We normally don’t comment on political statements, however in his 23 APR 2025 social media post US President Donald J. Trump made 9 (nine!) factually false or misleading statements about UA so we had to address that.
Numerous detentions and arrests & widespread censorship against pro-UA voices by RU occupational forces in Crimea are well described (euromaidanpress.com/2024/06/10/act…), including by Donald Trump's US State Department in 2019 (state.gov/reports/2019-c…).
Top RU officials reiterated numerous times that their goal is effectively destruction of UA statehood: “demilitarization” and effectively russification (“denazification” in Kremlin-speech).
These demands are obviously unacceptable for sovereign Ukraine.
RU progress has effectively stalled since they had to make significant retreats in 2022. The majority of the territorial gains were made by RU in 2022 in the early weeks of the invasion. economist.com/europe/2025/02… (archived: archive.ph/jFV2B)
This statement could've been considered genuine if Donald Trump’s admin was doing their best to provide UA w/ increased military aid to defend against the illegal RU invasion. Additional air defense systems would particularly be a complete no brainer: kyivindependent.com/trump-dismisse…
Brief (and potentially incomplete) notes from a fresh interview w/ UA F-16 pilot:
- what missions F-16 and M2000 jets now perform
- their performance in UA
- RU glide bomb threat counteraction
- strike planning and intelligence
..and more
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- the interviewee trained in the first group [of UA pilots to train on F-16]
- constantly perform:
* aerial recoinnaissance of the enemy objects and forces
* ELINT flights
* after integrating the above information perform missions to hit enemy ground targets
* 24/7 on call for air defense, defending important national objects, "our cities"
My brief (and rough) notes from an interview w/ Andriy Kobzar - a (now retired, after injury) commander of a Ukrainian German-supplied PzH-2000 (). This video interview (in Ukrainian) adds details on top of the interesting text interview referenced below
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Is RU-UA war an artillery war:
- yes
- the role is dominant, the tactics evolves
- for RU, FAB/UMPK gliding bombs are playing some of arty role (because they have a lot of them and a lot of aviation)
Attack UAVs vs arty:
- UAVs do now complement some fraction of hits from the arty, but can not replace arty
- partly it's because of the wide spectrum of available arty ammunition. E.g. smoke arty shells, illumination shells, wide variety of modern programmable fuses.
Second half of my quick notes from an interview w/ UA Air Force head of aviation Gen. Serhii Holubtsov (). For the notes on the first half of the interview see linked thread.
The second half was mostly about F-16s and a little bit about JAS 39 Gripen.
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F-16
Munitions:
- all airplanes will have improved "sight" (in Ukrainian usually that mean improved radar - no further details given), will [also] have pods for ground attack targeting
- Gen. Holubtsov won't give away technical details on air-to-air munitions or the radar modifications, but mentions "AIM-120 is used [on these airplanes] and its combat range, let's say according to 'some data', is up to 180+ km"
Quick notes from an interview w/ UA Air Force head of aviation Serhii Holubtsov (published today).
I normally don't do translations, but I see a lot of mistranslations/misinterpretations of this interview - thus this thread.
Notes of 1st half below🧵:
JDAM and other guided bomb use by UA:
- the quantities are limited thus limited effect on the battlefield
- enough airplanes have been modified to use them by now
- domestically UA produced glide/guide kits to be tested "in a few weeks"
- currenly GBU-39 and -62 are used w/ different warheads, these are highly effective
- their use is limited also by RU air defenses located on sovereign RU territory which UA was not allowed to target (presumably by donated weapons)
Brief update (with geolocations) on Malovodne-Burne (Mariupol) rail line construction by RU occupational forces.
Based on geolocated media footage we confirm that in Novomykhailivka area there will be a railroad segment (of undetermined length) with 2 parallel tracks.
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Geolocation 1: video taken at Malovodne-Burne rail / hwy (T0508) intersection near Novomykhailivka.
First, we noticed a nearby cargo vessel with a peculiar shape of cranes. We looked through the vessels near Kerch Strait w/ AIS on and found a likely candidate: TWIN STAR () marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details…
We then identified a nearby vessel IDEL 4 as the clear POV of the video (~ 45.03675, 36.51238).
We identified matching railing, signage, and the door that can be seen in the video. The video was filmed from the port side looking towards IDEL 4 stern.