Reference News, July 15 - According to the German website "Die Welt," on July 13, while the West was still discussing new sanctions against Russia, Russia was celebrating record numbers of drones produced and launched. On the 9th, the Russian military launched an unprecedented 728 drones to strike multiple cities in Ukraine. From the night of the 11th to the early morning of the 12th, Russia launched another 597 drones.

These "Witness" suicide drones are equipped with up to 90 kilograms of explosives, crashing into residential areas and factories. Their range of over 1500 kilometers has made Kyiv, Odesa, and western Ukraine no longer safe.

This relatively inexpensive suicide drone is a tool for gaining air superiority through quantity rather than advanced technology, and has become a strategic attack weapon for Russia. The new situation that Ukraine faces is not the use of such drones by Russian forces, but the scale and tactics. For weeks, Russian forces have been using suicide drone swarms in conjunction with more powerful ballistic and cruise missiles to suppress Ukraine's air defense systems.

Austrian military expert Markus Reisner said: "Russia intends to overwhelm Ukraine's energy supply, military industry, and people's will to resist."

Currently, large-scale attacks on the heartland of Ukraine are weakening its military industry, which is its core strength. Because Western donor countries have failed to significantly upgrade their military production capacity over the past three and a half years, and European military stockpiles are running low, Ukraine has had to rely on its own military industry.

Austrian military expert Gustav Gresser warned that if the Ukrainian army cannot quickly curb the large-scale air raids by Russian forces, the consequences would be devastating. "If this continues, organized military resistance in Ukraine will collapse," he said.

This means that the Russian forces could potentially achieve significant breakthroughs on the front lines. Although the pace of Russian advances has been slow so far, they continue to capture cities and territory.

Large-scale air raids on Ukraine also indicate that Russia has greatly increased the production capacity of long-range attack weapons. Russia can produce at least 2500 long-range suicide drones per month.

What makes Ukraine's situation more difficult is that Russia is further developing drones and changing attack tactics. An Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson said that some Russian drones are currently flying above 2000 meters, beyond the reach of many mobile air defense units. In addition, to bypass air defenses, Russian forces are launching drone swarms from multiple different directions.

For this attrition war that Russia is waging in Ukraine, the core problem lies in the high cost and limited quantity of the Western weapon systems and ammunition currently available to the Ukrainian forces. Therefore, military experts suggest that in addition to increasing aid to Ukraine in the area of air defense, the West should also allow Ukraine to strike the Russian drone production bases in the interior.

Military analyst Fabian Hoffmann said: "The capacity of Western missile defense systems cannot keep up with the capacity of Russian missiles - this applies to all categories of weapons." He believes that Ukraine must be given the ability to use long-range weapons on a large scale to strike deep into Russian territory.

According to another report on the German website "Die Welt" on July 13, the number of suicide drones used by Russia in the past week to attack Ukraine was almost equivalent to the total of the previous year. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy stated on the social media platform Telegram that in the past week, Russia launched approximately 1800 drones. This refers to the "Witness" suicide drones designed by Iran.

According to data released by the Air War Tracking Organization, in the first year after obtaining the "Witness" drones, Russia launched nearly 2000 of these drones toward Ukraine. Tehran began supplying the "Witness" drones to Russia in the late summer of 2022. Currently, Russia is also producing these drones independently.

Ukrainian cities away from the front lines were previously largely untouched, but have recently become targets of Russian air raids, including Lutsk in western Ukraine and Chernivtsi in the south. (Translated by Wang Qing)

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7527145968552034843/

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