Vladimir Putin’s Air Force Secretary has deployed FELON’s fifth-generation supersonic fighter jets over Russia, but they are too “risk-unfriendly” to fly over Ukraine, the UK Defense Secretary said on Monday. rice field.
They believe the “stealth” aircraft was instead used to launch long-range missiles over Ukraine.
Five of them were found at an airbase believed to be used to launch missions against Ukraine.
The Ministry of Defense in London said in its latest intelligence briefing: FELON is Russia’s most advanced 5th generation supersonic fighter with stealth technology and advanced avionics.
“These missions are likely to be limited to flying over Russian territory and firing long-range air-to-ground or air-to-air missiles into Ukraine.”
The briefing added: These aircraft may have been involved in operations against Ukraine, as this is the only known FELON base of his.
“Russia is most likely prioritizing avoiding reputational damage, reduced export prospects, and compromise of classified technology resulting from the loss of FELON to Ukraine.
This is a sign of Russia’s continued risk-averse approach to using its air force in war. ”
The UK, US, Ukraine, and their allies are fighting an information war against the Putin regime, so their briefings should be treated with caution, but they are far more believable than the propaganda put out by the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their troops were repelling constant Russian attacks on Bakhmut and other towns in the eastern region of Donbass.
They also denied the Kremlin’s claim that 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the missile strike.
According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russia has carried out seven missile attacks, 31 airstrikes and 73 salvo rocket launchers in the past day.
Ukrainian forces have repelled attacks on 14 settlements, including Bakhmut, he added.
“Bakhmut is holding up despite everything,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Sunday.
“And even though most of the town has been destroyed by Russian attacks, our soldiers are repelling constant Russian attempts to advance.”
The nearby town of Soledad was holding up “despite the much more destruction and the situation being very difficult,” he added.
On Sunday, Russia announced that 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a missile attack on Kramatorsk, northwest of Bakhmut.
However, a reporter who visited the scene found an empty house.
They saw two university dormitories that Moscow said were temporarily housing Ukrainian staff.
However, none of the dormitories in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appear to have been hit or severely damaged. According to the reporter, there were no obvious signs that soldiers lived there, and there were no corpses or traces of blood.
Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Ukrainian Army in the Eastern Region, explained that the mass casualty claim was an attempt to show that the Russian Defense Ministry responded strongly to recent attacks on Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
“This is an intelligence operation of the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Cherevaty told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspirun News.
Russia’s defense ministry said last week that mobile phones used by its military have destroyed buildings and killed dozens of conscripts in the eastern city of Makyovka.
Kyiv claims about 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the New Year’s attacks, with the Russian military admitting 89 were killed.
Putin offered a ceasefire over the Orthodox Christmas period.
But on Monday, Mr Zelensky renewed what he called Russia’s failure to honor a declared ceasefire by planning an attack on a Ukrainian city.
“The Russians were bombarding Kherson with incendiary bombs right after Christmas,” he said, referring to the southern city abandoned by Russian troops in November.
“Attacks on Kramatorsk and other cities of Donbass – attacks targeting civilians, and just as Moscow was reporting the ‘silence’ of its troops. ”
As Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine approaches a year later, Russian forces are under domestic pressure for battlefield success.
Hawkish voices have called for an escalation of the war effort after setbacks such as the loss of occupied territory and high casualty rates.
Some prominent Russian military bloggers have criticized the Russian Defense Ministry’s claims.
“Let’s talk about ‘scams’,” wrote a prominent pre-war military blogger with more than 500,000 subscribers, who posted under the name of Military Informant, on the Telegram messaging app.
“If the building had not actually been attacked (even though the lights remained on), it is not clear who, or why, decided that 600 Ukrainian soldiers had died en masse inside. is not.
“Instead of the actual destruction of enemy personnel, which would have been a worthy response, only media manipulation of retaliation was invented.”
Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have often overestimated the losses of their opponents while minimizing their own losses.
A senior Ukrainian military official said last week that about 760 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in two attacks on Moscow-controlled areas in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
Western countries estimate that more than 100,000 Russian military personnel were killed or wounded in Putin’s war, Ukrainian military casualties were comparable, and about 40,000 civilians were killed indiscriminately. Killed by artillery and airstrikes.
