Image caption,Wreckage of what appeared to be Russia’s Okhotnik or Hunter aerial vehicle was found in Kostyantynivka
Published October 12, 2024
When two white vapour trails cross the sky near the front line in eastern Ukraine, it tends to mean one thing. Russian jets are about to attack.
But what happened near the city of Kostyantynivka was unprecedented. The lower trail split in two and a new object quickly accelerated towards the other vapour trail until they crossed and a bright orange flash lit up the sky.
Was it, as many believed, a Russian war plane shooting down another in so-called friendly fire 20km (12 miles) from the front line, or a Ukrainian jet shooting down a Russian plane?
Intrigued, Ukrainians soon found out from the fallen debris that they had just witnessed the destruction of Russian’s newest weapon – the S-70 stealth combat drone.
This is no ordinary drone. Named Okhotnik (Hunter), this heavy, unmanned vehicle is as big as a fighter jet but without a cockpit. It is very hard to detect and its developers claim it has “almost no analogy” in the world.
That all may be true, but it clearly went astray, and it appears the second trail seen on the video came from a Russian Su-57 jet, apparently chasing it down.
The Russian plane may have been trying to re-establish the contact with the errant drone, but as they were both flying into a Ukrainian air defence zone, it is assumed a decision was made to destroy the Okhotnik to prevent it ending up in enemy hands.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv have commented officially on what happened in the skies near Kostyantynivka. But analysts believe the Russians most likely lost control over their drone, possibly due to jamming by Ukraine’s electronic warfare systems.
This war has seen many drones but nothing like Russia’s S-70.
It weighs more than 20 tonnes and reputedly has a range of 6,000km (3,700 miles).
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SOURCE: www.bbc.com
RELATED: ‘The Kursk operation has become normalized:’ As Ukraine’s Russia incursion enters third month, Put
A Ukrainian soldier stands in Sudzha, Russia, on October 8 — months into the country’s surprise incursion.
Published October 12, 2024
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is now entering its third month, with scores of settlements still firmly under its control.
The operation marked the first time foreign troops entered Russian territory since World War II – embarrassing the Kremlin and proving to Kyiv’s backers and the rest of the world that Ukraine’s military was not perpetually on the back foot.
Some nine weeks later, Ukraine’s advance has stalled, and neither side has made major gains or counterattacks in recent days.
The endgame is unclear. Analysts believe Kyiv is trying to use its initial momentum for a morale boost and a potential bargaining chip, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to downplay the entire incursion and limit the resources Russia’s war machine devotes to countering it.
What’s the latest on the ground?
Ukraine has maintained a foothold in Kursk of about 786 square kilometers (300 square miles), according to the latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank in Washington, DC.
“Russian advances are mostly happening on the flanks of our foothold,” a commander of a Ukrainian battalion inside Kursk, Dmytro – who uses the call sign “Kholod,” meaning cold – told CNN on Wednesday. “They keep trying to advance but the gains are incremental, somewhere they manage to take a street in the village. But it goes both ways – we also counterattack and push them back.”
Ukraine’s main foothold is around the Russian town of Sudzha and its military is trying to establish a second foothold around Veseloe village. Ukraine has not disclosed how many troops it has sent to the region.
Russia has deployed a reasonably large number of troops – estimated at 40,000 – to defend and counterattack in Kursk, but analyst Mark Galeotti described the initial force as “built from wherever they can find,” with Russia using conscripts and reservists at the outset of the incursion.
“This is equivalent to sort of scramping around your sofa cushions to find some small change,” Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British think tank, told CNN.
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SOURCE: www.cnn.com
