War in Ukraine

• By most accounts, Russia’s offensive continues to falter in Ukraine, and it no longer seems inevitable that Russia will capture Kyiv within weeks. Analysts are now talking about a “grinding war” in which both sides gradually lose troops, equipment, and supplies.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly recaptured the city of Makariv, which is about 30 miles (50 km) from Kyiv.
• Ukraine’s defense ministry estimates that Russian forces currently have only enough food and ammo for three more days of fighting due to broken supply chains. Western analysts don’t have sufficient information to corroborate that estimate, but say it’s “plausible” that Russian troops are on the verge of a disastrous shortage.
• Pres. Biden said there are “clear signs” that an increasingly desperate Russian military is planning a “false flag” attack in Ukraine to justify the use of chemical or biological weapons. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’ll be an imminent attack: this revelation is probably part of the U.S. strategy to preemptively divulge intelligence about Russian plans to dispel misinformation as they eventually unfold.
• The NYT had an excellent article (pasted below) on the scrappy Ukrainian Air Force’s effective defenses against a much better equipped Russian enemy: “Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land.” Ukraine is still asking for more planes to supplement its fleet and replace damaged aircraft.
• The U.S. isn’t sending Ukraine aircraft yet, but it is sending several pieces of Soviet-built S-300, SA-10, and SA-8 air defense equipment that are familiar to Ukrainian operators.

End Game

• Pres. Zelensky said any compromises Ukraine makes with Russia to end the war would have to be approved by a nationwide referendum. That’s quite a democratic move, and will likely further endear Zelensky to EU and NATO leaders.

International Angle

• Pres. Zelensky virtually addressed the Italian Parliament yesterday, and once again demonstrated his skill for appealing to the hearts of his audience: he warned a room of Italians that Russia’s war will hinder Ukrainian production of key pasta ingredients like cooking oil and wheat. (To be fair, he was actually warning them of the risk of famine in Italy’s “neighbors across the sea” and a resulting immigration crisis, but I couldn’t resist the joke).
• Ukraine also sent an appeal to Chinese drone maker DJI to deactivate its drones that were bought in Russia to prevent Russian troops in Ukraine from using them to target their strikes. DJI responded that it can’t deactivate individual drones, but can impose geofences to shut down all of its drones in a particular area. That’s more of a response than I would’ve expected a Chinese company to give to a Ukrainian appeal, although we have yet to see if DJI actually follows through with geofences.
• In a protest over new sanctions, Russia pulled out of peace talks with Japan over the status of the Kuril Islands, which the two sides have been fighting over for longer than either modern country has existed.
• The U.S. is preparing to slap sanctions on all 300+ lawmakers in Russia’s lower house of parliament.

Meanwhile in Russia

• Western media are starting to report criticism of the war from within Russia, but doing so with caution since it’s illegal for Russians to criticize the war. The NYT says retired Russian officers are “leveling thinly veiled criticisms of the invasion and the quality of the intelligence that preceded it,” and The Economist published a great letter to the editor from a Russian civilian who says “many Russians are confused and shocked” by the war in Ukraine (and whose surname was withheld, presumably to protect him from jail time). That letter is pasted below.
• A Russian court sentenced jailed (and poisoned) dissident Alexey Navalny to nine more years in prison for “fraud.” Navalny continues to be a thorn in Pres. Putin’s side from prison: he’s writing letters urging Russians to protest the ongoing war in Ukraine.
• The new sentence doesn’t just add to Navalny’s jail time (which was previously only two-and-a-half years); it will also allow Russia to move him to a higher-security prison that’ll be harder for his lawyers and family to visit.

China

• Struggling megadeveloper China Evergrande delayed the publication of its annual results due to a “drastic change” in its prospects, and said that banks had seized $2 billion of its cash that was pledged as collateral. That’s just a fraction of the $300 billion Evergrande owes lenders in total, but the seizure was still a “major incident” for the company.
• So far rescuers have found no survivors of the Boeing 737-800 that crashed in southern China, and the speed of the plane’s descent leads experts to think “the chances of anyone from the plane surviving are minuscule.”

Other News

• Tesla just opened its first “Gigafactory” in Europe, located outside of Berlin with a production capacity of 500,000 cars per year. Its location is significant because it puts Tesla in direct competition with German automakers on the latter’s home turf.

Views on the war (Economist letters section)

I want to thank The Economist for making a clear distinction between Vladimir Putin’s regime and common Russians (“A tragedy and a catastrophe”, March 5th). Many Russians don’t believe that the government is capable of saving the economy when they see queues growing at cash machines. Thousands of Russians have been buying drugs and other medication to cope with the stress. I know five people who have started using anti depressants. Thousands more leave the country every day.

For others, accepting the war as a “special military operation” is a coping mechanism. Many Russians are confused and shocked. Some accept the truth, others hide behind government propaganda. “Ukrainians deserved it”, “We had no choice”; these words are used by some to accept events they have no control over. No one supports this war wholeheartedly, except for the siloviks (strongmen).

It is painful to see Ukrainians, not Russians, fighting for Russia’s future. One day that should change, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Egor (last name withheld)

St Petersburg

How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets (NYT)

Each night, Ukrainian pilots like Andriy loiter in an undisclosed aircraft hangar, waiting, waiting, until the tension is broken with a shouted, one-word command: “Air!”

Andriy hustles into his Su-27 supersonic jet and hastily taxis toward the runway, getting airborne as quickly as possible. He takes off so fast that he doesn’t yet know his mission for the night, though the big picture is always the same — to bring the fight to a Russian Air Force that is vastly superior in numbers but has so far failed to win control of the skies above Ukraine.

“I don’t do any checks,” said Andriy, a Ukrainian Air Force pilot who as a condition of granting an interview was not permitted to give his surname or rank. “I just take off.”

Nearly a month into the fighting, one of the biggest surprises of the war in Ukraine is Russia’s failure to defeat the Ukrainian Air Force. Military analysts had expected Russian forces to quickly destroy or paralyze Ukraine’s air defenses and military aircraft, yet neither has happened. Instead, Top Gun-style aerial dogfights, rare in modern warfare, are now raging above the country.

“Every time when I fly, it’s for a real fight,” said Andriy, who is 25 and has flown 10 missions in the war. “In every fight with Russian jets, there is no equality. They always have five times more” planes in the air.

The success of Ukrainian pilots has helped protect Ukrainian soldiers on the ground and prevented wider bombing in cities, since pilots have intercepted some Russian cruise missiles. Ukrainian officials also say the country’s military has shot down 97 fixed-wing Russian aircraft. That number could not be verified but the crumpled remnants of Russian fighter jets have crashed into rivers, fields and houses.

The Ukrainian Air Force is operating in near total secrecy. Its fighter jets can fly from air strips in western Ukraine, airports that have been bombed yet retain enough runway for takeoffs or landings — or even from highways, analysts say. They are vastly outnumbered: Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10.

Ukrainian pilots do have one advantage. In most of the country, Russian planes fly over territory controlled by the Ukrainian military, which can move anti-aircraft missiles to harass — and shoot down — planes.

“Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force said. “The enemy flying into our airspace is flying into the zone of our air defense systems.” He described the strategy as luring Russian planes into air defense traps.

Dave Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the principal attack planner for the Desert Storm air campaign in Iraq, said the impressive performance of the Ukrainian pilots had helped counter their disadvantages in numbers. He said Ukraine now has roughly 55 operational fighter jets, a number that is dwindling from shoot-downs and mechanical failures, as Ukrainian pilots are “stressing them to max performance.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has appealed repeatedly to Western governments to replenish the Ukrainian Air Force and has asked NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over the country, a step Western leaders have so far refused to take. Slovakia and Poland have considered sending MiG-29 fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots could fly with minimal additional training, but as yet no transfers have been made.

“Russian troops have already fired nearly 1,000 missiles at Ukraine, countless bombs,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address to Congress on March 16, appealing for more planes. “And you know that they exist, and you have them, but they are on earth, not in Ukraine — in the Ukrainian sky.”

Mr. Deptula said transferring these jets into Ukraine is critical. “Without resupply,” he said, “they will run out of airplanes before they run out of pilots.”

Pilotless drones are also a tool in the Ukrainian military’s arsenal, but not in the battle for control of the airspace. Ukraine flies a Turkish-made armed drone, the Bayraktar TB-2, a plodding, propeller aircraft that is lethally effective in destroying tanks or artillery pieces on the ground but cannot hit targets in the air. If Ukraine’s air defenses fail, Russian jets could easily pick them off.

As in other aspects of Ukraine’s war effort, volunteers play a role in the air battles. A volunteer network watches and listens for Russian jets, calling in coordinates and estimated speed and altitude. Other private Ukrainian pilots have removed up-to-date civilian navigation equipment from their planes and handed it over to the air force, in case it can be helpful.

Air-to-air combat has been rare in modern war, with only isolated examples in recent decades. U.S. pilots, for example, have not flown extensive aerial dogfights since the first Iraq War in 1991. Since then, U.S. fighter jets have engaged in air-to-air combat on just a few occasions, shooting down 10 planes in the Balkan wars and one plane in Syria, according to Mr. Deptula.

In the night sky, Andriy said he relies on instruments to discern the positions of enemy planes, which he says are always present. He has shot down Russian jets but was not permitted to say how many, or of which type. He said his targeting system can fire at planes a few dozen miles away.

“I mostly have tasks of hitting airborne targets, of intercepting enemy jets,” he said. “I wait for the missile to lock on my target. After that I press fire.”

When he shoots down a Russian jet, he said, “I am happy that this plane will no longer bomb my peaceful towns. And as we see in practice, that is exactly what Russian jets do.”

Most of the aerial combat in Ukraine has been nocturnal, as Russian aircraft attack in the dark when they are less vulnerable to air defenses. In the dogfights over Ukraine, Andriy said, the Russians have been flying an array of modern Sukhoi jets, such as the Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35.

“I had situations when I was approaching a Russian plane to a close enough distance to target and fire,” he said. “I could already detect it but was waiting for my missile to lock on while at the same time from the ground they tell me that a missile was fired at me already.”

He said he maneuvered his jet through a series of extreme banks, dives and climbs in order to exhaust the fuel supplies of the missiles coming after him. “The time I have to save myself depends on how far away the missile was fired at me and what kind of missile,” he said.

Still, he said in an interview on a clear, sunny day, “I can still feel a huge rush of adrenaline in my body because every flight is a fight.”

Andriy graduated from the Kharkiv Air Force School after deciding to become a pilot as a teenager. “Neither me nor my friends ever thought we would have to face a real war,” he said. “But that’s not how it turned out.”

Andriy has moved his wife to a safer part of Ukraine, but she has not left the country, he said. She spends her days weaving homemade camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army. He never tells family members when he is going on duty, he said, calling only after returning from a night flight.

“I only have to use my skills to win,” said Andriy. “My skills are better than the Russians. But on the other hand, many of my friends, and even those more experienced than me, are already dead.”