Ukrainian Defensive War against the Russian Invasion - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

8 killed, 60 injured as Russia launches mass strike on Dnipro, other cities across Ukraine​

April 25, 2026 4:14 am
(Updated: April 25, 2026 8:02 pm)
Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

Russia launched one of its largest aerial strikes on Ukraine overnight and during the day on April 25, killing at least eight people and injuring at least 57, officials reported.

Moscow's forces deployed 47 missiles and 619 drones overnight, primarily targeting the city of Dnipro while also striking the Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa, and Kyiv oblasts, the Air Force reported. Ukrainian air defenses reportedly intercepted 580 drones and 30 missiles.

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Governor Oleksandr Hanzha reported that a four-story building and an unspecified "industrial infrastructure facility" were struck in Dnipro amid the attack.

At least four people have been killed during the attacks overnight, Hanzha said, with authorities previously reporting that more people may be trapped under the debris.

Attacks against the city continued during the day on April 25, killing another person. The daytime strike targeted the same residential area that was hit overnight, the governor reported......
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Kyiv Independent archive / original link - Kyiv Independent

Another almost routine communist crime. Ukraine is able to attack Russia every day with few to no civilian casualties, yet Russia hurts civilians without fail. Russia made a choice to do harm civilians for reasons of terror. It means Ukrainians go abroad and abroad they are usually less trouble to Russia, altho Canada's big Ukrainian immigrant population has played a role in Canada's unstinting support for Ukraine.



40 years after the Chornobyl, hundreds of small settlements cope with an existence which was not easy before it.


TLDR News EU on how Ukraine's prospects have improved. Among the factors are that the gypo Orbán is not obstructing the 90bn loan he had already agreed to, Ukraine's drone tech is improving. Autonomous drones don't need to worry about jamming. Long range strike capabilities also help. Ukraine has according to Reuters taken out 40% of Russia's crude export capacity. Production cut from 400k to 300k. This doesn't help finances with GDP shrinking and deficits soaring. Now if Hormuz remains closed, this will help Putin. Also Ukraine has cost effective interceptors now. Western systems are not always available and so Ukraine has systems covering 70% of drone interceptions that cost little more than $2000 per unit. This is far, far cheap than Patriots that are not as easily available and can be denied by an erratic US Administration. Also thanks to the war in Iran, Ukrainian interception is far cheaper. A Patriot is $4 million a missile and it could be hitting a $7000 Shaheed drone. Ukraine mass produces a cost effective alternative. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE have signed security pacts with Ukraine in that connection. It means a welcome injection of greenbacks for Ukraine's drone industry. Ukrainian firms have also launched joint ventures with Denmark, Finland and Latvia and now Germany (despite the Rheinmetall's boss's foolish mockery of the Ukrainian drone industry, which suggests an MIC bossman is annoyed the extra military spending could be very carefully rationed). Italy is now discussing a deal too, so Ukraine is no longer a supplicant. Perhaps this result in Putin taking negotiations seriously.

THE END OF 2024 LOOKED GRIM FOR UKRAINE: President Trump was promising no further aid, and Hungary under Viktor Orbán was vowing to block any further European Union financial support. Seeing an opportunity, Russia poured all the manpower possible into collapsing Ukrainian front lines, hoping to convince Trump that Russia’s victory and Ukraine’s defeat were inevitable, so that he would pressure Ukraine into a peace treaty favorable to Putin.

Instead, Ukraine dug in. They continued to innovate, and gained superiority in drone warfare at the short, medium, and long ranges. As a result, the front lines have remained essentially stabile, while Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower and losing more people than it is recruiting.

Extending out from the front lines in both directions runs a zone ten to twenty kilometers wide where drones from both sides constantly prowl for new victims. Ukraine has achieved slight advantage in this part of the war. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) finds that Ukraine now has a distinct numerical and technological edge in drones on the battlefield.

Russia has opted for producing large quantities of a few types of drones rather than investing in technical innovation, but at least for now, Ukrainian production of small drones appears to exceed Russia’s, with at least 3–4 million units produced in 2025 and a goal of up to 7 million in 2026. This is within spitting distance of the 10 million per year that Ukraine estimates it will need to completely overwhelm Russia and achieve decisive victory. It’s also a tremendous advantage. Drones are the dominant force on the lines today, causing approximately 75–80 percent of all casualties. Ukraine now has 1.3 drones at the front line for every 1 Russian drone, and they are of better quality. Additionally, Ukraine has reportedly begun operating AI powered small drone “swarms” that are semi-autonomous and coordinate their attacks.

For most of the war, Russia has had the advantage over Ukraine in number and quality of medium-range First Person View (FPV) drones than Ukraine, like the Lancet, which can hit up to 70 kilometers behind enemy lines. This range is similar to the GMLRS rockets used on HIMARS launchers. The last time Ukraine had the advantage in medium-range attacks was after the introduction of HIMARS to the battlefield in 2022. Over time, HIMARS gradually lost effectiveness, due to Russian electronic countermeasures and a lack of resupply of ammunition from the United States. The result is that Ukraine, unlike Russia, had struggled to hit moving targets more than 20–30 kilometers behind the front lines.


This is changing rapidly. Ukraine’s home-grown drone systems like the FP-2, RAM-2X, and Hornet can now strike targets at medium ranges. They are small enough to operate with near impunity against air defenses, and they are also more technologically advanced than Russia’s Lancet.

The latest Ukrainian medium-range drones reportedly have the ability use AI for navigation. Terrain-matching guidance systems have been around for decades—American Tomahawk cruise missiles use terrain contour mapping and digital scene matching area correlator systems to plot their paths to their targets. They compare the terrain they see below it with what they expect to see—but the use of AI makes the Ukrainian systems even more advanced and flexible. This autonomous navigation capability prevents them from being jammed. They can also find and lock onto targets visually using AI, making them impossible to jam during the terminal phase of their attack. Amazingly, the TFL-1 autonomy module has a unit cost of only $70.

Ukraine’s Hornets reportedly can navigate autonomously, identify targets using AI, and conduct attacks autonomously far behind Russian lines. They also reportedly can autonomously find and attack targets as well using optical recognition AI. This is beginning to have a significant impact on Russian logistics, and the situation will only get worse as production ramps up.

The Ukrainian army has increasingly been using medium-range drones to destroy out the high-value anti-aircraft radars and launch vehicles that Russian forces placed well behind the front lines. Eliminating Russian air defenses not only makes it easier for Ukrainian fighter-bombers to operate closer to the front lines, but also opens corridors for longer-range Ukrainian strikes into Russian-controlled territory and even into Russia itself.

There are signs this is working. Ukrainian drones have been spotted operating with impunity over Donetsk. With Russian defenses degraded, as well as increased Ukrainian production and continuous technical advancement, more Ukrainian drones appear to be getting through to important targets far behind the lines.......
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The Bulwark original link / The Bulwark archive

The Bulwark also talks about Ukraine's changed prospects. While they're known not to be Trump superfans, the reference to POTUS are fairly slight and neutral for them.
 
Agreed.
Ghostse said:
So what this boils down to is when you are told "We need more money for dem medical programs" its not saving hundreds or thousands or lives like you're told.
those programs aren't helping the working poor. They are helping hoodrats and illegals, mostly with dialysis because they let their diabetes get so bad their kidneys failed. And what they want isn't "life saving" dialysis so much as more dialysis becasue they haven't changed their lifestyle an iota.
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Same goes for "curing malaria" or whatever in the turd world -- it's a pipeline for future black and brown rapefugees to White countries.
Ghostse said:
I have said this before and will say it again:
Insane bills are because the hospital has to charge everyone the same rate. Normal people aren't expected to pay those prices, insurance is. Simply asking for the hospital financial aid department and asking for an itemized bill will usually drop your bill 25-35%. There are "needs based" programs with higher income limits than you'd think that will effectively give you grants to reduce you bill for their services. Entering into a payment plan at a non-profit hospital will usually see your debt waved in year or two due to how their bookkeeping works.
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The legalized casino of health insurance is how we got Luigi. Even if that was a psyop, the stories that came out afterward should —but never will —foment pogroms.
 
Balr0g said:
So which of the old WW2 fighters would be good as drone interceptor? Spitfires? Or maybe German FW-190's? Because that was the idea of the video: use Piston-engine fighters as a "cheap" way to defend against swarms of drones
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Ironically, I'd actually say the IL-2, probably the IL-2M which has the gunners turret.

Make a new version entirely made of metal, instead of the original which used wood, and it probably could survive outright drone suicide attacks from drones that weren't killed at range. Also has the advantage of being a good ground attack support, like some bootleg soviet version of the A-10 before that plane existed.

And as an added bonus, that specific plane was very, very dear to one Joseph Stalin, and thus important to the USSR as a whole. It would give Russia a lot of problems to have footage of their own forces attacking such a major soviet icon.

Snekposter said:
The Bell designs like the Airacobra and King Cobra, as they were optimized for low-mid altitude performance and were unusually maneuverable for their size. They were also the only American planes to mount a propeller cannon, in their case a 37mm that could be easily replaced with the M230L firing VT.

But realistically, none of them since the engines are finnicky, underpowered, and require special aviation-grade fuel compared to a modern turboprop that can run on just about anything from vodka to kerosene to used cooking oil.
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I would expect that if trying to make a WWII style fighter for anti-drone ops was even remotely viable, the Ukranians would simply develop their own in-house model with modern technology, as opposed to actually just recycling designs that lacked pressurized cockpits.
 
In Russia's budget getting fucked news, Bessent rules out further sanctions waivers for Russia.
(not quoting/arching because its just that; google bessent sanctions waiver if that link dies)

Self Community Note: Bessent said that last time and Russia got a 30 day extension so hold your celebrating. But it shows that wider US policy is still anti-Zigger
Balr0g said:
So which of the old WW2 fighters would be good as drone interceptor? Spitfires? Or maybe German FW-190's? Because that was the idea of the video: use Piston-engine fighters as a "cheap" way to defend against swarms of drones
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@Snekposter has the real answer: None. It is fun to imagine and think about, but reality is super gay.

Snekposter said:
But realistically, none of them since the engines are finnicky, underpowered, and require special aviation-grade fuel compared to a modern turboprop that can run on just about anything from vodka to kerosene to used cooking oil.
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They are old and finnicky, parts aren't produced at scale anymore, have lots of "fun" quirks that are likely to kill a pilot. And while its nothing compared to a jet they still guzzle fuel.
The planes themselves have issues too. You don't need to dog fight Shaheeds, just line up a shot. The shaheeds aren't shooting back so armor isn't needed.
And that's before we get into the avionics packages, or rather lack there of. Even night fighter packages, the radar sucked.

This would be different if you had a time portal to say 1950 when you could access hundreds of mint P-51s as well as a population of pilots already trained in their use. But you are looking at a small collection of flyable WWII warbirds and the few hundred people who fly them.

The other issue, specifically for Ukraine, is that the air environment is contested. this is less of an issue if you are say Israel or the UAE, but Ukraine has to deal with the very likely odds of Russian air defense of CAP pouncing on their anti-drone sweepers. P-51s don't have flare or chaff launchers.

And @Fatsuit Shinji has the other issues with taking on drones the side of a pickup truck bed:

Fatsuit Shinji said:
Where you can look at the other vital things like cockpit ergonomics and pilot visibility, as most fighters had even back then had shit visibility for the pilots.
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If you had me going full milsperg fapdream on the Future Interceptor:
I would have two air frames. A "forward deployed" interceptor and a rear-line patrol craft.

for the interceptor,
Either a real-mounted or twin-engine design with a glass nose so the pilot could have maximum visibility. Varible angle props so the pilot can alter stall speed - that lets them get on station quickly then slow down for intercept.
Modern GPS and battlespace integration so they can be pinged drone locations. They should be armed with at least 20mm canon, maybe 30mm or 40mm - basically you want to cram in a prox fuse. Ideally the guns would be if not fully turreted have some travel in them.
Avionics youd want good ECM and EW packages to ensure the drone is going to be an easy kill.

For the patrol craft, basically we're talking a more ergonomic version of what Ukraine is already putting up: a loitering high endurance craft with radar and a turreted gun. again, I'd go for a 20mm prox-fused cannon minimum, but they are on the right track.

The problem with this exercise, besides me needing to put down a tarp, is that we are already seeing jet-powered shaheeds enter the battlespace. There are many issues with upgrading shaheeds to jet-speeds - such as you need much more powerful computation to keep it on target - but let's say Ukraine had 500 interceptors and 200 patrol craft ready today, crews trained.
once they completely shut down Russia's rotax Shaheeds, Russia wil just double down on jet shaheeds and now you turboprop hunters are obsolete.
 
Balr0g said:
So which of the old WW2 fighters would be good as drone interceptor? Spitfires? Or maybe German FW-190's? Because that was the idea of the video: use Piston-engine fighters as a "cheap" way to defend against swarms of drones
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A modern prop plane with modern radar (even if albeit lightweight) and modern infrared.

Something like the Super Tucano or a revived A-67 Dragon (but with actual radar).
Alternatively, a subsonic cheap COTS jet fighter like the Textron Scorpion.

The problem with "just revive a WW2 propplane" is that even propellor plane technology has advanced significantly in the last 80 years. It'd be like expecting to bring back WW2 era jeeps and trucks for the modern battlefield.

No. 7 cat said:
Another almost routine communist crime. Ukraine is able to attack Russia every day with few to no civilian casualties, yet Russia hurts civilians without fail. Russia made a choice to do harm civilians for reasons of terror. It means Ukrainians go abroad and abroad they are usually less trouble to Russia, altho Canada's big Ukrainian immigrant population has played a role in Canada's unstinting support for Ukraine.
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Russia does this shit routinely and it's crickets at best and "oh yeah this is why Ukraine can't win" at worst.
 
Ghostse said:
The problem with this exercise, besides me needing to put down a tarp, is that we are already seeing jet-powered shaheeds enter the battlespace. There are many issues with upgrading shaheeds to jet-speeds - such as you need much more powerful computation to keep it on target - but let's say Ukraine had 500 interceptors and 200 patrol craft ready today, crews trained.
once they completely shut down Russia's rotax Shaheeds, Russia wil just double down on jet shaheeds and now you turboprop hunters are obsolete
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Just to it done and out of the way, obvious would be to heavily modernize the very first jet generation fighters like Messerschmitt Me 262,, Gloster Meteor and so on. Leading to major issue of them and very soon 2nd generation jet fighters also becoming obsolete. Due to just how fast they're speed running through military aviation history with the more expensive higher end drones and missiles.

Imho any WWII to Korean War era aircraft would be better off built as drones. Whether for anti-drone anti-missile, ground attack or long range missile boat to try and keep Russian FAB lobbers from getting too close to the border.
 
Fatsuit Shinji said:
Just to it done and out of the way, obvious would be to heavily modernize the very first jet generation fighters like Messerschmitt Me 262,, Gloster Meteor and so on. Leading to major issue of them and very soon 2nd generation jet fighters also becoming obsolete. Due to just how fast they're speed running through military aviation history with the more expensive higher end drones and missiles.
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The issue with early jet fighters is they absolutely Foodie-Beauty-at-golden-corral-and-they-close-in-15-minutes hork down fuel. They have zero loiter.

The problem for drone- makers is once you start hitting near-sonic speeds, between turbine production and sensor/compute, your drones will be hitting the 6-to-7 figure range, and now patriot saturation isn't a viable strategy as the cost delta is closed. once you go to super-sonic speeds, you are pretty much at that 2-million mark and you realize you've just convergence evolved a cruise missile with a very expensive engine (but one that requires lower manufacturing tolerances; see previous post about 'cost is greater, but the tech level needed is lower')
 
Slurgle said:
> muh every solution is drones

My brother in Christ I swear to god we've been through this.
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How is it not better than a more expensive and risky option requiring a trained pilot being risked?

I get that drones aren't cool, but they're cheaper, more efficient, and less risky. It was lame when cheap, effective muskets made badass armored knights unusable, too.

The future is robots fighting through robots to come kill robot operators. It sucks and is gay, but P-51s are a silly idea to change that.
 
No. 7 cat said:
Kyiv Independent archive / original link - Kyiv Independent

Another almost routine communist crime. Ukraine is able to attack Russia every day with few to no civilian casualties, yet Russia hurts civilians without fail. Russia made a choice to do harm civilians for reasons of terror.
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It's absolutely intentional, it fits their mongoloid thought process. There's virtually no cost for doing it, while it allows to put pressure on all Ukrainians since it could happen to any of them, at any moment. That's terror.
Anything to push them closer to surrender.
 

Suchomimus on YouTube

I wonder if Ukraine is again lending a hand, but thankfully Russia's shabby presence in West Africa is coming to an end. Russia's Africa Corp made a deal allowing them to flee, but abandoning their Malian military allies. If Macron had balls (if doing a lot of work) he'd send the Foreign Legion to sort out Mali and the rest of Francafrique. Three days to Kyiv to one day of Mali. Basically various groups have launched an uprising which is doing quite well. It mightn't be the end for Russia here as the presence connects to various off the books enterprises based on local resources.
 
No. 7 cat said:
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Suchomimus on YouTube

I wonder if Ukraine is again lending a hand, but thankfully Russia's shabby presence in West Africa is coming to an end. Russia's Africa Corp made a deal allowing them to flee, but abandoning their Malian military allies. If Macron had balls (if doing a lot of work) he'd send the Foreign Legion to sort out Mali and the rest of Francafrique. Three days to Kyiv to one day of Mali. Basically various groups have launched an uprising which is doing quite well. It mightn't be the end for Russia here as the presence connects to various off the books enterprises based on local resources.
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Will Russia pulling out mean more or less dead niggers? I need to know if I should be happy about this.

 
Mike_Israeltel said:
How is it not better than a more expensive and risky option requiring a trained pilot being risked?

I get that drones aren't cool, but they're cheaper, more efficient, and less risky. It was lame when cheap, effective muskets made badass armored knights unusable, too.

The future is robots fighting through robots to come kill robot operators. It sucks and is gay, but P-51s are a silly idea to change that.
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You ask why you can't slap quad .50 cals onto a drone, and the answer there is sheer recoil. It would be difficult enough to just get one 50 cal onto a drone platform, but quads firing simultaneously would be like throwing a small home refrigerator against the airframe. Repeatedly.

The whole 'bring back WWII fighters' discussion was purely from how Ukraine is using an old soviet trainer prop plane (which ironically enough is actually from the mid-1970s) to get a guy with a shotgun in the air close enough to just pop slugs into the things. A properly outfitted fighter would just make it more efficient by giving the pilot control over the trigger, to which end many modern trainer aircraft of prop and jet variety do have armed variants that could be applied to the role.

And sure, drones have advantages but they can't really become fully armed replacements for fighter planes. Sure, the US has the MQ-9s that can launch missiles, but those same UAVs are the size of basic human training aircraft and at best only carry bomb or missile payloads - to put guns on drones would create massive additions of weight of not only the guns themselves, but you need to account for all the ammo as well which needs storage AND contributes more weight. There's a reason why the US never just made drones out of A-10s.
 
Optimus Prime said:
You ask why you can't slap quad .50 cals onto a drone, and the answer there is sheer recoil. It would be difficult enough to just get one 50 cal onto a drone platform, but quads firing simultaneously would be like throwing a small home refrigerator against the airframe. Repeatedly.

The whole 'bring back WWII fighters' discussion was purely from how Ukraine is using an old soviet trainer prop plane (which ironically enough is actually from the mid-1970s) to get a guy with a shotgun in the air close enough to just pop slugs into the things. A properly outfitted fighter would just make it more efficient by giving the pilot control over the trigger, to which end many modern trainer aircraft of prop and jet variety do have armed variants that could be applied to the role.

And sure, drones have advantages but they can't really become fully armed replacements for fighter planes. Sure, the US has the MQ-9s that can launch missiles, but those same UAVs are the size of basic human training aircraft and at best only carry bomb or missile payloads - to put guns on drones would create massive additions of weight of not only the guns themselves, but you need to account for all the ammo as well which needs storage AND contributes more weight. There's a reason why the US never just made drones out of A-10s.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-6_Texan_II
Yeah, the perfect planes for this sort of proposed work actually exist.
1777249383595.png
What, you thought only the HUEHUES would stick some guns on a turboprop training aircraft?
 
It's interesting how both the Ukraine threads have kind of settled into the doldrums of random sidetopic and milgear theorycrafting while waiting for the other side to collapse.
 
los pepes said:
It's interesting how both the Ukraine threads have kind of settled into the doldrums of random sidetopic and milgear theorycrafting while waiting for the other side to collapse.
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We can only talk about the loss of a whole sidewalk at the cost of 4000 dead russians for so long during a lull in the war. Everyone here understands what Ukraine is doing targetting russian logistics and economic lines. It would be a bit boring on the thread if we just had a running stock ticker.
 
Optimus Prime said:
You ask why you can't slap quad .50 cals onto a drone, and the answer there is sheer recoil. It would be difficult enough to just get one 50 cal onto a drone platform, but quads firing simultaneously would be like throwing a small home refrigerator against the airframe. Repeatedly.

The whole 'bring back WWII fighters' discussion was purely from how Ukraine is using an old soviet trainer prop plane (which ironically enough is actually from the mid-1970s) to get a guy with a shotgun in the air close enough to just pop slugs into the things. A properly outfitted fighter would just make it more efficient by giving the pilot control over the trigger, to which end many modern trainer aircraft of prop and jet variety do have armed variants that could be applied to the role.

And sure, drones have advantages but they can't really become fully armed replacements for fighter planes. Sure, the US has the MQ-9s that can launch missiles, but those same UAVs are the size of basic human training aircraft and at best only carry bomb or missile payloads - to put guns on drones would create massive additions of weight of not only the guns themselves, but you need to account for all the ammo as well which needs storage AND contributes more weight. There's a reason why the US never just made drones out of A-10s.
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Why would recoil of a machinegun be too much for a non-piloted craft, but not too much for one with a pilot? I very obviously wasn't talking about a temu quadcopter. You're either arguing in bad faith or an idiot.
 
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