Ballistic missiles won’t make the difference in the Donbas — drones will

Ukraine’s Turkish-supplied Bayraktar drones are at much greater risk in eastern Ukraine, as Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense think tank, noted this week. “The density of Russian ground-based air defence systems is also much greater here,” he says. And he warns that “Russia is likely to have localized air superiority over much of Donbas during the next phase of ground operations.” Bronk predicts Russian warplanes will have greater freedom of action in the skies over the Donbas than they had closer to Kyiv. They will be better protected by ground-based air defense systems, he adds.