Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 05 DEC 2022 13:45 PST - Ukraine's Good Day

When you add it all up, Ukraine had a very good day today.

Here is what we can confirm at this point.

There were reports of drones hitting up to four Russian air bases within Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea. We can confirm two, we can debunk one, and we're investigating the fourth (Crimea) and have doubts. It is more likely it was nervous air defense shooting at seagulls.

As we wrote in the Situation Report (thank you to our European-based translators for jumping on the Russian milblogger space!), the official version from the Russian Ministry of Defense was one drone strike, two Tu-95 planes "slightly" damaged, and an "accident" at another base where a fuel truck exploded, three killed, six wounded, no aircraft damaged.

That version of events was already being dismissed universally in the Russian milblogger space before Dmytry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, fired off his first statement.

Gray Zone shared photos from Diaghilev airbase showing an APU or hydraulic fluid tanker heavily damaged and a Tu-22M bomber with significant damage - fire suppression foam surrounded the aircraft and vehicle, and there was no evidence of a fuel truck fire. Those pictures have since been deleted from the original source. Rybar indicated at one point that two Tu-95 were damaged at Engels, and two more were close to being destroyed. That post also disappeared. We have seen reports of between two and eight airframes damaged or destroyed, but we're settling on six at this time. We don't have an information network in Russia, so we don't have any additional information; just trying to tease out the truth between the lies and exaggerations. The photos confirming the damaged aircraft at Diaghilev have us believing the number is at the higher edge of the range.

Russia put 14 Tu-95s in the air from Engels, which strongly indicates that four aircraft were damaged because they had 18. Eight were armed, and a total of 70 to 75 cruise missiles entered Ukrainian air space between Russian VKS, and 22 Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from the Black Sea Fleet. Capabilities were for 24 missiles, so it is unclear if one missile carrier was partially loaded or if there were two launch failures. VKS launches included the Kh-22 AS-4 Kitchen, which we wrote/podcasted about as having an extremely high failure rate in midflight. It is almost certain more than 70 to 75 missiles were likely launched.

Ukraine claims they shot down over 60, achieving an 80% to 85% success rate. Their target is 90%, so air defense did an excellent job. It appears Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv took the brunt of the strikes, with the most issues with the electrical grid. Other outages, for example, in Sumy, were partially caused by DTEK shutting the grid down preventively to avoid transformer farms from overloading and cooking themselves.

The missile debris that landed in Moldova was the booster section of an S-300 antiaircraft missile that detonated as designed in the air. There was no damage or injuries, and the section was identified as part of an S-300 minutes after the pictures were released. 

There are a lot of questions about how Ukraine could have flown at least two drones this deep into Russia undetected. There is a lot of speculation in the Russian information space that Ukraine has modified Tu-141 surveillance drones from the Cold War, which they apparently have a lot of, into armed cruise missiles. We can't verify that, and the speculation is based on one commonality. Ukraine claims the new kamikaze drone they developed has a 1000 km range, and the Tu-141 has a 1000 km range. Ukraine has always had a strong aerospace program with a lot of institutional knowledge. Modifying an existing platform is the path of least resistance. Creating their own platform isn't impossible.

Some Russian milbloggers speculated that Ukraine had been given Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States, and NATO was involved because, of course, they did. When Ukraine does something right, it clearly was NATO, the Poles, and the Brits, under the orders of the United States, which controls the entire world. When Ukraine loses, well, then they beat Ukraine. 

Ukraine would get main battle tanks and fighter planes before Tomahawks.

We have questions due to the size of the explosions at both bases. Shockwaves were felt over 6 km away from Engels and 4 km away from Diaghilev. That is a lot of boom that a 73-kilogram warhead won't deliver on its own, and an exploding fuel truck doesn't have that much explosive force. This is a significant unanswered question. No videos showed signs of secondary explosions at either location.

The bigger story we think people aren't talking about is everything we learned today.

• Ukraine crossed another Russian "redline," and there wasn't a nuclear response because there never will be 
• Russian domestic air defense is poor despite being on a war footing and telling their nation to get ready for attacks on their cities
• This is supportive of the photos we shared about six weeks ago of Russian air defense installations around Moscow that are moss-covered, rusted out, and unmaintained
• If this was a modified Tu-141 reconnaissance drone, it is even more embarrassing that Russian Federation technology could not detect and neutralize Soviet-era technology from the 1970s - this should have been easy
• For some perspective, the Diaghilev airbase is about 100 kilometers from Moscow; imagine a foreign power launch a kamikaze drone or cruise missile from Canadian air space, and it flies for 100s of kilometers over the United States and strikes Dover AFB, which is about 125 kilometers from Washington D.C.
• Russian milbloggers who are veterans claim Russia only has two functional surveillance satellites and are attacking Roscosmos for corruption and incompetence
• Russian milbloggers claim that the radar installations at Russian airbases are not integrated into advanced air defense systems such as the Pantsir 
• Russia keeps all of its strategic bombers at just three bases and its refueling fleet at one, and they don't have hardened hangars to store them in and hide operations
• The damaged strategic bombers, especially the Tu-22M or Tu-22Ms, will be extremely hard to repair and impossible to replace - they are gorgeous aircraft but were never successful airframes and are extremely expensive to maintain and repair even without battle damage
• Even accounting for Russia's exceptional ability (that isn't a backhanded compliment) to keep things operating with duct tape, zip ties, baling wire, lots of blyats, and a large hammer, "good enough" hopefully will not apply to strategic bombers that are designed to carry nuclear weapons
• Ukraine's air defense is improving with each wave of attacks
• Russia's response to an attack on two or three airbases and the loss of two to eight critical airframes was to attack civilian infrastructure in a $400 million expenditure with very limited success
• Russia already doesn't have the parts, the funds, or the institutional knowledge to maintain its existing air fleet, ironically it is highly likely that some of the required parts and systems to restore the damaged strategic bombers would normally come from Ukraine or Poland
• This attack completely overshadowed Putin's drive across the Kerch Bridge today, which is a public relations disaster in itself, with the Russian people asking aloud why did he drive in a Mercedes and not in a Russian-branded vehicle

When you add up all the columns, this was a good day for Ukraine. In the social media space, the Ukrainian people are in full "Keep calm and carry on" London 1940 Blitz mode. They are finding the loss of water, power, Internet, and air raids frustrating, but the will is getting stronger, not weaker, as time goes by. Russia's response to attack civilians and civilian infrastructure as retaliation for an attack on valid military targets bolsters Western support.

Large areas of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Donetsk went without electricity for months, including during the unusually cold early spring at the start of the war. In these areas, it is mostly, "well, here we go again."

The Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to be audacious in their ingenuity and planning to strike at Russian targets further and further away from their borders. Who would have thought that Ukraine would be striking air bases in the Moscow suburbs almost eight months after the Moskva was sunk?