Transcription
And it has been a a massacre. Every day the footage has been shocking because these tankers are trying to move across the Sea of Azov with no protection. Whereas the Black Sea fleet, the Black Sea fleet is largely hiding in port because they don't want to get sunk. And right now, Ukraine is winning.
So, we've seen that Crimea is kind of a focus. This logistics lockdown of Ukrainian uh middle- range drone strikes and it's become an issue for them. Ukraine started hitting some of the land crossings to the north. uh aerial resupply is is not really feasible, but sea resupply is. And the Sea of Azov there is kind of the one to look at. It connects mainland Russia to occupied Crimea. And about a week ago, Ukraine started hitting these vessels. And the initial footage, every day, the footage has been shocking because these tankers are trying to move across the Sea of Azov with no protection. Seemingly, it doesn't look like there's there's counter drone teams on board. And it has been a a massacre is the best way to put it.
So, uh, right out the gate, there were, I think day by day, 10, 15, 20 that were hit. The last number I saw is over a hundred. You know, I I don't want to get this number wrong, but I think it was 116 different Russian vessels that have been hit by Ukrainian drones, which they're not sinking, and I don't think any have been sunk at this point. But what we're seeing is fewer ships willing to make that transit. The shipping companies, the individuals on those ships, the the captain saying, "We're not doing that. You kidding me?" because they get out into the Sea of Azov and there's smoke plumes in every direction. I don't know that anybody has been killed so far. I would be surprised if nobody has been injured just given the volume of the uh of the strikes here. But shipping in the Sea of Azov has has really fallen off a cliff. Very similar to what we saw in the uh the Ukrainian strikes in the southern occupied territories where they didn't destroy every truck, but they hit enough to where plenty of drivers said we just can't do this or we can't drive at these certain times or we can't take this certain route. The same thing right now happening uh happening on the water.
It was pretty surprising for a couple different reasons. So, I think something that's usually missed with this is folks that maybe aren't following the war day in and day out, like the majority of people around the world, is they tune in and they see a bunch of strikes against these ships and think, "Why didn't they do this last year or last month or at any point? If they could do this, why not?" And the fact is Ukraine has been building this program month by month, year by year. So, over the course of the last few years, we have seen Ukraine as their drone technology advances going after a lot of air defense systems. And it was interesting to see because Ukraine doesn't have aircraft really that are going to be flying into Russian territory. So they're clearing out these air defense systems for what and we're seeing that today. So there have been gaps created all throughout Russia, all throughout the occupied territories. And all it takes is one or two systems to go down like a pansy or a book system to go down and it opens up a new corridor for these drones to fly through. And Ukraine is not launching one drone at a time. They're launching hundreds. And every one of those gathers information on Russian uh on on flight routes through Russian territory. So every single launch is a time to learn and you have to imagine the amount of AI and machine learning and stuff that is going into that behind the scenes to identify the exact perfect route to avoid all of the Russian systems.
The reason they started going after the ships recently is they kind of narrowed this down. So they hit a lot of targets on Crimea. Then they started hitting the shipping or the the uh transportation moving into Crimea started hitting the bridges in the north. There's very few remaining ways to get anything in. There's the Kersch bridge with uh I believe the commander of the unmanned systems forces, Robert Madar, yesterday suggested that they're going to leave that standing so Russia can evacuate using the bridge, but there's very little going across the bridge. Air travel into Crimea is not feasible in terms of keeping it supplied. So the one remaining option was the sea. So after the land route was was pretty heavily degraded and the the trucks stopped driving nearly as much as they could, they started hitting the ships. Had they done this in the other direction, it wouldn't have really been noticeable because something like four to 5% of of fuel of general supplies coming into Crimea is coming via sea. So if they hit that first, it would have been a minor distraction and everything just would have increased over the land routes. But Russia shut those or Ukraine shut those land routes down effectively really stopped them in a long way uh and then shifted over to one of the few remaining uh ways they had.
I think the reason these these tankers are are showing well there's a couple aspects here. First off is they very clearly did not think that there was any sort of threat. We are still seeing Russian tankers move out in columns one after the other. And you can see videos probably today, I haven't looked at the footage yet, but yesterday certainly, uh you can see a tanker burning in the distance when another drone comes in and hits the next one. Like that's crazy that that's happening. So the the tactics of dispersion and trying to move out at certain times just hasn't played out there. I mean, that's that's knowledge that is play that is uh in force all across the front, but the Sea of Azovv apparently they viewed themselves as uh they view that area as not susceptible to getting hit. The other side here is the protection. Where's the Black Sea fleet is a question being raised on a lot of uh Russian channels. Again, when we go to the the kind of order that Ukraine carried this out in, you know, 2 three years ago, there were likely a fair number of Black Sea fleet vessels that could have stood picket duty and shot down a lot of these drones and protected the vessels against Ukrainian strikes. Right now, the Black Sea fleet is largely hiding in port because they don't want to get sunk. And we're hearing more and more Russians say it's a problem because if the fleet goes out there, then we're just going to lose a naval vessel. So there there's a shortage of ways to intercept these munitions. On land, we're seeing it in shortage of air defense assets. We're seeing it in a shortage of the mobile anti-aircraft teams or anti- drone teams. At sea, especially in this area, you're seeing the shortage of the Black Sea fleet. So, it's the the kind of steady degradation of Russian air defense playing out in a couple different ways that has left these tankers just completely vulnerable.
I I think the situation in Crimea is getting really bad really quickly. We're seeing more and more every day. I saw a post earlier today where I want to say it was 350 rubles for a liter of gas. That's like a 500% or 400% increase in the last two months. It's just, you know, it's I can't imagine what that would be like here in the United States if if gas down the street went up 400% in two months. I mean, there'd be there would be riots. So, I I I have to imagine that things are are steadily getting worse for the Russian people in some of these occupied territories, and that's just just going to trickle up uh to Putin. So, it's it's happening fast.
At the NATO summit, this is the second time I've been, so I have a a little bit to compare to, but not a ton. Uh the previous one was in 2024 and it was a very cautious nervous tone throughout the alliance and if you go back to that time period July 2024 Ukraine was on the defensive and and trying to figure out you know that the counteroffensive hadn't really succeeded and it was what's going to come next. We saw the Russian military continuing to advance. This was different where the view was I mean I was sitting there watching a speech from Ukrainian President Zullinsky as the footage came out showing the massacre in the Sea of Azov. Like that is wild to see these tankers get hit one after the other after the other. We didn't expect that a few years ago. And I think anybody especially in the NATO alliance that has been following the war has seen on their TVs or on their computers every day now for months Russian refineries getting hit. They're seeing shipping getting hit. They're seeing logistics get hit. They're seeing gains along the front by the Russian military, but they're also seeing the videos come out to show the staggering losses that Russia is taking trying to advance a few meters in some of the, you know, rural areas of of the eastern Donbos. So, all of that together, day after day after day, I I think has has kind of uh brought the point home to a lot of folks that Ukraine has the upper hand right now. There's a great quote in I believe it was in Reuters where a NATO official said Donald Trump likes a winner and right now Ukraine is winning. That's not a term we've heard throughout this war. Anytime any a NATO official or somebody says Ukraine is they generally kind of couch it with no well Russia isn't winning but Ukraine is is still here. And this time they were much more overt. Ukraine is winning. Ukraine has the upper hand. They have the possibility of uh of bringing this war home in the near term. So very optimistic and I think it has to do with I mean the media piece of this the strikes are happening on the ground but Ukraine is making sure that the entire world can see the effects of these strikes and they're seeing Russia was supposed to be impenetrable. Nothing could get through the vaunted Russian air defense. And we are seeing instead Ukrainian drones that they are manufacturing themselves getting through every single day. And Russia's inability to protect themselves, I think, is has been a bit of a wakeup call in a lot of ways to uh to the NATO alliance.
So, this was a pretty interesting one. It's it's new in so many different ways. It's the 123rd, I believe, territorial defense brigade from Ukraine. They landed a USV or unmanned surface vessel on the Kinburn Spit just off the coast of Crimea. Then they drove a unmanned uh ground vehicle with a mounted machine gun onto land and started firing into the distance. So the the headline here is Ukraine just conducted an unmanned amphibious assault. They used an unmanned vessel to land an unmanned vehicle that started firing, you know, ideally towards enemy positions. All of this technologies existed for a while though. So really all this did was show it in kind of a combat environment sort of. We didn't actually see an operation carried out. You know, it doesn't not clear what exactly it did other than showcase the technology and the capabilities on Russian territory or Russian occupied territory, but this is the kind of thing that we're seeing week in and week out where there's just new ways that drones can be utilized. So each go back a couple years and it wasn't in the cards to use a drone to land a drone in occupied territory. Now that's there. We'll continue to see more kind of iterations on what that could mean. There's a lot of uh UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles being used, FPVs and bomber drones. We know those have been very effective. One of the big challenges that has not yet been resolved by drones is holding terrain, holding territory. Robots can't control a village indefinitely like people can. That's still a line we have to cross. So, we've seen some of these UGVs utilized in offensive capacities, either carrying mines and and blowing up uh or machine guns, rocket launchers, things like that. but they're slow. You know, they they they can't take cover as easily as maybe a person could. So, there's there's still a lot of differences. Uh it's not it's not a uh clear-cut solution quite yet. Right now, it's still more of a you know, helping the soldier on the ground. So, carrying logistics alongside. So, maybe an infantryman instead of just having 80 lb on his back has 80 lb on his back and 500 lb on that vehicle next to him. So, for today at least, it's still very much a uh an and thing, not an or.
Kinburn Spit is an interesting area where it's it's just uh it's kind of the closest Russian occupied territory of Crimea to Ukraine. So, we've seen some landing operations there in the past. This is an area where Russia uses the the terrain there to identify Ukrainian drones and missiles coming into Crimea. So, it's kind of like the the outer ring or one of the outer rings of air defense for Crimea. There's been some talk of Russian uh units abandoning positions there. I think that was probably a little premature. Uh but it is kind of one of those areas that's going to be an indicator of how things are going in Crimea. Right now, I would say there's probably not a real good incentive for Ukraine to physically take over that territory. They're more incentivized to make it unbearable for Russians. that when you're looking at the possibility of Russian forces exiting Crimea or coming under strain, the Kinburn spit, that very very narrow peninsula is uh is kind of the key indicator, the canary in a coal mine, if you will. When that goes and troops evacuate that area, it's probably a sign that things are getting pretty bad.
So, a couple days ago, video went pretty viral across just about every social media network, including some Russian channels. They were laughing about it as well where a trainee tried to mount the machine gun on the back of a uh truck, clearly modified, not how it was supposed to be set up, and the thing just spun him in circles and it was it flew him off the truck. And then I think kind of secretly the best part of that was the instructor grabbing the the steaming hot barrel when he got up and and probably ripping a few layers of skin off his hand. But the interesting thing here is uh it is an improvisation and it's something we've seen both Russia and Ukraine do for quite a while now. not new to take machine guns or weapon systems from say a tank or in this case an aircraft and try to use it for some other purpose. So I wouldn't read too much into that. There's clearly a shortage in Russia right now of these mobile air defense teams and that looks like what they were training this guy on trying to shoot down drones. So they are doing everything they can to build out more of those teams. Not crazy that they're grabbing a machine gun from an aircraft, putting it in the back of a truck. However, somebody should have caught that like at somewhere along the line, somebody should have said, "This isn't designed to be fired from this capacity. It's not anchored incorrectly." Uh, and then the instructor just let it happen. So, I wouldn't read too much into uh kind of unique ways of using weapon systems, but there is a little bit to uh to take in about how nobody caught that that would be an issue before they pulled the trigger.
The coolest experiences for me over the course of the last couple years getting to know so many wonderful people in Ukraine and in the armed forces is just the reminder that they're normal people. We see these videos and they're especially when they're in uniform and they're kitted up. They look like these crazy warriors going out there and you know scared of nothing and just the the meanest, toughest guys on the planet. But when you get to talking with them, they're all just normal. They're the they're your neighbor. They're the guy that works at the store down the street. They're the kid you went to school with. Like, and I think we lose sight of that. I knew that when I was in the US military and always tried to relay that to civilians, that they look different, but they're the same. Like, they look different because they have a uniform on and they signed up to do a certain job, but these are normal people that you would get along with that that share your beliefs and and would crack up at your jokes and uh their kids would get along with your kids. And that's been a a nice reminder. With the Ukrainian military, it's the exact same. They are normal people. uh just right now they have to do a job that you know they wouldn't otherwise be doing. But when you strip away that uniform, they're you know they're watching the same shows, they're listening to the same music and uh they have the same concerns and the same hopes and dreams as as anyone else.