Ukraine’s Drone Attacks Work on a Free Market System

Back to our regularly scheduled program of Ukraine blowing up Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea. Since I don’t think I posted yesterday’s video, here it is. This one shows strikes on 11 ships and is a bit different from previous videos because some of these were hit early in the morning instead of at night.

Admiral Magyar’s update:

+11⚓️🔥 Shadow fleet vessels hunted by the Birds of the Unmanned Systems Forces on 16 July (10 in the Black Sea, 1 in the Sea of Azov): 5 oil tankers, 1 LNG tanker, 3 cargo vessels and 2 tugboats.

During Operation “MoLoChKa” by the Unmanned Systems… pic.twitter.com/Y52F9hO0s2

— 414 Magyar’s Birds (@414magyarbirds) July 16, 2026

Early this morning, the same site announced that grain exports via the Sea of Azov had been completely shut down thanks to previous strikes.

Magyar’s copyediting lessons:

At least you won’t starve, worms. The rodents will have plenty to eat and breed even faster.

🖕You get dick, not foreign currency revenue from Black Sea grain exports, worms.

“Grain exports via the Don have stopped.
At the very beginning of the…

— 414 Magyar’s Birds (@414magyarbirds) July 17, 2026

Here’s the copyediting lesson:

“Grain exports via the Don have stopped.

At the very beginning of the 2026/2027 agricultural season, shipping through the Azov–Don Sea Canal has been halted due to Ukrainian strikes on civilian vessels. Up to 30% of russian grain is exported through waterways crossing Rostov Oblast.”

A small correction: ”…was exported.”

The rest is accurate.

And that brings us to last night’s strikes which hit another “9 cargo vessels, 1 oil tanker, 1 LNG tanker, and 1 tugboat.”

Magyar’s dairy update: Bird’s Milk is back on the menu

MoLoChKa’s bird’s milk, courtesy of the Unmanned Systems Forces: +12⚓️🔥 shadow fleet vessels hunted in the Black Sea on 17 July.

The fleetfall continues indefinitely: 🌶️159 vessels struck during the first 12 days of… pic.twitter.com/dNWjz8FiUF

— 414 Magyar’s Birds (@414magyarbirds) July 17, 2026

Why are these strikes always aimed at the bridge and not attempting to sink the tankers? Because they don’t want massive oil spills in the sea.

Objective: irreversible paralysis of oil, fuel, and cargo logistics operating around sanctions. Turn every self-propelled vessel into a drifting barge, blind and deaf. The goal is not to pollute the sea with oil spills; therefore, there must be no hull breaches. 

Finally, as promised, there’s a Belgian news article about how the drone launches and flights work which is pretty interesting. The author visited a site where drones were being launched and got a pretty good story out of it.

We are on our way to a launch site somewhere in eastern Ukraine. The exact location must remain secret. The team we are visiting belongs to the so-called ‘Birds of Magyar’, a notorious drone brigade that strikes day and night far behind the front lines. Today, it is operating in the direction of Dobropilja, a fiercely contested city in the Donetsk province…

They are putting the finishing touches on their drones. The men check the connection, the cameras, and the warhead of about 8 kilos, after which they fill the fuel tanks with gasoline via a hose. “7 to 8 liters is enough for about 200 kilometers,” says Field Commander Kusto.

Each B2 drone is launched by catapult so there’s no need for a runway. They use wooden propellers at the front and fly at 120 to 180 kph. After each drone is launched, a pilot sitting nearby makes sure the drone reaches altitude and is flying stably. Once that happens, AI takes over and flies the drones in pairs toward its target. 

Once a drone reaches that area close to the target, which could be a couple hours later, a pilot somewhere in Kyiv takes over and can be flying multiple “birds” at once. The soldiers launching the drones don’t know the pilots who complete the missions. In fact, they don’t even know exactly where each drone is going. Their job is just to keep launching them.

In this particular case, one of the drones flew over a Russian anti-aircraft battery hidden in a line of trees. The Russian soldiers manning it  launched an expensive missile to intercept the drone but missed. All they did was alert the Ukrainians to the fact that they were there. 

“The Russians heard our drone coming from afar and probably thought they were the target,” Kusto laughs. “They just fired an expensive anti-aircraft missile. For nothing.”

A second B2 drone arrives as reinforcement. Together they circle the Tor system, which fires a second missile. That one misses as well. Then the first B2 picks up speed and rams the installation.

Why do the drones always launch and fly in pairs? So the second drone can record the attack and verify the target has been destroyed. And it turns out that verification is a key part of the Ukrainian process for distributing drones to various units.

The second drone flies over the site and records the impact. “With those images, we prove that the system is truly destroyed,” says Kusto. “That is how we earn ‘points,’ which we use to order new drones and equipment.” The point system is the free market of this army: whoever destroys a lot can order a lot.

The more successful your unit is, the more resources you get moving forward. That’s a smart way to distribute material and is probably something put in place by the Minister of Defense who was removed yesterday. I’m still not convinced that decision makes any sense.

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