The quality of intelligence gathered by the drone is insane. The guy is playing dead, not moving, wearing sunglasses. When thinking about satellite images, aircraft taking pictures or binoculars, other lenses and cameras with high zoom, this would work.

But the drone zooms in and between hat and sunglasses, we see the eyes looking right up, we see the wink and the chest moving from breathing.

It’s all exciting action to record with the phone, until a ship explodes and reality kicks in.

Besides the title statement, China hasn’t done anything. In the article text, they get more into detail and it’s the Western sanctions leading to individual companies stopping their services for Russians. Companies don’t want to get dragged into Western sanctions themselves, so they stop their business with/in Russia.

Article quotes:

News portal 66.ru reported that while payment by physical UnionPay cards appears to work as usual, the same cards linked to the Huawei Pay service are refused in Russia.

The decision was made by Chinese banks Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of China due to the “risks of secondary sanctions” from the United States,

These charts are usually a day or a few days behind for individual kills. It takes time to collect statistics from the front lines, make reports and create that image overview out of it. So it’s never from events of the same day, always what recently happened.

I often saw videos of Russian columns advancing into fields and lots of wrecks at the end of the videos. Sometimes it even takes 2 days, but then there is the spike in numbers in the published data.

As you didn’t read the article:

“This move seems driven by the government’s interest in collecting and centralizing biometric data for identification, tracking, and surveillance purposes,” he said. Omar agreed: “Probably to keep track of the refugees.”

They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn’t change SIM card tracking within the network.

Oh wow that turret was probably seen on various radars in the region.

You have to watch until the end, approx. at 1:30 it starts getting more interesting. It’s like poking a stick into an anthill.

Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. ‘Fast’ charging I’ve seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it’s like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I’d have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.

With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.

This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don’t need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.

This is the new shoot and scoot automatic in action.

Do you have any information why and why now?

If I remember correctly, last year in autumn, Ukraine was pushing before winter and before some rain and mud would make everything more difficult or even impossible from the logistics side. Made a lot of sense to me.

But I have seen videos from a few weeks ago and due to heavy rains, there was mud everywhere. Looking at the temperatures in eastern Ukraine, it’s not frozen yet.

Why is Russia pushing now? And they get >1000 for two(?) weeks already. Is there any event that could explain this? Elections in Russia? Some 2023 deadline where they want to show a victory on TV?

For decades we talk about stealth technology in aviation, x-th generation fighter, radar absorbing materials and so on. And now there is a war, with everyone having air defence available, and in the air, we see hobby camera drones dropping grenades and moped drones with a technology advancement to get black paint.

I’ve seen those dugouts a lot on the green strips between open fields. So they have the choice to go back in and have some minor cover, or out into the open field, with their dark clothing on white, snowy ground. Also it’s not like the drone is limited to hitting the dugout and it’s faster as well. Not much they can do.

Maybe the better option would be to craft a white flag and surrender to the drone, as we have seen in the past. Saves the life and some limbs.

That is also a good signal, that maybe not many Ukrainian POW are held by Russia at the moment. In the past, even Zelensky mentioned, they needed to capture more Russians to have some numbers for the POW exchange between the two countries.

Full war camps in Ukraine could mean Russia has no one to exchange.

That really looks wrecked. Probably not worth it to repair (just a wild guess) with time and costs involved.

On top of what we see, there is always further damage from the blast, shrapnel, fire/heat, smoke, firefighting water.

Holy shit, 1st I thought what a shame, they missed. Maybe they do a 2nd strike?

But then the drone lights up, with seemingly 2 guys working at the drone? So I think one dropped right at the drone and the body caught fire? With the other one dragging his body using his arms across the ground, away from the fire.

The area of effect of such a strike is surprisingly huge.

In a way kinda. It’s problematic though that China is using Uyghur forced labour to produce cheap solar panels.

This of course allows them to undercut any other manufacturer, driving them out of the market. So the delivery chain is getting kinda small and the products have forced labour attached to them.

“China uses Uyghur forced labour to make solar panels, says report” Published 14 May 2021 (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636)

It’s a miracle! I guess grenades can now be supplied to Ukraine as humanitarian aid.

It’s crazy how drones have changed warfare and camouflage. That field with the high plants is a fantastic visual cover, unless there is a drone with HD camera hovering above.

The same when I see traditional camo nets above vehicles, parked behind a wall. The the drone just peeks in, over the wall, under the net, from an angle and directs the artillery fire.

According to WSJ, the delivered US ATACMS have a reduced range:

The ATACMS models that were provided have a range of about 100 miles.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-fires-atacms-missile-at-russian-forces-for-the-first-time-3bebcdb1

And reducing the Taurus range was an initial topic, where the manufacturer clarified that it’s not a problem:

“Taurus on the test bench”

“It had previously become known that the range of the cruise missiles can apparently be limited relatively easily from a technical point of view. This was the conclusion of a test conducted by the manufacturer on behalf of the German government. This would require a reprogramming of the built-in software.” (via DeepL, source in German (14.09.2023): https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/russische-kriegslogistik-gezielt-schwachen-ampel-politiker-dringen-bei-scholz-auf-schnelle-taurus-lieferung-10467682.html

It’s a different system and currently only tested on Eurofighter Typhoon and Saab JAS 39 Gripen, as the Taurus was a cooperation project between Germany and Sweden. Wikipedia lists additional untested launch platforms: Tornado, F/A-18, F-15K but none of those are in Ukraine.

The only one that I heard of that was up for discussion so far, was the Gripen. F/A-18 and F-15K would be up to USA again and German Tornados are old and the ones still in use are required operational in Germany for carrying US nuclear weapons, as there are currently no other approved platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_KEPD_350