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Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
Ukrainian UAVs—that is, unmanned aerial vehicles—are in the news.
In my last dispatch, I mentioned this week’s massive Russian drone attack. Over the last four years, Moscow has launched around 60,000 Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones at Ukraine, killing innocent people and wrecking civilian infrastructure.
Now, Russia’s Iranian allies are using those same Shaheds against American servicemembers and allies in the Middle East. Kyiv’s expertise in drone interception is in high demand because of the Iran war.
So what better time to meet with one of the senior-most officers in Ukraine’s military?
The Renew Democracy Initiative’s delegation had the opportunity to get together with Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force. He built out Ukraine’s most effective UAV unit, and I want to share some of his insights in drone warfare with you.
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Pavlo is a Soviet Army veteran and entrepreneur in his late fifties. When the Russians invaded, he volunteered to join Ukraine’s armed forces.
How did he become a drone pioneer?
Pavlo’s business ventures ranged from agriculture to television, but he didn’t have a background with drones. Well, war forces people to adapt, and it was just days into Russia’s all-out assault that Pavlo and his comrades first witnessed one of these pilotless killing machines at work.
Ever the innovator, Pavlo set up what would become known as Lasar’s Group so that Ukraine could counter the threat of unmanned Russian weapons with UAVs of their own.
Pavlo and his friends put their own money toward building drones. In the early stages of the war, Lasar’s Group tinkered away in a garage. (I’d like to watch that episode of Silicon Valley!)
In our meeting, Pavlo boasts that Lasar’s Group has destroyed $13 billion in Russian equipment. Many Ukrainian interceptor drones cost just $1,000 while knocking out Shaheds with a price tag as much as 50 times as high.
Yet in the US-Israel war with Iran, the cost ratio favors Tehran as America continues to rely on expensive interceptors. The cheapest options will run you more than $100,000 per shot, and Washington pays millions of dollars for others.
Russia works closely with Iran. We need to be working more closely with our democratic allies like Kyiv. Two US presidential administrations had four years of warning on the Iranian drone threat as demonstrated in Ukraine. Even if we weren’t going to go to war with the Islamic Republic (and you can certainly debate the wisdom of the current intervention), we should have been much better prepared to protect American lives and interests in the Middle East.
You may have seen the headlines that 200 Ukrainian drone experts are headed off to the Middle East to support the US. Seeing what Ukraine is going through, I don’t think anyone would blame those drone experts if they stayed in Ukraine. (OK, maybe JD Vance would…)
Pavlo tells us that Ukraine’s priority is standing with its friends—first and foremost, the United States of America. And there the Ukrainians are, in the Gulf, protecting our troops.
What the hell are we doing?
America’s Greed Problem: The Reason Why Democracy Is Crashing
When the wealthy get wealthy they want more This has become the billionaires creed “I can never have enough I must get more You can never have enough (fill in the blank eg boats planes etc)”
The Bezos’, Zuckerberg’s, Theil’s, Musk’s of the billionaire world use the excuse that “they are building their corporations for the good of their shareholders or if they want to play the patriotic card, the country” But let’s be honest The bottom line is that the only reason they exist is to line their pockets at the expense of the peons who are foolish enough to support their companies so that they can make $$$ on their investment
So there is a large growing class of the wealthy American investment community which the average American doesn’t participate And you can see where this is going These top of the $$$ peak in the country is supported by a vast network of investors throwing large sums of cash around to gain even greater wealth And this leads to groups of people who want to support a fraudulent criminal organization like the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) to keep the greed game going
What this looks like is a 21st century version of the roaring 20’s featured in the Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby which didn’t end well And how this got started goes back to the government’s need to keep the state afloat economically through QE This put massive amounts of $$$ into the system which got multiplied in the equity markets but for the average American devalued the dollar to the point in terms of gold is now worth 5cents of what it was in 1971