Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States have lifted restrictions on the types of weapons that can be supplied to Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on May 26. (video)
The move clears the way for the EU to send its most powerful and long-range missiles to Kyiv that can strike targets deep inside Russian territory, something the allies have been reluctant to do for fears of escalating tensions with the Kremlin and possibly provoking a direct clash between Russia and Nato countries in Europe.
"There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine, not from the British, not from the French, not from us, not from the Americans either. This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia, for example,” Merz said during an interview on German television. “It couldn’t do that until some time ago, and with very few exceptions, it didn’t do that until some time ago. Now it can. In jargon, we call this long-range fire, i.e., equipping Ukraine with weapons that attack military targets in the rear.”
The decision comes the day after Russia launched a devastating missile and drone barrage on Ukraine over the weekend of May 23-25 that largely targeted civilian targets in Kyiv and many other urban centres in Ukraine – amongst the largest attacks since the war started over three years ago.
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The decision also clears the way for Germany to deliver its powerful Taurus cruise missiles that Kyiv had been asking for, but Berlin had so far been reluctant to supply. Merz didn’t mention the Taurus missiles by name during his interview, but has suggested that unlike former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he was not against supplying Kyiv with the missile, which can hit Russian targets deep in the rear or could destroy the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the Crimean peninsula.
Finally. But what’s been going on in Russia isn’t making sense either.
Consider: Some estimates show Russia used 69 missiles and 298 drones between May 23-25.
Googling, “How much does a Russian drone cost?” gives: The cost of Russian drones varies significantly depending on the type and capabilities. Some cheaper drones like the “Ghoul” quadcopter cost as little as $500, while others, like the Shahed-136, are estimated to range from $20,000 to $80,000. More advanced drones, such as the Merlin-VR, can cost over $300,000
So let’s say they used a mid-range drone, call it $30,000. 298 of them is $8,940,000.
Google again, “How much does a Russian missile used against Ukraine cost?”. Lots of variation, but call it $500,000 for each of the 69 used, for a total of $34,500,000.
So, for this two-day attack, they spent about $43-44 million dollars. And Google again, “How many people were killed in Ukraine May 23-25” says, “at least 12”.
Twelve people killed for $44 million. How stupid can you get? Do the Russians realize they could have simply bought the land they want in the Ukraine, if they’d done so through a dummy corporation or something like that?
I realize it’s the whole, “terror” thing, but frankly Ukraine ain’t terrified.
And now they’re going to be really well armed, and off the chain.
Thinking about this in terms of money spent is the wrong mindset. That 44 million dollars went from the hands of one Russian into the hands of another. And it even counts towards their GDP. On the other side, 12 Ukrainians are dead. Think about that. Depopulation, especially of working aged people is what’s really going to hurt your economy, not spending money on weapons.
As a sidenote, politicians often want you to believe that you can’t have nice things because “there isn’t enough money”. That is just bullshit.
Excellent points. While on the outside it does look like the Russians could have bought out all of Eastern Ukraine’s homeowners/farmers/citizens for $1 mil apiece, spent less money and still got the territory they want, it isn’t that simple.
The war never made economic sense. Russia was well off before, with a huge reserve. It could have invested in its own people. But it did not.
Even the second most important city of Russia, St Petersburg, is in shit ruins with infrastructure falling apart.
Well if you invest it into your people and infrastructure you can’t line you friends pockets 🤷♂️
Couldn’t they subcontract out the infrastructure construction to their friends?
But if they had to do honest work, they wouldn’t become even more filthy rich
This particular Russian attack seems to have been retaliatory in nature, because right before it Ukraine attacked Russian territory including Moscow with hundreds of drones at the same time.
Reported on here for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBAIalMNCAA
And here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NbxXJJJNZk
I figure the logic of escalation here is something like “If Ukraine can already make massive strikes on Moscow with self produced drones there isn’t much sense in keeping up the range restrictions on NATO equipment anymore”.
Missile strikes like this are for damaging infrastructure as much as killing people. If they did enough economic damage it was worth the strike.
For example, look at that recent strike where Ukraine blew up that huge Russian ammo depot. Even if they killed nobody (that’s what Russia claimed lmao), it took out 264,000 tons of missiles, drones, and artillery shells!
Ukraine shut down 266 drones and 45 missiles.
That leaves 24 missile and 32 drone hits.
Even if they target infrastructure, 12 seems to be a very low number of casualities.
I would say that either Russia can’t aim or Ukraine is understating their defence capabilities.
There are air raid sirens. Hitting an empty building makes two dozen homeless, but kills nobody. Hitting in a schoolyard might main and cripple dozens, but kill nobody.
And of course, Ukraine is a country at war. They have an interest in understating casualties.
But in the end, terror bombing doesn’t work. It didn’t work for the Nazis, it didn’t work against the Nazis. It didn’t work in Vietnam, or Korea, or anywhere anyone has ever tried it. And it’s not working now.
Did it work on Japan?
One could argue that literally nuking two whole cities and burning a dozen more to the ground DID contribute to the surrender of a nation that was basically already defeated in every single way except for civilians with handguns and pointy bits of metal.
One could also argue the incredible scale of the allied bombing campaign on Japan wasn’t terror bombing. It wasn’t meant to scare the Japanese into surrender, it was meant to destroy them into surrender.
It took the entire industrial power of the allies to make it happen. Over 25000 sorties, millions of liters of napalm, hundreds of millions kilos of bombs (not counting 2 nukes), basically unopposed bombing for years in addition to ground and naval war.
And they still almost committed a coup and against god, rather than surrender.
I’m quite sure that not all losses/hits are reported to prevent easy damage assessment. With all my contempt for Russia, I cannot imagine that they didn’t hit any actually useful target. The mass of munitions is generally used to overwhelm defences.
And we can’t forget the information/propaganda part of this war excellently played by both countries here, even though in different ways. It makes sense for Ukraine to play up the murder of civilians and not mention military losses.
Of course, I may be completely wrong here and the orcs are just trying to intimidate Ukraine to surrender with that. But that has rarely worked and definitely won’t work on Ukraine.
Great comment but I’d just like to say that I’m pretty sure that there’s a hell of a lot of people over there that are indeed terrified.