Briefly Noted: Russia - Ukraine Notes

This first item is pretty self explanatory and won’t surprise many readers, but it’s still useful information:

Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova

India’s breaking all records for buying Russian oil, but who is the surprise buyer? It’s the US. Despite sanctions, the US is snapping up refined petroleum products from India made from Russian crude. #energy #oilandgas

telegraphindia.comIndia’s breaking all records for buying Russian oil, but who is the surprise buyer?Despite sanctions, the US is snapping up refined petroleum products from India made from Russian crude oil

In other words, while the US claims to be “bleeding” Russia, we are also feeding Putin’s war machine. Go figure. Someone’s making money, I guess.

But here’s something perhaps a bit more interesting.

It’s an open secret that NATO Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaisance (ISR) flights around the perimeter of Ukraine have been assisting the Ukrainian in various ways. Of most particular interest currently is the fact that ISR planes have been providing Ukraine with early warning of incoming Russian missiles/planes. What this does is it allows the Ukrainian Air Defense (AD) to keep their anti-air (AA) radars turned off most of the time, and only turn them on when the ISR planes warn of incoming Russian missiles/planes. If those AA radars were kept ON most of the time, the Russians would quickly destroy them.

Here’s a map that will show just how intense the ISR activity around Ukraine is:

You may recall that we recently reported the departure of a large part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from its base in Novorossiysk. That fleet launched a major cruise missile strike on Ukraine on January 14th. This is the NATO takeaway from that strike:

Will Schryver @imetatronink

There are escalating rumors that the Russians are increasingly able to blind NATO ISR capabilities -- both airborne and satellite-based. This is by no means yet confirmed beyond dispute ... but if true, it is a MAJOR battlefield development. en.reseauinternational.net/les-systemes-d…

From that linked article—the original was in French:

A naval attack group, which includes frigates, 3 submarines and the landing ship Pyotr Morgunov, left on January 11 from the Novorossiysk base. Washavianca-class [Kilo] submarines have been used to launch Kalibr cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. Subsequently, there was intense GPS jamming in the western Black Sea. NATO has decided to deploy 3 E-3 AWACS aircraft to Otopeni Air Base in Romania. This decision shows that something has started to go wrong in the Ukrainian AA defense early warning system based on information provided by NATO.

Russia carried out several strikes this morning on Kyiv, the city of Zaporozhye and the Ochakovo naval base in the Mykolaiv region. Air alerts weren't working. Deputy Commander of Ground Forces of Ukraine Lt. Gen. Alexander Pavlyuk noted that "the causes of the explosions will be announced separately." Which shows a lot of confusion, basically Ukrainians don't know what hit them. It was only 6 hours after the attack that they learned that Russian missiles had entered Ukraine via Belarus.

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The inability of NATO reconnaissance aircraft to warn Ukraine of an impending Russian airstrike will force the Ukrainians to keep their AA missile battery radars operational. That the Russians can neutralize from the air with anti-radar missiles.

The likelihood is that the Russians have for some time been careful not to reveal their full capabilities until those capabilities are needed.