It’s Hammer Vs. Dagger — And The Daggers Keep Stabbing

A Ukrainian saboteur set fire to a $50-million Russian Su-34 fighter jet that was sitting on a snow-covered runway in distant Chelyabinsk.

The alleged saboteur was a Russian teenager.

This is as disturbing to Putin’s cause as the idea that a professional saboteur had travelled 2000 km from Ukraine. If teenagers are being inspired to fight for Ukraine, then Putin is in much deeper trouble than would be excepted even from the dwindling numbers of people listening to his war news channels (see below).

A video of the fire set by the 16-year-old boy from the North Caucasian Russian republic of Dagestan has been released by Ukraine’s military Intelligence directorate (HUR), which has not officially claimed credit for recruiting the young man. The twin-engine, two-seat Su-34 belonged to the 21st Composite Aviation Division, a known operator of the type. “The reasons for the plane catching fire are being clarified,” said the intelligence directorate, parroting the style of media coverage used in Russian press when things go wrong to ships or planes that are well-guarded and invulnerable.

The Dagestani boy was arrested the following day. A city court in Chelyabinsk ordered him into pre-trial detention.

He was also allegedly involved in other sabotage attacks on Russian infrastructure in Dagestan. We shall look briefly at a few of those to see how likely it is that he has travelled all across a country where guards are everywhere and set numerous fires.

Russia does not provide access to its legal system, and human rights organizations have long detailed abuse in its justice system, such as the use of torture.

Chelyabinsk has become a byword in Russia for a place that is cold and desolate and inhabited by dim-witted people. It is the Russian version of “Florida Man”. Here is one of their own memes describing it:

This is not the first time something has blown up in their faces; detonations for example have previously ripped through the night sky at a major Russian airbase near Moscow. When the smoke cleared the base was short two planes and a helicopter.

The Chkalovsky military air base is hard for an agent to hit, let alone a teenager. It is the main aviation base of the Russian Armed Forces. It provides air support for the space program — this is the last Earthly touch-point for cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who crashed on a flight from the base — and is as protected as any national facility could be. Chkalovsky Air Base is home to government planes, often referred to as “doomsday planes,” as well as specialized reconnaissance aircraft, which has caused concern among high-ranking Russian military officials.

Despite the high level of security at the base, the unidentified agents managed to plant explosives on a nice selection of planes. The An-148 costs $30-million, the IL-20 cost about $2.7-million, and the Mi-28 some $18-million…for a total loss of $50.7-million. Known to NATO as Coot-A, the Il-20M is a radar reconnaissance and electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft based on the 1950s-era Ilyushin Il-18 airliner. Only around a dozen of these aircraft are thought to be operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces on behalf of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Replacing these aircraft on a one-for-one basis is now nearly impossible as there is no immediate successor in the same role.

Those saboteurs have never been caught.

Nor has the one(s) that reached the Russian airfield near Pskov in October 2022, and blew up a Kamov Ka-52 attack helicopter. Pskov is 500 miles from the border with Ukraine.

Nor have the people who destroyed the Russian A-50 surveillance aircraft at an airfield near the Belarus capital of Minsk. Front and central parts of the aircraft as well as the radar antenna and avionics were damaged as a result of two explosions.

Then there was the explosion and fire reported at a gunpowder factory in Kotovsk in the Tambov region.

The A-50 Russian airborne early warning aircraft has airborne command and control capabilities and the ability to track up to 60 targets at a time. The American equivalent would be an AWACS plane. The plan costs $330-million. Only six of the upgraded planes exist (now five); the upgraded planes are worth $500-million.

The drone was flown by Belarusian partisans, who have now fled the country, according to Aliaksandr Azarov, leader of Belarusian anti-government organization BYPOL.

It means that Russian and Belarusian armed forced need to extend their security perimeters around military air bases to a range that would exclude the drones. That will be a costly and involved process, tying up additional troops.

Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said in a post on Twitter it was the most successful act of sabotage since the beginning of 2022.

Franak added that that attack was carried out by two Belarusians.

The A-50’s provide an important ‘look-down’ radar surveillance capability. They can generate an ‘air picture’ deep into Ukraine that detects low-flying aircraft ground-based radars cannot detect. This is where Ukrainian aircraft operate. Its s look-down capability could become even more important when Ukraine gains additional cruise missiles and drones.

The A-50’s replacement, the A-100, has been delayed by sanctions that hit the Russian electronics sector as a result of Putin’s war.

This is confirmation of the speculation that Ukraine has cultivated a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets and has begun providing them with drones to stage attacks.

There are daggers under more cloaks than that of one teenage rebel. This is a network of knives.

US officials believe the knives are being abetted by drones; pro-Ukrainian agents inside Russia carried out a drone attack that targeted the Kremlin in early May by launching drones from within Russia rather than flying them from Ukraine into Moscow.

Then there was the time Ukrainian saboteurs blew up the central rail line from Russia to China. A freight train caught fire in the 15km-long (9.3-mile) Severomuysky Tunnel in the Republic of Buryatia on the night of November 29, the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor’s office reported. Ukrainian media cited intelligence sources as saying four explosive devices had been planted on the railway, one of two rail links between Russia and China, reportedly also used for ferrying ammunition.

The train in question was believed to be carrying 44 cars of refined fuel. At least three were destroyed. A successful detonation might have disabled the tunnel, and that indeed appeared to be the goal of the saboteurs, who told Ukrainian media the route was “paralysed”.

This time the Russians arrested a Belarusian man who was said to have planted the train explosives on behalf of Ukraine’s SBU. Calling the incident a “terrorist act”, Moscow said the detained man’s handler was a Lithuania-based Belarusian linked to Ukraine’s secret services.

There is no way of knowing whether this is true or another fabrication of a desperate Russian intelligence service.

But speculating on a Lithuanian-based Belarusian does draw attention to the fact that Ukraine has a spectrum of nationalities and ethnicities and young idealists to draw on for its recruiting; each would have its own deadly reason to hate Russia.

This does not even count the direct HUR actions, such as the very recent report that its forces engaged in a cross-border raid on Russian positions in Belgorod Oblast and inflicted an undisclosed number of losses. Incursions into Russia’s western Belgorod Oblast have been reported on several occasions since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Most notable were high-profile skirmishes that occurred after a group of armed men calling themselves members of the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps recorded videos saying they had crossed into Russia in May 2023 and taken hold of several villages.

HUR said it had received intelligence that Russian commanders planned to inspect military positions in the Gayvoron district of Belgorod Oblast, some 80 kilometers west of the city of Belgorod and the location of the May 2023 incursions. The inspections were allegedly due to complaints from Russian soldiers about poor conditions in the area, according to the report. HUR said it mined the only road in the area and attacked a Russian platoon, sharing a video of parts of the assault. The number of casualties inflicted is still being determined, the HUR said.

All of this direct sabotage must be most embarrassing for the Russians. It erodes the claim that the people are on Putin’s side — who could get away with bold operations like these attacks without Russia’s vaunted FSB security services catching them?

There are some who say that Ukraine’s shadow war behind Russia’s front lines is in part a legacy of U.S. and British training and assistance over the past decade. After Russia first sent troops into Ukraine in 2014, Washington cultivated cooperation with Ukraine’s intelligence services and helped train and shape the GUR.

But I doubt that the clever and inventive Ukrainians needed any help in designing campaigns against Russia. Nor would they have needed to pressure anyone into volunteering for them; the country has been torn apart by Russian destruction.

What the sealed nature of the operations, hidden from Russian view, suggests, is that Ukraine has a very good handle on Russian counter-intelligence. At the moment, in the battle of spy-vs-spy, the Ukrainians are coming out on top. Conviction carries death.

These dagger-like Ukrainian operations are the pinnacle of sanity in comparison to the actions being attempted by their opponents, the Brains Trust of the Russian Staff and its best combat troops during the same period.

Let me spare you the tactical details; here is what the Russians did, seven times.

In Mala Tokmachka near the centre of the Russian lines the Russians attacked, got wrecked by the combination of mines, drones, artillery and close cannon fire, then retreated. The Ukrainians re-set the minefields and waited; they had replenished the mines under the cover of darkness. One observer noted that “Ukrainian drones are mining the roads at night and disabling trucks and cars. In the morning, before the vehicles can be recovered, drones finish them off by dropping munitions.” A few days later, the Russians tried again, got wrecked again and retreated again.

What is that definition of insanity? Trying the same thing time after time, hoping for different results.

The Russians call this the “Zhukov maneuver”. Eighty years ago the Russian general Georgy Zhukov cleared German minefields by ordering his soldiers to just … walk across them.

Russia has lost more ground in the past six months than it has gained.

Putin’s only recent win has been in Bakhmut, which took over a year to accomplish, and cost more than 50,000 Russian lives. The Russian line advanced 16 square miles. The city itself is not particularly valuable in military terms.

The unceasing dismal news has been having an effect on Russian civilian life.

According to Chris Snow, Russia’s population has decreased by 1 million between 2020 and 2023; births have fallen to early 19th century levels: “The empire’s demography was in utter collapse even before the war. The Russian industrial based is littered with technological bottlenecks. The nuclear arsenal is expensive in its upkeep. This sector has also been starved of funding since 1992. Russia faces a lack of highly skilled workers.”

This impacts people’s view of their social environment and dims the thrill of fighting Putin’s war.

Telegram is a messaging app founded by Russian billionaire Pavel Durov. “Z-channels” have incorporated the letter Z in their names since the beginning of the invasion, and the Russian telecom authority changed the branding of its Telegram channel to showcase the “Z” symbol in its name.

Z channels are now losing their audience in droves, according to Nadin Brzezinski; the losses began after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup in June. It’s almost like the Russians thought the wrong guy had survived the coup. Military correspondents are losing the most subscribers the fastest…around a thousand disconnects a day.

At the end of the year, sociologists recorded that Russians in general were tired of the war, and ending it was their main wish for 2024. Their revulsion has to be serious if the war news is ignored by Russian audiences; they are used to melding government control with Western entertainment. As one Russian producer explained: “We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense that something is happening. They need to be kept entertained….who is the enemy this week?”

The first thing Putin did when he became President was to seize control of television. And it did not make the same mistake the Soviets had make; Putin’s boys made it entertaining. At the centre of the show is Putin himself — a performance artist as a bare-chested hunter and businessman.

Now Putin is boring. Prighozin had more appeal for Russians while he was defying Putin; his merchandise sold online twice as fast as did Putin-gear. In a country where votes don’t mean anything, you get your polling where you can.

Helping to drive the Russian mistrust of the public statements about the war, are the widely-reported sabotage attacks. They carry both a psychological and practical effect, as they not only hamper Russia’s military logistics but also sow anxiety among Russia’s elite.

Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a nonprofit focused on advancing American global leadership, points out that “The war ends when Putin decides the war ends.”

In breaking the will of the Russian leadership to continue supporting the war, he notes “that means an asymmetric fight that brings the war to Russian territory … to make everyday life painful for the Russian elites, which today do not feel this war.”

This brings up a final honing of the dagger: Ukraine’s aggressive assassination campaign.

Ukraine has targeted Russian officials and alleged collaborators, sometimes confirming that its spy agencies had killed them. Earlier this month, Ukraine said the SBU intelligence service gunned down a former Ukrainian lawmaker, Ilya Kiva, 46, near Moscow. Kiva had defected to Russia and had called for Kyiv to surrender to Russian troops after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“The liquidation of the top-ranking traitor, collaborator, and propagandist Ilya Kiva is a special operation of the SBU,” said a Ukrainian law enforcement officer. “The criminal was eliminated using firearms.”

These dagger-like operations are only going to increase as time goes on, as Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has consistently proposed some brazen plans.

“All I will comment on is that we’ve been killing Russians,” Budanov said recently. “And we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

Bring on the knives.