A Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber comes down near the Savasleyka airbase in a third military plane crash this year. Ukraine confirms its drones hit a plant in Izhevsk that manufactures air defenses systems and drones. Ukraine can still win the war if the West changes its strategy, Foreign Affairs says.
Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber comes down near Savasleyka airbase in third military plane crash this year
A Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber crashed in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russian media reported on Tuesday. This is Russia’s third military aircraft lost in a crash this year.
The plane went down in a forested area near the village of Veletma, around 10 kilometers from the Savasleyka airbase that is home to the 4th State Center for Training of Aviation Personnel and Testing under the Defense Ministry, Russian media said.
A crew of two pilots ejected safely. There was no damage or casualties on the ground, while the aircraft was destroyed. Firefighters were working on the site, according to the reports.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a Su-34 strike aircraft had crashed during a scheduled training flight.
“During the landing approach, the release system of one of the landing gears failed to deploy. The crew made several attempts to fix the malfunction in flight, but the situation did not change. At the command of the flight director, the crew brought the aircraft to a safe zone before ejecting. Both crew members have survived. The aircraft crashed in an uninhabited area without causing any damage,” the message reads.
Ukraine confirms its drones hit plant in Izhevsk that manufactures air defenses systems, drones
Ukraine’s Security Service carried out a drone attack on the Kupol Electromechanical Plant in the city of Izhevsk, in Russia’s Udmurtiya region, which produces air defense systems and drones for the Russian military, an unnamed source in the agency told The New Voice of Ukraine on Tuesday. The plant sits more than 1,300 kilometers from the border.
The facility takes orders from the defense ministry and specializes in the production of Tor and Osa air defense systems. It has also developed Garpiya attack drones. The plant has been sanctioned.
At least two drones hit the plant’s buildings, sparking a fire, the source said.
“Ukraine’s Security Service continues to launch strikes with surgical accuracy on the facilities of the Russian military industrial complex that work to support the war effort against Ukraine. Each such special operation reduces the enemy’s offensive potential, disrupts military production chains and demonstrates that even deep in Russia’s rear, there are no safe zones for its military infrastructure,” the source told The New Voice of Ukraine.
At least nine people were injured in the attack, Russian Telegram channels said. Flights at the local airport were temporarily suspended.
Regional governor, Aleksandr Brechalov confirmed that an industrial facility in Izhevsk was struck by drones.
Head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, said the Kupol Electromechanical Plant is one of the key manufacturers of the Tor air defense systems and Garpiya-A1 attack drones for the Russian military.
Residents of Saratov and Engels reported explosions overnight. Ukrainian drones also targeted the cities of Rostov, Taganrog and Novoshakhtinsk as well as the wider region of Rostov.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 60 Ukrainian drones were downed overnight on Tuesday over several Russian regions and occupied Crimea.
Ukraine can still win the war if West changes strategy, Foreign Affairs says
A piece written by Michael Carpenter for Foreign Affairs says that Western half measures have prolonged Russia’s war against Ukraine, but decisive action now could end it. The paragraphs below are quoted from the article. Read the full text here.
As Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted in Foreign Affairs in late May, neither Russia nor Ukraine “has much of an incentive to stop the fighting.” Ukraine refuses to surrender its sovereignty; Russia will not accept anything less than Ukrainian capitulation.
This conclusion, however, does not mean all is lost. Russia is much weaker economically than many analysts realize, and hard-hitting sanctions and export controls can still cripple its war economy. Ukraine is fighting smartly and could turn the tide on the battlefield with more high-end drones, air defense systems, long-range missiles, and munitions. With a change of strategy, Ukraine can still win the war in the near term—if both Europe and the United States decide to give it the assistance it needs.
Much of the premature optimism about a settlement earlier this year sprang from the prevailing belief that Ukraine was losing and would soon be forced to negotiate out of desperation. Trump stoked this narrative by asserting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had “no cards” left to play. U.S. Vice President JD Vance took it a step further, declaring that Ukraine—and its foreign backers—never had any “pathway to victory.”
Both assumptions, meanwhile, rest on an excessively narrow reading of battlefield dynamics and a limited understanding of the policy options available to Ukraine’s backers. Despite significant constraints on the aid that Europe and the United States have offered over the past three and a half years, Ukraine has achieved impressive victories. It repelled Russia’s initial push toward Kyiv in March 2022 with little more than shoulder-fired antitank missiles and grit, defying the predictions of many military analysts. Later that year, in a stunning rout for Russian forces, Ukraine reclaimed nearly a thousand square miles in the Kharkiv region without the benefit of modern armor or air cover. And just weeks ago, Ukraine shocked the world by pulling off Operation Spiderweb, a surprise attack that used cheap, remote-controlled drones to inflict substantial damage on Russia’s long-range aviation.
Indeed, what most consistently hindered Ukraine’s war effort was not Kyiv’s lack of manpower or weak resolve compared with Putin, but rather an insufficient supply of advanced military capabilities.
Long after Russia had deployed its most modern tanks, fifth-generation fighter aircraft, long-range air defense systems, and cutting-edge ballistic and cruise missiles, Ukraine was still waiting for deliveries of similar capabilities from its Western partners. When some of these systems finally did arrive, Ukraine was prohibited from using them on targets inside Russia until the United States relaxed its rules of engagement in mid-2024.
The truth is precisely the opposite of what the current [U.S.] administration has claimed. Instead of prolonging the war by giving Ukraine too much military assistance, Kyiv’s foreign allies have prolonged it by giving too little, and often with significant delays.
When it comes to punitive economic measures against Russia, the international response has been similarly half-baked. In the early days of the war, the United States and its G-7 allies crafted sanctions and export controls that were thought to pack a powerful punch but in fact had so many mitigations built in that they were robbed of their full impact. In April 2022, just after Russia’s invasion, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union removed seven Russian banks from SWIFT, the dominant international payments system. Many analysts had previously touted the move as a “nuclear option” that would decimate the Russian economy. But the delisting was so selective in its application—targeting only seven banks out of hundreds in Russia—that the Russian economy actually grew in 2023 and 2024. The gradual implementation of export controls also gave Russia time to adapt, as did numerous carve-outs for certain types of Russian banks or transactions.
Despite these missteps, victory for Ukraine—minimally defined as preserving its sovereignty and continuing to chart a course toward NATO and EU membership—is still squarely within reach. Achieving it, however, requires a fundamental shift in Western strategy, one that combines a large boost in military assistance with more robust economic measures to constrain Russia’s war economy. The linchpin for this new strategy is the West’s mobilization of the approximately $300 billion in frozen Russian assets held in their jurisdictions—mostly in the EU—to support Ukraine’s current fight.
These funds could serve multiple purposes. A portion could be invested in Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industrial base: its drone sector, for instance, has become highly innovative but needs additional investments for industrial-scale production, sensor development, and counter-electronic warfare measures. Another portion could help Ukraine purchase long-range missiles and other weapons systems from Europe, assisting the continent in building up production lines that support both Ukraine’s defense and, once the war is over, NATO deterrence.
Yet helping Ukraine win requires more than just transferring arms. Western governments must prioritize co-production agreements, intellectual property sharing, and defense manufacturing partnerships—especially in missile and ammunition manufacturing, armored vehicles, and drone and counterdrone technologies, as well as cyber, command and coordination systems, and electronic warfare systems.
Despite being outnumbered, Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to offset its disadvantages with asymmetric tactics, such as sinking parts of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet with maritime drones and missiles and denying Russia air superiority by using its limited air defenses creatively. With more sustained military, technological, and economic support, Ukraine could develop new advantages, such as better integrating drones, land mines, and long-range fires to pin down Russian forces and take out their logistics nodes.
To buttress Ukraine’s military capabilities, the West must also target the economic foundations of Russia’s war effort. Fortunately for Ukraine, Russia’s economy remains fragile.
Currently, Europe is still importing roughly $23.5 billion worth of Russian oil and natural gas. If Europe is to get serious about ending the war, it must decrease Moscow’s energy income and foreign currency flows. Moreover, Russia has systematically evaded the G-7’s oil price cap, significantly weakening its intended impact. Western countries should impose a full embargo or steep tariffs on Russian oil and gas and should tighten regulations, engage in more systematic maritime tracking, and take stronger legal measures to strictly enforce the G-7 price cap.
To meaningfully disrupt Russia’s trade, devalue the ruble, and increase economic uncertainty, the G-7 should remove all Russian banks from SWIFT and subject them to full blocking sanctions, which prohibit all transactions with the sanctioned entity. If financial institutions in foreign countries enable sanctions evasion, they, too, should be subjected to secondary sanctions.
Western governments can also redouble their efforts regarding export controls on high-tech components, including semiconductors, precision machine tools, optics, aviation components, and industrial software.
The U.S. Commerce Department should further restrict Russia’s access to “dual use” goods—products valuable in both civilian and military applications—in order to constrain its production of high-tech weapons and undermine its military-industrial complex.
Yet it is also important to recognize that Russia is no longer waging this war alone.
By the fall of that year, however, Iran began supplying Russia with drones. Then, by 2023, China emerged as Russia’s primary supplier of dual-use technologies, including accounting for over 90 percent of imported microelectronics. North Korea, meanwhile, provided short-range ballistic missiles and, later, troops.
European leaders acknowledge China’s key role in enabling the Russian war effort, but they have not taken serious steps to stop it; mere expressions of disapproval are not enough. If the war in Ukraine is to be contained and ultimately resolved, Europe will have to make clear to Beijing that normal commercial relations cannot coexist with China’s support for a war against the European security order.
Putin’s ambition to dominate Ukraine is unlikely ever to diminish, even as Russian casualties approach a million. What can change are the battlefield and defense-industrial conditions that make Putin’s ambition feasible.
Once the strategic risks accumulate to the extent that the Kremlin has to ask difficult questions about Russia’s ability to defend itself against other hostile actors, it will be compelled to reassess its approach.
Indeed, from a strategic vantage point, Russia has already lost this war. Regardless of how much additional territory changes hands, the Ukrainian nation is lost to Russia forever. No matter how many billions of dollars Moscow spends on propaganda and “reeducation,” filtration camps and torture chambers, it will never convince Ukrainians to accept its rule as legitimate. What Ukraine needs now is the time, tools, and space to prove to the Kremlin that an occupation is not just immoral but incompatible with Russia’s long-term security needs.
Ukraine’s allies have a choice. They can continue the current approach of transatlantic division and stillborn diplomacy, risking an expanded, longer, and far costlier war. Or they can act decisively to help Ukraine turn the tide, throttle the tempo of Russian weapons manufacturing, and empower the leadership in Kyiv to negotiate from a position of strength. A peace agreement may forever remain elusive, but once the cost of continued fighting becomes untenable, Russia can eventually be forced to settle for an armistice similar to the one that effectively ended the Korean War. Once that point is reached and the fighting diminishes, the space will emerge for Ukraine to renew its democratic mandate, resettle refugees, reconstruct infrastructure, and—perhaps most critically—finish its accession process with the EU and NATO. The return of all occupied territories may take longer, but Ukraine will have established the foundations of strategic victory.
