Drone strikes on Millerovo air base.
Via Russiancontext
A powerful barrage of Ukrainian drones pummeled Millerovo air base in Russia’s Rostov Oblast on Monday. Russian gunners opened fire, lighting up the early morning sky. Explosions rocked the base.
The targets may have included the few Russian air force Sukhoi Su-25 attack jets that still stage from the airfield for attacks on the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 34-month wider war on Ukraine, 100 miles to the west. There’s also a military academy at the base.
The specific target doesn’t really matter. The point of Ukraine’s deep-strike raids isn’t always to destroy particular buildings or pieces of equipment. According to Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight, “the goal is to steadily increase the cost of war for Russia” by instilling fear, increasing risk and disrupting operations.
It’s working. As Ukraine has deployed more, and more powerful, deep-strike munitions—U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems rockets, French- and British-made SCALP-EG and Storm Shadow cruise missiles and an array of locally-produced drones, rockets and cruise missiles—the Russians have reacted by shifting forces farther from the front line.
As recently as seven months ago, the Russian air force based as many as 305 warplanes within just 100 miles of the front line in Ukraine. When the Ukrainian army started lobbing ATACMS, each of which scatters hundreds of grenade-sized submunitions across a wide area, the Russians panicked—and began pulling back many of the warplanes, redeploying them to bases just beyond the 200-mile range of the ATACMS.
Last year, commercial satellites spotted dozens of Su-25s and Sukhoi Su-30 fighters at Millerovo. This fall, the same satellites observed just a handful of Su-25s left at the base.
The great warplane evacuation may have saved valuable airframes from destruction in the recent drone bombardment. But that doesn’t mean the Ukrainian raids on the Rostov Oblast airfield are pointless. The raids force the Russians into a time-distance dilemma.
Operating from bases as far as 400 miles from the front line, instead of just 100 miles, limits how often Russian warplanes can fly in a given week—and also limits how long they can linger over the front during their less frequent sorties. Sure, the Russian air force is preserving its planes. But in doing so, it’s making the planes less useful.
This is good math for Ukraine. And the math gets even better as Ukrainian munitions reach deeper into Russia, more often. “Ukraine is steadily enhancing its ability to increase the cost of war for Russia,” Tatarigami wrote.
