Stuff Fedorov's and Zelenskyy's insults wherever — and call each other

It seems every day reactive drones cause trouble in Kyiv, around Kyiv, and in other parts of Ukraine.

We are used to the fact that we lack defense against ballistic missiles; a Kyiv resident’s ear tries to distinguish a downing from an impact, and when it seems the missile has been shot down, the feeling of relief mixes with the familiar gratitude, but also with disappointment toward partners: they have given, therefore they have sprinkled a handful of countermeasures from their generosity. But ballistic missiles are relatively rare, expensive, and mostly at night, whereas reactive drones have recently become many, relatively cheap, and around the clock. We have not yet managed to shoot them down in high proportion, and the problems are visible to the naked eye and are heard constantly.

I drew attention to this problem to Erik Schmidt, former head of Google, founder of a defense company that makes the Hornet UAVs, which make the most important contribution to our mid-strikes. He visited Ukraine in August and shared his concerns in a column for The Washington Post. Ukrainian people, writes the prominent entrepreneur, are also distinguished by their ingenuity in development and flexibility in decision-making, but Russia tightens the screws by scaling its decisions. It is not enough to find a brilliant technical solution; the important resource possibilities must be transformed into thousands of ready-to-use products. A good drone is better than a great one if it can be produced much more.

Schmidt believes Ukraine can withstand a much more powerful industrial machine of Russia when it shifts from being a recipient of individual batches of Western weapons to being part of the Western defense-industrial complex, which will be resource-wise superior to the Russian. Joint search for solutions, joint production and scaling to the required scale—that is the path to success: “The winner is the one who can invent something faster than the opponent, and then scale it faster.” And for the West, this is not charity but the ability to wage modern warfare. Ukraine, with its courage and resilience, has bought time for the West; now that time must be turned into industrial and military advantage...

Simultaneously with the publication of Erik Schmidt’s piece, it became known that from his trip to the United States returned Mykhailo Fedorov, a name associated with, and many still associate with, this mutual integration of leading Western companies with the Ukrainian defense sector. The former defense minister said in a short video that the defense fund he is launching and the analytical center will find the necessary solutions to work in the war against the Russians ahead of them: “I hope this will give hope to someone who has it, or restore hope to someone who is starting to lose it. Everything will be all right.”

A few days earlier, Volodymyr Zelensky, answering a question about his relationship with Fedorov, said: “Honestly, I haven’t seen him in a long time, I haven’t heard from him. I know he was abroad somewhere. He, as they say, doesn’t call or write.”

It is clear that the relationship between these two is not easy after the high-profile operation to relieve tensions, the mutual slights are even more burning because of their big egos and ambitions, which both have in excess. It is only in order to give hope to those who hadn’t lost it and to return to those who began to lose it, that the guys should shove their resentments farther aside and call each other. That would be better than flowery words and positions, proving that Ukraine is their primary concern.

Source: Leonid Shvets / Facebook