The kamikaze drones being used by the Russian army in a string of recent attacks on Kyiv come from Iran. Moscow has had to turn to one of its last remaining allies for tech weaponry to maintain its assault on civilians in the Ukraine capital. Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan says the outreach for Iranian drones shows just how far Russia has fallen in industrial capacity, and underscores Vladimir Putin’s growing desperation in the Ukraine war.
Excerpted from Peter’s Oct. 20 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
Russia’s reliance on Iran for armed drones and missiles is a resounding fall from grace for the one-time defense manufacturing rival to the United States. And a telling indicator of not only just how far the Russians have fallen, but how few reliable friends Moscow has left. It is also a stunning reversal in leverage for Putin, who for decades has used his ability to lean on Tehran (especially when it comes to U.S.-Iranian spats) as a tool against Washington, DC.Beyond the geopolitical intrigue, the shoddiness of Iranian tech underscores the determination of Russian leadership to inflict as much pain and damage to Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure as possible. Iranian drones are unreliable, loud and easily shot down. Russia has to overcompensate by sending small swarms all at once to take out their intended targets –many of which are residential areas, train stations and power infrastructure. Really hard to accidentally target any of these over a half-dozen times…
Look at the targets that the Russians have been choosing. Glass bridges, power plants, apartment blocks…things that are absolutely, 100% not military targets. That tells us two things. Number one, they’re not just deliberately committing war crimes, they’re programming those same coordinates in five, 10, 20 times to make sure they hit the target, which is about as deliberate as war crimes can get.
Second, there are almost no reports of the Russians targeting military targets. Now, military targets evolve. And so, in order to hit a building that has what you want, you need some intelligence. That’s probably why the Russians aren’t going after them, because they have none. Their satellite reconnaissance is not working, or at least it’s not being communicated to the people who are launching these assaults. They don’t have fighter or reconnaissance plane cover at all, and their drones aren’t good enough with optics and range to provide them with the basic information they need for military targeting. So all that’s left is civilian targeting.