In the winter, Ukraine began a new phase of the war, dramatically increasing drone attacks on Russia's rear and border regions.
Launch of Ukrainian drones
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Minister of Strategic Industries, told TIME journalist Simon Shuster about how drones are launched to hit targets in Russian cities.
Every day, the world sees the results of Ukrainian attacks on Russian military facilities. Still, the world does not see the ways of deploying Ukrainian drones, which usually happen in the dead of night at secret bases.
The paper says the bases are so closely guarded that, aside from the soldiers who run them, only a few civilian engineers are usually allowed to observe the launches, making careful recordings and measurements of how the weapons function, how the troops use them and any incidents that occur during startups.
We don't have time to put these things to the test. We test them in battle. So we have to be present, making adjustments and improving along the way, Kamyshin tells TIME.
Such experiments, conducted under the supervision of Kamyshin and his ministry, as TIME admits, will determine the next phase of the war.
Production of Ukrainian weapons
By order of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainians began to try to reduce their dependence on Western weapons by producing more of their own.
Kamyshin says that almost all of the recent strikes on targets in Russia were not carried out from foreign stockpiles but from Ukrainian factories and underground workshops.
Ukraine's ability to produce enough weapons for its army will be central to its current strategy for defeating the Russians.
However, to implement this strategy, Ukraine must combine its old and worn arms industry with the advanced weapons designs and capabilities of its Western allies, especially the United States.
According to US law, President Joe Biden has the right to issue licenses that will help start the production of weapons in Ukraine without the approval of the US Congress.
However, this decision must go through the approval process of the US government, and Ukraine will also need billions of dollars in aid to rebuild its arms industry.
