Opinion: Trading Bombardments, Icky Economy, Erik Prince

The Front

Longtime readers will know that this review has always taken the position that the toughest job is on the front line and the Ukrainians deserving the most respect, if not awe, are the (mostly middle-aged, from medium- and small-sized towns and cities, not university-educated) guys in the forward positions, particularly the infantry and their medics. Image of an infantryman and his cat.

That being said, having taken a fairly close look at terrain control changes taking place this week, and comparing it to the rear area strikes, it’s pretty clear to see the rear area war is at least as important to both sides, and in some ways as violent, as the front line war. But the bloody part is at the front.

This week overall, I’d say it looks like the Russians took about 10-20 square kilometers (3.9-7.7 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, and not so many Ukrainian prisoners, at the price of some pretty severe losses. This was mostly in the Pokrovsk sector.

At the same time, the Ukrainians it looks to me, liberated maybe 5-10 square kilometers (1.9-3.9 square miles) of territory from the Russians, in some places picking up prisoners.

Ukrainian losses weren’t anything like the Russian losses, it looks about an order of magnitude less. But make no mistake, when the Ukrainians move troops, they get hit, and soldiers are killed and wounded. An inside source in one of the better brigades told me his formation, in a week, in mixed defensive- offensive- operations, recently evacuated about ten soldiers. There are a lot of brigades in the ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine), there are a lot of weeks in the year, and there is a lot of metal in the air.

As to details, the Russian gains were, I read, around the towns of Pokrovsk, Siversk, and Novopavlivka, while the Ukrainian counterattacks were centered around Dobropillia and Lyman.

Dobropillia is a mop-up operation where there are surrounded Russian forces, and the Ukrainian mission is to eliminate them at the lowest cost possible, so starve them out; while the Lyman operation is more operationally critical, it’s over control of access to a section of the Siverskiy Donets River. I read 11th Army Corps is the overall command here.

The Ukrainians also recovered ground in Sumy region, the named villages were Oleksiivka, Kindrativka, and Stepne, this is not prosecuting surrounded enemy but it’s similar, in Sumy region it seems pretty clear the Russian objective is just to hang on to Ukrainian territory without committing more resources. The much-battered 810th Naval Infantry is here, along with some other units.

In Kuyansk, I (like others) still don’t have a clear picture of the strength of Russian forces in the city, but at least we know the ZSU cleared the city of civilians (almost) and basically banned reporters. History shows the way that will play out is months of city fighting that will eventually level the place, which would be too bad. Kupyansk used to be a normal town.

On the southern front, following last week’s Russian advances/probes/pushes/temporary gains, it seems like this sector is pretty quiet.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

The Ukrainian long-range drone troops had a busy week. To get the ongoing part of the information out of the way first, this week my unofficial count has the following targeted in the oil refinery-Russian energy industry bombardment campaign:

• Afipsky oil refinery, Krasnodar region, fire in the vicinity of Cracking tower, Sept. 26
• Astrakhan Oil Refinery, 14th USF (Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces) Regiment, Sept. 27
• Chuvashiua, oil pumping station, village Konar, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), at least three explosions, SBU (Security Service of Ukraine), Sept. 27
• Yaroslavl oil refinery, 5th biggest in Russia, vacuum distillation unit, extensive fire, Sept. 30
• Sukhodolna pump station, Rostov region, ten hits, big fires, production stopped, Sept. 30
• Yaroslavl, Slavneft-Yanos refinery, multiple hits, fire for more than a day, Oct. 1
• Fuel base, Bitumne village, Crimea, rail siding strike, this may have been rocket artillery, Oct. 2
• Orskenefteorgsintez, Orsk, 1,500 kilometers (930 miles), AN-126 Lyutiy (first time painted black!), Oct. 3

Humorously, an odious Russian propagandist named Sergei Mardan, speaking on his Vblog, told his viewers/listeners that the Ukrainians not only were committing war crimes by bombarding the Orsk refinery, which had never attacked anyone, but that the drones “obviously” came from Kazakhstan.

This means Russia needs to “deal with” Kazakhstan so the evil Kazakhs stop collaborating with the evil Ukrainians to attack the peace-loving people in Orsk.

Probably the most newsworthy Ukrainian strike deep in Russia this week was on Monday, when HIMARS rockets (yes, the US-made precision-guided munition, that one) hit Belgorod, targeting the city power plant and shutting down electricity over about half the city. It seems near certain 12 rockets — that’s two HIMARS launchers or one M270 launcher, and what’s more, the rockets used were an extended range weapon called GMLRS, which more or less is a glide bomb that detaches from the rocket at apogee and flies to the target on its own.

There are two interesting points to this strike, first GMLRS had trouble working earlier in the war, possibly due to Russian jamming, this time clearly it hit what it was aimed at. But then maybe there are no jammers protecting Belgorod city power plant. Second, this is pretty solid proof that some sophisticated US weaponry — paid for by the Europeans, the US is not donating a dime to arming Ukraine — is reaching the Ukrainians. Strike was right at the edge of max range, about 130 kilometers (85 miles).

Also, same day, Neptunes hit the city of Bryansk and smacked a military electronics factory. This was some 240 kilometers (150 miles) from launch sites, source is the Ukrainian military. Although Neptune had been used before in a land role, this appears to have been the first time the Ukrainians used the long-range “Long Neptune” version in combat. Here’s a write-up on the two strikes if more detail is wished.

Probably this section also should note that there was yet more talk in the news feeds about the Americans maybe delivering Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles, or maybe US-based military tech company Anduril’s new Barracuda cruise missiles (range 220 kilometers /137 miles variably depending on warhead, Barracuda – 100-220 kilometers / 62-137 miles, 16-kilogram / 35-pound warhead; Barracuda – 250-370 kilometers / 55-230 miles, 16-kilogram / 35 pound warhead; Barracuda – 500-925 kilometers / 311-575 miles, 45-kilogram / 99-pound warhead).

For those who aren’t sure, this is the military-industrial version of the Trump administration saying it is “thinking seriously” about putting sanctions on Russia. Anduril is in the business of selling weapons; it advertises its weapons as modern and different from conventional weapons, and it needs to test them in a war to sell its weapons, especially to the US military. However – and the Americans and Israelis don’t like to think about this – the Ukrainians are already in the arms export business themselves, and they are not about to help a competitor out.

Ukraine already sends hundreds, that’s plural, attack drones into Russian airspace regularly, they average 50-100 drones a night, and a big night is 300+. They have, using their own weapons, done serious damage to Russia’s oil-processing industry with their long-range drone.

The last thing the Ukrainians need is a few dozen Barracuda cruise missiles with all the White House political strings attached. There was a time when the Ukrainians would have knocked you over running to anyone offering them long-range strike weaponry for use against the Russians; those times are mostly gone, the Americans pretty much have missed that boat. We will probably see the Ukrainians reverse-engineer HIMARS rockets in the next two or three years, but of course, GMLRS will take longer.

Barracuda cruise missiles? My view, they have a whole lot bigger chance of seeing combat against Venezuela than in Ukraine.

Final note – for the Ukraine bombardment section, late report, it seems like some kind of drone strike hit Sochi Sunday evening, the same time Putin was there. I was planning to ignore it for this review but let the record reflect that today a US Navy Poseidon flew the length of the Black Sea and approached to about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Sochi, among other locations.

Erik Prince Was in Kyiv to Help the Ukrainians!

A footnote is that, for the record, the US “businessman” Erik Prince, ex-Blackwater, was visiting Kyiv recently.

According to the native drums in the capital, he was visiting Ukrainian drone companies trying to drum up (get it?) business for his various enterprises. This was most likely in connection with recent changes to Ukrainian law allowing the export of Ukrainian weapons outside Ukraine during wartime; the speculation is that Prince was hunting for drones for mercenaries he has in his companies to operate. Also, the rumor was floating around that “Eric wants to buy Ukrainian drone companies.”

Zero reports of any deals cut. I think I am not going out on a limb here to say that the chances the SBU let him out of their sight were zero.

As a guy in Kyiv, I am also here to tell you, you can trust me on this, the Ukrainians understand very well how valuable their knowledge on drones is, the war is still on and the Russian need to be beaten first, but if a Ukrainian guy is doing anything in the drone industry he understands it will be monetized and if he plays his cards right he will be a part of that.

If an outsider thinks he can swoop in and grab up a Ukrainian drone business, manufacturing outfit, or even individual operator team on the cheap, well, he’s underestimating Ukrainians. These guys speak English. They know what happened in Eastern Europe when the wall came down, and they know how the Hungarians dealt with foreign capital coming in, and the Poles, and who did better.

As to Prince, I’ve met US special ops guys and I’ve met Ukrainian drone guys. You don’t want to ask me who’s going to be better skilled at business in Ukraine.

Image of Prince talking to Steve Bannon on the channel RealAmericasVoice; in that broadcast, Prince explains to Bannon that cheap drones have made conventional armies pretty obsolete. Bannon tells Prince that the drone technology used by Ukraine is mostly American, which was certainly news to me, and I am sure would be news to the thousands of Ukrainian drone manufacturers and operators. Bannon goes on to tell his viewers that Ukrainian drone capacity is thanks to “American ingenuity.”

By way of background on what Ukrainians might think of Erik Prince personally, just so we take note of what the Ukrainians know, in 2020-2021, so right before Russia’s second invasion, Prince proposed a $10 billion plan to privatize Ukraine’s military industry and create a private army. One key proposed Prince partner was a Ukrainian “businessman” named Andriy Derkach.

Who’s that? Short version, Derkach was a pro-Russia businessman with links to organized crime, who was sanctioned by the US in 2020 as a probable Russian intelligence agent, who had at least met with Rudy Giuliani, and whom both the US Feds and the Ukrainian SBU have accused of running a political-influence-for-cash operation in Ukraine during the early 2020s.

Derkach is now a Russian citizen and a parliament member for Astrakhan, which would be a peculiar career track for an eastern European mobster, but a pretty reasonable one for a Russian spy working in Ukraine whose mission there ended.

To be specific, Prince met with Derkach in February 2020 (at the Vodka Grill nightclub, which for me is a pretty tacky place for a business meeting, image attached of premises for reference), then he returned in March and even toured a military factory (possibly Antonov for aircraft or Malyshev for armored vehicles) in Kharkiv, but the “deal” never went anywhere because Derkach had run afoul of the Ukrainian government by September.

To be clear, I have no information Prince paid Derkach, on his own behalf or on behalf of others, for access to Ukraine’s arm industry leadership. Had Prince done so, it would have violated both US and Ukrainian law.

Derkach, you can read in most US media, was at the center of the Russian political influence operation run to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, unsuccessfully, in favor of Donald Trump. So the guy running the “Russia, Russia” operation for the Kremlin against the US – this was Prince’s intended business associate in Ukraine.

Fast forward just five years, and whoops! Prince is back in Ukraine again, and again he’s talking monetizing Ukrainian military capacity for, er, private business.

Maybe Prince thought five years was enough for the Ukrainians to have forgotten about his former business associates in Ukraine. Or the mercenaries working for Prince’s company, Blackwater, who shot up civilians in Iraq – and as you can see from the Russian bombardment section below, generally speaking, people who kill civilians or are complicit in killing civilians, in a war, are not going to be popular in Ukraine.

So it doesn’t seem Prince’s recent visit to Ukraine delivered any deals. The fact that the media here was all over his presence probably didn’t help his business interests. Usually, in the private military company/mercenary industry, you don’t want your business trips reported all over a country’s media.

But upside, the SBU didn’t arrest Prince, which has certainly happened to other people who associated with Derkach. In general, Ukrainian law enforcement considers Derkach a confirmed Russian Federation agent, and Derkach’s associates somewhere between possible and probable Russian spies. Image of Derkach meeting with Rudy Giuliani.

Developments in Actual Conventional War Tech, Not Involving Fly-By-Night Goofballs

The news is, the USF (Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces) are expanding AGAIN. We are already well past the point where the ZSU has pushed well ahead of the rest of the world in drone operations. We are already in the territory of: “There is really no military force on Earth close to the ZSU in terms of incorporation and operation of drones.” Remember, last month the US put out a video showing a dinky Mavic drone flying a piece of paper to US military civilian boss Pete Hegseth, and they made a really big deal about how the US military is serious about drones.

Meanwhile, the ZSU is firmly on track to becoming the only army in the world with the equivalent of an entire corps’ worth of pure, dedicated drone forces.

The specific changes are:

• 414th separate brigade (this is the famous Ptakhi Madyara) will double in size with the addition of a deep strike component
• 14th separate regiment (this is special ops drones) will expand to become 1st Separate Center

• 20th separate regiment “‘K-2” is now 20th separate brigade, so doubling in strength at least
• 412th separate regiment “Nemesis” is now 412th brigade, likewise doubling in strength
• 413th separate battalion “Reid” is now 413th separate regiment

In other words, practically all Ukrainian drone units operating at ranges outside the brigade battle envelope will be under a single command, so roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) to 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles). This appears to be air operations only. The qualifier is that the SBU and Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR ,still will be doing their own drone operations in the same envelope and farther, but on their own, and they will do sea and air. I’m not fully clear how 14th Regiment/1st Center would fit into a future special operation, so we’ll see on that.

Russian Bombardment Tactics Shift Some

This is not a one-way war. There are two pretty significant changes the Russians have put into effect with their own long-range strikes, both of which became especially apparent this week.

One strategic shift is, Russia will seek out increased casualties and destruction in major Ukrainian cities, one assumes because ultranationalist Alexander Dugin told Russian leader Vladimir Putin this will make the Ukrainians decide to surrender. To wit, the past two weeks:

• Sept. 19-20, Dnipro, cluster munition missile hits apartment building, three or four people killed
• Sept. 22-23, Zaporizhzhia, six aerial bombs hit residential area, three killed and 10 injured
• Sept. 27-28, Big strike.

The Russians launched 500-650 Shahed-type drones, 45-55 Kh-101 cruise missiles, eight Kalibr cruise missiles, two Kinzhal ballistic missiles, and an unknown number of Kh-59 guided missiles. The Kizhals got through, as to the rest, the Ukrainians intercepted/deflected 70-80% of incoming weapons, depending on type.

Kyiv; residential sites in Solomiansky and Darnitsky regions, mostly drones but also missiles, four killed, 40+ wounded. Most casualties were because a Shahed hit an apartment building. Also, a kindergarten and the Polish Embassy. I confirm use of cluster munitions, at least in one case with a low air burst (above Zhulyanska Street).

Zaporizhzhia, 14 apartment buildings hit, 38 injured, Image of some of that debris getting cleared up.

Dnipro — apartment buildings hit, 31 injured, cluster munitions reported

Poltava 14 killed, two children, surface-to-surface missile hits high rise.

Also hit during the Sept. 27-28 strikes, but with less human losses: Odesa (2), Sumy, Kharkiv (1), Kherson, Chernihiv.

• Sept. 29-30 – Ballistic missile hits in the vicinity of Balakliia, Kharkiv region, one dead. Drone hits his home in Sumy region, kills entire family (four).

• Sept. 30-Oct.1, Dnipro, Drones hit homes and a market, one dead, 15 injured

Second, particularly in northern Ukraine, the Russians clearly are launching strikes with the objective of making life impossible for residents by attacking the power grid and heating infrastructure.

• Oct 2-3 – The Russians launched 21 Iskander-K cruise missiles, seven Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles, five to seven Kh-59/69 air-launched cruise missiles (I read from Su-34s fighter bombers), and several more Kh-59 cruise missiles from Belgorod and Taganrgo region, this apparently from bombers. 383 drones.

All the ballistic missiles got through, half of the cruise missiles, 20% of the drones. Twenty-seven people were injured, so the Russians continued with their program to hurt people. But also, there was infrastructure damage.

• Poltava, power grid and energy generation, 8,000 left without electricity. I read the Yablunivske Gas Processing Branch was set on fire and some gas deliveries were disrupted, other power grid and heating infrastructure was beaten up as well. There were 14 people injured.
• Slavutych (this is by Chornobyl) power infrastructure targeted, town blacked out.
• Bucha, rail infrastructure torn up.
• Also hit: Sumy, Dnipro, Odesa, Chernihiv

To be very clear, today the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES) had spokespeople talking in the media: If you live in northern Ukraine, get ready for power outages and no heating in the winter, it is the Russian intent to deny that if they can. This is the third year of the war, and even if governments outside Ukraine don’t tell their voters the truth about natural and man-made cataclysms, in Ukraine, MES has an excellent reputation; they tell the truth, they don’t sugar-coat it, and they risk their own lives to help regular people who are in trouble. So this is not political bla- bla- bla-, it is to be taken seriously.

So Why Isn’t Anything Being Done?

If you are wondering how is the Kremlin getting away with this, why doesn’t somebody do something, first thing, the Russians are mixing Shahed drones and ballistic missile for this human-targeted bombardment strategy, and they are launching their weapons from 200-500 km. (by and large) away from their targets.

So second thing, the counter-tactic is pretty basic: Have in inventory a flexible, fast-moving, precision-guided long-range weapon, good intelligence, and just hunt down and blow up the launchers. But it has to reach at least 200 kilometers (124 miles) and better 500-600 kilometers (311-373 miles).

In simple terms, this weapon in the Ukrainian context would be a US-made ATACMS missile, a French-made SCALP missile, a British-made Storm Shadow missile, or a German-made Taurus missile. Another, even better possibility would be those missiles, plus a bunch of fighter-bombers suited to launch them, like exactly the Ukrainian F-16s in the picture. To be clear, the Ukrainians have the planes to take care of this problem.

But they don’t have the sophisticated missiles; the Americans stopped sending them to “support the peace process,” while the Europeans make like five or 10 a month so they don’t have enough to share.

As we have seen, Washington, Paris, London, and Berlin all have deployed these excellent why-Ukraine-shouldn’t-get-these-missiles arguments. Of course, none of the people making those arguments have ever sat out a Russian missile strike. But I’m sure they have impressive university degrees.

Eventually, the Ukrainians will develop their own weapon, of course, but a lot of Ukrainians are going to die and get hurt by Russian weapons before that happens. Never mind all the material destruction. The image is from Kharkiv region, Emergency Situations Ministry, is also from this week’s attacks.

Russian Canary in a Cage – Macroeconomic Indicators

It is worth recording that there was a lot of very downbeat Russian economic news. I assume what was going on was that the summer is officially over so the silver bullets the Russian big business and government were pretending might work by the end of summer – Ukraine could surrender, Trump could intervene on the side of Russia, the Europeans could stop blocking Russia – were clearly not going to happen, so it became more acceptable to publish Things That Are Wrong In The Russian Economy. There was a lot, just this week:

• At the major auto manufacturer AvtoVaz salaries are cut by 50-60% and the work week reduced by one day. Workers trying to quit have trouble – that’s only allowed on Friday.
• Russian government buys $2.4 billion on money markets, Russian state debt to loan agencies increased by $38 billion in 2025 so far.
• Russian government increases VAT (Value-Added Tax) from 20 to 22%, all transactions in country.
• Despite tight state financing, $525 million new tax breaks announced for state energy company Rosneft.
• Russian overall national debt rises to $68 billion. This is about 10% more than budget. Loss of tax receipts blamed. 67 of 89 regions report severe deficits.
• Russian stock prices at lowest average price since December 2024, and falling.
• Official GDP growth in July was stagnant (Sept. Announced) at 0.4%, the Russian economic war boom seems to be over and normal-economy-related civilian sectors like real state and trade are in recession.
• Oil product revenues at 5-year lows (August).

• Manufacturing at lowest level since 2022.

Image of a graph showing Russian oil prices taking a nose dive.

Get a Gripen

Earlier in the Ukrainian defense minister, well, a vice minister, happily told news outlets, and to be specific BBC, that Sweden has seen its way clear to transfer Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine. He went on to say more F-16s and Mirages are expected as well, which was less of a surprise, as that was known because the donors (Belgium and France) had already said those aircraft were coming.

The Gripen, many of you will recall, is an excellent fighter jet more suited for operations against Russia, by Ukraine, than any other fighter jet out there; it is simple and cheap to operate, it can use a highway as a runway, it is small and not the easiest to pick up on radar, its own radar is excellent and its missiles are probably better than anything the Russians have. Ukraine and Sweden have been discussing a possible transfer for more than a year, and at one point, a pair of Ukrainian pilots went to Sweden to test the aircraft out. Word is the feedback was very positive.

However, Saab doesn’t make them quickly, and there are already orders, and these are Swedes, so this is not an arms transfer that Stockholm is going to get in front of. It took the Swedes half a week, but finally, on Friday, Swedish Defense Minister Poul Jonsson told the media that “Ja” negotiations on the delivery of aircraft to Ukraine are ongoing, but no final decision has yet been made.

Most likely, what happened is the general agreement is there between the Ukrainian MoD and the Swedish MoD, but now the Swedes have to agree among themselves, which is not just the elected government, but also Saab corporate, and I have no doubt NATO: every Gripen sent to Ukraine is a Gripen that won’t be protecting NATO airspace in Scandinavia.

Well It Had to Happen Sooner or Later

This week, we saw a confirmed kill by a Ukrainian FPV drone of a Russian Mi-8 Helicopter Near Kotliarivka. Operators from Ukraine’s 59th Separate Assault Brigade said they used a $500 FPV drone to strike and destroy an Mi-8 gunship. I’m not sure if this is absolutely the very first time an FPV took out a helicopter in history, but it certainly was the first recorded time, so a series of screen images.

Screen grabs from video published by 59th UAR on Monday: In one of the first shoot-downs of its kind of the entire war, a Ukrainian FPV drone scores a kill on a Russian Air Force Mi-8 helicopter gunship. Reportedly the crew survived.

I read that the co-pilot and crew chief survived the crash. The passengers (possibly six) and the pilot died.

Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

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