Buffoonery: This Week in Ukraine

Amateur insurgents, Trump, the Pope, turkey basting, and more.

This week Russians ambushed three Ukrainian helicopters in an assembly area 35 miles from the front. Watch the video here.

1. Beavis and Boris Take Belgorod

This week Russian pro-Ukrainian, anti-Putin insurgency groups crossed the border into Russia to attack in proximity to the city of Belgorod—only 20 miles from the border and having a population of just over 300k. The excursion was timed to cause maximum embarrassment for Putin on the eve of his sham presidential “election,” and this time the ragtag insurgent groups were armed with tanks and at least one US Bradley.

We’ve seen these “thunder runs” across the border before. In May 2023, similar paramilitary groups attacked across the border, killed a few people, sheepishly took some quick photos with their unit flag inside of Russia, and then hightailed it back to Ukraine before Russian SU-34s flattened their faces (the rebels still lost about 70 individuals in that attack). Every time Ukraine wants to make a statement on how precarious Putin’s hold is on the population they send in these Russian volunteer rejects to run amok, fire their AKs over their heads, shoot the windows out of a few shopping malls, and get their tank destroyed. I doubt if this is the start of any serious insurgency inside of Russia.

2. Follow the Money

This week Europe’s resident pariah, Hungary’s Victor Orban, met with his authoritarian soul mate Donald Trump at the twice-impeached president’s hillbilly Versailles located at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. After the meeting Orban revealed Trump’s secret plan to instantly end the war in Ukraine—cut off US funding.

This plan is clearly a result of Trump “thinking things out” on his gilded toilet made from the bones of his enemies. Contrary to Trump logic, the war will continue as long as Ukraine and Russia have the political will to continue. Europe, even with the continual Orban impediment, will fund Ukraine. The Ukrainians will continue to fight.

On a side note, this week the Biden administration announced that it will reallocate $300 million “from unanticipated cost savings from Pentagon contracts” for military support to Ukraine. Who would have ever thought there was wasted money just sitting in Pentagon contracts? Pentagon officials responded, “you can’t take our money to kill Russians, that money is meant for us to prepare to kill Russians.”

According to the British MoD, Russian losses in February averaged almost 1000 per day.

3. Papal Smear

This week it was revealed that Pope Francis believes that the Ukrainians should capitulate. According to the Argentinean Pontifex Maximus, "the word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate." This coming from the same organization that, according to a May 2022 article in the Atlantic by David I. Kertzer, had a secret, cozy relationship with Adolph Hitler during the Second World War.  

The Pope’s negative attitude aside, now is not an ideal time for either side to negotiate. The Ukrainians still have Europe’s support, they may actually get a Ukraine supplemental passed in the US Congress, and they are killing a lot of Russians—now  almost 1000 a day. Putin is going to wait out the US presidential elections to see if Trump wins, and is capitalizing on his recent victory in Avdiivka to push the Ukrainians on five different fronts (again, with costly assaults that the Ukrainians are now calling “Banzai attacks” because the Russians are just rushing in with one BTR-80 loaded with infantry, for example).   

Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries continued this week, The Ukrainians hit at least four oil refineries, prompting Russian to place a 6-month ban on gasoline exports.

4. Well Earned R&R

This week Ukraine’s new Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will now, finally, start rotating troops out from the front lines. This plan might be good for Ukrane’s conscription problem, as it should increase recruitment. Currently the minimum conscription age is 27, and the bill proposed in the Verkhovna Rada to reduce that age to 25 is stalled. Conscription is a politically charged issue, and Zelensky has been hesitant to address the manpower problem.   

This rotation strategy comes at a time when the battlefield is getting more deadly. In September I interviewed soldiers near the Zaporizhzhia front, and I was told that Russian FPVs would attack any small group of soldiers consisting of 3 or more. Now they are attacking individual combatants. According to one Ukrainian expert on drone warfare, Serhii Flesh, “Within a year, both sides will produce enough FPV drones to target every soldier - all will be found & hit day & night in a zone of up to 8 km. Infantry will retreat underground & surface activity will belong to ground robots.” Perhaps Elon Musk will save the Ukrainians again by using his Boring Company to build combat tunnels.

5. Time is Running Out

If Ukraine is going to have hope for even a modicum of victory, Western countries need to act now, and act with full force. Out this month in the US Army War College Quarterly, Parameters, Dr. Rebecca Jensen and I explain why Ukraine could be on the verge of collapse in: Ukraine: The Case for Urgency.

6. [Video] Roasted

This week’s video is of a Russian soldier attempting to protect himself against an FPV drone using what I can only describe as a large turkey-roasting pan. As usual, hilarity ensues. It’s unfortunate that this orc met his timely demise, he could have been a valuable asset to the US defense industry as they come up with expensive and useless ways to defend against drones.