Ukrainian paratroopers destroy ’33 tanks & avs’ repelling Putin’s assaults as ‘first F-16 sighted’

Ukrainian paratroopers destroy ’33 tanks & avs’ repelling Putin’s assaults as ‘first F-16 sighted’

Ukraine claims it has destroyed some 20 Russian tanks repelling an armored assault but Russian forces have advanced on three fronts and appear to have used a North Korean rocket launcher for the first time in the war we’re in again my name is Jerome starky I’m the defense editor at the Sun newspaper and this is Frontline your weekly Roundup of the most important news from the war in Ukraine we start today with news from Ukraine that they have repelled two waves of Russian armored assaults near Kur kovo which in the Southeastern front line in the dunet sector uh to the west of dunet city now Ukraine said that Russia launched a series of attacks uh the first one involving 11 tanks 45 armored vehicles and interestingly uh what they did 12 motorcycle out Riders sort of fast soldiers you know trying to get through the front lines quickly uh they claimed in that first wave that Ukraine’s destroyed six tanks seven armored fighting vehicles and all 12 motorcycles and then Russia appears to have had a second attempt this time with 10 tanks 47 armored vehicles and a number of buggies and motorbikes this time Ukraine saying it destroyed eight of those tanks uh and about a dozen armored and infantry fighting Vehicles more motorbikes and one buggy in the first attack Ukraine claimed it killed about 40 Russian soldiers and a similar number were wounded in the second attack slightly fewer killed Ukraine said 36 Russians killed 32 wounded now of course all of that information coming from Ukraine’s Armed Forces impossible for us to sort of independently verify one of the things that is interesting is their suggestion almost a one:1 ratio of dead to wounded uh also a suggestion that Russia appears to just repeated a failed attack back uh a second time without any particular obvious change of tactics or uh softening up or preparation for that assault and in both cases they have failed but it comes after uh confirmed Russian advances on three fronts in the Northeast in harv uh in sort of East and Central Direction around uh a DEA and in the Southeastern Direction uh near dones City it appears Russian forces have moved uh West from uh we know that they’ve moved into Marena which was a suburb of detet city and they appear to be advancing towards uh kova which is a town it’s a town I visited early on in the war when we documented uh the use of Russian cluster Munitions killing and wounding a number of civilians in that town early on in the conflict there’s also today reports that Russia has used a bulai 4 North Korean uh multiple launch rocket system a self-propelled rocket launcher or missile launcher which fires anti-tank guided Munitions these are known as en loss atgms nonline of sight anti-tank guided Munitions uh which have a range of about 25 kilm and the suggestion uh from open source analysis is that this launcher was in belgorod that’s Russian soil just north of the harv frontier and they fight fired a missile into Ukraine hitting an as90 self-propelled Howitzer now the United Kingdom is the only country which has provided as far as we know those as90 howitzers they fire5 uh millimeter artillery shells they look like giant tanks they big tracked big guns on a sort of tracked chassis they also have a very similar range of about 25 km but it would seem on this occasion if that that reporting is correct North Korean launcher uh discovered the as90 first and fired first and may have destroyed it this may be a sign of of what’s to come we know that countries have provided similar sorts of capabilities to uh Ukraine uh the United Kingdom has sent Brimstone missiles anti-tank Brimstone missiles mounted on uh wheeled Vehicles part of a sort of modified uh Jerry rigged weapon system if you like developed for this conflict in Ukraine so Ukraine has a similar capability uh North Korea after Vladimir Putin’s visit to pyang appears to be answering moscow’s call for weapons we know they’ve given huge quantities of dumb unguided ammunition shells they’ve promised to send uh combat engineers to support Russian uh efforts in the donbass now we’re seeing the use of this new rocket launcher unclear yet whether or not that will make any significant difference on the battlefield but worth watching and we’ve also seen this week Russia has unveiled footage of a new type of drone uh drone it called the gerbera drone it looks very similar in shape to the Iranian made sha heads a delta wing with a central fuselage suggestions from Ukraine which has shot one of them down uh that it has large parts of the fuselage are and wings are made of wood uh to try and reduce its radar signature uh and also worth noting that it’s painted black that’s an evolution that we’ve seen over the course of this war the drones when they were first deployed tended to be white now they’re painted black and that’s quite simply because when they’re used at night it makes it harder for the anti-aircraft Gunners to find them with their search lights I mean that is a tactic a technique reminiscent of World War II these drones are quite noisy Gunners search for them in the sky with their lights and if they’re white obviously that makes them easier to detect also worth noting that reports have emerged in the last week of one of the ingenious way Ukraine is detecting and tracking these drone attacks and that is with a network of more than 9,500 acoustic sensors now this is something I’d like to come back to at a later date and do a little bit more on uh but apparently a very lowcost system costing less than about than $5 million across the entire country and developed initially by Engineers using mobile phones networked mobile phones the microphones on mobile phones to detect these sounds and then triangulate them uh based on an array and coordinating the information that all these phones were getting to work out so geolocate uh the location and the path of these drones now interestingly again that is a technique that was used during World War II uh sort of acoustic location uh mechanisms but clearly more sophisticated now and the array of sensors available to Ukraine with technology that comes from uh mobile phones has made it uh significantly we understand significantly more accurate uh in terms of weapons and Technology on the battlefield while we’re there we’ll also mention that is circulating footage of what is an F-16 uh and suggestions that it might be the first footage of an americanmade F-16 in Ukraine it’s a piece of what looks like phone footage of a fighter jet flying through a blue sky any geoca information on the horizon has been deliberately blurred so whilst a number of people have come out and said yes that’s definitely an F-16 the fact is we cannot be sure where it is it might be the first sighting an of an F-16 in Ukraine we know there due there imminently if they’re not already there uh but certainly at this stage is not clear enough for us to be confident that it’s there and worth noting there is also a report in the stars and stripes uh newspaper news Outlet which is uh serves the American Military saying that f-16s are due to arrive within weeks and interestingly they make a point which we’ve made on this show repeatedly that the f-16s are not expected to be a game changer on the battlefield uh partly because there won’t be enough of them partly because of the range of their Munitions uh won’t necessarily be able to hit deep uh behind Russian lines and also because of Russian air defenses will make it hard for these Jets uh to penetrate Russian territory uh without risk being shot down and what that means and this is what’s interesting in Stars and Stripes they say we should expect those f-16s to be used in an air defense role so actually they’ll be scrambled to shoot down Russian missiles Russian drones and to Target Russian fighter jets and aircraft in terms of what’s been happening uh on the battlefield in the Deep Battlefield Ukraine continues its campaign against oil refineries and significantly now airfields deep inside Uh Russian soil uh we’ve seen strike against refineries and oil depos in orov voron and belgorod uh and before that but during this week we’ve also seen drone strikes against the Engles Airbase in Saratov oblast and an Airfield in razan uh oblast as well now both of those targets about 300 miles from the nearest Ukrainian territory so very deep inside Russian soil and General Alexander syi who is the new commander in chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces uh gave an interview to the Guardian newspaper in which he said that since the start of the war Ukraine had targeted more than 200 sites uh of critical military infrastructures that’s either bases airfields or uh locations like oil refineries and depos which are supporting uh the Russian war effort and I can tell you that from conversations I’ve had with very senior uh military individuals this is not simply a question of targets of opportunity but there is a concerted design Behind these attacks there are a handful of air bases that Russia is using to attack Ukraine and Ukraine is aware that if it can make if it can put those at risk it may Force Russia to push its aircraft further back deeper into Russian soil that will mean they have to carry more fuel when they take off in order to be able to reach uh a place where they can launch their bombs and get back safely more fuel means fewer bombs so effectively it would be a way of reducing Russia’s strike capability if they could push those aircraft backwards and finally today we’re going to talk about what’s been happening in Marley in West Africa because it appears that a column of Vagner mercenaries have been ambushed uh and slaughtered by tware rebels near the Marley Algeria border now this is a very sort of Lawless remote part of the world in the Sahara Desert historically very very dangerous and largely beyond the writ of the governments either in uh bamako or in alers or in the region around now uh the rebel group uh the permanent strategic framework for peace security and development uh quite a mouthful uh appears to have ambushed a column of Russian and marlean Fighters killing we understand uh some 33 Russians at least 18 of them wounded and more taken hostage and just today a photograph has emerged of that Rebel group brandishing a Ukrainian flag suggesting perhaps uh they were aided uh by Ukraine or certainly that they are supporting Ukraine against Russia moscow’s response to this uh has been unclear of course because the relationship between Vagner and Moscow is mer ever the mercenary groups late leader y pran LED an attempted coup a failed coup against Vladimir Putin as ever if you got any questions please do ask them in the comments below I’ll try and answer some of them online in the comments and also answer as many as we can here on the next update I’m going to focus there were two themes that came through really loud and clear from last week’s show and that was about the numbers you remember uh our update last week was that prediction that if Russia continues advancing at the current rate it could lose up to 2 million soldiers close to two million soldiers uh and take five years to capture four oast the four ooss which are Vladimir Putin’s minimum requirements Kon zapara denet and luhansk a lot of you just asking how was that number calculated and forgive me for not making it clear uh how long it is the first part of that equation is how long is it going to take Russia to advance uh and that is uh time is uh distance over speed so you look at how the rate of Russian Advance how far is left to go and in order to capture that amount of territory uh the assessment of the new head of the British military was it would take five years then you look at what Russia has lost since the start of the war the war has been going on about 2 and 1/2 years and the Western estimates of Russian losses dead wounded and deserted are about 550,000 now if you multiply uh that figure two and a half years by two uh to take you up to another five years that would give you at least another million so you add that million to the 550,000 already lost sorry it give you 1.1 million add that to the 5.5 that have already been killed that gives you a figure uh of around 1.65 these are estimates and the suggestion is you know if you take the higher end of that estimate what we heard from General CI walker uh was that the Russian losses would be the best part of 1.5 to 1.8 so in summary rate of Russian Advance how far they have left to go if it takes them five years and they continue to lose soldiers at the current rate then his estimate was 1.5 to 1.8 million soldiers these are massive numbers huge losses Russia may be able to soak them up and one of you point pointed out you know remember that these are human beings we do not forget that both sides are suffering enormous losses and I think I made the point last time this really illustrates the Carnage and The Madness of State on state conflict and on that same vein uh a number of you asking can Ukraine sustain these losses it’s a really good question General Roy Walker framed it in a slightly different way when he made this these predictions he said the key question is whether Ukraine can maintain its defense at the same rate and inflict the same losses on Russia but it amounts to the same thing we know Ukraine is hurting it has lost a lot of soldiers it needs to replenish the troops on the front line uh those that have survived the conflict or have fought in the conflict many of them are exhausted uh and there is a risk of sort of growing uh Discord between those who are on the front line and fighting and those who are not those who haven’t mobilized and so far whilst Ukraine is changing the law to allow it to mobilize it has not uh initiated a wave of mobilization of 18 to 25 year olds which many feel is essential to bolster its armed forces and keep them in the fight what we have seen curiously is Ukraine uh allowing prisoners to go on the front line now this is something Russia did much earlier in the conflict uh causing con ation and some condemnation around the world but desperate times have led to Desperate Measures for both sides if you have any questions please do ask them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer as many as I can uh next week

Ukraine claims it has destroyed some twenty Russian tanks repelling an armoured assault but Russian forces have advanced on three fronts an appear to have used a North Korean Rocket launcher for the first time in the war.

The Sun’s Defence Editor breaks down the latest news from Ukraine on The Frontline with Jerome Starkey.
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