On September 12 and the night of September 13, units of Ukraine's Defense Forces struck a number of targets that at first glance may not seem as notable as a downed drone or destroyed warehouse, but are significantly more painful for the Russians. These include ground repeaters, antenna complexes, and target tracking radar stations. This is reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to UNN.
The logic here is simple and practical: a single Shahed-type strike drone costs the Russians relatively little and is mass-produced, but the infrastructure that controls it is artificial and vulnerable. Destroying a repeater in Zaliznyi Port, Skadovsk, Chornomorske, or Olenivka in temporarily occupied Crimea means cutting off the command channel for dozens of possible Geran and Gerber launches at once, rather than for a single specific aircraft in the air.
In the city of Donetsk, a storage, preparation, and launch site for the occupiers' strike UAVs was struck
A strike on the very storage and preparation site for drones in Donetsk works on the same principle: it is not a chase after a flying target in the sky, but the destruction of the pipeline before the drone even takes off. In military logic, this is called striking a target "at the source" — it is cheaper, more effective, and less risky than intercepting already launched aircraft over Ukrainian cities.
A Radar That Can No Longer See Anything
A separate story concerns the target tracking radar station in the area of the settlement of Ryovny in Bryansk Oblast. A radar station of this type is the "eyes" of air defense or artillery guidance, and without it, command loses the ability to accurately direct weapons at Ukrainian targets in this sector. Nearby, near Rechitsa, an ammunition and military equipment depot was also struck — meaning the strike hit both the ability to see and the ability to act.
Work on key military targets of the Russian aggressor continues
The General Staff traditionally does not disclose which weapons were used to deliver the strikes, and this makes sense for operational security reasons. However, the very geography — from Crimea to Bryansk Oblast — shows that the Defense Forces are operating not along the front line, but throughout the entire depth of logistics and command infrastructure that Russia tried to consider unreachable.
Over the course of September 6, the Defense Forces also eliminated 1,540 Russian military personnel, destroyed 1,473 UAVs, and 591 units of vehicles. The question is not whether Russia will be able to completely stop the production of Gerans — it is mass-produced and cheap. The question is whether Russia will be able to restore ground control infrastructure faster than Ukraine can find and destroy it.
