RFU News — Strategic Geopolitics

Today, the biggest news comes from Russia’s air force disintegrating in the sky.

Here, Ukraine’s secret intelligence service just revealed its newest master plot. All the way in the Russian Far East, a TU ninety-five strategic bomber recently crashed shortly after taking off. The aircraft was fully loaded with air-launched KH cruise missiles, as the ammunition cook-off was audible from miles away. The aircraft was en route from the far east to the Russian Olenya strategic airbase, to subsequently participate in that night’s Russian missile strike on Ukrainian cities. However, Russians report that all three of the four engines on the bomber had failed almost immediately after taking off, leaving the crew without enough altitude to safely parachute down. As a result, six of the seven crewmembers have been officially noted as killed in action, with one more being heavily wounded; as Russian citizens kept finding more bodies in the forest around the crash site.

Almost immediately, military analysts from all sides began suspecting the crash was the cause of a Ukrainian sabotage operation. They state that it would be extremely unusual for three of the four engines to fail simultaneously and right after take-off, causing the plane to be in the air high enough for a crash to destroy it completely, but low enough to ensure it could not make it to a suitable place for an emergency landing. Shortly thereafter, affiliates of Ukraine’s military channel confirmed everyone’s suspicions, indirectly stating that they were responsible for the sabotage that destroyed one of Putin’s most prized assets.

The reason that the strategic aircraft’s destruction is so critical for Russia, is that production of them has been halted completely since the year ninety-three, with the total number of any strategic bomber aircraft produced being only four since the outbreak of the full-scale invasion. During Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, eighteen had already been fully destroyed, and throughout the war Ukraine destroyed at least twenty-five of them in total. This leaves a total of fifty-one strategic bombers left in Russia’s arsenal today. The problems that this causes are significant. While Russia does not necessarily lose out on its capacity to fire missiles at Ukraine from them, keeping this number the same means that existing aircraft have a lot less time on the ground for maintenance and repairs, in addition to them flying a lot more hours than they would normally. Even if Ukraine does not sabotage them, Russian aircraft are increasingly falling out of the sky due to mechanical and technical failures. Just recently, two Russian Su thirty-five jet fighters collided with each other in the Kursk region, with onboard equipment being the unofficial cause of the crash. In total, fifteen Russian aircraft have been lost due to these crashes and accidents already this year. Further enhancing the destruction, Ukraine also directly struck two Russian TU ninety-five strategic bombers at Engels airbase recently. Before that, two more were destroyed at the same Engels airbase, as the Russian launching points for missile strikes against Ukraine are fully within Ukrainian strike distance.

Overall, Ukrainian operatives have infiltrated even Russia’s most critical strategic bomber fleets. As the events that caused the most recent bomber crash are all but confirmed to be due to sabotage, the irreplaceable bomber fleet is suffering losses it cannot sustain. Ukraine does not need to destroy Russia’s entire strategic aviation force at once. By continuously striking airbases, aircraft on the ground, and infiltrating the logistical and maintenance systems that keep these bombers flying, Ukraine can steadily increase the cost and difficulty of every Russian missile strike on Ukraine. With each aircraft lost, Russia’s strategic bomber fleet becomes smaller, older, and increasingly difficult to sustain.