From: Bojidar Marinov — People asking me what will happen to Ukraine now when she doesn’t have any US assistance. Answer: nothing unusual. She will continue the fight until she wins.
Many Americans don’t realize that US military aid wasn’t as much as to be critical. That was Biden’s fault, and that was Zelensky’s complaint that “not even half of the promised aid materialized. (Which Trump the Orange Liar twisted into, “Half of our money disappeared.”) At the best of all times during the war, US aid met about 20% of the needs of the Ukrainian military, and during those best times, Ukraine was on the offensive. During the rest of the war, US aid was given, as Eastern Europeans say, “by a teaspoon every hour.”
What most people don’t know is that the nature of this war changed so very quickly that most outside military observers didn’t even realize it, and people who never had any military experience – like Trump – wouldn’t even be able to see it. One statistics is sufficient to show how radically the war changed: In 2022, 90% of all casualties on the battlefield (both personnel and vehicles) were caused by artillery shells, long and short-range. In 2024, 75% of all personnel casualties and 90% of all vehicle casualties were caused by DRONES. So powerful have drones become that Ukrainian military correspondents report that there are vast stretches of the front line where Ukraine uses almost exclusively drones. With drones, radio-electronic warfare (REW) has become the most rapidly developing combat technology, on both sides. At this moment, Russia and Ukraine have the most developed radio-electronic warfare (REW) technologies, as far as tactical and operational level is concerned. This war is turning into a war of drones, principally, and only secondarily a war of human militaries.
And, guess what. There is right now one country in the world that not only has the most developed drone technologies, but also the most developed infrastructure for drone manufacturing: Ukraine. Number two is China; and during much of the war, the Ukrainian military bought drones from China, until domestic production was organized. And that production is so well organized that Ukraine’s private companies are in a position to not only supply their own military, but also export abroad. As of now, there is a government ban on export; but if the government decides that they need the money to finance their war effort, it won’t be long before Ukrainian drones are sold all over the world.
Guess who is lagging behind. That’s right, US. That is, the US. In all the wars we fought, we never fought a technologically superior enemy, or an enemy that outnumbered us. We have zero experience with this new kind of war. Only two countries have that experience right now. One of them is our devout enemy (and big friend of our comic parody of a president). The other one is trying to be our friend, but because we have dumb children for leaders (and the stupidest political constituency voting for them), we are making it very difficult for them. Not that we don’t have drones; we do. We have a few thousand highly technological, expensive, and combat-untested toys. We gave a few to the Ukrainians, and they turned out to be very useful . . . for a few months, until the Russians found REW ways to blind their navigational and communication systems. Speaking of REW, do you all remember the HIMARS we gave to the Ukrainians, that were the main weapon that was changing the course of the war for several months? We don’t hear anything about them anymore, do we? Why? Because the Russians found ways to blind their navigational system, too. Funny how real-life experience can bring forth developments that zero experience can never produce. And funny how cheap drones produced by the hundreds of thousands are more useful than a few high-priced toys.
The good news is that while Russia is a centralized bureaucratic KGB machine where nothing happens without orders from above, Ukraine is a decentralized, private, almost libertarian economy when it comes to the IT sector. (Contrary to our American idiots who call Zelensky a dictator.) Ukraine produced a million drones over the last one year, and is planning to raise the production figures to 2.5 million. Russian military correspondents are reporting that, where the Russian military tries to advance, the sky is replete with Ukrainian drones. Those North Korean soldiers, remember them? They didn’t know about the drones. Well, 14,000 of them didn’t last for more than two months, and the Russian government had to withdraw what was left of them.
As a result, the Russian main advance, towards Pokrovsk, is now halted. The Russians are not moving at all, and their supply lines are all covered with dead vehicles and people. Toretsk, another area of advance, is now seeing Ukrainian soldiers counter-attacking and taking back villages and parts of the city. Only Kurahovo and Sudja are now problematic for the Ukrainian military, but even there, the advance has been minimal. The speed of Russian advance has slowed down to the slowest ever for the whole war, and the Russians are even losing some of their gains.
The US military-industrial complex still has certain items that are irreplaceable. The Patriot System is one of them: there is no analog in the world. US electronic reconnaissance and surveillance on strategic level, as well as satellite communication systems, are also unique. As important as they are, though, they have no direct impact on the battlefield. The Patriot System protects mainly civilians from ballistic missiles; no ammo for it will only expose civilians to greater risks. Electronic surveillance and communications are important for strikes deep into Russian territory, but they hardly help with direct tactical or operational tasks. Besides, the Ukrainian government already uses the services of private satellite companies for much of it; full replacement is probably not possible, but even partial one will work. After all, Russia being just a gigantic gas station, all that the Ukrainians need to know is where the refineries are, and they can figure that from Google Maps, if needed.
So, no, Ukraine is not as dependent on US aid as Trump imagines. They haven’t been sitting idly. They have been using every opportunity to develop their own weapons, with the little resources they have. (For the fellow Asimov fans out there, think Terminus.) In many ways, they are ahead of us. Pretty soon we will need them, especially if Trump goes ahead and starts those hostilities against China he has been dreaming about. When we get to that, we will be apologizing to the Ukrainians and will be asking them to come and teach us to fight.
Voice of Ukraine 