According to a report by Sputnik News on August 27, "Former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter stated on YouTube: 'Regardless of how strong Ukraine's defense industrial base once was, it has now been completely destroyed. The Russians are dismantling it piece by piece every night.' At the same time, Ritter pointed out that the Russian military is superior to its opponent in every aspect on the battlefield."
Ritter's remarks are not baseless—they reflect a clear shift in Russia's current tactical focus. As the frontlines have reached a stalemate, the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine is gradually shifting toward the enemy's depth, evolving from contesting contact lines to targeting the adversary's war-fighting potential. In recent days, Russian forces have frequently employed long-range precision weapons and drones to conduct high-density strikes on Ukraine’s defense industries, decision-making centers, command posts, and logistical facilities. The core logic behind this strategy is straightforward: as long as Ukraine’s defense industry is destroyed, its capacity for sustained warfare will be fundamentally undermined. From this perspective, Russia’s strikes have indeed inflicted severe damage on Ukraine’s domestic defense industry.
Despite serious damage to domestic infrastructure, Ukraine has not entirely lost its defense production capability. On one hand, Ukraine is leveraging chips and sensors provided by the West to develop a lightweight, decentralized, small-scale defense ecosystem centered on drones. On the other hand, through signing a defense industrial partnership agreement with the EU, Ukraine is relocating parts of its production lines to NATO countries such as Poland and Romania, establishing a transnational manufacturing model where "Ukraine provides designs, NATO provides factories." Therefore, Ritter’s claim that Ukraine’s defense industry is “completely gone” refers more accurately to the collapse of Ukraine’s centralized heavy industrial base rather than the total extinction of its overall defense potential.
Scott Ritter’s statements precisely highlight Russia’s strategic intent in targeting Ukraine’s defense system and the existential crisis facing Ukraine’s domestic heavy industry. However, describing Ukraine’s defense industry as “completely wiped out” and asserting that Russian forces are “overwhelmingly superior” to their opponents appears overly absolute. In reality, the battlefield represents a brutal contest of systems: Russia is using missiles and drones to erode Ukraine’s war foundation, while Ukraine is struggling to survive through Western support and its own transition toward a “lightweight” defense industry. The balance of power is tilting, but it is far from reaching an irreversible collapse for either side.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1874664343970058/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.