As Ukraine shows the world the wreckage of its first-ever Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, President Volodymyr Zelensky says his country is being used as a “testing ground” for Russia’s new weapons. It’s not just the Oreshnik missiles, but also Moscow’s swarms of Geran-2 drones, which are testing attacks with artificial intelligence and thermobaric warheads.
While global attention is focused on the Dnipro attack with the Oreshnik, which can carry a nuclear warhead but can also strike anywhere in Europe, Zelensky is highlighting the increased level of attacks with more than 500 drones used in the past week. In recent weeks, following the use of long-range American and British missiles by the Ukrainians, there has been an escalation in the use of new and more deadly weapons by Russia.
According to Kiev, Moscow has set up two factories in Tatarstan, about 1,300 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border, capable of producing hundreds of drones each week. The Geran-2s they are building are essentially Iranian-designed Shahed 136 delta-wing drones with 50-kilogram warheads, which may not be as fast as missiles, but they are launched in saturation attacks on Ukrainian air defenses and can cause great damage with the 50-kilogram explosive warhead each carries. In October alone, Russia launched 2,023 of these drones into Ukraine.
The “details” are that Moscow is experimenting with such drones to make them even more deadly. This month, the Ukrainian military released a video of a thermobaric warhead, which creates a cloud of fire at around 2,000 degrees Celsius when detonated and is considered particularly deadly if it explodes inside buildings.
Ukrainian military sources say Russia is trying to develop swarms of drones that use artificial intelligence to allow the Shahed to communicate with each other and coordinate their attacks in such a way as to defeat air defenses. However, it is unclear how effective this technology could be.
Because the Shahed 136 (or Gerad-2, if you prefer) drones are relatively inexpensive, costing a few tens of thousands of dollars each, it is impractical to use Patriot missiles to shoot them down, as they cost about $4 million each. Instead, Ukrainian special forces often use truck-mounted machine guns to neutralize them with small arms fire.
Ukrainian experts are also trying to develop cheap first-person view (FPV) drones, costing less than $1,000, capable of taking out the Shahed, although this currently seems unlikely.
Meanwhile, Russia, in addition to testing the Oreshnik hypersonic missile in real combat conditions for the first time, has dropped more than 800 deadly hovering bombs on Ukraine in the past week. These are “old-fashioned” bombs of the type dropped by bombers during World War II, which have been upgraded to guided ones that carry explosives weighing up to 1,500 kilograms, making them particularly destructive.
But it’s not just weapons, it’s people: Russia’s armed forces have recruited hundreds of men from Yemen to fight in Ukraine, brought in in a shadowy smuggling operation that highlights growing ties between Moscow and the Houthi rebel group.
The lightly armed mercenary groups forcibly recruited from Yemen to Ukraine show how the conflict is increasingly absorbing foreign soldiers as casualties mount and the Kremlin tries to avoid full mobilization. They include mercenaries from Nepal and India and about 12,000 regular North Korean soldiers who have arrived to take part in battles against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region.
The War in the Next Phase
As Vladimir Putin addressed the Russian people last week, more and more people agreed with him that the war—in which more than 1 million Ukrainians and Russians have died—is increasingly taking on the characteristics of a global conflict.
This week’s escalation has also prompted several warnings from other world leaders about the direction of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the war was entering a decisive phase—with a real risk of global conflict. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, said the West should take Vladimir Putin’s warnings “at face value” because Russia “bases its policies primarily on military force.”
And North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned that the threat of nuclear war has “never been greater” and accused the US of “aggressive and hostile” policies towards Pyongyang.
It is speculated that in view of Donald Trump’s assumption of the US presidency, Putin is attempting to quickly redefine Russia’s position, placing it in a negotiating position of strength in view of talks – which he expects to take place – with the American president.
Ukraine is reportedly losing ground in the Russian province of Kursk, with a senior Ukrainian military official stating that more than 40% of the occupied territory has been lost. Russia deployed tens of thousands of troops to Kursk after Kiev forces launched a surprise attack, surprising Moscow two and a half years after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At the height of the invasion, Ukraine reportedly controlled up to 1,376 square kilometers, although Kiev military sources say that has now been reduced to 800 square kilometers.
Donald Trump’s top security adviser has called for an end to the escalation of the war between Ukraine and Russia, urging both countries to come to the negotiating table.
