November 11, 2024

 

The Norwegian Conservative Party has proposed to increase military aid to Ukraine by $2.72 billion in 2025, raising the total from $1.36 billion to $4.08 billion, equivalent to roughly 40% of Norway’s defense budget for the year. The funds would primarily be spent on equipment production and military infrastructure in Ukraine. They believe that such investments in Ukraine’s defense industry can make a rapid change on the battlefield, after receiving assurances that Ukraine is capable of expanding its production lines. The final decision has yet to be made by the Norwegian government, however.

The Druk Army is a public initiative in Ukraine focused on supporting the military by providing them with 3D printed materials for free. The Druk Army community has filled over 113,000 orders. Anyone with a 3D printer in Ukraine can contribute and the community has a catalog of over 500 items in 16 different categories, including droppable munition components and medical equipment.


In Ternopil Oblast, 48% of recruits signing up for the military are women. In Chernivtsi, that number is 44%, and in Chernihiv, that number is 39%. Across the whole nation, women make up 19% of all volunteers. Over 67,000 women serve in the military and as of April 2024, 5,000 of them were on the front lines.


On November 5, a Russian shahed drone struck an apartment building in Belgorod Russia, injuring 2 people. The Russian authorities originally blamed Ukraine for the attack, but footage from a surveillance camera clearly shows a Russian Shahed-136 caused the impact. Ukraine lately has been reporting that Shaheds are returning to Russia during attacks on Ukraine; this was not one of those. This was flying from deeper inside Russia and in the direction of the Ukrainian border when it impacted the building. Some eyewitnesses say that they saw a black cloud of smoke in the air near the drone shortly before the impact and suggested that it was shot down by Russian air defenses and landed on the building.


The Russians reported that their special services stopped a Ukrainian plot to hire a helicopter pilot to poison his fellow crewman and fly a Mi-8MTPR-1 into Ukrainian territory. The pilot’s family was to be evacuated to Chisinau before the hijacking. The FSB claims that the pilot was offered a safe corridor to fly through, with the positions of Ukrainian air defenses being provided to the pilot. They further claim that Russia successfully destroyed these air defense systems. This is a pretty unlikely story for multiple reasons, including the fact that the pilot’s family wasn’t evacuated from Russia yet, so it seems unlikely the air defense corridor was already set up. The Mi-8MTPR-1 helicopter is a special electronic warfare variant designed to suppress/disrupt Ukrainian radars.


Petro Andryushchenko, advisor to the mayor of Mariupol reported that Ukraine attacked Russian air defense systems between the Mariupol Airport and the village of Berdyanske, and at least 4 explosions were heard on November 9, sometime around 11 p.m. He said the attack resulted in a fire and one system was hit.


Josep Borrell, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs said that Ukraine is making progress on the path towards membership in the EU. He described the European Commission's most recent report on Ukraine as being "very positive.” He said that he thinks negotiations will begin in 2025, which is an unprecedented pace in the EU’s history. He added that membership in the EU comes with its own security commitments.


German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Russia may seek to use the transition period between U.S. presidential administrations to improve its footing on the battlefield. She encouraged European countries to increase their aid as soon as possible, so it has time to make it to the front lines in time. She particularly emphasized the need to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses.


Ukraine’s Strategic Industries Minister Herman Smetanin announced that Ukrainian defense companies have created lightweight drones comparable to the DJI Mavic. Some passed military testing, flying 10 km at an altitude of 250m. The drones can fly for 40-60 minutes and carry a 1-3 kg payload. They are intended primarily for reconnaissance but can be used to drop munitions. 6 companies presented designs for testing and 2 of them were approved.


The EU has delivered 980,000 out of the 1,000,000 million shells that it promised to Ukraine in March of 2023, according to Josep Borrell. He said Europe plans to complete the order by the end of the year, despite having the initial goal of reaching it by spring. The EU significantly overestimated its own 155mm artillery shell production capacity. It was believed that Europe could manufacture about 1 million of these shells per year, but according to a statement by Rheinmetall in January of 2024, the actual production capacity was actually about 550,000 shells. In addition to these 1,000,000 shells, the delivery of 500,000 shells from the Czech shell initiative is also expected to be completed by the end of the year.


Media outlet Meduza published a presentation on Russian mobilization that was made between May 30 and June 4. The presentation was published online on June 4. The presentation was created with a pirated version of Microsoft Office, by a user named GVC-2, which is the abbreviation of Russia’s Main Computing Center of the Russian Armed Forces. The presentation discusses a database that was created to gather information on people who can be mobilized into the Russian military. The mobilizable population includes men between the ages of 18-27, military veterans, reservists, and specialists, including people who have specific skills or qualifications that can support the military. This database gathers information together from various other Russian databases such as the Civil Registry Office and the Federal Tax Service to create a more complete database to find everyone potentially available for military service.


The data shows there are 13,218,679 people in the Central Military District, 9,167,697 in the Moscow Military District, 5,436,221 in the Southern Military District, 3,147,578 in the Leningrad Military District, 19,55,281 in the Eastern Military District eligible for mobilization, but it isn’t clear if these numbers are real, final, or just sample numbers and don’t account for people who are crucial to the Russian economy and cannot easily be replaced.


President Zelenskyy reported that Ukraine produced more than 100 missiles in 2024. He added that some of the loans provided by the EU are being used to further fund Ukraine’s missile and long-range drone programs. He said that there are more than 800 Ukrainian companies involved in the production of weapons and equipment for the military. He also mentioned that Ukraine’s defense industry is now attracting money from international investors and is engaging in technology sharing, to enable Ukraine’s industry to advance more quickly.


Former President Petro Poroshenko provided the Ukrainian military with 12 excavators equipped with EW systems. The excavators are domestically made TDC 105s, with a digging depth of 3.5m.
The bucket can scoop up to 1.2 cubic meters of soil at a time. The total cost of the vehicles is approximately $1 million. The EW systems seems to be the “Shatro” system which creates a 100-250 m dome of interference against enemy drones.


Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry thanked Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for continuing to express support for Ukraine and sticking to the position of allowing Ukraine to set its own conditions for negotiating peace with Russia and stating that such decisions cannot be made without Ukraine. Heorhiy Tykhyi, a foreign ministry spokesperson said that the only fair resolution respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and forces all parties to adhere to international law and the UN Charter.


Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman reported that Russians executed 2 unarmed Ukrainian POWs in Kursk Oblast. He condemned the war crime and called on all prisoners to be protected. The video shows these men being gunned down at close range. Ukraine has reported that the rate at which POWs are being killed has increased.


On November 10, refugees from Sudzha, a town in Kursk Oblast captured by Ukraine, staged a protest that Russian authorities have declared to be illegal. The protest involved “several dozen” protesters gathering in Red Square. Initially, the protest was treated as legitimate and a government official asked the group to appoint leaders to simplify communication, but then declared the protest illegal, and said it was out of the government’s control; they could not have a legal protest because there is a “counter-terrorist operation” ongoing throughout the country. The Russian authority promised to punish those who were responsible for the success of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk. The protesters responded that only conscripts were guarding the border with rifles, and said that the generals in charge of that decision should be the ones punished. They also demanded that the government call the war with Ukraine a war, and not a “special military operation.” The Russian government official then told them they weren’t allowed to yell things and if they kept yelling, the protest would be ended “right now.” They were assured the governor of the region would meet with them, on the 12th. This meeting was later canceled, and instead, the head of the Sudzha district would meet with them.


On the night of November 9-10, a Russian Mi-24 attack helicopter was destroyed at the Klin-5 airfield in Moscow Oblast. Footage shows a moderately large fire burning on/in the helicopter. The helicopter belonged to the 92nd Squadron of the 344th Center for Combat Application and Retraining of Army Aviation Personnel.


The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has signed several agreements with Denmark to improve Ukraine’s defenses and defense industry. Money from Denmark, Sweden, and frozen Russian assets will be used to purchase €535 million worth of equipment produced by Ukraine’s domestic defense industry. The agreements outline which projects will be funded, how they will be funded, and timelines for delivery.


On November 6, 2024, Ukrainian drones attacked the Caspian Flotilla base in Kaspiysk, Russia, a distance of over 1,500 km from Ukraine’s border. The attack caused minimal damage, but according to satellite images, it caused Russia to move all of its ships from the base, including its missile launching ships. Before the strike, the combined missile capacity of all ships at the base was 40, after the strike, only a decommissioned corvette remained in port.


Ukrainian soldier Stanislav Osman:

“In the direction of Hulyaipole, the enemy launched a mechanized assault on our positions today, involving around 5 units of heavy equipment and motorcycles. One BMP was sunk in a lake, but details are still unavailable.
…
Large mechanized assaults were repulsed in [Kursk] today, and about 2 dozen pieces of equipment were destroyed.”

Quote of the Day:

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting hedgehogs.”

― Ingrid Bergman