Donald Trump made clear that his personal grudge with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t abated during a phone interview with NBC News.
Speaking with Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker on Saturday, the president knocked Zelensky for offering assistance to the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries, the latter of which the Ukrainian president said on Friday were seeking his aid in sharing drone detection technology.
The “last person we need help from is Zelensky,” Trump told Welker.
This was my first take too, but I think that was mostly true in the first years when the rot in the russian military was more prevalent. They have been steadily cleaning up and ramping up production across their MIC and they also have local Shahed production now set up by Iranian engineers afaik.
That means that the main limits on Russias ability to get drones is now primarily financial, rather than production volume. So while they lost some of their effective production, they have made so much money out of this, that even if it ends today, their biggest challenge, their economy, is hugely improved. If it continues, they will be able to afford even more production.
With the effectiveness of the Shaheds, I wouldn’t be surprised if China is also pumping them out and Russia can buy them there. If NATO dumped a bunch of money into reverse engineering and setting up production, Iranian allies sure as hell should have.