Er . . . since when has being able to get commercial data mean that they're having to wait for US official permission for each strike?
The post says that “Ukraine is no longer reliant on the US and can strike Russia as it chooses” and “without permission”. Clearly, neither is true. 100% dependence on the US providing this service is obvious, so it is fully reliant on the US, be it commercial services or those provided by the government. In reality, nothing had probably changed on the western side, but on Ukrainian. This article outlines vague details (
@personaldesas):
Ukrainian forces are using commercial satellite imagery sent directly to soldier devices to drastically speed up drone strikes against Russian military targets.
united24media.com
The intel previously having to go through the vetting above, goes straight to the field. Note the article also says that coordinates provided are accurate within 5 meters and are good enough for a strike with a 50kg of explosives. Again, nothing has changed and it is not unlikely that strike coordinates are provided as they previously were since the very beginning. This leads to striking the provided targets, not as it chooses.
Finally, the service is most certainly provided with the blessing from the US government. So there is permission. Which has been getting looser ever since early 2022. We are simply observing the final stages of this development. And I had talked about it since… 2022.
Just like the leniency towards the strikes deep inside Russia, energy infrastructure, etc. All done with the American blessing and provision strike coordinates and desired hit placement (which, I would guess, rarely works out (the desired placement) because the operating capacity is usually restored within days or weeks at the longest (months worth of repairs is a rarity).
Funny enough, most of these medium-range strikes are also done with the American drones (not made in Ukraine), the Hornets. So no longer reliant is quite an exaggeration disconnected from reality.
Hornet strike drones have already become one of the most widely used and successful weapons in the Defense Forces’ arsenal for striking Russian logistics deep in the rear. However, very […]
militarnyi.com
Side note, I highly doubt these cost €5,000 each.
Interceptor drones (not made in Ukraine):
The German government has contracted TYTAN Technologies to supply more than 1,000 METIS interception drones for the National Guard of Ukraine.
deaidua.org
More on the Hornet manufacturer:
Although little is known about Swift Beat, a company that has entered a drone-making agreement with Ukraine, traces of its activities lead to "storks" and AI-based drones
en.defence-ua.com
The deal stipulates an expansion of the American company's production capacities and supplying Ukraine with interceptor drones "on a priority basis, under special terms and at cost price."[…]
The Presidential Office states that "hundreds of thousands of drones" will be delivered this year already, with further output increase in 2026. As also mentioned, the U.S. company already has a significant presence in Ukraine and specializes in UAVs with artificial intelligence.[…]
As for the products supplied to Ukraine under the agreement, the Presidential Office lists interceptor drones, quadcopters for reconnaissance, surveillance, fire control and logistics, as well as medium-class strike drones. All of them can use artificial intelligence for guidance, navigation and adjusting the pilot's command.
In the future, the parties plan to develop interceptors of cruise and ballistic missiles, automatic turrets, and reconnaissance platforms. Defense Express assumes that production facilities will be deployed in Denmark, where the memorandum was signed, or in Estonia, where Volya Robotics OÜ is registered.
Again, not produced in Ukraine. And so on.
Would anyone be surprised that down the line we find out that absolute majority of the “Ukrainian ingenuity” was supplies by the Western countries and Ukraine is simply the ideal testing ground for these weapons? Of course not or no one should be. All this Ukrainian AI developments, targeting, etc? In my opinion, the probability is close to zero that Ukrainians develop the stuff themselves (they certainly do, but the proportion of home-developed stuff is most likely minuscule in comparison, if not negligible, proportionally speaking). But they are paying for it, like someone said, the highest price, in blood and (my addition) the future of the country.
Ukrainians and Russians have a saying “don’t make my sleepers laugh”. This applies to Ukrainians selling their tech to the US and Europe. You can’t sell what the potential buyer provided to you (at no monetary cost) back to the buyer. All you can do is sell back the field reports so that the “buyer” can make improvements and provide you back with (in other words sell you) a better product (it’s a barter, field testing for equipment). Once the product reaches sufficient “perfection”, the “buyer” will stop supplying the product to you for free, but at some nominal reduced cost (best-case scenario) because your returning field reports have lower value than they did initially, but you will still be sending the feedback because product improvement is in your core interests.
I guess to conclude, if you can build millions of FPV drones from Chinese stock available on Alibaba or Aliexpress (or whatever the platform is called), it has no translation whatsoever into manufacturing fairly advanced and advanced technology that you had zero grasp on few short years ago.
I should also add that you can often say by looking at the product whether it is a Ukrainian development/assembly or west-provided piece of equipment.
Here is another example of complete disconnect from reality:
I didn’t click the link, but my guess is (not a “I would bet my last” type of a guess, haha) it leads to the second article I cited above, in lemming interpretation, of course. We should also ask ourselves here, what is a “Ukrainian” drone? For example, dear Canadian media has their own interpretation of that too (another example of disconnect from reality):
Globe and Mail (via the archive):
To note, it is not a yellow press or a tabloid type of an outlet.
So an interpretation appears to be a form of convenience and is dictated by “Ukrainian ingenuity and success” (favourable) and “unprovoked and brutal Russian aggression” (unfavourable).
Since I have space to attach a couple more images, I am going to use it. This is a sentinel image (“stolen” from Clement Molin’s twitter post) showing some extremely precise Russian strikes (with gliding bombs) on tree lines in Hulyaipole area:
Janis Kluge’s analysis of the Russian recruitment numbers:
His article on Substack:
The latest federal budget data confirms a slowdown in recruitment to around 800 per day in Q1, but newer regional data shows stabilization at closer to 1,000 per day in April-May 2026.
janiskluge.substack.com
I can envision lemming interpretation of the headline as “Zomg, Russia recruits just over twenty thousand bags per month while Ukrainians are killing more than 30,000 of orcs every month”, “Victory is behind the corner”, etc.
To use the post as dump (ie, an opportunity to close some more tabs on my part), an excellent article by Jompy on stocks of Russian armour:
Russia's Soviet-era legacy heavy equipment reserves have been prematurely declared depleted many times since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine started...
fronts.co
On Russia’s collapse:
Opinion | Russia is waging a war against its neighbor.
www.themoscowtimes.com
