“Palyanitsya”: The term for a typical type of bread stands for Ukraine’s emancipation efforts; and now for Putin’s new nightmare.
Kiev – “When Ukrainian forces encounter a suspected Russian saboteur posing as a Ukrainian, they usually ask him to pronounce the Ukrainian word for a local type of bread: ‘palyanitsya’,” writes Alexander J. Motyl. Ukrainians recognize their enemies by the pronunciation of the ending, the political scientist explains in the magazine Foreign Policy: “Almost always, the suspect reveals his nationality and political views by pronouncing the word with a different ending: ‘palyanitsa’.” Now the term is being permanently ingrained in Vladimir Putin’s Russia: “Palyanitsya” is the name of a new long-range weapon in which Ukraine is investing a lot of hope.
“This is our new method of retaliation against the aggressor. The enemy is defeated. I thank everyone who made this possible. All developers, manufacturers and our soldiers. I am proud of you,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Ukraine’s Independence Day, August 24. Zelensky speaks of weapons of a “completely new class,” as both the Ukrainian Pravda as well as the Kyiv Independent reported.
A rocket-drone hybrid: Putin’s new enemy in the skies above his own country
According to Zelensky, it is difficult to do anything about it, but very easy to understand why it was fired; for Russia, the “Palyanitsya” will be a challenge. One challenge is to determine what this weapon actually is: obviously a missile-drone hybrid, as Oleksandr Kamyshin tries to explain.
“Some Russian speakers in Ukraine have declared that they will switch to Ukrainian because they now consider Russian to be the language of the aggressor and oppressor. They also defend themselves with language.”
“It is a drone – and it is a missile, because according to its specifications the product falls under both definitions. There will be more missile drones, just as there are already more long-range attack drones, the results of which we see almost every day,” says the Ukrainian Minister for Strategic Industries, according to the magazine Defense ExpressThe weapon looks like a small rocket and has a tail unit and narrow wings; the “Palyanitsya” appears to be powered by a jet engine.
The target at which the new weapon was fired apparently remains a secret. The fact is that at the same time as the Ukrainian president announced the use of the new “wonder weapon”, an ammunition depot in the Russian region of Voronezh was hit; probably by a Ukrainian long-range drone. Video images posted by local residents on social networks allegedly show the sound of a jet engine – these assumptions were published by Defense Express.
Secrecy surrounding the “miracle weapon”: Silence about where it will inflict losses on Putin
On the other hand, Kamyshin is said to have stated on social networks that the weapon was “not used in Russia, but to attack an enemy in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine,” as the magazine explains. In this context, Kamyshin declared the “‘rocket drone’ to be the next step in the development of Ukrainian defense technology.” The moment of the maiden flight was eagerly awaited; and just as with the coup in the Russian region of Kursk, Ukraine has surprised the world again.
Apparently, the Ukrainian developers have taken an optimal path to “find a balance between destructive power and – compared to full-fledged cruise missiles – relatively low costs in order to enable mass production with an emphasis on cost efficiency,” writes Defense ExpressDrones still seem to be the cheapest way for Ukraine to achieve success in the Ukraine war.
“Drone power Ukraine”: Targeted reduction of bureaucracy to develop a key technology
“Ukraine has become a drone power in recent years and especially since the beginning of the war,” said Ulrike Franke, from European Council on Foreign Relations compared to the ZDFAnd she is quite certain: “It is likely that Ukraine will emerge from this war as a major drone manufacturing country.” In this respect, the current expenditure will have to be viewed as development costs – and in view of possible future profits, perhaps actually as a bargain in retrospect. For Ukraine, drones are a key military technology.
Although this had already existed before the Ukraine war, it had gained momentum with the invasion. Half a dozen government agencies were dealing with issues relating to the development and production of drones, wrote Foreign Policy At the beginning of July. Apparently, general economic barriers in Ukraine for the drone industry would be removed – for example by reducing tax rates. According to FPAccording to US military author Tamar Jacoby, this administrative push means that “more than 200 registered companies – some industry insiders count more than 500 manufacturers, if you count smaller companies and volunteers in workshops – are now supplying troops with hundreds of thousands of drones per month.”
Economic counter-offensive: Drone manufacturers benefit from deregulation by Kiev
“Palyanitsya” is obviously an impressive result of deregulation in the Ukrainian economic system: According to Jacoby, components for drones were previously subject to both VAT and import duties; in addition, the path through the bureaucratic jungle before a developer was allowed to sell a product to the military was impenetrable, says Alex Bornyakov. “It used to take three to five years,” says the Deputy Minister for Digital Transformation of Ukraine to Foreign Policy“and you needed someone with influence to help push it through.” Today, this process would be completed in a maximum of three months.
Apparently, Ukraine is still trapped in the communist economic policies of the Soviet Union and is only slowly emerging from it. According to Jacoby, profits of defense companies were capped at three percent. The Ukrainian government has now raised this limit to 25 percent. What previously seemed to have paralyzed companies’ innovative power now seems to be a boost for research and development as well as for companies’ profits, which in turn provokes new innovations.
“This sparked a revolution in the drone industry,” said Facebook Valerii Iakovenko, co-founder of DroneUA, today one of the largest drone manufacturers in Ukraine. Apparently, Ukraine has emancipated itself from Russia, or rather from the entire world, in a special industrial sector. As the think tank Atlantic Council speculates that the country had to make a virtue out of necessity. The emphasis on agility in Ukraine stands in contrast to the Kremlin’s more centralized military structure. Russia may be able to produce seemingly inexhaustible quantities of military equipment, but comparatively slow decision-making processes and bureaucratic inefficiencies are lagging behind the dynamism on the front lines, writes David Kirichenko.
Kharkiv instead of Kharkov: Russia’s loss of influence is also reflected in the language
“We don’t have as many human resources as Russia. They fight, they die, they send more people, they don’t care, but that’s not how we see war,” comments Alex Bornyakov. Drones are freeing Ukraine from its dependence on ammunition supplies, from the restrictions on the use of Western weapons and the lack of men fit for combat. Looking ahead, Ukraine’s drone warfare strategy will continue to focus on flexibility, innovation and the daily challenge of using drones to maintain its technological lead over Russia, predicts Tamar Jacoby.
This applies to the palm-sized FPV (first-person view) drones that Ukraine launches dozens to hundreds of every day. This also applies to long-range drones with the precision and firepower to carry out targeted destruction over a distance of 2,000 kilometers. This is even more true for the future drone swarms that will use artificial intelligence to attack Russian troops.
The Ukrainians fought back, and not only with weapons and pronunciation tests, as Alexander J. Motyl in Foreign Policy The Russian claim to power can also be found in Ukrainian terms and has been increasingly pushed out since the beginning of the invasion. The Dnepr River is therefore now called Dnipro and Kharkiv is now Kharkiv. “Some Russian speakers in Ukraine have declared that they will switch to Ukrainian because they now see Russian as the language of the aggressor and oppressor. They are also defending themselves with language.”
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