Pipeline to Mayhem, Naval Nastiness, Bombs for Vipers

Russia’s war in Ukraine continues at full intensity despite a nominal ceasefire. Ukraine’s 71st Brigade repelled a Russian pipeline infiltration attack near Yablunivka with zero casualties using drones and artillery. Azov’s corps launched medium-range drone strikes over Mariupol. Ukraine debuted its Flamingo cruise missile operationally, struck naval targets across three seas, and expanded its F-16 pilot pipeline. Russia continues ballistic missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, killing dozens. Make us preferred on Google Flip Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Ukrainian soldiers (Photo General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine / Facebook) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google The Red Square parade happened, but without vehicles, just marchers. The Russians are still launching strikes. Ukrainians are still getting killed. The Trump ceasefire is only in effect if your definition of “ceasefire” includes firing with lethal results. The front remains stable physically without any effective net change of control by either side. The fighting is still massive and on a scale orders of magnitude bigger and more intense than limited combat taking place right now around the Strait of Hormuz or in southern Lebanon. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . It may not be in mainstream media, but it’s still a full-on, conventional war with about 700,000-800,000 men on each side. This week saw excellent video surface courtesy of the 71st Separate Airmobile Brigade “Immitis” (71 OAeMBr, military unit A4030), 8th Airborne Corps. This is a unit that didn’t exist before the war started and was created wholly from reserves and unassigned troops elsewhere in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). On one hand, the unit had no established chain of command that had trained and worked together. On the other hand, a large portion of its soldiers were combat veterans who had fought in the Donbas region between 2015 and 2021. Ukrainian national guardsman negotiates a water obstacle, Sunday (National Guard Telegram feed) Other Topics of Interest Senior Ukrainian Official Reports Armed Forces Sighted UFO, Publishes Video A senior Ukrainian defense advisor, Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov, released drone footage showing a spherical UFO with six pointed cones and a heat plume. It was spotted in May 2025 at 800 meters during combat operations. The object hovered slowly without reacting to the drone. The object resembled a star-shaped UFO observed by US forces in 2013. Background on the 71st: First raised in the Kharkiv region as a Jaeger brigade, designed for air assault in October 2022, as of January 2026, reorganized as an Airmobile brigade. As nearly as I can tell, this means it was beefed up with drone units. Raised in the Kharkiv region, participated in the Kharkiv counteroffensive, captured Balaklia, fought in Bakhmut, instrumental in chopping up Wagner there, then fought around Kreminna, Avdiivka, Kurahove. Stationed in the Sumy sector since 2025. So, all in all, the 71st is representative of a solid, reliable Ukrainian combat brigade, better than the average, not on the level of the special ops guys or 12th National Guard Brigade/Azov. Commander is a career infantryman from Crimea named Pavlo Adamenko. On Thursday, Ukraine’s military published a video report from the 71st Brigade HQ (link below), which was fairly detailed and, I think, is an excellent window into Ukrainian defensive tactics as of late spring 2026. It’s not fully clear when the battle happened from the video, but research will tell you it was on April 19 near the village of Yablunivka, Sumy region, about 5.5-6 kilometers (3.4-3.7 miles) from the international border. In the engagement, Russian troops tried to advance using a section of the Druzhba/Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod gas pipeline network, the tactic basically being to send batches of infantrymen through the pipeline to surface in a wooded area. The idea was to spread out from there and build up enough force to control the area and make new advances. The push took place at night, starting at 6 p.m. The 71st, however, has been in the sector for some time, and as it turned out, they appear to have known about the pipeline section outlets and had drone observation on them, not least because the Russians had used the pipeline in this area three times before. On this particular night, it was raining. Both sides sometimes try to use bad weather as a way to move without getting spotted by drones, but it doesn’t always work. 71st Airmobile Brigade Lieutenant, awards ceremony (unit Facebook page) In this case, according to a 71st Brigade recon commander (an officer identified as “Galich”) the Russians were spotted by see-in-the-dark drones, monitored, and a band of about 15 moved out from the woods where the pipeline surfaced, heading southwards. That led them into an open farm field that had already been ranged by Ukrainian artillery. Then two more groups, roughly the same size, followed them. By the standards of the war as of April 2026, this counts as a sizable attack and a serious effort by the Russians to gain ground. The Ukrainians called in artillery and mortars, which killed and injured some of the Russians and forced the survivors to go to ground because if you are standing up in a barrage, you almost certainly will die, and if you are lying down, you have a chance of surviving. Once stationary, the Russian infantrymen became viable targets for bomber drones that dropped munitions effectively the same as a mortar round, but usually with much more accuracy – a good bomber drone pilot can drop a munition reliably within 1-2 meters (3.3-6.6 feet) of a man lying down and frequently can hit him directly. Some dropped munitions appear to be the size of big mortar rounds (120mm). Then, first-person-view (FPV) drones called to the scene showed up and hunted down the survivors of the survivors. The Russians popped smoke grenades to conceal themselves. The Ukrainians shelled the smoke or just waited for the grenade to run out of smoke. The video shows three-shell salvoes of howitzer rounds coming in from at least two batteries. The Russians then seem to have called in smoke screens from their own artillery to create cover. As with the grenades, the Russian smoke didn’t really protect the Russian soldiers because it showed the Ukrainians where to shoot their own shells. Some Russians caught out in the open were killed with basic, WWI-tactic arching machine gun fire; the Russians were lying down in the field, so the Ukrainians fired machine guns into the area and beat the ground with bullets. The officer commanding the action was an officer identified as “Indiya,” and from the video it’s clear his role was battle captain controlling the various observation and strike systems the Ukrainians had covering that section of the front. The report shows a tactical operations center with more than 40 data feeds; this is not extraordinary, there can be as many as a hundred, the limiting factor is the staff needed to watch the feeds. The recon officer says that a big reason the battle went well is that the brigade was able to put a good number of its own small observation drones (MAVICS) into the air, and those streams created an excellent picture of what was going on. The Ukrainians say they wiped out the entire attack and confirmed 44 killed and 30 seriously injured, and they’re confident the actual numbers are higher. The engagement lasted 23 minutes and ended when the Russian survivors had retreated far enough back into the pipe that the FPV drones couldn’t follow them. On April 29, the Russians tried again – six killed, survivors retreated. The most important takeaway, of course, is that it is very probable no Ukrainian was even injured in this action beyond possible Carpal Tunnel Syndrome suffered by some drone pilots from over-intense use of controllers in seating not supportive of good posture. But beyond that, from a pure military point of view, the engagement is an excellent illustration of how it is Russia suffers such heavy casualties for so little ground gained, and how often it’s no ground gained at all, it’s just casualties. Equally, it’s a solid window into Ukrainian defensive doctrine; at the start of the war, the Ukrainians were still figuring out how to stop the Russians on the battlefield. Now, there are dozens of Russian corpses (again) demonstrating, with incontestable evidence, that the Ukrainians have cracked that code. I can only end this section with a comment by US President Donald J. Trump to Hugh Hewitt on the Salem News Channel, on May 4, i.e., 15 days AFTER the Battle of Yablunkivka took place, and five days after the Russians attacked through the same pipeline, and again got their heads handed to them by 71st Brigade: ”You know, they are losing territory, but it’s at a big cost to Russia and to them. And I like [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. I’ve always sort of gotten along with him, other than the one moment in the White House, which I thought was a little aggressive on his behalf.” At the risk of self-promotion, Chris Edwards and I wrote a book about the Siege of Mariupol and I patrolled out of Mariupol for five years, so maybe I am biased on this item. Still, this week, in one of the better ironies of the entire war, 1st Corps “Azov,” started operating medium-range drones over Mariupol city, and yes, they are blowing things up. (Background: Azov started the war as a National Guard Brigade, and it led an epic defense of Mariupol during the first three months of the war, was supposedly destroyed, yet its command group and old and new fighters went on to reconstitute the brigade in 2023, and by 2025, the very first operational corps in the entire AFU was created with the Azov headquarters in charge. This is one of, if not the best-led and hardest-fighting conventional combat formations in the entire AFU, and the Russians hate, hate, hate Azov). 2022, Azovstal, the final redoubt of Azov at Mariupol, after surrender (Ukraine government image) This is the result of Ukraine’s drone forces, the SBS, pushing the decision-making for medium-range drone strikes down to the field commanders, because those commanders are constantly watching the Russian rear area in front of them and usually have the best sense of where the targets are. Parallel with that, the AFU’s manufacturers have increased production substantially of observation drones that can loiter for several hours, and strike drones that can hit out to 100-150 kilometers (62 to 93 miles). Service member, Azov 12th Special Ops Bde, 1st Corps, Saturday (1st Corps media channel) In Azov’s case, and now documented by video, the upshot of these developments has been for the Azov’s drone unit to take to the skies in and around Mariupol, and anyone from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) stationed in Donetsk or Mariupol hubs reading this will recognize several of the landmarks now the Azov drones are flying over. It is safe to say that within Azov, knowledge of every nook and cranny of the Mariupol sector is superior to anything on the Russian side, they fought there for years. Some of the Azov drones are patrolling the H-20 (a/k/a the Donetsk highway), the N-14 (a/k/a the Zaporizhzhia highway, and the T-0509 (a/k/a the Velyka Novoselivka road), all of which SMM vets drove ad nauseam. There weren’t strike drones in those days – now there are. Azov returns to Mariupol. For now, through reconnaissance-strike systems. Pilots of First Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine patrol roads up to 160 km deep behind the line of contact. In the cameras of reconnaissance-strike drones: Mariupol and enemy military targets.… pic.twitter.com/9QcTBiZr6I Operationally, this is the Ukrainians pushing out interdiction (disrupting the enemy’s ability to move troops, supplies, and equipment) to make the Russian supply of forces in the western Donetsk region and southern Zaporizhzhia region more difficult. These are heavily used logistic routes, so if you are Russian, you are hoping the AFU doesn’t give Azov too many of these medium-range drones. As many of you know, the Russians were very nervous about their May 9 World War II victory parade in Red Square because they thought the Ukrainians would hit it with drones and that would not look good on Russian TV. So they banned foreign dignitaries, surrounded the place with barbed wire, threatened to blow Kyiv up with intercontinental ballistic missiles if Ukraine interfered, and “declared” a ceasefire on May 9 to show largesse and “remove” any pretext the Ukrainians might use to ruin the “holiday.” NOTE: In Putinist Russia, the end of WWII is treated like a near-religious holiday – paying homage to citizens sacrificing to the state and Russia’s “liberation” of Eastern Europe. The Red Square tank and artillery parade is a big deal nationwide. There was some back and forth between Kyiv and Moscow about the ceasefire, with some silly finger-pointing about how neither side could be “forced” to declare a ceasefire, and then on Friday, Zelensky won the contest of wits – as one might have expected considering the opponent – by issuing a formal Presidential order “allowing” the Russian parade to go forward and designating Red Square (and only Red Square) Russian territory that might not be hit by Ukrainian weapons on Saturday. Then on Friday evening, Trump announced he had “arranged” a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and also, there was going to be a 1,000-member prisoner of war exchange. The Russian milblogger crowd was, of course, livid that here was Zelensky trolling Russian President Vladimir Putin about Russia’s holiest propaganda event of the year, but beyond all the internet anger, the parade did take place. The Ukrainians didn’t attack it, but the parade was pretty anemic, with mostly cadets from military schools doing the marching, no armored vehicles rumbling anywhere, and a pretty small-scale aircraft flyover. Compared to previous Red Square demonstrations of Russian military might, it looked like a military parade by the likes of Columbia or Indonesia. Wives of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine march in a parade in the Far Eastern city Chita, during World War Two celebrations, May 9. (Image published by ChitaRu) On the Ukrainian side, the stance seems to be: ‘OK, we’ll promise to leave the parade alone, if that will get our soldiers back.’ Did the ceasefire hold? The Ukrainians say no. The Ukrainian Air Force reported Russian drones and missiles attacking targets in Ukraine overnight, with one Iskander-M missile and 43 drones launched, 34 drones shot down. The wording makes clear this is the situation as of 8 a.m. on Saturday. The AFU reported a typical level of combat activity through the morning of May 9 (1,080 Russian troops claimed killed/wounded, 82 artillery/mortar systems destroyed, etc.), but unlike the air force, did not specify what, if any, of that took place after midnight. On the morning of May 9, in Chernihiv, there were two Ukrainian civilians dead and farm buildings were still burning by sunrise, following what appears to have been Russian air or possibly rocket artillery strikes. As the morning continued, simultaneously with Putin’s speech and the Red Square marches, more images surfaced of destroyed buildings in the Sumy region. Also overnight, the Ukrainians hit the Radar factory in Rostov, which is military electronics. Major fires. Morning of May 9, Ukrainian air defense nets were reporting Russian drones crossing the border, Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions. So if you want evidence that the ceasefire was broken, this is evidence. The Ukraine long-range strike forces maintained operations at a very high pace, so I’m splitting up my usual “Ukraine bombards Russia” section into pieces. The most visible and in some ways impressive strike of the week was carried out on Sunday-Monday in another typical Ukrainian complex attack. It took place in the early morning hours, and it was the first time in the war that the Ukrainians combined Flamingo cruise missiles (think big, heavy, guidance system is inertia+GPS, not overly accurate) with FP-196 Liuty drones (smaller, very precise, guidance system is a pilot, prop-driven). Sometime after midnight, a fire unit from 19th Rocket Artillery Brigade – a unit I visited way back in 2022 when they were one of the first units to get M270 and HIMARS – launched five Flamingo missiles at Cheboksary’s VNIIR-PROGRESS military electronics plant. This is a high-priority Ukrainian target that got hit before, on Feb. 18, but the damage that time was limited. Subsequent satellite imagery showed that the factory roof had been fitted with some kind of protective armor. At least one Flamingo blew a hole in the roof (remember the “big” part? These things are advertised to carry a warhead weighing 1.15 metric tons), probably damaged whatever was inside, and ignited fires. There appear to have been at least two misses. No air defense reported. Then, once the sun was up, something like four drones appeared, and they seemed to have attacked the hole in the roof. Light anti-aircraft. Two hits, more fires. For the record, this was all about 900-950 kilometers (559-590 miles) from probable Ukrainian launch sites. This was significant in two ways (three if you count the AFU decision to hand operating Flamingos specifically to the 19th Brigade. There were other ways the AFU could have fielded the system, but they seem to have gone with “most-experienced/least-chances of an unforced error,” which is typical AFU but still interesting). First, this attack confirms Flamingo is now operational in the AFU; it’s no longer experimental and testing, and the implication is the Ukrainians believe they can sustain production of the missiles. There clearly are still issues with the missile’s accuracy, but this is a one-ton+ warhead with a rated range of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles). At the start of the war, had Russia been looking at a weapon of that capacity reaching AFU hands, the Kremlin would have threatened nuclear retaliation; this is no exaggeration, they did that when the Americans were debating handing over HIMARS/M270, and on paper, Flamingo is somewhere between three times and an order of magnitude more dangerous to Russian rear area targets than those systems. For the Russian military people looking at the situation honestly, this is a disastrous development, if for no other reason than the fact that the track record makes clear: the Ukrainians will not stop until the missile is accurate. Without any exaggeration, for a serious Russian policymaker, how fast Ukraine can manufacture Flamingo missiles is quite literally a matter of Russian national security. Since Putinist Russia really isn’t like that, the best guess is that the Kremlin response will be to do nothing and wait collectively until the next disaster, and on an individual government official level, focus most of one’s energy so that when that disaster comes, it’s someone else’s fault. Which brings me to the second implication. Since the most probable Russian response to this dangerous Ukrainian capacity, which is almost certain to grow, will not be to react and hope things get better on their own, it’s realistic to predict strikes like Progress/Cheboksary taking place in Russia not once every six months, but regularly. A top priority for Ukrainian targeting is Russian ballistic missile production. So, in a way, we are now watching a race for which the starter’s gun just got fired. Can Ukraine demolish enough of Russia’s ballistic missile capacity by October, so that when Russia starts attacking Ukraine’s power grid in November, Russia will be short of ballistic missiles? On the one hand, the Americans have screwed the Ukrainians and basically cut off PAC-3/Patriot interceptor missiles supplies, but on the other hand, “shooting the archer, not the arrow” is an ongoing AFU operation. I’ve attached a graphic showing how often the Russians have been able to launch Iskander-M ballistic missiles from Crimea. Bottom line, a whole lot less because the Ukrainians have been hunting the air defense units protecting the launchers, and then the launchers themselves. Here’s an article detailing how serious the Ukrainians are about destroying Russia’s ballistic missile factories and finished missiles. Equally upsetting for the Russians, on April 30-May 1, very long-range Ukrainian drones, believed to be converted E-300 aircraft, flew all the way to the Ural Mountains – and Chelyabinsk, and Shagol military airfield. This is close to 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) from Ukraine-controlled territory and, probably in local commanders’ minds, far outside the strike range of Ukrainian weapons. Russian Su-57 “stealth” fighter jet parked at an Ural Mountains airfield is approached at night by a Ukrainian kamikaze drone (SBS Sunday) Drone video showed two Su-57 fighters (this is Russia’s very best fighter jet with stealth technology), and one or two Su-34 strike jets damaged, in the attack. Later on, a Russian image of an E-300, not necessarily one used in the strike, appeared; it was shot through full of holes and still flying. Ukrainian E-300 drone shows damage and keeps on flying, Sunday,(General Staff video) On May 1-2, so one week ago, Ukrainian drones attacked Central Military District “A” on the Sevastopol Bay, hitting and damaging two large amphibious assault ships tied up there (possibly Yamal and Filchenkov), the FSB border patrol cutter Ivan Khurs, as well as Belbek airfield. Nothing was sunk; it seems like the idea was to concentrate on comms and command systems to make the ships unusable for a while. In Belbek, a control center, a comms center, a big radar, and air defense installations were hit. The SBU’s Apha unit seems to have been involved. Combined image by me depicting the results of another Russian naval disaster, the Battle of Tsushima, against Japan in 1905. Upper left is Russian Baltic Fleet sailors finding out Japanese main gun fire control, although Asiatic and un-Christian, was more effective than Russian. Upper right is Vice Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky, whom the Tsar blamed for the defeat, which probably was unfair, he just followed orders, the problem was the foreigners unfairly fought better than the Russians. The lower image is HMIJNS Mikasa, the Japanese fleet flagship at the battle. Same night or possibly later in the morning, Ukrainian sea drones – you know, robot kamikaze boats – smacked into two Russian shadow tankers right outside Novorossiysk. This is the current main base of what’s left of the Black Fleet, and no, not a single warship moved from its pier to go help the poor shadow tankers from being swarmed by Ukrainian sea drones. This was, by most calculations, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) offshore – so well in the view of the entire seaboard, every resident and tourist and spy and beachcomber, anyone who had the energy to look west and wonder what all the noise was about. Ukrainian Magura kamikaze boat zeros in on a Russian shadow tanker offshore Novorossiysk Sunday (General Staff video). As best as can be told from sifting through open-source marine traffic data, both tankers were hit in the stern/rudder/engine room. One, last I checked, was wallowing in medium seas outside the port. The other seems to have reached Samsun, Turkey, under its own power. This all preceded, by one day (May 2-3), Ukraine’s possibly biggest massed drone strike of the war, generally against the Primorsk oil refinery and the Leningrad region. The aircraft count was 350+, and the Russians claimed shootdowns of 334. Russian air defenses engaged Ukrainian drones over the territories of Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, Tula regions, the Moscow region and the Republic of Crimea. Ukrainian Bulava drone shortly before striking a Russian vehicle thought to carry military supplies (Thursday, SBS information feed) As per Russian messaging rules, the governor of the Leningrad region announced 60 Ukrainian drones had been shot down and that there was some damage from “falling debris.” In due course, this filtered through more reliable sources to mean the Primorsk refinery had been set on fire, again. But the most newsworthy part of that attack, I would say, was that this marked the first time ever that the Ukrainians hit a Russian navy missile boat in the Baltic. Next, on Thursday, Ukrainian drones flew all the way to Kaspyisk, Caspian Sea, and hit a Karakut missile boat there. She was moving at the time. On Friday, the Ukrainian General Staff identified the ship as the Tucha and claimed not only substantial damage, but further, that the strike (and the one in the Baltic) had been carried out by a long-range drone with built-in terminal guidance. If you want to be cool and scary, you can call it AI. If you want to be accurate, this is called “homing,” whose fielding as a military technology dates back to the early Cold War. But whatever you call it, this week, the Ukrainians just expanded their strike campaign against Russian naval assets in the Black Sea – where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is basically defeated and bottled up in Novorossiysk port – to the Baltic Sea and the Caspian Sea. And the Ukrainians used home-made drones armed with some kind of machine-driven terminal guidance, to hit moving warships in both those places, if you believe the General Staff. What’s it all mean? It means this is what a Russian naval defeat looks like. There is no other way to interpret it. For the Kremlin, the frightening part has to be – there is zero evidence that the Ukrainians can be forced to back off, or that the Ukrainians will not accelerate attacks like this in the future. But of course, the US president says Ukraine is losing, we have to keep that in mind. Ukrainian air base at unknown location with Su-27s (Solpyanshnik Telegram channel, Friday) There was this small but interesting factoid: via friendly media covering the British military, we now know that “more than 50 Ukrainian pilots” have completed the UK’s early-stage English-language and elementary flying course, which is designed to prepare them for more advanced fast-jet training abroad. This is the F-16 pilot pipeline. The UK announced that the programm(e) is designed to take 20 aspiring Ukrainian pilots a year — teaching them English and flight fundamentals — with the first cadet class beginning back in February 2023. This is not the same as transition training or individual systems training the British have run for the Ukrainians; this is the way the Ukrainian air force gets new pilots for its F-16s. The implication is that three years down the road, the training is still ongoing, but it hasn’t gotten bigger or smaller. A very interesting question would be, how many F-16 pilots does Ukraine have right now, along with how many never flew any other aircraft but were just put into the pipeline? Once we adjust for losses, transfers, and promotions, and finger-in-wind guesswork, the bottom line is that most likely Ukraine has at least one pilot for each of the F-16s it operates – and since this is war and the Americans are being jerks about replacement parts sometimes it’s reasonable to guess 70-80% of that fleet is theoretically flyable at one time. But probably not two and definitely not three. Then there was this item out of Belgium. There is now a firm schedule for Belgian F-16s (finally) to be transferred to the Ukrainian air force: seven in 2026, five in 2027, 14 in 2028, and 27 in 2029. Meanwhile, Ukraine has received a total of 24 F-16 jets from the Dutch, of which 18 were F-16AM multi-role variants. Of the 19 Denmark pledged, 12 appear to have been delivered. Norway has pledged six and sent none. Three Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcons fly alongside a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker during Exercise Trident Juncture 18, in Swedish airspace, Oct. 30, 2018. The NATO-led exercise includes 31 countries and provides unique opportunities to train with NATO allies and partners. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Luke Milano / Wikimedia Commons) Four have been lost to date, so, probably Ukraine has on balance 38 air frames at the moment, of which maybe 28-30 are operationally ready at any given time, and that normally would mean Ukraine would need around 90 F-16 pilots along with something like 60 ground crews, to get maximum use out of its F-16 fleet. If we guess there are around 40 pilots, at best, probably at any given time, Ukraine can put 15-20 F-16s into the air, maximum, with major surges not being possible because then Russia would see it and attack the air bases. Which is not a lot, but again, look at the pipeline, it’s functioning, there will be more pilots. My instinct is that right now, Ukraine has about 30 pilots who are combat worthy, plus another 10-20 who are still too green to count on. So, if you are looking for a reason the Danes and the Norwegians and the Belgians aren’t flooding Ukraine with F-16s, it’s pretty clear that odds are the bottleneck is pilots and ground crews and will be for at least the next two years. Which brings me to another NATO aircraft story of the week. On May 4, the Americans approved the sale – for payment, not as a gift – of 1,200 KMU-572 kits and 332 KMU-556 kits, which convert 250kg and 500kg dumb bombs, respectively, into precision-guided munitions, for a total of $373.6 million. The package also includes fuses, spares, software, training, and support equipment, all sourced from Boeing. Over 1,500 smart bomb conversion kits are, by any measure, a significant delivery. The way it looks to me, in about three to six months, the Ukrainian air force will sortie more ground strike missions and thereby become a good deal more destructive, because in that time frame, more bombs and pilots are going to arrive in theater able to do that. It won’t be a sea change, but it will become more visible, and again, if we go back to that intelligent Kremlin planner, just because one can see it coming, it’s not nearly so easy to see how to stop it. P.S. More news that Ukraine is on track to sign a deal to receive Swedish Gripens in a couple of months (signing, not receiving) came out this week, but that’s more long-term, and it’s time for a Belgian F-16 to do duty as the fighter jet image for this review, so the Gripens can get a break. Russia appears to be taking advantage of the near-total Ukrainian inability to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles by shooting its ballistic missiles into civilian areas to maximize the number of civilian dead and injured. The worst attacks hit Zaporizhzhia overnight May 5-6, killing 27 people and injuring 70+. Most of the death toll was from the strike of either a ballistic missile or a guided bomb against an apartment building that collapsed about three floors, crushing people sleeping inside. Adjacent buildings, both residential and commercial, suffered severe blast damage. Also, there were fires and strikes by Shaheds elsewhere in the city. Ukrainians keep fit with Russian drone and missile strikes in the background, Dnipo (Screenshot rose_in_boots / Instagram) The same night, a glide bomb hit an apartment building in Kramatorsk, killing six and injuring nine. And a Sumy apartment building got hit by a drone, two dead, and in Dnipro, either a glide bomb or a missile killed four and injured nine, this at a commercial-industrial site. Dnipro, Saturday (Ukraine Emergency Response Ministry) Overall, the Ukrainian Air Force counts the Russians launched 11 ballistic missiles and 164 drones, one missile and 149 drones were intercepted, and eight missiles and 14 drones got through. It’s important to note that in places close enough to the line for Russia to hit a place with glide bombs (Kramatorsk, northern Kharkiv), the Russians prefer glide bombs. It’s too bad JD Vance doesn’t care one way or another about Ukraine, because if he did, maybe Ukraine’s air defenses would have managed to knock down more than one Russian Iskander-M, and 10-20 Ukrainian civilians would be alive right now instead of dead. Reprinted from Kyiv Post’s Special Military Correspondent Stefan Korshak’s blog. You can read his blog here . The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post. Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US .