Gordon Chang

I know a big one is like fiber optic cables, for example.

So there is a little bit of competition on the market for those components.

But again, the Russia-China relationship is obviously going to be a lot deeper in that sense.

No, absolutely.

I think the Moscow strikes in particular were very interesting and the whole, you know, debacle back and forth between Putin and Zelensky about the Victory Day parade on May 9th in Red Square.

So those strikes on Moscow and just in general, the increasing Ukrainian long-range drone strikes that you mentioned,

like against Leningrad Oblast and refineries and all over kind of the European part of Western Russia, what they're really showing us is a major Russian weakness, which is that they don't have enough air defense to control their entire rear.

Now, this is a problem that the Russians have been imposing on the Ukrainians for years at this point.

Ukraine does not have enough air defense.

It's a very large country.

They can't control, I'm sorry, they can't protect everything.

So we have seen them talk about publicly how they have to make these decisions between protecting cities, which cities get more protection, and then also having to protect the frontline.

So this is now the problem that Ukrainians have flipped the script and they're imposing on Russia.

And what we're really seeing is the Russians don't have enough air defenses.

So I think something that's been super interesting is the way that the Ukrainians are striking some of these main targets again and again and again, sometimes in a span of a week or two, they're hitting them multiple times.

I think that in and of itself, again, is a really strong indicator that the Russians have not by any means perfected their protection of their rear, mostly just because.

They kind of swept that problem under the rug.

They kind of underestimated that the Ukrainians would ever be able to do that.

We've seen actually for a couple of years now, a lot of these Russian sources on, again, Telegram, a lot of these are very pro-war.

They're huge supporters.