Russia is choking Ukraine’s Black Sea export corridor, the sea route that keeps Ukrainian grain moving to world markets.
On Wednesday, for the first time since the corridor opened in 2023, zero ships entered Ukraine’s 3 Odesa ports, Politico. 1/
Sybiha [Ukraine’s FM]: “Russia is holding global food security hostage.”
At peak harvest, he called the shutdown deliberate economic and humanitarian terror that could mean higher prices and hunger for families in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. 2/
The shipping giant Maersk stopped operations at Chornomorsk Fishing Port and redirected cargo to Romania’s Constanta.
Ukraine: It can still provide security, but shipowners halted traffic because Russia is now hitting civilian cargo ships before they reach port. 3/
Ukraine will make Patriot interceptor missiles with Raytheon, the US producer of the Patriot system.
Patriots are crucial for stopping Russian ballistic and aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities, United24. 1/
Zelenskyy: “Ukraine will jointly produce one of the most important air defense assets — interceptors for Patriots — together with Raytheon.”
The talks followed earlier discussions with Trump in Ankara and focused on non-offensive military hardware. 2/
Ukraine needs more interceptors as Russian strikes intensify.
Lockheed Martin also unveiled ACE, a cheaper Patriot interceptor. US budget documents put PAC-3 MSE at over $4mn per round; ACE could cost less than half of that. 3X
Browder: Ukraine has created a drone kill zone along the front.
Anyone who enters it can be targeted. One operator can control 100 drones searching for heat and killing anyone inside the zone. 1/
Browder: Putin can draft more men and send them to the front, where they will be killed.
Russia has ten times the personnel and resources, but Ukrainian strikes keep degrading its economy and reducing the resources Putin can use to continue the war. 2/
Browder: Drones are destroying the old idea of a superpower.
The US can destroy almost any target, but it cannot stop small groups from launching drones at valuable economic assets. Ukraine and Iran are exploiting that asymmetry. 3/
Zelenskyy: The Soviet Union was the most dangerous enemy for the United States, not only for your democracy or way of life, but for 70 years.
Putin’s global idea is to take everything back: the Soviet Union, former Soviet republics, and Europe too.
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Zelenskyy: If Russia becomes the Soviet Union again, this becomes a global war. Then you get China and a restored Soviet empire with the biggest army in the world.
They would be bigger than the United States, and that would be dangerous for America.
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Zelenskyy: Israel’s Russian-speaking Jews are not all from Russia.
Many came from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Lithuania after the Soviet Union killed languages, churches, religion and traditions for 70 years. They know Russian, but they are not “Russian-speaking people.”3/
Keane: Ukraine can put 10,000 drones in the air in a single day.
The entire US Army does not have 10,000 drones. Ukraine’s defense industry gets new technology into soldiers’ hands at a speed that is nothing short of remarkable. 1/
Keane: Ukraine will manufacture 8 million drones this year — aerial drones and unmanned ground vehicles.
Ukrainian forces pushed Russians off a position defended by troops with no humans in the fight. It was the first time this had happened in warfare. 2/
Keane: Ukraine defeated Russia’s Black Sea Fleet without having a navy of its own.
It did it with surface drones, aerial drones and subsurface drones. We will likely see what Ukraine has proven reproduced in other countries. 3X