One of the primary reasons Russia’s violent incursion in Ukraine has so far failed to capture the much smaller nation is its shoddy weapons, which fail 60 percent of the time, according U.S. officials interviewed by Reuters.
Normally a 20 percent rate of failure would be considered “high,” an unnamed U.S. weapons expert said. A rate that is three times as much explains why Russia has not been able to capture Ukraine, which has a significantly smaller military capability.
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russia has depended on air-launched cruise missiles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project, cited by Reuters. The failures could be abandoned or misfired launches or malfunctioning of the missiles not detonating on impact.
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Among the civilian targets of Russia’s fevered attack is the Mariupol Drama Theater, where it was originally believed that as many as 1,300 people were thought to be hiding and in front of which were letters of the word “children” so giant they were visible from the sky. On Friday, Petr Andryuschenko, an adviser to the deputy mayor of Mariupol, told BBC World Service that instead around 600 people were in the theater. On Friday, CNN reported that 300 bodies have been removed from the rubble so far. Around 200 people hiding in the makeshift shelter survived the attack. It remains unclear how many dead or survivors may still be below the collapsed theater. It is the single largest number of Ukrainian deaths so far during the war.
Fighting continues alongside diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire. Speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit attended by President Joe Biden, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters that Ukraine and Russia had reached what he called “an understanding” on four of the six “topics of disagreement” of ongoing negotiations. “At first, Ukraine was hung up on this issue, but later on, Zelensky began to express that he could withdraw from NATO membership. Another issue is the acceptance of Russian as an official language. Zelensky also admitted this. Russian is a language spoken almost everywhere in Ukraine. There is no problem at this point either,” Erdoğan said. The Turkish leader also complimented Ukrainian President Volodymor Zelensky on his “smart leadership” by saying he would need a referendum to agree on any points with Russia. Ukraine did not confirm or deny the Turkish president’s comments.
