How Russia is avoiding detection with its strikes from the skies above Ukraine

Published

6 months ago

November 28, 2024

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There’s a veneer of normality to life in Ukraine’s major cities if you ignore the air raid sirens, the booming sounds of anti-aircraft fire, the threatening buzz of drones passing overhead, and the darkened streets of neighbourhoods taking their turn as part of rolling power cuts affecting all of Ukraine.

As I say, if you ignore all of the above it’s fine, and many people do.

Kyiv appears particularly normal. Shops and restaurants are open, I’m told theatre performances are sometimes sold out, and at times you can still see families taking photos in front of the capital’s exquisite churches and cathedrals.

Late at night though, the city starts to change.

In the past few days, mostly throughout the night, air raid apps have been lighting up with warnings to “seek shelter”, while the sound of the sirens pierces the still and freezing air of the city.

From different directions I watched the anti-aircraft batteries tracking and following Russian drones swarming over Kyiv in unprecedented numbers – the tracers from their machine guns shooting into the night skies and ominous orange glows in the distance from possible missile strikes.

The capital is being targeted as never before, so much so that the military has assigned special anti-air units particularly for the defence of Kyiv.

Attacking this city is partly a Russian tactic to wear its population down and create fear and uncertainty.

But many of its drones and missiles are targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. Russia wants to switch the lights out here and, if possible, literally freeze this people’s resistance.

A necessity, rolling blackouts are the norm now while engineers repair power stations and supply lines. Power producing capacity is already limited after years of targeting, and as the temperature drops the authorities must save wherever they can.

For families the threat of attack from the skies never goes away

I drove through the streets of Kyiv’s left-bank suburbs, darkened apartment blocks silhouetted against the city’s skyline.

The dimly lit lights inside apartments are provided by generators or car batteries hooked up to makeshift electrical circuits tacked on to walls and ceilings.

Alona emerged from the doors of her apartment building into a pitch-black car park, her torch glinting off the remains of the first snows of winter, now turned into ice.

I followed her up three flights of stairs into her apartment and was introduced to her husband, Yevhen, and their two-year-old, Oles.

For families in particular, the threat of attack from the skies never goes away. In many ways it is psychological warfare, and Alona said it’s taking its toll on her and her little boy Oles.

“The hardest part, by far, is at night when you’re putting your child to sleep in the bathroom or when you have to rush to the shelter in the middle of the night. It’s really tough because it disrupts the child’s routine,” she explained.

“He doesn’t get proper sleep, everything is upside down for him, he’s terrified and he had started to become scared of the alarms.”

‘It’s still deeply frightening to be in the open’

Alona talked me through how her family tries to work out the risk of a strike in their area when the air raid sirens go off, and then they make a decision whether or not to seek shelter accordingly.

This family is typical of thousands here – scared to stay at home and scared to go out.

“I saw a missile being shot down and let me tell you, it was terrifying,” Alona said.

“It’s a haunting experience, even though I’m standing here now, telling you about how we ‘measure’ the scale of the danger, it’s still deeply frightening to be in the open.”

The soldiers who do their best to track Russian drones

After travelling to see the family, I went to meet an air defence mobile group belonging to the National Guard. I followed them on to a frozen field where they set up to man their position in the dark of night and sub-zero temperatures.

They are just a handful of hundreds, even thousands, of soldiers across the country doing the same.

These men, led by their commander Serhii, do their best to track the incoming drones with radar and use large spotlights to search the skies when they believe a Russian drone is nearby.

‘The enemy is changing tactics’

Russian tactics have changed though. As many as half are harmless decoys designed to waste time and bullets. The other half are deadly.

“The enemy is changing tactics, trying out different manoeuvres,” Serhii told me.

“They are attempting to approach in groups at low altitudes to avoid detection by radar, some targets fly high and are visible on radar, while another group flies low and slips past air defence systems.”

He showed me a Ukrainian-developed program on a tablet that tracks and monitors the movement of drones and missiles.

“Here it shows the movement of aerial targets in real-time within our zone of engagement,” he explained, pointing at a swarm of drones on his screen flying over Ukrainian territory.

People try to carry on as normal as attacks increase

Whether Russia’s main tactic is to target energy infrastructure or to sow fear, or both, nobody really knows. What they do know is that the attacks have increased.

“I cannot say the specific [reason for] that, whether it’s just the terror to make people feel unsafe and create [an] unstable situation or it’s some kind of facilities they’re trying to target, but they are operating, it’s like regular,” Pavlo Yurov of the National Guard’s “Hurricane” brigade told me.

Beneath the National Guards’ rudimentary dome of protection, people try to carry on with life as staff in restaurants and shops dress Christmas trees and hang fairy lights, but this war is grindingly depressing for everyone.

Young men fear being drafted, many hide out of sight. The news from the eastern front lines is never good, the Russians are taking more land.

Another Christmas is coming and like the last two it will likely pass without any sign of peace.

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‘Good chance’ of Russia-Ukraine peace but US has a red line in talks, says Donald Trump

Published

4 hours ago

May 20, 2025

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'Good chance' of Russia-Ukraine peace but US has a red line in talks, says Donald Trump

Donald Trump has said there is a “good chance” of peace between Russia and Ukraine – but added the US has a red line in upcoming talks.

After a two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin, the US president announced on Monday that Russia–Ukraine discussions will begin “immediately”.

It is unclear how these will differ from negotiations that already started in Turkey last Friday.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later on Monday, Mr Trump said he does have a red line on when he’ll stop pushing Moscow and Kyiv for peace – but would not say what it is.

There are “big egos involved”, he said before adding: “This was a European situation, it should have remained a European situation.”

The US president also claimed he asked Mr Putin on their call: “When are we going to end this bloodbath?”

He said of the Russian president: “I do believe he wants to end [the war].”

“My whole life is deals, one big deal, and if I thought that President Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out,” he added.

The US president spoke to his Russian counterpart on Monday as part of a bid to push the two countries towards agreeing a truce in the war.

In a Truth Social post, published shortly after the call, Mr Trump said Russia and Ukraine “will immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire and, more importantly, an end to the war”.

Mr Trump continued: “Russia wants to do large-scale trade with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is unlimited.”

Ukraine “can be a great beneficiary on trade, in the process of rebuilding its country”, he said.

The Vatican “has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations”, Mr Trump added. He signed off his post with: “Let the process begin!”

A Russia-Ukraine ceasefire is the one deal Trump can’t seem to seal

For the war that Donald Trump said he’d solve in a day, read the war he couldn’t solve at all.

By posting on Truth Social that an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict will be negotiated between the two parties, the US president puts distance between himself and the deal he couldn’t seal.

The United States appears to be taking a step back from its stewardship of negotiations, as it leaves both sides to it.

The broker broken? For Trump, certainly, this has been a most intractable negotiation that he has never looked like closing.

He mentions “ceasefire” in his social media post only as a discussion for Russia and Ukraine, not as the call he made for an unconditional cessation of hostilities.

There’s no mention of the frustrations he once threatened at intensive Russian bombing, or of the sanctions he once threatened against Moscow.

Far from it, he speaks of “large-scale trade with the United States when this bloodbath is over”.

He adds that Ukraine can be a trade beneficiary from the country’s rebuilding.

In Kyiv and allied European capitals, they were looking for strong-armed support from Washington.

European leaders had called Trump the day before he spoke to Putin to discuss sanctions and to reinforce their need for US support in steering the Russian leader towards serious engagement.

They will be making further calls to the White House to clarify where they stand now, for fear they stand alone.

Ukraine was never a pet project of Donald Trump.

In his ambitions to reshape the world order, restored relations with Russia has always been a prize as he eyes China as adversary-in-chief.

In the bigger picture, Ukraine has always been a small feature. It shows.

Mr Putin found the call “informative, frank and very useful”, Russian news agency RIA reported.

“A ceasefire in the situation in Ukraine for a certain period of time is possible if appropriate agreements are reached,” the Russian leader reportedly said.

Discussions are ‘positive,’ says Zelenskyy

The US president spoke separately to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European leaders.

At a briefing after the day’s calls had taken place, Ukraine’s leader said he told Mr Trump that Russia “might propose some particularly difficult conditions” for a ceasefire – which could be “a sign that it is the Russian side that is unwilling to end the war”.

“I think we are still discussing the very possibility of strong and severe sanctions [on Russia],” he continued. “I don’t yet have an answer to that question.”

Kyiv is considering the possibility of a meeting between “high-level” teams from Ukraine, the US, Russia and some European countries, Mr Zelenskyy said, describing the talks on Monday as “positive”.

He continued: “Such a meeting could take place in Turkey, the Vatican, or Switzerland. We are currently considering these three venues, as all three countries – all three venues – are neutral.”

European leaders and Ukraine have demanded Russia agree to a ceasefire immediately, and Mr Trump has focused on getting Mr Putin to commit to a 30-day truce. The Russian president has resisted that, insisting that conditions be met first.

The Trump-Putin call came as Russia has continued to target Ukraine with attacks.

Moscow on Monday claimed its forces have taken two villages in Ukraine, according to state news agency RIA.

Russia recently began pushing into the Sumy region after claiming it had ousted Kyiv’s forces from Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region.

RIA cited the defence ministry as saying Novoolenivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, and Marine, in Sumy, have now been taken by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 112 drones over various parts of the country overnight, killing two people and leaving another 13 injured.

On Sunday, Kyiv officials said Russia had launched the largest drone attack of the war so far by firing 273 explosives into Ukraine over the course of Saturday night into the following morning.

World

Israel to allow ‘basic quantity of food’ into Gaza to avoid ‘starvation crisis’

Published

19 hours ago

May 19, 2025

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Israel to allow 'basic quantity of food' into Gaza to avoid 'starvation crisis'

Israel has said it will allow a “basic quantity of food” into the besieged enclave of Gaza to avoid a “starvation crisis” following a near three-month blockade.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was “based on the operational need to enable the expansion of the military operation to defeat Hamas“.

Gaza, where local authorities say more than 53,000 people have died in Israel’s 19-month campaign, has been under a complete blockade on humanitarian aid since 2 March.

It comes as global food security experts warn of famine across the territory and after a UN-backed report from last Monday which warned one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.

The statement from the prime minister’s office said it would “allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip”.

“Such a crisis would endanger the continuation of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ to defeat Hamas,” it added.

“Israel will act to deny Hamas’s ability to take control of the distribution of humanitarian assistance in order to ensure that the assistance does not reach the Hamas terrorists.”

It comes after a British surgeon working in Gaza said in a video to Sky News the enclave is now “a slaughterhouse” amid Israeli bombardment.

Israel has just ramped up its offensive in Gaza – where it’s been conducting a military campaign in retaliation for 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October 2023 – with Palestinian health officials reporting at least 130 people were killed overnight into Sunday.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed troops had begun “extensive ground operations throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip”.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 464 people had died in Israeli military strikes in the week to Sunday.

In a statement on Sunday, IDF said its air force struck “over 670 Hamas terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip to disrupt enemy preparations and support ground operations” over the past week.

Israel has launched an escalation to increase pressure on Hamas, seize territory, displace Palestinians to the south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.

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Nicusor Dan beats hard-right favourite George Simion in surprise win in Romanian election

Published

1 day ago

May 18, 2025

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Nicusor Dan beats hard-right favourite George Simion in surprise win in Romanian election

Pro-Western candidate Nicusor Dan has unexpectedly beaten hard-right populist George Simion in the Romanian presidential election.

Mr Simion, 38, and his rival – a centrist who’s mayor of Bucharest – faced off in the second round of the contest.

According to the official tally, Mr Dan was leading by nearly nine percentage points with more than 98% of the votes counted.

After exit polls suggested he wasn’t going to win, Trump-supporting Mr Simion rejected the result and said estimates put him 400,000 votes ahead.

Speaking after voting ended, Mr Simion said his election was “clear” as he posted on Facebook: “I won!!! I am the new President of Romania and I am giving back the power to the Romanians!”

Romania’s last election was annulled after its highest court ruled the leading candidate, nationalist Calin Georgescu, should be disqualified due to claims of electoral interference by Russia.

The result is surprising because in the first round, 38-year-old Mr Simion, founder of the right-wing Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), took 40.96% of the vote – almost 20 points ahead.

An opinion poll on Friday had it much closer, but still suggested the two men were virtually tied.

Mr Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician, is running as an independent and has pledged to clamp down on corruption.

He is also staunchly pro-EU and NATO, and has said Romania’s support for Ukraine is vital for its own security.

When voting closed at 9pm local time, 11.6 million people – about 64% of eligible voters – had cast ballots. About 1.64 million Romanians living abroad also took part.

The election is being closely watched across Europe amid a rise of support for President Donald Trump.

After polls closed, Mr Dan said “elections are not about politicians” but about communities and that in the latest vote “a community of Romanians has won, a community that wants a profound change in Romania”.

“When Romania goes through difficult times, let us remember the strength of this Romanian society,” he said.

“There is also a community that lost today’s elections. A community that is rightly outraged by the way politics has been conducted in Romania up to now.”