March 8 — Day 1107b — continued
Smaller Items:
European arms Ukraine — I just checked, since Trump got elected the value of Rheinmetall stock has more than doubled. Their press office tells me two German factories that used to make just auto parts, will now make auto parts and military components. As noted, Rheinmetall’s operations in Ukraine include a repair base for German armored vehicles, and construction of an assembly line for Fuchs fighting vehicles.
Best.MG.Ever. — Czech weaponry popped up in the news twice this week. First, it turns out Colt CZ Group has small arms production going, in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian state arms manufacturer Ukroboboronpron. They are producing the Bren 2, which as NATO-standard automatic rifle with an excellent reputation. 400 weapons a day, production is planned to increase. Plans for ammo production and parts production in Ukraine are moving ahead. A company official put the number of rifles made so far in the tens of thousands. Follow-on is production of the P10 pistol and the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 automatic pistol. Corporate image of the AR.
And Czech Artillery Shells — The Czech STV Group is expanding a Czech-based production line from around 100,000 shells a year to 200,000 shells a year. This is 155mm, the critical caliber. Corporate spokesmen said a new line will be operational by the end of the year raising capacity to 300,000 shells/year.
And American artillery shells — I know this is a cheap shot, but in the US state Oklahoma work on setting up a state-of-the-art 155mm shell production line came to a halt because DOGE (US Department of Government Efficiency) ordered about a thousand employees laid off at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. US Senator James Lankford (R), a strong supporter of cutting government waste and the Trump administration, has gone public with his objection. In his view US national security is better protected if voters at McAlester get their jobs back. You can’t make this stuff up. Image from Lankford’s Twitter account.
Ukrainian arms manufacturing in Ukraine — Prime Ministry Denys Shmygal gave us a useful baseline this week, as of now Ukraine manufactures about 35 percent of its weapons and the goal is 50 percent. He cited since-war’s-start increased manufacture of artillery pieces (three times), armored vehicles (five times) anti-tank weapons (double) and shells and mortar rounds (2.5 times) as successes. Priority this year will be to growing 122mm and 155mm shell production, which makes sense.
The drone numbers are already in the public domain: 1.25–1.5 million in 2024, 2.5–4 million in 2025. My evaluation is that that makes Ukraine the biggest military drone manufacturer on Earth, outstripping for instance Israel, Turkey by a giant margin, and the People’s Republic by a meaningful margin.
According to Shmygal, overall, Ukrainian arms manufacturing in 2025 will be worth about $35 billion, which is already far more than most countries.
Sneaky US end-run on Ukraine blows up in White House face — On Wednesday Politico reported the Trump team secretly contacted Ukrainian “opposition” politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko for exploratory talks on how to get rid of Zelensky. They both told the Americans the same thing Zelensky has said for years, which is the Ukrainian constitution says martial law bans elections, Russia has invaded Ukraine, therefore in Ukraine there is martial law and there are not elections.
By my calculation it took all of 72 hours for these clandestine sneaky world’s-greatest-deal-maker Trump administration maneuvers to push Zelensky out of their path (which, by the way, constitutes direct US interference in the internal political processes of a democratic state) — to reach the public domain, via Politco.
Poroshenko is a marginal rival to Zelensky but for years he has said the war comes first and domestic politics only afterwards, this has been his unchanged position since the first day of the war.
Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a nice enough lady, is a political has-been that only a person truly ignorant of Ukrainian politics would contact about a possible play for political leadership in the country.
I know of newsrooms that laughed out loud when they found out the Americans thought Yulia Tymoshenko was a serious political player in Ukraine.
I am reliably informed the Kyiv diplomatic corps found it quite funny as well. So all in all the international reputation for the Trump administration’s foreign policy finesse was hardly burnished, and it sure didn’t contribute towards making the Zelensky administration more inclined towards cooperation with the White House.
It doesn’t seem like the Trump Team chose to (dared to) reach out to him, which is a little strange because if the Trump people are going to try to oust Zelensky, by far the second-most popular public figure in Ukraine is General Valery Zaluzhny.
Less than 24 hours after the news of secret US back channel moves towards Ukraine’s opposition reached the public domain, Zaluzhny issued a statement: No elections until peace, Zelensky is Ukraine’s wartime leader, he has the full support of the Ukrainian people and Zaluzhny personally.
What’s more Trump and America — Zaluzhny called him out by name — are attacking Europe’s security and stability. The Americans need to start behaving like a civilized country and stop siding with dictators. Zaluzhny’s job right now is ambassador to Great Britain but he’s a career soldier and he speaks pretty directly. Zaluzhny when he ran the ZSU was great for images, the one attached is the General in a reasonably friendly mood.
Zaluzhny is a physically big guy with a reputation for a pretty short fuse. More than one Ukrainian service member has pointed out to me that if Trump and Vance had tried yelling at General Zaluzhny like they did with Zelensky, the US Secret Service would have had challenging work to do and some one not Ukrainian in the Oval Office would have wound up with a black eye.
But the second-to-final nail in the coffin was the latest popularity polls in Ukraine. Three days after Trump and Vance yelled at Zelensky in the White House, Zelensky’s ratings shot up ten points to 57 percent. One week later, as of today, it was 68 percent. Unsurprisingly, Ukrainians are obviously rallying around their wartime leader.
What could be worse for US leverage on Ukraine than all that? The final nail?
Next week the Americans and the Ukrainians will be talks, in Saudi Arabia. The Americans have already thrown away all their leverage over the Ukrainians. Once you take away military support you no longer can threaten you’ll take it away. It’s not like the Ukrainians don’t know how to survive a US arms embargo, for almost half of 2024 the Americans stopped everything. Now the ZSU leads the world in strike drone manufacturing and operation, and the Russian army has been fought to a stand still.
So whichever genius Trump administration official (Waltz? Rubio? Gabbard? Vance? Trump himself?) came up with the bright idea of going behind Zelensky’s back, and cutting off US intelligence feeds and arms deliveries to Kyiv, so the Mighty United States of America might exert its will and bully puny Ukraine — all in all not exactly a positive outcome for Team USA.
Now, when the American negotiating team in Riyadh says “You have to sign! Do what we say or else!” we can be confident the Ukrainian delegation is going to answer “Or else what? Is your plan to make Zelensky even more popular?”
Image of a rake.
Thank you for your excellent reporting. As a US citizen who is deeply ashamed of the actions of the present occupant of the White House, I am encouraged by your reporting on Ukraine and Europe.
My theories on Trump's selection of opposition figures to approach:
1. Someone told him Poroshenko has a candy empire
2. Someone showed him a glam portrait of Tymoshenko
If the Sky Shield was set up as pictured and things got hot I expect it would play out like Turkiye 2015, where Turkiye set an explicit boundary, Russia crossed it, Turkiye protested, Russia crossed it again, Turkiye downed the plane, Putin spat venom but all that happened next was that Russia respected the boundary. If there are no legitimate military targets in the unbuffered zone then the only thing Putin can legitimately argue is that it's preventing Russian terrorism. Perversely enough it might make his military more effective if it was blocked from spending ordnance on civilians.
Mick Ryan's theory on the US cozying up to Russia is that it's a clueless and futile effort to form a US-Russia axis against China.
P.S. current slang term for a British person is "Brit"