The units of Russia’s Battlegroup South repelled the attacks of the assault groups of the Ukrainian armed forces in the directions of Lisichansk, Aleksandr-Kalinovsk and Soledar-Artyomovsk, head of the group’s press center Vadim Astafyev said.
"The units of the Battlegroup South successfully repelled the attacks of the assault groups of the Ukrainian armed forces in the directions of Lisichansk, Aleksandr-Kalinovsk and Soledar-Artemovsk," he said.
According to him, artillery near the village of Ivano-Daryevka destroyed an infantry fighting vehicle of the enemy. During the counter-battery fight, two 155-mm Krab self-propelled artillery mounts were destroyed near the village of Dyleevka and the city of Seversk, as well as a 155-mm M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer near the city of Krasnogorovka, D-30, D-20 howitzers and a 120-mm mortar in areas of settlements Karlovka, Umanskoe and Avdeevka.
The artillery crews of the group destroyed an enemy pickup truck and pillbox in the areas of Avdeyevka and Nevelskoye settlements.
According to Astafyev, the crews of army aviation helicopters hit targets in the areas of the villages of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka. Assault aircraft carried out missile and bomb attacks on enemy targets in the areas of the villages of Kurdyumovka, Bogdanovka, Avdeyevka and Mayorskoye.
Watch Russian Nona-SVK Blast Ukrainian Mortars and BMPs
The Russian Armed Forces often use self-propelled artillery systems such as Nona-SVK for high-precision fire to destroy roving mortars and enemy infantry fighting vehicles.
The Russian Defense Ministry has released video footage of Nona-SVK crews taking out Ukrainian armored vehicles near Krasny Liman, DPR.
Servicemen from the Central Military District's Mountain Motorized Rifle Unit obtained coordinates from reconnaissance and, using 120-mm guns, blasted enemy targets. The soldiers used high-explosive fragmentation and thermobaric shells. To effectively carry out their mission, the artillerymen closely coordinated their efforts with drone calculations, enabling swift adjustments and valuable assessments of the actual combat situation.
The Nona-SVK self-propelled artillery system is designed to suppress various armored targets and incoming firepower. In addition, the unit is able to use smoke screens and apply night lighting.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin’s hope of seeing the Russian military emerging from the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine “weakened” has failed to materialize, with Russia ramping up munitions production and fielding new, complex weapons systems. What’s Russia’s secret? Sputnik spoke to veteran military observer and author Andrei Martyanov to find out.
Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov announced this week that defense enterprises have already surpassed production figures for all of 2022 in the first half of this year, and that when it comes to munitions, output is on course to exceeding “the overall production volume” of 2022 on a monthly basis.
Also this week, KB Mashinostroyeniya, a Moscow region-based state defense, scientific and design enterprise which makes Iskander missile systems, air-launched anti-tank weapons and other munitions, reported that it has ramped up the production of some munitions by up to 250 percent compared to 2022, and that the company is fulfilling the state defense order in full.
NATO Can't Outgun Russia
President Putin promised back in March that the US and its allies won’t be able to outproduce Russia in Ukraine, pointing out that for every artillery shell or tank NATO builds and sends to Kiev, Russia will be able to produce three or more.
And Russia’s output hasn’t been limited to legacy Cold War-era equipment, either, with defense enterprises demonstrating over the 18 months that it is capable of developing (and in many cases fielding en masse) a range of fundamentally new equipment, from a new generation of kamikaze UAVs to advanced anti-drone defenses, and smart systems featuring AI capabilities for drones and missiles.
Moscow’s ability to withstand crushing Western sanctions and ramp up the production of a broad assortment of weapons flies in the face of bold predictions by senior US officials and media last year claiming that Russia would soon run out of chips for its missiles, that NATO’s advanced tanks would be able to cut through Russian defenses like a hot knife through butter, and that the country simply couldn’t match the wealthy and technologically advanced Western countries’ superior military technologies.
Russia’s campaign of precision missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, and the stalling of Kiev’s counteroffensive, have proven otherwise, with even the most vehemently anti-Russian Western legacy media now admitting that the counteroffensive has bogged down, prompting some US officials to rush to blame Ukrainian commanders’ tactics, and to insist that their equipment is not the problem.
Having blown over $95 billion on arms to Ukraine, Western countries have increasingly started talking about their inability to keep providing Kiev with weapons and ammo at the same pace as they have up to now. Some European countries have calculated that their armies would be able to fight a full-scale war for as little as 24-48 hours after their sending weapons and ammo inventories to Kiev. Earlier this month, President Biden admitted to media that the United States was deploying cluster bombs to Ukraine because it was running low on conventional 155 mm artillery ammunition. The admission sparked harsh criticism from former President Donald Trump, who blasted Biden for essentially revealing that the emperor has no clothes.
American 'Mythology' Meets Russian Reality
“Let me put it this way: We have witnessed, in the last 15 months, a ‘21+ mature audiences only explicit’ demolition of the American military mythology and American technological mythology,” Andrei Martyanov, a veteran Russian military analyst and best-selling author, told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
“Those people from the think tanks [predicting the weakening of the Russian MIC], most of them never served a day in the armed forces. And to quote General Robert Latiff, author of the book Future War, ‘everything that the American public and politicians know about warfare is primarily from the entertainment industry.’ I’m beginning to think that many American generals also know and learn about warfare from the entertainment industry, from Hollywood. Those people are absolutely unprepared and not equipped to operate with basically what amounts to operational values, and they don’t even understand what they’re looking at,” Martyanov stressed.
Characterizing the field of Russia studies in Western countries as “basically a wasteland” today, Martyanov suggested that they don’t have the ability to comprehend realities on the ground because they take their primary data from Kiev, which falsifies it, and from “pseudo-academic shysters” in US academia whose “only task is to rewrite and then reiterate what Russia is and what is history, especially of the 20th century, is, and sell it to the public and policymakers.”
America's War Record: The ‘White Elephant’ in the Room
Commenting on the steady stream of triumphalist reporting in Western media over the past year that the Russian military industrial complex allegedly has been weakened in Ukraine, Martyanov said this amounted mostly to “sour grapes…professional anger and jealousy” on the part of the US defense establishment.
“We cannot ignore this white elephant or 800 pound gorilla in the room,” which is that “American generals lost every single war they fought. And if anybody needs a reminder of that, how about they look at how the United States was leaving Afghanistan? But the point is not just Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, of course, with the exception of the ‘glorious’ victory over Grenada."
"The point is, just to give you a technological example…that the United States in terms of air defenses…is not even in the same league with Russia. In terms of cruise missiles, again, the United States lags here not by years, it lags by generations. And the same goes for armor, the same goes for operational concepts and things of this nature, and even in electronic warfare,” the observer stressed.
“For the average American political scientist who grew up with their Wall Street type economy, that’s the one I think they studied, they operate with gross domestic product numbers which are provided by Wall Street and shysters from the economic schools. They still cannot even grasp the idea” that the US could be weaker than its adversaries, Martyanov said.
“For example, Russia produces as much steel as the United States. And it produces six times more aluminum…And when you look at these fundamental economic and military indices, how can you explain it? [Meanwhile] they still believe that they are the number one economy in the world, while China actually dwarfs the United States.”
What are Russia's 'Network-Centric' Warfare Capabilities
Western observers covering the Ukrainian crisis have spilled a lot of virtual ink discussing network-centric warfare, the resource-intensive military doctrine aimed at translating armies’ informational advantage, gained through things like the effective use of communications, computer networking, advanced sensors and other tech, into a real-world battlefield advantage that results in faster speed of command, deployment and fire, increased survivability, improved awareness and greater lethality.
Naturally, most have touted Ukraine’s NATO-provided network-centric capabilities, while characterizing Russia’s "bordering on non-existent."
The reality says otherwise, Martyanov said, pointing, for starters, to Russia’s extensive use of a broad range of ballistic, cruise and hypersonic weaponry to target Ukrainian forces and infrastructure at standoff ranges, and Russian air defenses’ ability to ground the country’s air force to ensure near total air superiority.
“The Russian air defense systems have been in the net-centric paradigm a long time now – since Soviet times, actually,” the military expert said, pointing, for example, to the ultra-long range R-37 missile, which has confirmed kills at ranges beyond 200 km. The same is the case with ground-based anti-air defenses, which have seen “just [an] absolute dramatic improvement” in performance on the immediate battlefield, Martyanov noted, citing “the Pantsir-S1…the Tor-M2 and the Buk-M3 and things of this nature.”
“Technologically, the United States cannot even produce anything comparable to that,” the observer emphasized.
“Net-centric warfare and everything associated with it is designed to resolve uncertainties in targeting and detection of targets. Generally speaking, to put it into simple words, it is when each shooter communicates with each shooter in the appropriate theater or in the appropriate environment,” Martyanov said.
This is an area where Russia has had experience for decades, he noted, pointing, for example, to the networking capabilities of the MiG-31 interceptor, which can provide guidance for missiles launched by other aircraft flying in groups of up to six aircraft.
“What it gives you is that your awareness of the environment grows dramatically. And this is done based on several fundamental principles, including what is called ‘data and sensor fusion’. When you can obtain and process information, for example, from infrared search and track to radar, to even some kind of other purely visual sources. And then you put together this information, you ‘fuse’ it and you have this much clearer picture.” That, in turn, “allows you to also efficiently redistribute or reassign targets.”
How Long Has Russia Had Drone and AI Capabilities?
In the field of drone warfare, where Russia seemed to lag behind NATO capabilities at the start of the Ukrainian proxy conflict, Martyanov noted that Russia’s perceived shortcomings concealed behind-the-scenes developments which have more than proven their capabilities this year.
“The point is, even already at the end of the 2000s and the start of the 2010s, Russia was actively in the development of drone technology. So it’s not like it came out and suddenly ‘oh my gosh, you see we have the drones and the Russians just sort of leapfrogged in to some kind of new paradigm.’ It was always there. Don’t forget, some of the first drones ever were the [Soviet Tupolev Tu-143] Reys drones. Obviously, they were nothing like the modern ones, but the Soviet army was using them extensively already in the 1970s. So it’s not like it’s something new. What is new, of course, and especially with the Lancet-3... is the fact that they use swarms now.”
The same applies when it comes to so-called artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Martyanov said, recalling that the Onyx P-800 supersonic anti-ship missile’s predecessor, the P-700 Granit, had mathematically sophisticated proto-AI computing capabilities going back to 1983, including automatic target selection, evasion and coordination capabilities.
“So these were the first missiles with what you would define as artificial intellect. And when the submarine was launching them, they could launch up to 24 in a single salvo, and they would communicate with each other, all 24 of them, will do their target distribution or receive targeting from each missiles, assigned the role of a remote radar control,” he said.
“And when you look at this, this was a terrifying weapon. And the Russians have had it for 40 years now; and then obviously the more modern Onyx P-800, which is used very actively in and around Ukraine. It was used also to huge effect in Syria,” Martyanov noted.
“But yes, it’s nothing new. And now we have Lancet-3s, which is the complete swarm technology. They can communicate, they can redirect targets. They can decide on their own what to attack. So yes, radio-electronics advanced quite significantly since the 1970s and 1980s,” the military analyst summed up.
The style of deceiving the white house on its people
Meanwhile, John Kirby, continues to try to deceive the United States, which was published by Reuters media entitled "Ukraine counteroffensive is moving, US says while pledging support", to get approval for funding assistance.
In the media Kirby has been tricked into believing that a Ukrainian counteroffensive "isn't a dead end" even if it doesn't progress fast enough, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday.
Kirby made the remarks when asked about the pace of Ukraine's counterattack at a news conference.
Disaster was narrowly averted on Wednesday after a huge construction crane collapsed in Midtown Manhattan.
New York City firefighters had already responded to the blaze on the crane atop 550 10th Avenue in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on Wednesday morning, when the crane’s great arm gave way.
The cause of the fire was unclear, but the crane operator told FDNY he attempted to extinguish it before it got out of control, but failed. It quickly grew into a five-alarm fire and more than 200 first responders were at the scene.
"So we give a lot of credit to the crane operator, but the fire overwhelmed that operator and [they] had to exit the crane," FDNY First Deputy Fire Commissioner Joseph Pfeifer told reporters.
Then, suddenly, around 9:30 am, the crane’s structure began to give way.
Video captured by eyewitnesses and posted on social media showed the crane’s arm fall, striking a building across the street before swinging back against the building holding the crane. Seconds later, 16 tons of concrete and steel came plummeting down onto a Manhattan street below.
According to city officials, the incident only injured six people, two of whom were firefighters responding to the scene.
"Thank God that the injuries… were minor," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said. "As you can see from the debris on the street, this could have been much worse."
Adams said the remnants of the crane will be taken down once the fire is extinguished.
Russian forces repulsed a Ukrainian army’s massive tank attack in the Zaporozhye area, destroying 22 enemy tanks and retaining their positions over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Wednesday.
"From the morning of July 26, the enemy resumed intensive offensive operations in the Orekhov area. It carried out a massive attack by three battalions reinforced by tanks. All of the Ukrainian army’s attacks were repelled by courageous and professional actions of units from the 810th marine infantry brigade and the 71st motor rifle regiment of the 42nd motor rifle division. The positions were retained," the spokesman said.
During the battle, Russian forces "destroyed 22 enemy tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, an armored combat vehicle and over 100 Ukrainian personnel," the general reported.
In addition, Russian forces repulsed a Ukrainian attack near Rabotino in the Zaporozhye area over the past day, he said.
"In the Zaporozhye direction, an enemy attack near Rabotino was repulsed in the past 24 hours. Two tanks, a Giatsint-B howitzer and a Gvozdika motorized artillery system were destroyed. Operational/tactical and army aircraft strikes and artillery fire inflicted damage on the Ukrainian army units near the settlements of Malaya Tokmachka, Yablokovo and Rabotino in the Zaporozhye region," the spokesman specified.
In the south Donetsk direction, "an enemy attack towards the settlement of Nikolskoye in the Zaporozhye Region was repelled," the general reported.
"In areas near the settlements of Storozhevoye and Neskuchnoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Ukrainian army’s manpower and hardware were struck," he added.
Russian forces also eliminated a Ukrainian subversive and reconnaissance group near the settlement of Lugovskoye in the Zaporozhye Region, the general reported.
Russian military repels ‘massive’ Ukrainian offensive – defense ministry
Russian troops have stopped an “intensive” effort by the Ukrainian military to break their defensive lines near the village of Orekhov in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region. The village and its surroundings have been the scene of fierce fighting for weeks, as Ukraine’s floundering counteroffensive drags on.
Kiev’s forces “resumed intensive offensive operations” just south of Orekhov on Wednesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that evening. Despite the Ukrainian army launching a “massive” assault with three battalions backed by tanks, Russia’s 810th Marine Brigade, and 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division held their positions and repelled the Ukrainian advance, the ministry said.
During the battle, Ukraine lost 22 tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, and more than 100 men, according to the ministry.
Nearby, Russian troops repelled an attack on the village of Rabotino, and used air and artillery power to hit Ukrainian units near Malaya Tokmachka, Yablokovo and Rabotino.
All of these locations sit within the formerly Ukrainian region of Zaporozhye, where Kiev’s forces have been attempting for almost two months to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered defensive lines and push south to the Black Sea. If Ukraine were to succeed in this gambit, Russia’s land access to Kherson Region and Crimea would be severed.
However, Ukraine’s efforts have thus far been in vain. Russia has heavily mined the no-man’s-land in front of its defensive lines in this area, and early attempts to push through these minefields have proven disastrous for the Ukrainian military. Photos and videos from the beginning of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in June showed lines of destroyed tanks and armored vehicles sitting in minefields between Malaya Tokmachka and Rabotino, burning after they hit mines, and being targeted by artillery and Russian helicopters.
Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade – a NATO-trained unit – reportedly lost 30% of its US-supplied Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles in two weeks near Orekhov and Rabotino, while the 33rd Mechanized Brigade lost nearly a third of its 32 German-made Leopard tanks in the same area in a single week.
Across the entire frontline, Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive has already cost Kiev 26,000 troops and 3,000 pieces of heavy military hardware since June, according to the latest figures from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the Ukrainian operation as “suicidal.”
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has admitted to having difficulties, saying the counteroffensive is developing “slower than desired.” Amid reports that his Western backers are displeased at the pace of the offensive, Zelensky has attempted to shift the blame for the apparent failure to the West, saying that Ukraine did not receive enough munitions, weaponry, or training to succeed.
Moscow resolutely denounces the latest incident involving the burning of a copy of the Quran, this time in Denmark, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing on Wednesday.
"We firmly condemn this (Quran burning incident in Denmark - TASS) and similar extremist actions. Showing intolerance to any religion is inappropriate," she said.
"We have been witnessing a trend by religious radicals, feeling their impunity, in this or that European capital <…> to conduct, with maniacal persistence, crimes against Islam, desecrating the Holy Quran," the Russian diplomat noted, slamming such moves as a manifestation of aggressive barbarism and xenophobia.
Zakharova pledged that Russia would always "oppose attempts to humiliate the feelings of religious believers and such shameful human right violations" similar to those on display in Denmark. "Unless the authorities intervene to stop such antics, this will encourage radicalism to multiply <…>. It is ordinary citizens and staff at diplomatic missions who will have to suffer, regardless of their faith," Zakharova emphasized.
"We proceed from the [expectation] that the authorities in Denmark will cease condoning the incitement of interfaith hatred and will take all necessary measures against the radicals," she concluded.
Participants in an anti-Islam demonstration burned a copy of the Quran near the embassies of Egypt and Turkey in Copenhagen on July 25. A similar protest was held outside the Iraqi embassy on the previous day. The actions were organized by a group called Danish Patriots and sparked criticism across the Islamic world.
The former environmental lawyer, author, and activist continues to creep up in the polls for the Democratic nomination for president, with a recent Harris Poll giving him 16 percent support against incumbent Joe Biden, who enjoys the full backing of the Democratic establishment.
There is no chance of Russia losing the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, the West fomented the conflict and a peace agreement is needed immediately to prevent further bloodshed, Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said.
"Russia's not gonna lose this war. Russia can't afford this – it'd be like us losing a war to Mexico. They are not gonna lose the war," Kennedy said, speaking at a televised town hall Tuesday night.
"Go look at what Russia did in Stalingrad in order to preserve its territorial integrity. Russia’s been invaded three times through the Ukraine. The last time, Hitler killed one out of every seven Russians. They’re 400 miles from Moscow. We already have Aegis missile systems within 12 minutes of Moscow. We wouldn’t tolerate that if the Russians did it [like] in 1962 when they put them in Cuba," the candidate added, referencing the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which time his late uncle, John F. Kennedy, was president.
US Sabotaged Peace
"The more disturbing thing," Kennedy said, "is that on two occasions the Russians tried to sign a peace agreement with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky," and both times the West sabotaged it.
The candidate pointed to the 2015 Minsk Agreements, which Zelensky expressed interest in before being talked out of it by the US in 2019, and the 2022 draft peace deal reached after talks in Belarus and Turkiye.
"In 2019, France Germany and Russia all agreed to the Minsk Accords. That year, Zelensky ran for president. He was a comedian. He had no political experience. Why did he win? Because he ran on one issue: signing the Minsk Accords. As soon has he got in there, Victoria Nuland and the White House told him he couldn’t do it," Kennedy recalled.
“Then,” in February 2022, he noted, Russia sent “40,000 troops in. That’s not enough to conquer the country. Clearly, [Putin] wanted somebody to come to the negotiating table.” Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul, hammering out a draft peace deal. After that, “Putin in good faith began withdrawing troops from Ukraine. What happened? We sent Boris Johnson over there to torpedo it. Because we don’t want peace, we want war with Russia,” RFK Jr. stressed.
Road to Perdition
The Democratic politician also pointed out that the current crisis has its origins in the end of the Cold War.
“We promised in 1992, the Russian leadership said… 'We’re gonna withdraw 400,000 troops from East Germany and we’re gonna allow you to reunite Germany under NATO,' which is a hostile army. That’s a huge concession for them. 'One commitment that we want,' is what the Russians said, 'is that you will not move NATO to the east.'" He said.
"James Baker, who was then secretary of state under [George H.W.] Bush, famously promised ‘We will not move NATO one inch to the east.’ Well since then, we’ve moved it 1,000 miles and 14 countries. Now when we started that plan in 1997, Bill Perry, who was the secretary of defense under the Clinton administration, said ‘If you move NATO to the east, I am resigning because you are forcing the Russians to come to war with us.’ George Kennan, who’s the most important diplomat in American history, the architect of the containment policy [after] World War II, said the same thing. You do not need to make an enemy out of Russia,” Kennedy said.
Since announcing his run for the presidency in April, RFK Jr. has been the single most outspoken critic of the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine in the Democratic Party, and like former Republican President Donald Trump, has promised to bring the conflict to a close if elected president.
The 69-year-old candidate, who is currently polling at 16 percent, is a veteran environmental lawyer and the son of assassinated former US Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. RFK Jr. has enjoyed a groundswell of support among Democrats, Republican, and independents amid his refusal to play party politics, but has been smeared by media and largely ignored by the Democratic establishment as an "anti-vaxxer" and "conspiracy theorist." Kennedy has rejected these claims and accused the establishment of trying to silence him.
