Ukraine Intercepts 90% of Aerial Targets but Faces Critical Shortage of Anti-Ballistic Missiles

Because Russia didn’t become the isolated entity we had hoped they’d become. -The east, like India, still trades with them. -China has filled the gap Europe left in trade deficit. -Russia is in wartime economy and can save on quite a few “luxury” expenses without their people rising up because they were never a proper democracy to begin with. -Russia has gigantic cold war/Soviet stockpiles and this is the perfect war to deplete them. -North Korea has supplied them. -Iran has supplied them with their c**** drone technology and taught them how to make it themselves. (very c**** to make compared to missiles.) -Putin is not a rational man who wants what’s best for his nation. He’s getting old. He has burning ambitions to restore the soviet union and a passionate hate towards Ukraine. He will not back down.

China stepped in and provided an economic lifeline to Russia. Trade between them has surged 30-50% since the war started and China essentially filled the gap that other nations left behind. North Korean and Iran have also been providing military support (weapons, equipment, troops, etc).

The question is, why haven't you been paying attention to the most destructive war in our lifetime? Ukraine is more devastated than it was in World War 2. They lost more than 60% of all their energy infrastructure. Over 1 million in casualties; likely half a million dead. Over 10 million displaced. Tens of thousands of children abducted. Ukraine has lost a lot of territory in these 4 years. Invading soldiers are told if they get a home, they can keep it. That's how you occupy territory: You make people settle there. As for why the war has not ended: Russia has 140 million people. Even though casualties are high, they replenish them because they pay them relatively well. The timeline of the war as I remember it played out like this: Russia overextended and vastly misjudged the population's reaction. Russia lost a ton of armored units to Javelins. The HIMARs were pivotal against Russian artilley. Western aid from the USA and EU kept Ukraine barely afloat. We saw in real time the tech tree of warfare start to fill out with drones between both nations: Ukraine's FPV drone factories and Russia's deployment of the Iranian Shahed. There is alot of symmetry between them now in terms of what each deploys, but Ukraine is seen as the expert now. The war seems like it's in a stalemate, but the fighting is intense every day. There are aerial drones constantly surveying the battlefield at 100% coverage. They don't consider them "front lines" but instead "kill zones." If they see you, in 10 minutes a drone will make contact and detonate a IED on you. Every day hundreds of long strikes come from Russia, from ballistic missiles to drones, aimed at military and civilian targets.

Because they had an immense war chest that they'd been building for years, arguably a decade, prior to the invasion? Because they're doing irreparable harm to their economy and exhausting every conceivable financial angle to continue to prosecute this conflict? Because they're now relying on North Korea and until lately Iran, to supply them with munitions and personnel - in addition to enlisting huge numbers of foreign mercenaries?

Everyone was correct that the Russians couldn't bear the cost of war from their income alone, but they underestimated how large the soviet era stockpiles are. The war will probably continue until the Russians finish depleting those stockpiles.

This. According to Listnook Russia has been on the verge of economic collapse or rubbing out of X for like 3 years at this point.

Listnook experts got things wrong but more importantly western coverage, because it is pro Ukraine, tends to portray the Russian situation as worse than it really is. Partly fog of war, partly propaganda to keep morale and aid going

The US, Hungary and other Russian allies have made sure Russia hasn't run out of money. They have literally given them billions through projects and lifting sanctions and have weakened Europe also via wars, creating internal conflicts and blocking/shorting/diverting/stopping aid. They always pull some scheme.

Because the US got a baboon destroying the country so others are able to easily support russia to further harm US

I hardly saw any sentiment like this at the start, so I'm not sure your 'everyone' is correct. That said the russian liquid reserves have halved since 2021, recruitment costs are being gradually driven upwards or they can't find people to fight their war, and they've been unable to replenish stocks of ground vehicles.

It is not propaganda. In the sense that it is based off of recorded incidents in reality, not some rhetoric. [https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/monthly-analysis-of-russian-shahed-136-deployment-against-ukraine](https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/monthly-analysis-of-russian-shahed-136-deployment-against-ukraine) In 2026, there were 6462 launches and 5932 interceptions. These are not all Shahed. Some are diversion drones, etc. The Shahed hits are recorded at 12%. I wonder if people are looking at this and just shrug it off. There are hundreds of drones launched against Ukraine's civilians every day. Their daycares, their hospitals, their schools.

Almost certainly real. They have been facing shaheed/geran for years s and they are not difficult to take down

Probably propaganda. 90% are the best case scenarios for slow drones. Attacks with cruise missiles/Iskanders the rates plummet. [Syrskyi Powerpoints](https://youtu.be/b6JtJY9OQ28?si=jK6_dZ9BV0_gZnEh) slides from a year or so ago gave us %60 of all drones and %25 of all missiles.

You can't use lasers against ballistic missiles iirc. They are too fast in terminal phase and lasers have limited effective range. Wouldn't have enough time to destroy the missile and even if it could somehow do it, it's still likely falling exactly where it's aiming. Lasers are great for slower moving targets.

Good luck mass producing lasers and infrastructure to support it to cover major locations in Ukraine, while still having enough for own use. Bouncing to fancy new tech every time there's new development will leave you without means to defend. You need to settle on things to build on scale. You can always tweak any issues during mass production, while down the line new tech can be scaled up.

Nobody has lasers that are tested on ballistic missiles.

Ok general Armchair.

Yes to shahed drones. Likely no to ballistic missiles, they're too fast to hit basically. Drones aren't the best all end all solution and actually some of the most effective anti-ballisitic missile systems do just fire a mmhigh velocity interceptor with NO payload.

The problem with ballistic missiles is their enormeous speeds when descending towards the target, which means your interceptor also has to be very fast (too fast for anything called a drone).

I've recently learned that usa "interceptor" type missiles are good for low speed drones and cruise missiles and not very effective for "fast" hyper-sonic missiles (like the russian oreshnik and some iranian missiles). Take a look at Ted Postol interviews on YT.

I didn’t believe them before either. Ukraine claims a 99% interception rate, but then still taking damage