/ world today news/ Serious Russian intelligence work is behind a series of recent missile strikes on Ukrainian military warehouses
Over the past few days, Russia has been carrying out massive missile strikes on the ASU warehouses with ammunition and military equipment. Defense and chemical plants and fuel depots are also targeted. Landing such strikes is a matter of technique, but getting the exact coordinates of a specific target can require much more effort. How does the Russian military calculate the location of large warehouses and reserves of the Armed Forces?
As a result of group high-precision strikes with long-range naval and air weapons on Thursday evening, the Ukrainian army lost a significant stockpile of ammunition, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Large warehouses with weapons and foreign equipment, ammunition, as well as reserves of the Armed Forces were hit.
In May, Russia resumed regular missile strikes on enemy territory. Since the beginning of the month, such strikes have been carried out at least nine times. On Thursday evening, powerful explosions rumbled in different parts of Odessa. As a result, the logistics of Western military supplies were disrupted and weapons depots were destroyed. It is likely that one of the strikes hit the territory of the Centrolit plant, where NATO equipment was hidden.
Khmelnytskyi region was also attacked, where a certain infrastructure facility was destroyed. Other explosions thundered near Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Kharkiv. The previous evening, a video was published on the network with footage of several powerful cruise missile strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on Nikolaev. As explained in the Ministry of Defense, the blow fell on a large warehouse for ammunition, equipped on the territory of a ship repair enterprise.
And on Wednesday, military correspondents reported a strike with “Caliber” on the Ukrainian state enterprise “Zorya-Mashproekt” near Nikolaev. The plant produced gas turbine engines, including for missile boats of the “Lightning” type. The workshops also housed military equipment of the VSU.
At the beginning of the week, panic broke out in Ukrainian social networks after an attack on one of the military facilities in the city of Khmelnytskyi. Judging by the photo from the video surveillance cameras, smoke rose above the city in the form of a black mushroom, which usually appears after the use of nuclear weapons. But in fact, ammunition depots were hit, including depleted uranium for use by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass.
Also at the beginning of May, a strong explosion went off in Pavlograd, accompanied by an unusual glow. According to experts, this is how solid rocket fuel explodes. There is a branch of Yuzhmash in the city, which has been producing rockets since Soviet times. In social networks, they also write about the echelons of military equipment destroyed by the strike and the hits of projectiles in the workshops of the local chemical plant producing explosives.
The Ministry of Defense only said that on that day a high-precision weapon struck targets of Ukraine’s military complex. All objectives have been achieved: the work of enterprises that produce ammunition, weapons and military equipment for the nationalists has been disrupted.
Shelling activity was also assessed in the West. According to Forbes magazine, Russia is actively destroying Ukrainian artillery, including that handed over to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by Western countries. “Ukraine’s losses are very heavy. Of the approximately 152 large 155mm M777 towed howitzers that have officially arrived in Ukraine, more than a third have already been damaged or destroyed.
In the expert community, they claim that the massive strikes on Ukrainian military warehouses, if they do not disrupt, then significantly slow down the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces. According to the military expert, captain 1st rank of the reserve Vladimir Gundarov, the destruction of warehouses with weapons and equipment significantly reduces the offensive capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“But there are many more such warehouses. The enemy scatters ammunition and equipment. It is impossible to cover all warehouses with missile strikes. Air bombing strikes would be more effective, but we can drop guided bombs only from certain areas so as not to enter the enemy’s air defense coverage area, because the lives of the pilots are the most valuable thing for us,” the interlocutor adds.
However, everything done by the Russian armed forces works to weaken and undermine the offensive potential of the ASU. The interlocutor also recalled that large weapons depots in Ukraine have existed since the time of the USSR and their coordinates, schemes and drawings are available to the Russian Ministry of Defense. The most famous sites are located in Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk and many other cities.
The means of electronic and satellite intelligence help to find the location of temporary warehouses built after 1991. “Satellite intelligence sees where trains are approaching, where the most active movement of unloading and loading of equipment and ammunition takes place,” Gundarov said.
In addition, information about the location of warehouses is taken from any open sources, including from social networks and from the analysis of user correspondence. “Information comes from the most unexpected sources. During the time of the USSR, the Americans found out how many planes we were building from the reports of the Pravda newspaper. And now it is enough to have a person with a mobile phone and he will tell everything,” explained the expert.
Of great importance is the intelligence network, which operates not only in NATO countries, but also in Ukraine. The interlocutor recalled that in Poland, as the local press wrote, a certain group of people was discovered who allegedly placed beacons on trains carrying equipment of NATO. It is debatable whether it is true, but this method can also be useful in calculating enemy forces and assets.
Telegram channels also drew attention to a series of recent targeted attacks on warehouses. According to them, the main condition for the success of these strikes was the activity of those people, forces and means that indicated the exact location of these strikes, and “the rest is, as they say, a matter of technique.”
As for satellite intelligence, it is “much more modest than the American one, but the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has devices that provide photography of the earth’s surface on the territory of Ukraine and quick transmission of the relevant data to the relevant structures.”
The A-50U air defense system and the Tu-214R and Il-20M electronic reconnaissance aircraft make their contribution. They are capable of recognizing the coordinates and types of various military objects hundreds of kilometers away. “Enemy communications in the radio range are also actively listened to. The ASU uses, of course, excellent secure radio communication, but its very activity in a number of areas can be revealed. And this already allows for important conclusions from the point of view of intelligence,” the publication says.
“If several similar sources simultaneously point to the same object, the intelligence is considered reliable. In addition, the intelligence data is structured in a special way so that it can be used to issue a target indication of the means of destruction of the armed forces of the Russian Federation – for example, to include cruise missiles in the mission,” the authors summarize.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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