🇳🇴🇺🇦 Norway is allocating 6.5 billion Norwegian kroner (nearly $640 million USD) to purchase drones and related technologies for Ukraine. Drones will be purchased from Ukrainian and European manufacturers, the Norwegian government announced on June 24.
Hume: I want to say a word if I may about Jennifer Griffin who was attacked by the defense secretary today. An attack I think she did not deserve. Her knowledge and experience at the Pentagon is unmatched and I have had and still have the greatest regard for her. The attack on her was unfair.
No longer confining their terrorism in the EU to burning shopping malls, assassinations, and attempts to blow up commercial airliners, Russians have escalated once again, burning military vehicles in Germany. https://t.co/Wwx0OWoVpS
Russian officials are promoting purposefully vague rhetoric about the "root causes" of Russia's war against Ukraine in order to allow the Kremlin the flexibility to adapt its demands as it sees fit. ⬇️
🤔A Russian government plane secretly landed in the US
According to data from Flightradar24, a Russian government aircraft with the tail number RA-96018 took off from Moscow, landed in St. Petersburg, and then flew to the United States.
The plane landed at JFK Airport in New York on June 25 at 3:27 PM local time (10:27 PM Kyiv time). A few hours later, it departed for Washington, where it landed at 8:56 PM the same day (3:56 AM Kyiv time on June 26).
It's unknown who was on board.
Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, killed by a Russian missile, won a 2025 Orwell Prize for a book Looking at Women Looking at War.
In Trostianets, she interviewed a woman who survived a Russian execution: shot at, thrown in a pit, awoke under two dead bodies, the Guardian. 1/
30/ BTR-MDM are very rarely seen and destroyed in Ukraine, and it seems they're produced in very low numbers (understandably so). Probably 20-30 per year, at most. https://t.co/5pLaBYt5V0
29/ Usually for each monthly batch of 30 BMP-3s, Kurganmashzavod also delivers a batch of 8-10 BMD-4M. So probably 100-120 BMD-4Ms produced per year: https://t.co/vluZMsq1l5
28/ Only BMD-4Ms and BTR-MDMs are still being manufactured, and they seem to be produced at high rate in the case of BMD-4Ms (not a surprise, Kurgan seems to be the most efficient Russian armor producer, as with BMP-3s): https://t.co/a6MIOjVa6v
27/ Based on recent losses and images from the 144th, it doesn’t look like they’ll spike again unless the remaining stored BMDs are finally taken from their respective storage bases. I estimate they refurbish up to 100-150 BMD-2s/BTR-Ds per year.
25/ It times perfectly with the rate at which BMDs were taken from storage bases earlier in the war, and has sincle slowed down notably: https://t.co/VIPqAuXZcc
24/ As with the 81st, the refurbishment rate must be high and saw a spike not so long ago, during 2023/24 (91 in 2021, 96 in 2022, 273 in 2023 and 128 in 2024):
23/ Next thing we’ll focus on is the 144th BTRZ. This one repairs BMP-2s, but mainly BMD-2s (maybe BTR-Ds as well), being the only BTRZ that refurbishes older BMDs:
22/ In the case of Armazas itself, only this increasing pile of hulls might point to either increasing production rate or that the plant also does repairs to damaged BTRs (besides actual losses in combat obviously):
21/ All the types of AFVs discussed in this thread, unlike MBTs and BMPs, lack hard evidence regarding production figures, but I think Armazas produces +500 BTR-82s per year. https://t.co/7ARQJsqJe4
20/ Actual numbers are unclear, but clearly the production rate is pretty high, considering how many are lost in Ukraine and how quickly they’re replenished: https://t.co/P2T8NJsLcp