WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

How Ukrainian air defense fends off Russian attacks

A few fishermen sat alongside a reservoir in the greater Kyiv area as families nearby on folding chairs enjoyed the sunny weather when a black and green Humvee military vehicle with a mounted Stinger anti-aircraft system suddenly pulled up. The people quickly packed their belongings and checked their mobile phones for a missile warning they might have overlooked.

Two soldiers got out of the vehicle and reassured the people, saying it was only a mobile air defense unit exercise. Oleksandr, the commander, made it clear, however, that in the event of an air attack, everyone should leave the area immediately.

"It is life-threatening to be out in the open near a body of water because from time to time, Russian missiles and Iranian Shahed drones fly along here, which we intercept," the 36-year-old told DW. The other soldier, 39-year-old Ivan, walked the area fully armed, looking closely at everything on the water, on the opposite shore and in the surrounding area.

'Good eyesight and ingenuity'

Ukrainian air defense forces have occasionally shot down targets from the side of the reservoir using a Dual Mount Stinger portable air defense system that can intercept missiles, planes and helicopters from a distance of five kilometers and at an altitude of up to three kilometers. The two men recreate a real combat situation they have practiced many times: They quickly pull boxes with missiles from the vehicle, open them and put the projectiles into the launcher. Oleksandr jumps onto the roof of the vehicle and inspects the airspace, spinning on a special seat.

"I can fire two missiles in five seconds," he said. The radar signals a target in the air before he sees it, transmits coordinates and tells him where to aim. "Once I see the target, I get the 'fire' signal."

With the exception of the Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile, Oleksandr said he could get pretty much anything out of the sky. Careful not to give too much detail, he said the air defense job takes "good eyesight and ingenuity." The system might see a cloud above a drone as a target, in which case he has to think on his feet to actually get to the drone.

In recent weeks, most of the Russian missile attacks on Kyiv and the region occurred at night. Those were tense situations, Oleksandr and Ivan said, as it is much more difficult to detect targets, and there were far too many of them. According to Ivan, the Russian army aims to diminish the Ukrainian air defense stocks and weaken fighting morale. But they won't succeed, he said.

"We have enough missiles and we have learned not to sleep at night," Ivan said.

Not everyone can stand the strain, said Oleksandr — not even soldiers.

"I'm now used to staying awake for eight hours at night," he said, adding he can fall asleep for a few hours in the afternoon because he knows the night might hold more attacks.

'I am responsible for many lives'

Oleksandr struggled for words when asked about his feelings when he failed to shoot down a target. He said it is very difficult to note that a drone or missile has hit an apartment building, a kindergarten, a school or a hospital.

"I realize then that I failed to save lives. I am responsible for many lives," he said, adding that's why soldiers train constantly. For every enemy target they shoot down, they paint a trident, Ukraine's national emblem, on their vehicle. Their Humvee sports 12 tridents.

The Ukrainian Army's Air Defense Command had never informed the media about the work of the mobile squads. Only now, after more than a year of war, has Oleksandr been allowed to talk about his experience. In the first months of the war, he shot down two Su-25 aircraft and two K-52 helicopters in the Kyiv region, he said, adding that helicopters are particularly difficult to hit because they deflect missiles with a laser.

"They said you can't shoot them down. But anything is possible if you try. I kept changing my position, came under artillery fire, but finally succeeded," he recalled. He said he also intercepted a total of eight drones elsewhere in the Kyiv region and in Kharkiv.

Relief thanks to IRIS-T and Patriot system

According to estimates by the Armed Forces Command of Ukraine, Ukrainian air defenses are now successfully repelling larger missile attacks on the Kyiv area. Success depends on the mobile man-portable air defense systems, which are difficult to locate and can be rapidly assembled and disassembled. Oleksandr and Ivan said it was a relief when Ukraine received the powerful IRIS-T and Patriot missile defense systems from their partners.

Oleksandr, who was a professional soldier before the war, already knew how to use the Dual Mount Stinger. Lithuania provided the portable air defense system to Ukraine and he took a crash course. His orders were to protect the airspace over Ukraine.

"I went to war to protect Ukraine, my family — my wife and child, whom I didn't see for eight months."

Ivan was trained during the war and said he was motivated to serve in air defense because, before the Russian invasion, he worked in disaster response, saving people's lives. He, too, said he is defending his country and his family.

The two men did not reveal how many other mobile air defense units protect the Kyiv area. Everyone would know if there were too few, they argued. They also promised to speak in more detail about their experiences after the war — the success as well as the losses.

** Russia tries to signal normalcy as Ukraine forces advance

Russia announced plans on Thursday to stage elections in occupied parts of Ukraine in just three months, Moscow's latest bid to signal it is in control even as a Ukrainian counteroffensive has pushed its forces back in some areas.

The Ukrainian assault is in its early stages, and military experts say the decisive battles still lie ahead. But corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armoured vehicles lining the roadside in villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian troops attested to Kyiv's biggest advances since last year.

"Our heroic people, our troops on... the front line are facing very tough resistance," Zelenskiy told NBC News in an interview in Kyiv. "Because for Russia to lose this campaign to Ukraine, I would say, actually means losing the war."

Zelenskiy said the news from the front lines was "generally positive but it's very difficult," according to a partial transcript of the interview.

Continuing his campaign for military assistance, Zelenskiy urged the Swiss parliament in a video address to allow other states to re-export Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine, saying such a move by the neutral country would be vital.

Reuters reached the villages of Neskuchne and Storozheve over the past two days, providing the first independent confirmation of the Ukrainian advance several kilometres southwards along the Mokry Yali river into territory Russia had held since the early days of its invasion last year.

Several bodies of Russian soldiers lay in the streets of ruined and depopulated villages. Ukrainian troops in Storozheve told Reuters they had killed around 50 Russians and captured four there.

The Ukrainian military, which had maintained strict silence about the campaign for more than a week, came forward to tout the gains on Thursday, holding its first full media briefing since the counteroffensive began.

Troops had captured at least seven settlements and 100 square km (38 square miles) of territory in two major pushes in the south so far, Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov said.

"We are ready to continue fighting to liberate our territory even with our bare hands," he said.

The army on the southern front had advanced by up to 7 km (4.4 miles) in the area along the Mokry Yali, as well as by up to 3 km (1.8 miles) on another axis further west near the village of Mala Tokmachka, Ukrainian military officials said.

They also described advances in the east around the ruined city of Bakhmut, which Moscow seized last month as its only major prize for a huge winter and spring offensive that saw the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted this week that Moscow's goals in Ukraine remain unchanged. He claimed that Russian forces were inflicting 10 times more casualties on Ukrainians than they were enduring.

AFRICAN PLAN

African leaders whose countries have been hit hard by the fallout from the war, which has disrupted supplies of grain and other food supplies, aggravated food price inflation and worsened hunger crises, are set to mediate in the conflict.

Senegal's President Macky Sall and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are heading a delegation including leaders from Zambia, the Comoros, and Egypt's prime minister that will travel to Kyiv on Friday and St. Petersburg on Saturday.

They could propose a series of "confidence building measures" during their initial efforts, according to a draft framework document seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Russia's announcement of a plan for elections in occupied territory was the latest effort by Moscow to convey that the situation was stable.

Russia's TASS state news agency quoted election chief Ella Pamfilova as sayingthat both the Defence Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had concluded that it would be possible to hold the votes in September.

Russia proclaimed its annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last year, although it does not fully control any of them and does not hold the main population centres of two.

Kyiv says any elections staged by Russians on Ukrainian territory would be invalid and illegal.

The big test of Ukraine's offensive still lies ahead. Russia has had months to prepare its defences. Ukrainian troops have yet to reach the heaviest Russian defensive fortifications, which are set back from the front line.

Kyiv is believed to have prepared an attack force of around 12 brigades of thousands of soldiers each, most using newly arrived Western armoured vehicles. Only a fraction of them have been engaged so far.

Russia, for its part, has released images of Western tanks and armoured vehicles it says it has destroyed or captured.

The head of the U.N. atomic energy agency, Rafael Grossi, visited the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and said the situation at the site was "serious" but the level of cooling water was sufficient following last week's devastating breach in the Kakhovka dam downstream on the Dnipro River.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian military shows off double tank kill

The Russian Defense Ministry has released live-action footage from the onboard cameras of an attack helicopter showing two Ukrainian tanks being destroyed by guided missiles in quick succession. 

The grainy footage, which was extracted from the onboard computer of a Ka-52 helicopter and posted to the ministry’s social media on Thursday, shows the Ukrainian tanks targeting Russian positions in southern Donbass. 

The armored vehicles, which appear to be main battle tanks, are standing next to one another. A third object – apparently a military engineering vehicle – is seen near the tanks.

The helicopter’s crew fired two guided missiles in quick succession at the tanks, hitting both of them. The vehicles caught fire and began emitting thick plumes of black smoke, the footage shows. The Russian military said both tanks were destroyed along with their crews in the attack.

The Ka-52 advanced Russian attack helicopters have been extensively used in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has been raging for over a year already. Although the helicopters have been in service for over a decade already, the ongoing hostilities are the first major conflict in which they have seen action.

** Pop legend offers $13,000 for each destroyed Western tank

A group of Russian pop stars has offered a bounty to the country’s servicemen for the destruction or capture of Western-supplied military hardware in Ukraine. Since Kiev’s Western backers announced plans to deliver tanks earlier this year, a number of Russian businessmen and officials have promised similar payments.   

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Wednesday, the leader of the band ‘Zemlyane’ (The Earthlings), Vladimir Kiselev, came forward with an initiative to remunerate Russian troops to the tune of 1 million rubles ($13,000) for each Western-made tank taken off the battlefield.     

Russian singers Grigory Leps and Nikolay Baskov backed the idea, with the former saying: “We do our own thing as we see fit, they do theirs.”    

Leps also vowed to continue “helping our fighters as long as the ground holds us.”    

Baskov explained that he and his fellow musicians support the Russian military not only through their songs but also via other means.      

“I hope that a huge number of our colleagues will join” their initiative, the singer added.     

In February of this year, the Pavel Sudoplatov Battalion, an international volunteer unit created in the part of Zaporozhye Region held by Russia, offered to “pay 12 million rubles [$170,000] for each serviceable captured Leopard, Abrams, or Challenger tank.”     

Several weeks prior, the governor of Zabaikalsky Region in eastern Russia, Alexander Osipov, announced that any local service member who managed to seize a Leopard tank “in working condition” could earn 3 million rubles ($42,909). A bounty of 1 million rubles ($14,303) would be paid to anyone who destroyed one of these German tanks, the official stated.      

Around the same time, the Russian chemical manufacturer Fores came out with a similar initiative.     

Commenting on such proposals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in February that they were proof of the “unity and the desire of all” to contribute to achieving the goals of Russia’s ongoing military campaign.

DW/Reuters/RT