Does the FBI pursue the HYPOTHESIS and the LEADS of the Russian Intelligence origins of the U.S. domestic terrorism? | #Putin wages the #HybridWar against the #US, including mass & school shootings (GS), various Performance Crimes, staged accidents; aiming to terrorize, to intimidate, to confuse, to force to submit. A Special PsyOp. | Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU | "Mr. Bausman attended a 2015 conference hosted by RT, a news channel tied to the Kremlin." | Look into his eyes. Do you see the big Three Letters there? I do: K-G-B.
-#Putin wages the #HybridWar against the #US, including mass & school shootings (GS), various Performance Acts, staged accidents; aiming to terrorize, to intimidate, to confuse, to force to submit.
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
A Special PsyOp. Does FBI pursue these HYPOTHESIS & LEADS?https://t.co/c7ZVC9WHIS
-Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU - Google Search https://t.co/lcCFXyyuVK https://t.co/mGb98f4SQt
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
-Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU - Google Search https://t.co/30HrI8zMpj https://t.co/f26euQVV5G
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
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Charles Bausman, a former financial executive who runs websites that promote far-right views, recorded footage in the Capitol for a Russian television producer. Soon after, he fled to Moscow as a “political refugee.”
In security footage from Jan. 6, it is easy to overlook the thin man wearing a red Trump hat who filters into the U.S. Capitol Building to record the mayhem with his phone.
He blends in with the mob, seemingly unexceptional by the chaotic standards of that day. But what he did afterward was far from routine.
Within 24 hours, the man, Charles Bausman, gave his recordings and commentary to a Russian television producer for a propaganda video. He then decamped to Moscow, where, appearing on a far-right television network owned by a sanctioned oligarch, he recently accused American media of covering up for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
“We must understand that in the West,” Mr. Bausman told Russian viewers, “we are already in a situation of total lies.”
For Mr. Bausman — an American alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Wesleyan University who speaks fluent Russian — it was the latest chapter in a strange odyssey. Once a financial executive who voted for President Barack Obama, he emerged in 2014 as a public critic of the left and of the United States, boosted by Russian state-sponsored organizations through speaking invitations, TV appearances and awards.
Central to his transformation was a series of websites he created pushing anti-America, pro-Russia themes, as well as racist and homophobic messaging. Some of his posts have racked up millions of views, and his 5,000-word screed on “the Jewish problem” has been hailed by antisemites around the world and translated into multiple languages.
Mr. Bausman’s path in some ways tracks a broader shift on the political right that embraces misinformation and sympathy toward Russia while tolerating an increasingly emboldened white nationalism. For its part, the Kremlin has sought to court conservatives in the United States and sow discord through a network of expats, collaborators and spies.
People who have written for Mr. Bausman’s websites or promoted his work have come under scrutiny by American intelligence, and the founder of a pro-Russia forum that hosted him and others was charged in March with being an unregistered agent of Moscow.
Mr. Bausman initially gained some prominence as a Russia apologist, but he has lowered his profile in recent years as he has espoused more extreme views. Yet he has been Zelig-like in exploiting cultural and political flash points, racing from cause to cause.
After surfacing as a voluble defender of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, Mr. Bausman became an outspoken Trump supporter. With white nationalism on the rise, he threw himself into promoting it, relocating to rural Pennsylvania and hosting neo-Nazis at his property. He joined Republican protests against coronavirus restrictions and the 2020 election and most recently has reappeared in Russian media to criticize the West’s response to the war in Ukraine.
Konstantin Malofeev, an influential oligarch indicted by the United States over alleged sanctions violations, said he had asked Mr. Bausman to appear on his television network because Mr. Bausman was one of the few Russian-speaking Americans willing to do it.
“Who else is there to invite?” Mr. Malofeev asked.
Mr. Bausman, 58, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No charges have been brought against him related to the events of Jan. 6, though he appears inside the Capitol in video clips introduced in court cases against others. When a Russian TV host referred to him as “a participant” in storming the Capitol, Mr. Bausman interrupted to say that the description could get him into trouble, and that he was a journalist.
But, on other occasions, he has described himself differently. Speaking on a white nationalist podcast in April, in which he attacked critics of Russia as “evil pedophile globalists” who control the “enslaved West,” he explained why he was back in Moscow:
“I’m a political refugee here.”
President Vladimir V. Putin had just invaded Crimea in 2014 when Mr. Bausman said he had an idea. He would create an alternative news source to counter what he called Western media’s “inaccurate, incomplete and unrealistically negative picture of Russia.”
The website, Russia Insider, was directed at an English-speaking audience and offered stories like, “Putin to Obama: You’re Turning the U.S.A. Into a Godless Sewer,” and “Anti-Christian Pogrom Underway in Ukraine.” Content was often aggregated from other pro-Russia sources, including RT, the Kremlin-funded television network.
The role of online agitator was not an obvious one for Mr. Bausman, who grew up in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Conn., attended prep school and went on to earn a history degree from Wesleyan and study business at Columbia. His experience with Russia dates to his childhood, when his father served as the Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press.
As a college graduate in the late 1980s, he returned to Russia, and, with help from his father’s connections, worked briefly for NBC News. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Mr. Bausman found a new role: as a multilingual fixer for entrepreneurs scrambling to cash in on the emerging economy.
A. Craig Copetas, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent who wrote a book about the post-Soviet business era, said Mr. Bausman worked with Russians who “were the forerunners of the oligarchs.”
“Charlie speaks excellent Russian,” he said, “so he was a valuable asset — he was like the young American prince of Moscow.”
Mr. Bausman’s early success was not to last. There are gaps in his résumé, and U.S. court records show that he filed for bankruptcy in 1999.
A former business associate recalled Mr. Bausman’s father beseeching people to “help my son” with his career. This person — one of several who did not want to be identified because of Mr. Bausman’s ties to extremists — described him as “just this lost guy” who seemed to struggle professionally despite impressive qualifications. He worked a succession of Russian private equity jobs, never staying in any position longer than a few years.
Mr. Bausman’s last role was with the agribusiness investor AVG Capital Partners. A 2012 company presentation, which listed him as director of investor relations, boasted of “strong partnerships” with Russian authorities and included a photo of Mr. Putin.
The exact timing of Mr. Bausman’s switch to propagandist is murky, but two profiles on the Russian social media platform VK offer a clue. The first, from 2011, is a sparse page featuring a wan Mr. Bausman in a suit and a link to a group interested in tennis.
In the second profile, from two years later, he looks tan and confident in an open-collared shirt. The VK groups he joined were strikingly radical, including a militant Russian Orthodox sect and another called the Internet Militia, whose goal echoed what would soon become Mr. Bausman’s focus: “to protect and defend our native information field” against American attack.
Publicly, Mr. Bausman turned to crowd funding to pay for Russia Insider. Behind the scenes, however, he was in contact with Mr. Malofeev, a promoter of Orthodox nationalist propaganda.
Leaked emails made public in 2014 revealed Mr. Bausman corresponding with a Malofeev associate, saying “we published your Serbia info” and asking for money. In an email to Mr. Malofeev, the associate praised Mr. Bausman’s site as “pro-Russian” and noted that he “wants to cooperate.”
Mr. Malofeev was backing another media project at the time with a similar agenda: Tsargrad TV, which he created with a former Fox News employee, John Hanick. Both Mr. Hanick and Mr. Malofeev were charged by the United States this year with violating sanctions imposed in 2014.
In an interview, Mr. Malofeev said he believed Mr. Bausman “has done a great job and that he is a very brave person,” but he denied they had “a financial relationship.”
Mr. Bausman has always said he did not receive support from Russian authorities. But there is little doubt that his emergence as an American salesman of pro-Kremlin views was aided greatly by entities controlled by or tied to the Russian state.
After Russia Insider went live, Mr. Bausman began appearing on RT and other Russian media, and a news crew from a major state-owned TV channel traveled to his parents’ home in Connecticut to film him discussing his new website. On Facebook, he boasted that “our traffic exploded after this aired.”
He was invited to join panel discussions at another state-owned outlet, received an award in 2016 named after a pro-Russia journalist killed in Ukraine, and spoke at a Kremlin-sponsored youth conference in newly captured Crimea. He gave interviews to Russian Orthodox figures, speaking approvingly of Mr. Malofeev.
In April 2016, Mr. Bausman’s work was promoted by a Russian website, RIA FAN, that has been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch indicted by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller. The website initially shared an address with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government “troll factory” accused of using fake social media accounts and online propaganda to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Russia analysts who have followed Mr. Bausman’s work say it has the hallmarks of a disinformation project. Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who researches Russian propaganda campaigns, said his messaging merged seamlessly with that of Mr. Putin’s government.
“The initial purpose of his outlet was to muddle the truth in American circles about Crimea,” she said. “And then you see his outlet and others repurposed to support the Kremlin narrative about Syria, and then the 2016 U.S. elections.
“It appears,” she said, “to be a classic Russian influence operation.”
With Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Mr. Bausman’s media outlet began to promote more extreme views. In a celebratory post after the election, he struck a militant chord that shocked old friends.
“Trump’s election is perhaps akin to Luther nailing his theses to the door, but now the demons are wakened, and they know they must fight or be killed, and as in the 16th century, they will not go quietly,” he wrote. “And there will be blood. Let us hope that it is the figurative, digital kind, and not the real, red, hot, sticky stuff.”
A turning point came in January 2018, when Mr. Bausman posted a lengthy polemic, “It’s Time to Drop the Jew Taboo,” that was both an antisemitic manifesto and a call to action for the alt-right.
“The evidence suggests that much of human enterprise dominated and shaped by Jews is a bottomless pit of trouble with a peculiar penchant for mendacity and cynicism, hostility to Christianity and Christian values, and in geopolitics, a clear bloodlust,” he wrote.
It was welcomed by white nationalist figures like Richard Spencer, who called it “a major event.”
Outside the far right, Mr. Bausman’s embrace of antisemitism was widely condemned. The U.S. State Department flagged it in a report on human-rights concerns in Russia, and the diatribe prompted a disavowal from RT.
After the death in August 2018 of his mother, who left an estate valued at about $2.6 million, Mr. Bausman bought two properties in Lancaster, Pa., where his family had roots.
His older sister, Mary-Fred Bausman-Watkins, said last year that her brother “was always short on money” and that their parents frequently helped him out, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has compiled several reports on his activities. Ms. Bausman-Watkins died in May.
“They funded his whole life,” she told the center, “and then he inherited their money when they died, and they’re still funding his life.”
While living in Lancaster with his Russian wife and two young daughters, Mr. Bausman turned his attention to two new websites devoted largely to white nationalist content. Headlines included: “Out of Control Black Violence” and “Jewish Intellectuals Call on Gays to Perform Sex Acts in Front of Children.”
Mr. Bausman concealed his ownership of one of these sites, National Justice, through a private registration, which The New York Times confirmed by reviewing data leaked last year from Epik, a web-hosting service favored by the far right. The site has the same name as a white nationalist organization and featured posts by one of its leaders, though it is not the group’s official site, according to its chairman, Michael Peinovich.
In an interview, Mr. Peinovich said Mr. Bausman had hosted party members at his farmstead for an inaugural meeting in 2020 (a large event first reported by a local news outlet, LancasterOnline). But afterward, he said, his group “went our own way” because it did not agree with Mr. Bausman’s preoccupation with supporting Mr. Trump.
Three days before Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Bausman allowed Rod of Iron Ministries, a gun-themed religious sect led by a son of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, to meet at his property, according to photos on social media. Members of the sect had been active in “Stop the Steal” rallies, some of which Mr. Bausman had also attended, and were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
On Facebook, Mr. Bausman posted an appeal for people to go to Washington “to support Trump.” At various points during the riot, Mr. Bausman can be seen inside the Capitol, often using his phone to record the chaos.
Afterward, he returned to Lancaster and gave a lengthy interview for a video about the insurrection produced by Arkady Mamontov, a Russian television host known for splashy pro-Kremlin propaganda pieces. The video also included footage of Mr. Bausman outside his home that appears to have been filmed months earlier. Mr. Mamontov did not respond to a request for comment.
In the video, Mr. Bausman suggested, without evidence, that federal agents had instigated the violence at the Capitol to “discredit Trump,” and he painted a dystopian, conspiratorial picture of American society. It is a theme that he has carried forward to more recent appearances on Mr. Malofeev’s television network, in which he has accused Western media of lying about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is not clear when Mr. Bausman left the U.S., but he was in Moscow for a TV appearance on the day of President Biden’s inauguration, two weeks after the insurrection at the Capitol. In the white nationalist podcast interview he gave in April from Russia, he said he had not been back home since.
When asked by the host if he was still a Trump fan, Mr. Bausman said he was not, before adding with a laugh that there was one thing that could restore his loyalty.
“When he pardons me for Jan. 6,” he said.
Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
A woman who ran a Russia propaganda center in New York City was charged on Tuesday for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian government.
Elena Branson, 61, who has both US and Russian citizenship, ran the Russian Center New York, which she founded in 2012, receiving thousands of dollars from the Russian government.
Branson received a total of $173,000 between August 2013 to November 2019 in connection to her work at the center, reported Sky News.
The center reportedly coordinated activities such as an “I love Russia” campaign aimed at American young people that promoted Russian history and culture.
Branson also serves as chairperson of the Russian Community Council of the USA, an organization with the goal of “[supporting] organizations of Russian compatriots, to preserve and popularize the Russian language and cultural and historical heritage in the United States”, according to group’s website.
Branson reportedly even invited Donald Trump or one of his children to a “Russia Forum New York” in 2016, though there is no evidence that Trump or any family members attended.
Prosecutors said that Branson, who left the US for Russia in 2020 and still remains at large, corresponded with high-ranking Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, about her campaign as Russia increased their propaganda efforts in the US.
Russian Center New York also lobbied officials in Hawaii not to change the name of a formerly Russian fort, Fort Elizabeth, on the island of Kauai, organizing a trip for Hawaiian officials to meet with Russian delegates in Moscow.
Branson has been charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the US attorney general as well as taking part in a visa fraud conspiracy, reported the Associated Press.
Branson is also being accused of helping others illegally avoid registering as foreign agents.
While none of Branson’s educational or diplomacy activities are illegal, all US agents for foreign governments must disclose their affiliation to the Department of Justice. “All the while, Branson knew she was supposed to register as an agent of the Russian government but chose not to do so and, instead, instructed others regarding how to illegally avoid the same,” said US attorney Damian Williams.
“Particularly given current global events, the need to detect and hinder attempts at foreign influence is of critical importance, and the southern district of New York is proud to do its part in the fight against tyranny,” said Williams.
During an interview with the FBI in September 2020, Branson said that she had never been asked by Russian officials to arrange meetings with US officials.
The following month, while speaking with a Russian-state controlled TV station, Branson said that she left the US because she thought she would most likely be arrested.
Declassified U.S. intelligence accuses Moscow of pushing propaganda through alternative websites as Russia refines techniques used in 2016.
By Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON — Russian intelligence services have been spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, according to newly declassified intelligence, material that demonstrates how Moscow is continuing to try to influence Americans as the election draws closer.
Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has used its ties with a Russian government information center, InfoRos, and other websites to push out English-language disinformation and propaganda about the pandemic, such as amplifying false Chinese arguments that the virus was created by the United States military and articles that said Russia’s medical assistance could bring a new détente with Washington.
The disinformation efforts are a refinement of what Russia tried to do in 2016. The fake social media accounts and bots used by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-backed groups to amplify false articles have proved relatively easy to stamp out. But it is far more difficult to stop the dissemination of such articles that appear on websites that seem legitimate, according to outside experts.
“Russian intelligence agencies are taking a more central role in disinformation efforts that Russia is pushing now,” said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It is not the blunt force” of the operations mounted by the Internet Research Agency.
Two American officials described the newly declassified intelligence but would not provide the underlying reports about the activities of the G.R.U. and the S.V.R., Moscow’s equivalent of the C.I.A. They discussed the information on the condition of anonymity.
Last week, intelligence officials warned about Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to interfere with the election. While Democrats criticized the warning for a lack of specifics, officials promised to release more information.
While the disinformation efforts outlined on Tuesday by American officials were focused on the pandemic, security researchers said Russia continued to push disinformation on a variety of topics.
The government’s accusations came as Mandiant Threat Intelligence, part of the FireEye cybersecurity firm, reported that it had detected a parallel influence campaign in Eastern Europe intended to discredit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including disinformation about the coronavirus. While the Mandiant report did not specifically name Russia and its intelligence agencies, it noted that the campaign was “aligned with Russian security interests” in an effort to undermine NATO activities.
Facebook has begun labeling stories that appear on state-sponsored news sites like RT and Sputnik. But it is harder for the social media companies to identify and label news articles that are posted on conspiracy-minded sites, according to experts.
Many of the pieces created by Russian intelligence were published on InfoRos, a site controlled by the Russian government, and OneWorld.Press, a nominally independent site that United States officials said had ties to the G.R.U. American officials said other sites, such as GlobalResearch.ca, regularly amplify G.R.U. propaganda, but officials have not directly linked it to Russian intelligence.
United States government officials mostly described disinformation focused on the pandemic, but they also outlined ties between Russian intelligence and a think tank that had published articles on politics.
The Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by another Russian intelligence agency, the S.V.R., according to two American officials. The foundation and its ties to Russian intelligence are also being investigated by the F.B.I., according to another official.
In May, the foundation published an article critical of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration official who lost a primary race in June in New York for a seat in Congress.
Dr. Farkas said the Russians were continuing to repeat their efforts from 2016 to try to influence the election.
“They want to sow dissent and reduce confidence among Americans in our democracy and make democracy look bad worldwide,” she said. “They want to prevent people who are tough on Russia from coming into power.”
Michael Averko, a contributor to the foundation, did not return a request for comment, but he said in a recent mass email to reporters that he had been visited by the F.B.I. Mr. Averko said he told the F.B.I. that he did not know about any ties between the foundation and Russian intelligence, but that he doubted they existed.
After the publication of this article, OneWorld.Press issued a statement saying any accusation that it worked for Russian intelligence was “categorically false.” “To the best of our knowledge,” its contributors have not been charged with crimes for cooperating with any foreign intelligence agency, the statement said.
Without evidence, OneWorld.Press claimed that the accusations about Russian intelligence’s propaganda efforts were being spread by officials who aimed to hurt President Trump’s re-election chances. “Everybody across the world knows that some members of the ‘deep state’ have their daggers out for Trump, and the president himself has even said as much on countless occasions,” it said.
American intelligence officials said the G.R.U.’s psychological warfare unit, known as Unit 54777 or the 72nd Special Service Center, was behind the propaganda campaigns that were often devised to obscure Moscow’s role in creating them. A 2018 report in The Washington Post linked InfoRos to the G.R.U.’s Unit 54777.
United States intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation drafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press.
Russian officials did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mr. Tyurin and Mr. Starunskiy, the American officials said, were in essence involved in a kind of information laundering, akin to money laundering. They take the messages from Russian intelligence and spread them on InfoRos, OnePress or another website.
The material created by the G.R.U. is then picked up by other websites that further spread it. Those websites are often on the fringes of the web, while some, like Global Research, have a significant following, American officials said.
The stories pushed by Russian intelligence appear to be written by native English speakers and do not stand out as products of a foreign influence campaign, American officials said.
From late May to early July, about 150 articles on the pandemic were published by the Russian intelligence-backed effort, American officials said.
OneWorld published pieces about how the pandemic was an experiment in manipulating the world. InfoRos, as well as the Tass news agency, published an article that said the United States was using the pandemic to impose its view of the world, according to American officials. InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon.
While the specific sites may not receive much traffic, American officials believe the disinformation written by Russian military intelligence is amplified, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly.
Tracking the influence of Russian disinformation is difficult. While documents stolen and published by Russian intelligence agencies had an important effect on the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, the social media posts do not seem to have been as consequential.
But propaganda and disinformation published on alternative news sites, like OneWorld or Global Research, may have more traction, some researchers believe.
“What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche media ecosystem,” said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
The EU DisinfoLab, an independent nonprofit organization, has previously linked OneWorld, InfoRos and a French-language site to Russian propaganda efforts. Some of that disinformation centered on allied troops spreading the coronavirus, allegations similar to those in the new Mandiant report.
Mandiant called the threat group it found “Ghostwriter,” since it relied on false news articles or made-up letters and quotations that appeared to originate with local politicians or military officials. It relied on articles written by what it called “at least 14 inauthentic personas,” meaning reporters or blog writers who were invented by the creators of the influence campaign. The articles were published by pro-Russian sites like TheDuran.com, which American intelligence officials have also been examining.
In one example, a fabricated letter presented as being written by the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, perpetuated the false claim that the alliance was planning to leave Lithuania as the pandemic spread. Another episode involved a local Lithuanian news site that was hacked, and attackers posted an article that falsely claimed German troops had desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Kaunas, a city in central Lithuania.
Глава Минобороны РФ Сергей Шойгу доложил президенту Владимиру Путину об освобождении Луганской Народной Республики (ЛНР), сообщает Минобороны РФ.
Министр рассказал главе государства об успешных боевых действиях ВС РФ и подразделений Народной милиции ЛНР. В результате был установлен полный контроль над Лисичанском и ближайшими населенными пунктами, такими, как Белогоровка, Новодружеск, Малорязанцево и Белая гора.
За сутки военные освободили 182 квадратных километра территорий.
Ранее Минобороны сообщило, что российские войска замкнули кольцо вокруг Лисичанска и заблокировали в «котле» группировку украинской армии. В плен сдались 38 человек.
Утром 3 июля глава Чеченской республики Рамзан Кадыров сообщил об освобождении Лисичанска и знаменах Победы на улицах города.
In the early days of the war in Ukraine, drones emerged as an unexpected source of victory against Russian forces.
Stories of the success dominated the news cycle, played out on multiple video clips widely distributed on social media, and showed Ukraine's drones decimating the chaotic Russian advances.
Ukraine's ad-hoc drone airforce, from small consumer drones typically used for surveillance to the famed Turkish-designed Bayraktar TB2 drones, were credited with eviscerating Putin's tanks and armor.
But Russia has learned from the humiliation by drones in the first months of the invasion. Experts told Insider that the drone wonder weapons are becoming increasingly ineffective because Russia has improved its defense systems and is downing and jamming many of Ukraine's drones.
"What's happening now is that Russia's electronic warfare and air defenses have become better organized and fielded when compared to the earlier months of the war," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems, said at the Center for Naval Analysis.
Russian forces are using early warning radars to identify the drones and electronic warfare systems to jam and disrupt their communication, Bendett said.
They also use various weapons like machine guns and air defense systems, such as the Tor missile system, to shoot the drones down.
Recent footage from the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to show a Krasukha-S4 electronic warfare system in action, taking out a Ukrainian drone.
According to Mark Cancian, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ukraine was previously able to use drones so effectively because Russia had not organized its defense systems.
"Drones were able to play such a role because the Russians were slow to set up an air defense system. They were slow to establish the combined arms operation (armor, infantry, artillery, recon, engineers, air defense) that their doctrine called for," he said.
Russia has better organized and positioned its ground-based air defense in the Donbas region, where the focus of the war has shifted.
Ukrainian forces are now limiting their use of drones because Russian troops are more easily thwarting them, and losing drones can be costly.
While single-use drones such as the Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost cost several thousand dollars each, the TB2 drones can cost somewhere between $1-2 million each.
Ukraine has received about 50 TB2 drones from Turkish arms company Baykar since the Russian invasion began.
Ruthlessly effective in the first days of the war, the TB2s have begun to be shot down by Russia, and the Ukrainian army is scaling back their use.
Reports have recently emerged that the US is planning on selling Ukraine US-made General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle armed drones, which have greater capabilities than the TB2s.
However, two unnamed Ukrainian Air Force pilots told The War Zone that they are not advocating for the drones due to their hefty price tag of $10 million each, as they are likely to get shot down on their first mission.
According to Cancian, Russia's air defenses are almost entirely short, and medium-range missiles and drones are especially vulnerable because they fly low and slow.
"Ukrainian pilots I have talked with say the role of drones is now limited as a result," he said.
Instead, Ukrainian forces have advocated for modern fighter jets from its Western allies.
While Ukraine's drones are becoming less effective in this new phase of the war, Russia is flying just as many if not more of their drones, especially for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, CNA expert Bendett said.
The Ukrainians lack the weaponry to shoot them down, and one soldier told The Sunday Times: "We can't see the Russian drones, but they can see us. The only thing we can do is hide."
Bendett said the next few weeks will likely involve the Russian military seeking to better organize and continue to push forward in its offensive.
"It's trying to trap Ukrainians in pockets around certain cities and towns and just trying to push and grind the Ukrainian defenses in general. Drones are playing a key part in providing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities back to the Russians so that they can conduct strikes from the ground and the air," Bendett said.
"So we're going to see drones on the Russian side, assuming probably even more important going forward, assuming that the war continues as it is right now."
Об этом сообщает Минобороны РФ.
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The post Russia Ukraine War | Nation World | thesunchronicle.com – The Sun Chronicle first appeared on The Russia News.Ukraine war: The fight for Lysychansk | DW News – latest news and breaking stories DW (English) The post Ukraine war: The fight for Lysychansk | DW News – latest news and breaking stories – DW (English) first appeared on My News Links.
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Ukraine Latest: Russia Blames Belgorod Explosions on Kyiv Yahoo Finance Australia The post Ukraine Latest: Russia Blames Belgorod Explosions on Kyiv – Yahoo Finance Australia first appeared on My News Links.
The post Ukraine Latest: Russia Blames Belgorod Explosions on Kyiv – Yahoo Finance Australia first appeared on The News And Times Information Network.
Selected Articles – Michael Novakhov’s favorite articles on Inoreader – The News And Times ‘A black day’ Putin humiliated as Russian navy sinks its OWN ship in latest calamity The Russian Navy has failed to cover itself in glory during the course of the war in Ukraine. The Black Sea Fleet suffered a major […]
The post ‘A black day’: Putin humiliated. | Audio Posts In Russian: Путин, лучше не связывайся, – командующий ВВС Германии предостерег диктатора от нападения на НАТО first appeared on The News And Times Information Network.
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