Dear Readers:
Iranian suicide drones are the game-changer. Period. There, that’s all I really needed to say. End of post. [Just kidding, I continue to blather on.]
Many of you may remember, earlier in the war, when Russia was using its own drones, the Ukrainians were boasting about their air defenses and how many drones they had destroyed. One recalls that idiotic fable about the Ukrainian grandma who saw a Russian drone flying over her garden, hefted a pickle jar, wound up her throw, and brought the device down with a single lob. Come to think of it, that story might just be factual: Ukrainian grandmas are known for their exceptionally hard work and muscular arms. On the other hand, such stories fit conveniently into the Ukrainian propaganda genre of “Shucks, we’re just ordinary folks, fighting off a mighty horde.” Also known as “Arise, O Nation, for the glorious People’s War!” Where every small child and every grandma becomes a guerrilla fighter for European values against the Beasts from the East.
These Iranian drones, they’re something else, though… Even Master Psychologist Alexei Arestovich, who has written and lectured much about the “disintegration of the personality” admitted mournfully, on last night’s Feigin episode, that “The Russians have found the key to evading our air defenses.” In other words, these drones just buzz around at will, destroying Ukraine’s power infrastructure, and there is almost zero the Ukrainians can do about it. They are completely helpless. From his bunker (some wicked tongues say in Poland, but I personally believe that he is still in Kiev), Lusya Karamelka wears a look of calm, manly, and stoic sadness; not even bothering to hide a slight smirk as he systematically tears down his good friend Feigin’s psychological defenses.
Whereas the look on Feigin’s face…priceless… As it slowly begins to dawn on this “odious burping toad” (as blogger Shariy likes to call him) that he is not going to be riding a Ukrainian tank through the streets of Moscow. Nor will he be triumphantly settling into his rightful place in the Kremlin palace. Just two nights ago he was gloating about purported Kremlin repressions against Girkin (not to be confused with Gherkin), crowing that “All the fewer purges that we will have to do, [once we are in power].” As the new President of Russia, it goes without saying, after Putin is defeated and dragged to Kiev in chains. Ah, the dreams and illusions that keep a man going! Nope, ain’t gonna happen the way he had hoped. Not with these little Iranian f*ckers buzzing around his head. But then Feigin’s whole miserable life has been a badly written Chekhov play, so what can you expect?
To be sure, idiots in the government like Anton Gerashchenko are still urging ordinary Ukrainians to shoot down the drones whenever they can. And indeed, it’s possible sometimes to shoot down a low-flying one with a rifle. But not a good idea at all. This tweet from Intel Slava explains why:
Following the last few days of strikes, it has been common among some in the West (Peter Zeihan, etc) to accuse Russia of deliberately targeting residential buildings and homes. Meanwhile Ukrainian media reveals what is really going on:
“We were shooting at these drones, and therefore they deviated a little from the course. And if we had not shot, they would have hit right on target. To a strategic facility with four pipes, which was located 50 meters across the road,” the Ukrainian militant said on the air.
It should be noted that earlier the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Gerashchenko insistently demanded that civilians with firearms shoot at drones. But the Minister of Internal Affairs Denis Monastyrsky himself asked the inhabitants of the country not to try to shoot down drones from firearms on their own.
In other words, if you shoot down a drone, it will explode and cause collateral damage that it was not actually aiming for. Just leave the drone alone, while it blows up the nearby power plant. (A bit of a Sophie’s Choice, there, no? But I reckon human life is always worth more than a building, however important.)
Zelensky, for his part, is furious about this whole thing, all blustery with his usual shtick and threatening to sanction the Iranians. The Iranians, for their part, just laugh at the little bitch and watch him thrash around ineffectually. According to some estimates, the Ukrainians have roughly two weeks to figure out that they need to surrender unconditionally. After that it’s literally lights out. For the entire country.
More Bridge Arrests
That’s it for that story. But I wanted to tack on a quickie, within the category of my “True Crime” beat.
This story takes us back to the investigation of the Crimea Kerch Bridge attack. Russian cops are catching more and more fish in their terror dragnet. This story from Interfax reports several more arrests, as of yesterday. The Moscow Basmanny Court has arrested three additional men, all citizens of the Russian Federation. Before spelling out their names, I remind my readers that all suspects should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Alexander Bylin. Oleg Antipov. Dmitry Tyazhelykh.
All three of these guys have been taken into custody and will be held until at least December 8. They are charged under Article 205 of the Russian legal codex, Part 2, Sections A, B, and V. (Commission of a Terrorist Act.)
That’s all we know for now. Stay tuned.
Awful Avalanche 
So it is accepted that these Geranium drones, Geran-2 kamikaze UAV’s, are rebadged Iranian drones? Not that it matters, although it is a talking point for some. Dimi, at the Military Summary Chanel, claims that Kiev citizens are starting to blame not only Russia for their plight, but also Zelensky for having not implemented the Minsk 2 agreements etc. It’s easy to feel sorry for them, though it’s an order of magnitude safer in Kiev than it is down on the contact line. That would be truly awful.
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It’s more than obvious they’re Iranian Shahed 136s. Pretending there is all of a sudden some hitherto unknown drone called Geran that is somehow identical is like the Korean War claim that all those MiG 15 pilots who helped fight the USAF to a stalemate were North Korean just because all their planes had DPRK roundels painted on them.
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What’s really impressive though, is how quickly these Iranian machines got integrated into the Russian battalion groupings, that cannot have been easy. Russian and Iranian armies must be working together at a very detailed level. Which is nice, from my point of view. Friendship of the Peoples, and all that.
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That second paragraph is a multifaceted prose poem rich in both force and subtlety, Yalensis. I stand in momentary awe of your wordsmithing and vainly wish that I could do in Russian what you can do in English.
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That paragraph about the pickle jar? You are so kind to me, Seraphim, thank you again!
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though i – as usual – abhor war and any human losses this all may cause, i have to say it’s refreshing to see iran joining russia in the “give zero f_cks club”. from bush jr pulling out of the ABM treaty to syria to the current SMO the US has made it glaringly obvious they think “negotiations = you’re our bitch”. they mistake kindness for weakness and diplomacy for surrender; russia and iran got the memo and have acted accordingly in their own interests. china has slowly been doing the same with their lovely asian patience. hopefully other countries will wake up and do the same.
side tangent: i have to wonder what it would look like if hezbollah and/or hamas got a care package of these little bats that go boom.
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Although I also abhor war and human losses, I secretly wouldn’t mind so much to see Hezbollah get some of those toys as well. Would be interesting to see what they can do against Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome.
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But, but, but … this morning, my MSM media told me that Ukraine is shooting down 86 to 92 % of these little droning wasps! Note the precision — 86 to 92%. So, not to worry. And my state broadcaster says Russia is using these drones for one main reason: they’ve run out of regular cruise missiles and rockets, and this is all they’ve got left. Yes, that’s right, they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The Iranians say it’s not their drones, but then they denied shooting down a Ukraine Air jetliner flight PS752 as it left Teheran Airport a couple of years ago. 138 Canadians or landed immigrants were on that plane and were taken out by two rockets. So I’m not a particular fan of Iran for that murderous incident and other incidents that directly relate to Iran/Canada relations over the years. Eventually Iran admitted their “mistake” (it was unintentional they claimed) on shooting down the airliner. Right. So yes, those Shahed 136 drones are Iranian — the regime is a habitual liar in my view.
Anyway, the small 40 kilogram warhead on these 136 drones isn’t taking out heavily-built power plant buildings, but they work well on adjoining electrical substations and office buildings like Energodar HQ and of course, the ever-popular Saudi oil pipeline terminals. Today, for Russia it was back to adding a few Kalibrs to the mix for some heavyweight bangs, according to Battlefield Insights channel, and cities all across Ukraine have felt them. Don’t know where the Russians found the Kalibrs, because they’ve run out, of course. Ahem. That’s the magic.
Frankly, all-in-all, the good times are over for the snarling talking heads of Ukraine. No power, so eventually no communications anywhere, and no district heat for Kiev this winter. Likely no food. The howls of outrage from aggrieved Zelensky and Company are presently deafening, calling these drones terrorist attacks. No mention by these wackadoodles of their killing 14,000 civilians by shelling in the Donbass over the last eight years. That’s a secret known only outside the Western world.
Not surprisingly, foreign citizens in Ukraine and diplomats are heading for the exits at the urging of their countries. In a couple of weeks, Russia can turn off the natural gas as well. Then we’ll finally have the humanitarian disaster that’ll have the West wringing its hands, and Guterres choking on his post-prandial litre stein of port. Hic. It’s a dangerous time for the world, because the US may freak out and do something incredibly silly because elections. At which point, we’ll see who really has some missiles and rockets left and whether the world survives. Doctorow is pessimistic, but then with Western “leaders” like Slow Joe Biden, Trussed-TurkeyBrain, Olafwurst, and Macroliberal, who cannot be?
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My sarcasm html quotes around my first paragraph above did not appear, due to WordPress magic. In other words, read it as my deep cynicism of Ukraine and the West’s continuing propaganda rubbish trying to keep any truth from their general publics. But my Iran criticism stands. Can’t see that the country is anything but a nutbar state run by religious dolts. That’s my opinion. And I’ve known some ex-Persian people for a quarter century here. Your mileage may vary, but frankly, I couldn’t care less.
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I didn’t even know that html had “sarcasm” tags. WordPress comments app supports only a few basic tags, like boldface, italic, they do have underline and strikethrough, which is nice.
Anyhow, I remember that incident of the Iranians accidentally shooting down the Ukrainian plane as it took off from the Teheran runway. If I remember, the Iranians eventually manned up, admitted their mistake, and apologized. Seems like there had been a real threat and one of their military guys got jumpy and trigger-happy. An “honest” mistake as far as I can tell. At least they admitted it, which is more than most countries do, in similar circumstances.
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It does not speak well of American intelligence that they did not foresee and prepare for this eventuality.
Nor of the Russian defence ministry that it was left to Iran to pioneer the development of this kind of medium-strike weapon.
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Well, Pavlo, you know what they say, “it takes a village” to perfect the development of deadly weapons. So let us give our Persian brothers their due…
🙂
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Those Iranian drones look like bats! So Putin is obviously a vampire for sending them. Blood-sucking will be added to his list of crimes against humanity. /s/ (Is that the sarcasm tag you were thinking of, Beluga, or do you have the code that adds vibrating air quotes around the sarcaspeech? Coz those things look way cool.)
But srsly, a country with a REAL air force would be able to shoot down those slow-moving things. They’re called mopeds for more than just the sound that their 50-hp motors make (which WOULD tend to drive the Ukies crazy. Like the annoyance you get from a leaf-blower operating outside your bedroom window. Only the gardener holding it isn’t going to explode at some random time.) Anti-aircraft missiles, radar flak targeting, slow-flying planes with cannons or even high-speed jets that could disrupt their flight with a slipstream (supersonic would be great!) The Brits sometimes used propeller-driven fighter planes to get alongside the V-1 “doodlebug” jet drones and tip their wings over, from what I’ve read in Battle of Britain (v 2.0) history books.
Which COULD have been Pommy propaganda (Pommyganda?) now that I think about it. Pictures or it didn’t happen! applies to 1945 too.
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I was reading that it the very slowness of the things which baffles Ukrainian air defense. Ukrainian super-duper anti-air runs on American Artificial Intelligence, which is programmed to go after fast-moving things.
It’s like trying to swat a slow-moving fly. [Come to think of it, that should be easy, if you had the right kind of fly swatter!]
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“Which COULD have been Pommy propaganda (Pommyganda?)”
But it actually wasn’t, since V-1’s gyro was a tender little sweetheart and could get easily confused if V-1 got pushed over by an enterprising Brit in his souped-up Spitfire.
Also, another interesting parallel between One-Three-Sixes and V-1s: specific engine sound.
V-1 was powered by a pulsejet, a dreadfully loud and farting thing that tended to make people panic when it STOPPED farting, since that was a sign V-1 is about to fall on someone’s head.
Shaheeds “mopeds” seem to panic Hohols the same way.
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Was just watching Gonzalo’s podcast, his guest called the Iranian drone a “flying lawnmower!”
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