Putin’s Missile Strikes Unite Ukrainians
What Failed for the Nazis Won’t Succeed for the Copycats
Everyone knew it was coming. I thought it would start as soon as winter froze the Ukrainian ground. But the Kremlin held back. They were sitting on top of an estimated 800-plus missiles but chose to wait until the last few days of 2023. Timing it with such perfection to spoil the Christmas to New Year weekend. When everyone is looking forward to the new year, let us just make the Ukrainians writhe in pain and fall into despair.
When it comes to the Kremlin, it is all about the message. They have to send a message. A message to diplomats. A message to foreign leaders. A message to leaders visiting Moscow. A message to Russians. A message to people whom the Kremlin wants to enslave.
More than anyone else, the Ukrainian army would have known the attacks were coming. They would have had a baseline stock of anti-missile ammunition to withstand the bombardment. Russia attacked the very spots you anticipated them to attack: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lyiv. The population centers where the Kremlin can have the highest opportunity to create an impact.
“Between 2016 and 2019, the UK suffered six terrorist attacks, all targeting crowded places. However, terrorist attacks on crowded public places are not exclusive to the UK.” Similar attacks have been happening across the world. “The one key shared feature of these attacks is that they have all targeted crowded places to inflict many casualties.”
Australia’s Tasmanian police force says that “In most cases, the location itself is not the target — it is the high volume and concentration of people that makes a crowded place attractive to attack. While some crowded places have other attractive features, any location that concentrates large crowds could be an attractive target.”
Terrorists need as much body count as they can get.. to publicize their actions and generate a news cycle that gets their name out in the public. For Russia, it has to be either urban centers that can give them a greater death toll or Ukrainian infrastructure that can force the Ukrainian government bogged down with a problem far away from the frontlines.
Except for the timing part of it, the Russians did what they were expected to do. That is why I was taken by complete surprise to see the interception rate of Russian missiles come down sharply during last week’s attacks.
On Friday, Ukraine intercepted just 114 missiles and drones out of the 158 units that entered Ukrainian airspace. A less than stellar interception rate of 72%. I think anything less than 95% is a bit of a failure that needs to be addressed.
Due to the sharp increase in air-defense systems in Ukraine this year compared to last year, Ukraine should have been able to defend its population centers. I thought Russia would circumvent this issue by attacking tier two cities and towns to extract a heavier death toll. Instead, they targeted the largest urban centers and still got through.
Things did not improve from the Ukrainian end when Russia fired six missiles and Iranian Shahed drones into Kharkiv on Sunday. The number of missiles that got through Ukrainian air defense is still not clear, but the death toll, 26 Ukrainian lives, shows some of them breached the defensive coverage.
“Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, said on social media that the assault began with three dozen Shahed drones launched from the north and southeast in the early hours of Friday. Then, bomber jets began firing cruise missiles around 5 a.m., followed by ballistic missiles an hour later. Finally, at 6:30 a.m., Russian fighter planes launched five hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, one of the most sophisticated weapons in Russia’s arsenal.”
A report by The New York Times found that, “Ukraine managed to intercept only the first wave of cruise missiles, fired around 5 a.m. The other missiles crashed into warehouses, weapons factories, and residential buildings, burying people under the rubble.”
The Russians are also not firing the Iranian drones mindlessly.
Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat reported that the “Shahed” drones often attack along riverbeds, roads, and regional borders. There is logic to this: flying low over a river can evade anti-aircraft radar detection; the noise of the “Shahed” merges with the sound of cars on roads; and we assume that regional borders may coincide with the junctions of different unit zones of responsibility, which the enemy exploits to slip through.
Russians have a set strategy to beat Ukrainian air defense. And it will work.
- Drones first
- Ballistic missiles next.
- Hypersonic missiles in the end.
- The cost spectrum goes from low to high. Since the location does not change, this strategy allows Russia to exhaust the air-defense system before firing the ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles. By sending the drones and ballistic missiles as the first two salvos, Russia can check the level of air defense coverage in each of the targeted locations. Depending on the response, they can choose to fire the hypersonic missiles.
For example, if Ukraine knocks out all the drones and ballistic missiles over Kyiv while one or two ballistic missiles get through in Kharkhiv, Russia can then choose to drop the hypersonic missiles in Kharkhiv instead of Kyiv.
I know this is sick. But what is the point? We have to look at what the enemy is doing so that we can develop better countermeasures. Due to the partial success Russia enjoyed in the recent attacks, they will persist in targeting highly populated urban centers in future attacks.
It is nothing wrong in going through a setback. No one can be on top all the time. The key for Ukraine is to get back up. There is a saying in my hometown that goes like this: It is ok to fall nine times. But make sure that you get back up ten times.
Russia has a set plan to breach Ukrainian air defenses. But to succeed, they need to find those spots where Ukraine does not have enough air-defense missiles. The best way to stop this is by loading up Ukrainian stock. There is literally no other way around it.
If Ukraine runs out of ammo, Russia will not target civilian centers; it will start taking out the air-defense systems. That will lead to an catastrophe. These are not systems that can be replaced easily. The West has to give as many air-defense missiles as it can to Ukraine. Russia only has 800 to 1000 missiles on hand. Many of them will fail. So, the number of air-defense missiles Ukraine needs is not way out of reach for the West to muster.
Russia may have succeeded in killing civilians. But if they assumed that this will help them destroy the morale of Ukrainians and subdue their will to fight, they are going to be horribly wrong.
This was the same strategy the Luftwaffe deployed against Great Britain, launching wave after wave of attacks from the air. It caused widespread destruction. Scores were killed. England’s economy took a beating. But that did not break the morale of the Brits to resist the Nazis.
It only reminded them of the kind of life they will experience under the Nazis. It did not break the morale. It boosted their morale to fight back.
Ukrainian leadership was going through a bit of turbulence in recent months. President Zelensky and Commander Zaluzhny diverged in their approaches to achieving victory. Internal strife could have helped Russia. But the indiscriminate targeting of civilians has already united them. Not just the leadership unit in Ukraine, these attacks will also push the West to rally behind Ukraine.
It happened last year.
It was in January last year the United States and Germany agreed to give Ukraine the Patriot air-defense systems, Leopard and M1 Abrams tanks. Last winter, Putin assumed that he can brutalize his way to victory, but it only forced the Western world to wake up and rally behind Ukraine.
Evil does not get its way all the time.
