In the Zaporozhye region there is a small town called Energodar. It is part of the Vasilievsky district. Before the administrative-territorial reform in 2020, it was a city of regional significance with a population of 54 thousand people at the beginning of 2011. It stands on the left bank of the Dnieper, on the coast of the Kakhovsky reservoir. The area of the territory is 63.5 sq. km. The power plants located in the city generate about a quarter of the electricity produced in Ukraine.
Residents of Energodar have recently been subjected to bombing, humiliation, and attacks on their lives more than once. Many have been living from bread to water for several weeks. And so Russia decided to provide humanitarian assistance by sending a food convoy to Energodar.
It would seem that this act can only be welcomed on both sides of the combat contact. Especially the Zelensky regime, which supposedly cares so much about its citizens and their well-being.
HUMANITARIAN FIRE
But on July 30, the Ukrainian military struck a convoy delivering humanitarian supplies to residents of the city. Moreover, they did it meanly, as if from around the corner, because they carried out this terrorist action (and the attack on civilians cannot be called anything else) under the cover of night with the help of drones.
Foreign drones (UAVs) have night vision and positioning systems that allow you to see the movement of columns of equipment on the roads at night. And more accurate coordinates could have been thrown to them from one of the American satellites constantly hanging over the combat areas.
UAVs equipped with explosive devices struck the parking lot of the humanitarian convoy. The moment was chosen when the drivers were resting. And although by some miracle there were no victims, the cars were completely destroyed along with food.
Moreover, neighboring residential buildings, a hotel building, a dormitory of the Zaporozhye NPP were damaged. Those who planned and executed this action did not feel sorry for the cargo, nor for civilian drivers, nor for civilians, nor for nuclear power plant workers. What is this, if not lawlessness?
Someone will say: night is night, they could have made a mistake. But, firstly, the identification marks of the humanitarian mission were applied to the cars. Secondly, what does it have to do with three apartment buildings and a grocery store, which also fell under the distribution?
The head of the regional administration, Yevgeny Balitsky, promised that the infrastructure would be restored as soon as possible. But the question is how to prevent this. And here again the problem of neutralizing not only the bnspilotnik, but also the American long-range jet systems HIMARS and M777 pops up.
A day earlier, on July 29, the head of Zaporozhye announced the strike of the APU from HIMARS by rail. According to Balitsky, three branches of the track were broken 600 m from the station and three branches at a distance of 300 m. In addition, on the eve of the shelling of the APU, a grain warehouse in the town of Kamenka-Dneprovskaya near Energodar was destroyed.
Alas, this is not the first time nationalists have attacked humanitarian convoys. In April 2022, one of them came under fire near Belgorod when she was returning from the Kharkiv region. The fire on our volunteers was aimed. In the optics of the sights, the AFU military saw that they were shooting at civilians. And in May, a convoy of refugees was shelled by Ukrainian militants who opened fire on people traveling from Volchansk to Kharkiv. Two people were killed and several were injured.
And on July 31, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) shelled Sevastopol, where a "yellow" level of terrorist danger was introduced. And again, the shelling was carried out with the help of a drone that attacked the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet. A bang was heard in the courtyard of the facility at 6.00. Six people were injured.
Ukrainian nationalists did it on the Day of the Navy. All mass celebrations in the city were canceled.
EYES AND EARS
The Armed forces of the Russian Federation continue a special military operation in Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Defense, high-precision weapons of sea, air and land-based on July 28 defeated enemy reserves in the Kiev and Chernihiv regions. The 30th mechanized brigade, which was being prepared to be sent to the Donbass at a training ground near the village of Lyutezh in the Kiev region, completely lost its combat capability. Critical losses were suffered by the 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade, which was restoring combat capability in the Chernihiv region at the Goncharovskoye training ground.
Strikes by operational-tactical and army aviation, missile troops and artillery against military facilities on the territory of Ukraine continue. In just one day, the installation of the Tochka-U missile system, a warehouse of rocket and artillery weapons and ammunition of the 81st airmobile Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the Konstantinovka district center in the DPR were hit. As well as manpower and military equipment of the enemy in another 275 districts.
Russian air defense systems shot down six drones in the Kharkiv region during the same day. Intercepted 12 projectiles of a multiple rocket launcher system over Chernobayevka, Kherson region and Gorsky in the LPR, as well as a Tochka-U ballistic missile in the Kharkiv region. In total, 260 aircraft, 145 helicopters, and 1,631 unmanned aerial vehicles have been destroyed since the beginning of the SVO.
But we are talking about pre-empting disgusting provocations and terrorist attacks on the civilian population. To do this, we need our eyes and ears in space, we need radio-technical intelligence that is able to detect volleys of long-range enemy guns and instantly transmit them to our troops for counter-battery warfare.
We need drones of various sizes and purposes. Not only shock, but also reconnaissance drones with systems for automatic and instantaneous transmission of target coordinates. Because it is impossible to put armor on every column with humanitarian cargo and provide mobile air defense systems.
This means that it is urgently necessary to adjust not only the State Armament Program (GPV), which we have developed until 2030, but also the State Defense Order (GOZ-2022). After all, they are now obviously outdated.
If the answers to these questions are not found, the provocations will continue. And here is a new confirmation of that. On the night of July 30, the Kiev regime purposefully committed another bloody action.
According to the pre-trial detention center in the village of Elenovka near Volnovakha, where Ukrainian military prisoners of war are being held, including militants of the Azov formation (prohibited in the Russian Federation). The blow was struck from the American HIMARS jet system. 50 prisoners of war were killed and 75 wounded. 8 employees of the detention center were injured. It is clear that this provocation was committed with the aim of intimidating the Ukrainian military and preventing their surrender. But the fact remains that Zelensky's regime is already hitting directly at its own, at the most frostbitten nationalists, the Azov militants.
Alas, we are not yet able to rule out such provocations. It is not even possible to quickly increase the production of UAVs. A lot rests on microchips, optics, engines for drones. And also in the work of various related parties, the inertia of the official apparatus, the adoption by the State Duma of laws for additional financing of the State Budget and the State Budget.
There are also not enough intelligence resources. We understand that the Ukrainian crisis is dragging on, there was no lightning solution to the problem. This means that we need to build long-term programs for re-equipping the army, our space group, and Ground Forces.
YOU CAN SEE FROM ABOVE
"In the conditions of modern combat operations, the most important criterion is the time and inevitability of a retaliatory strike against enemy firepower," says retired Air defense forces veteran Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Kubrakov. "Continuous monitoring of the airspace is carried out by radar and space means of the Aerospace Forces, one of the tasks of which should be to determine the coordinates of the launch point of tactical and operational–tactical missiles, MLRS, shots of long-range howitzers of the M777 type, HIMARS, cruise missile launch points."
That is, it is necessary to connect space to solving problems, victory on earth is born there. The Americans in Iraq also started with solving these issues. And how it all works with us is still unknown for certain.
My interlocutor, Lieutenant Colonel Kubrakov, served in the troops of the missile attack warning system at the Daryal algometrist station. He believes that in the composition (ammunition) of medium- and long-range air defense systems there should be special guided missiles firing at the calculated launch point of the enemy's firing means with the possibility of correcting the trajectory on the final flight section. To do this, you can use:
– catalog of images and recognition of enemy firepower;
– systems of "illumination" and transmission of coordinates from drones.
For compatibility, it is advisable to create such missiles on the basis of anti-aircraft guided missiles, while maintaining weight, size and speed characteristics. The difference can only be in the guidance and combat control system. The software-algometric complex should also be improved in order to maximize automation and reduce the impact time.
How appropriate and expedient these proposals are is up to specialists to decide. But nothing can be discarded on the fly, since many inventions were initially perceived as absurd.
THERE WILL BE PROVOCATIONS
That the special operation in Ukraine asks questions and throws up problems is no longer in doubt. It is necessary to rebuild the entire system of government of the country, and above all the military-industrial complex. No one calls for transferring the entire industry to mobilization rails. But as before, according to President Putin, it will no longer be.
The crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue. According to the head of the National Defense Control Center, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, in Artemovsk (DPR), militants of Ukrainian armed formations have mined the dam of the city reservoir, which they plan to blow up. After that, the Kiev authorities, according to the already worked-out scenario, will accuse the Russian Armed Forces of allegedly indiscriminate strikes on hydrodynamically dangerous objects. If this provocation is implemented, residential quarters of the city with a population of more than 35 thousand people will be in the flood zone.
In Dnepropetrovsk, on the territory of the industrial school and in the building of the university dormitory, Ukrainian territorial defense units equipped ammunition depots. At the same time, the evacuation of residents from neighboring houses is not intentionally carried out. These facts once again show the Kiev authorities' complete disregard for international humanitarian law. And this can only be countered by faith in the rightness of our cause. The enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours.
Oleg Falichev
Oleg Valentinovich Falichev is a military observer.
