What Happens If Russia Mobilizes

Welcome to another episode of the Ukraine Military History Podcast. My name is Sam Cook. I'm the founder of the Ukraine Military History Institute, the co-host of the Ukraine Military History Podcast with my co-host Rob Lee today. We had the pleasure of interviewing what I believe is the top war journalist in the Ukraine war, English speaking at least, the one that the Western world has access to. His name is Francis Farrell. He's a man from Australia who, after Maidan,

Was inspired to move to Europe and study international relations with a focus on Russian studies and the Russian language. And he came to Ukraine right after the war started, actually right before the war started, and joined the Kyiv Independent in the summer of 2022, just in time to cover most of the main offensives of that year after the summer, and every major military operation since then. Probably the old saying goes that journalists write the first draft of history.

Definitely Francis is doing that at a very high level, very thoughtful, very nuanced, and more importantly, focused on the human experience of the war and the soldiers and those fighting it at the very front. So Rob and I hosted him for a really fascinating conversation about how he got into journalism, the importance, the role and the importance that the Kyiv Independent has, especially for the Western English-speaking world covering this war. There are a lot of Ukrainian outlets, of course, that the Western media does not follow and have access to.

But the Kyiv Independent based in Kyiv English-speaking newspaper really is I think the top source for information in this war based here in Kyiv and we talk about the history of that publication and all the people who started it and are covering the war. Francis and Rob then go into a detailed discussion of the current situation as we find it as of today 14 August in 2026 And then we talk about some of the bigger trends of the war towards the end, whether or not Russia is going to mobilize, what impact that will have on the war, and what the risks are for Putin and the potential risks, of course, for Ukraine in such a scenario.

So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Francis has been a huge supporter of our Military History Institute, our work in the past at the Borderlands Foundation. He actually went to the last Ukraine Freedom Summit, was a host for a number of panels, and did an amazing job of bringing out the best of those who came to share their experience in the world. The Ukraine Freedom Summit is an annual event that we put on where we bring heroes from the battlefield of Ukraine

To meet their allies and colleagues and supporters, both the media, defense industry, and active duty soldiers, to a partner nation. Last year was in London. The first year it was in Washington, D.C. Next year, in March of 2027, we're going to be hosting that in Dallas, Texas, a great state. A lot of Ukrainians who visited Dallas with me already say that they most identify with Texans because the cowboy and culture, which is very closely tied to Ukrainian Cossack traditions, their history is

Is very similar. I always like to joke that Ukraine is the history or sorry is the Texas. I always like to joke that Ukraine is the Texas of Europe and all Ukrainians who go to Texas see exactly why I say that and are very much looking forward to going back to Texas next year. So enjoy this episode with Francis, a guest that we hope to have back often and regularly on the the show. And finally, again, if you enjoy this podcast, this content, please like and share it

With your friends. And I hope you enjoy this episode of the Ukraine Military History Podcast. Before we start, please take a moment to hear from our sponsors, which I'm going to tell you about how this show is made possible, how you can support future episodes of the show. The podcast is produced by the Borderlands Foundation. Borderlands Foundation is a foundation that I founded in 2022, right after the war started. Our mission is to make sure Ukraine's heroes are never forgotten. And we do that in three main ways. First,

The Ukraine Military History Institute, which produces this podcast. Our first main project is this podcast, but we're looking forward to generating the funding and the staffing for a number of other projects in the future, including a course on Ukrainian military history that we want to teach at the university level in English to the world. Teach that locally here to Ukrainian students and broadcast it to the world we're working on finding the home for

That course at a Ukrainian university who hosts that in english also we do battlefield tours right now private tours of the battle of Kyiv for vip political government military delegations that come into Ukraine to understand the lessons of this battle in 2022 which is now firmly part of military history of this war and then finally we're working on other projects like like a military history journal and other things we're recruiting people for. So this podcast is the first main project of that,

And we're very proud of the work that we're doing, and we'll continue to build that. Next, we have the Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress. To find out all the information on the center, you can go to theborderlandsfoundation.org, where you can see what we're doing at the Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress. History is built on memories of soldiers, and obviously those memories have consequences. our mission is to help understand research spread the word in in Ukraine and invite researchers from

Around the world to solve this problem for the large and growing continually growing veteran community here inside Ukraine and the society at large many non- military members also are suffering for that inside Ukraine and then finally we have the Ukraine freedom summit this is a annual event that we've done twice now. First year we did it in 2024 in Washington, D.C. Last year we did it in London. And this upcoming year in 2027, we're going to be doing it in Dallas, Texas in March

Of 2027. This is where we bring Rob, Dima, and a bunch of other Ukrainian veterans who fought in the war here to share their frontline experience with U.S. Defense industry leaders and also So soldiers, active duty soldiers, veterans. We have a four-day summit plan, which has a defense innovation day, talking about defense technology but also broader issues related to defense on the battlefield. This goes along to doctrine, training, leadership, and defense technology.

The second day is on recovery and veterans' issues, where we talk about the economy and veterans' issues, the future of Ukraine, if and when this war ever ends, how that's going to look and who's going to take the leadership role in that. And then we have a defense exhibit where we're going to show different defense technologies at the local Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, among all these great historical aircrafts. We're going to be showing the future of warfare with drones and other technologies exhibited

There. So if you'd like to get in touch and be part of that exhibit, whether a U.S. Company or Ukrainian company, please reach out and get in touch. And then finally, the Heroes of Ukraine golf tournament, where U.S. And Ukrainian veterans and veterans from around the world will get together and play each other in golf and people will donate to and buy tickets to that event to help raise money for the Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress. So the tickets for that are actually on sale. You can go to UkraineFreedomSummit.org

And register your interest or buy an advanced version of that ticket, an early bird version of that ticket for any of those events or the entire event. And then finally, the bill payer for this is the main donor for all of our work here is the Borderlands Group. This is an advisory group that I have where we advise Western defense companies trying to work inside Ukraine, get product market fit with your products, understand if what you're building

Actually works on a modern battlefield and bring that back and sell it confidently to your governments and allied governments around the world. We also work with some Ukrainian companies who are trying to obviously get more traction here in Ukraine, but also get ready for the ability to export their products around the world. And we're also looking into doing advisory work for foreign governments and militaries who want to understand and implement

The lessons of the war here in Ukraine to be ready for the threats and challenges to all of our security in the future. Okay, so welcome to another episode of Ukraine Military History Podcast. We're here with our regular co-host Rob Lee, but also what I hope will become a regular contributor, Francis Farrell of the Kyiv Independent, who is one of the few journalists that still actually goes very close to the front, really right up to the front, I think farther than anyone else does, and has a lot of perspective,

Not just on the current situation, but hopefully in future episodes, the arc of the war. Francis, tell us a little bit about your background. How the heck did you get to

Kyiv and why are you doing what you're doing with the Kyiv independent yeah thanks Sam it's good to be here just a quick remark I guess yeah I appreciate the the nice comments but there are still other journalists who are still going to frontline positions. It's true there are a lot fewer these days and maybe I'm not as often as you not as often and well especially among among english language ones there are still good Ukrainian journalists who are still smashing

It going to positions getting right in there but obviously it's not only getting more dangerous, but for the international context, they're just getting tired of it. I'm Australian originally, but since 2015, I guess partly motivated by Maidan and the beginning of the war in Donbass back then, I started studying in the Netherlands for doing international studies with a focus on Russia, Eurasia, Russian language. And it became pretty clear that, you know you can become a Russia expert and maybe travel there which I did but it's pretty

Depressing as an existence because you're just an enemy of the state and you're in a depressing office whereas if you engage with Ukraine you engage with a country that is building something going somewhere and a country whose values align with yours and if you come here you can be part that and so I came here quite a few times before 2022 really loved the place and then once things started I had to be here I wasn't really a full-time journalist then but journalism just

Made the most sense for me just going to places speaking to people and since then yeah I've been been doing that focusing on the battlefield on the front line we do video reports texts and and just continuing to go while we still can. Yeah, don't know what else to say.

So where did you study in the Netherlands?

In Leiden University, in The Hague.

Got it. Yeah, so I studied history. You studied international relations and two opposite ends of the same kind of... There's some different theories and structures on how the two are studied, but we both had an emphasis on Russian matters. So I didn't go to Russia before the full-scale invasion. Unlike you, I wish I would have because probably we'll never get to go, but definitely Ukraine is the place to be. And I'm glad we're here.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting time in Russia area studies, whether it's the Netherlands or I was also at UCL for my master's, which I didn't finish in London. But everywhere, you know, there's this old generation of real like Russia studies specialists who kind of carry with them, you know, they're not pro-Kremlin or anything, but they carry with them some of the biases and some of the kind of Russia-centric view of the region. And now that's undergoing a correction.

And when I hear stories from people back at UCL in London, I hear that more and more people are actually wanting to learn Ukrainian rather than Russian. But at the same time, of course, it's still super important to to understand Russia and understand your enemy I guess in this case

Yeah I think it's I think it's a difficult notice because as you said traveling there's dangerous I mean you might get arrested depending on your background and just the environment I mean it's even even whatever free speech it was in in Russia before that's you know severely curtailed and so I think for for research purposes I mean whether you have phd masters bachelors it's difficult to do that in Russia anymore. The FSB is probably going to clamp down even more and they're going

To be more aggressive about how they monitor people. So yeah, I mean, I think for Russia studies, that's become a more difficult topic in general because a lot of people who want to write about Russia can't go there or do real research. And how do you do it accurately if you're not going there? Because you're not actually talking to people on the grounds and other people there could be actually communicating honestly with people who are abroad, probably not. There's a

Lot of self-censorship there now too so you know again it comes back to like Russian polling because Levada Center is still kind of the traditional pollster, but how accurate those polls anymore about what do Russians think about the war or other things I don't know and I think it's just a difficult, a difficult subject now of how to write about this, because you know for a variety of reasons it's just it's difficult to kind of research it I mean yeah I mean Kremlin

Watching was already a kind of pretty nebulous and speculative and questionable discipline, but unfortunately it's also extremely relevant still because it's still Putin and you know I don't I don't even want to say his his inner circle but like the Kremlin that you know will decide you know when they feel like they might want to wind down this war what they'll do next so on so on but this is one of the interesting things but so before the war so I look at

Russia, but I'm not Russian. And so one of the questions I always have is, you know, to what extent to Russian foreign policy experts in Moscow, like what advantage they have over people who are not in Moscow? And one thing that was, you know, I don't remember many of them saying this, but few of them predicted there was going to be an invasion. And again, obviously we know that the way the choice is made, Putin had a very compartmentalized, you know, decision making, even many people in

The Kremlin didn't know. But I thought it was notable that, you know, this is maybe the biggest Russian foreign policy decision of the last 25 years. And it was a lot of people in Moscow had no clue it was going to happen, which also kind of says, to what extent do they know the Kremlin's decision making? Do they actually have insights into the palace itself? I have no clue. It was hard for me to know beforehand, but this is one case where it's like, okay,

I don't have any sources in the Kremlin. I never did, but I can look at Russian tank divisions being moved near Ukraine and make some basic kind of analysis based on that. I do think that that does open up ideas later on. You said Kremlinology, how useful is this? And then when people say they have sources, do they? Maybe. I have no clue, but I have no way of assessing this. And we know that a lot of people who allegedly had kind of sources in the Kremlin or what

Have you before did not have any idea this invasion is going to happen.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know when was the moment for you when you felt like it's more likely to happen than not. I remember for me, like I was reading your Twitter, like back, you know, in the weeks.

We all were.

In the weeks before the full-scale invasion. And I think like for me, I think it was the moment I started, like we started to see like Rosgvardia and these people like deployed to the Belarus border. that. And for me, like, yeah, with that geopolitics background, but also just like common sense, like it just doesn't make sense for all of this to be a bluff, because there's no political gains to be had here just through through these threats and and so I actually came to Ukraine a week before

A week before. Wow. When did you start with the reporting? Did you start reporting the week

Before it was a bit of an embarrassing first few weeks to be honest because I didn't know what what to do I wanted I was in lviv I I didn't I left Kyiv actually because I didn't want to be caught in a surrounded city just taking up resources so I was yeah that was a smart move

That was well I mean it would have been fine in the end but you know unless it wasn't yeah yeah

We also saw the mariupol scenario which you know could have happened and so yeah I was doing a bit of volunteering on the border and a little bit of freelance journalism but I think there was this huge inflow of hundreds of foreign journalists with their you know body armor with their fixers with their armored land cruisers just like and I was a bit like didn't feel I was ready so I I left in spring to do some other stuff and then I came back in summer and straight away like keep

Independent was the best fit like I could speak the language I could write but I was pretty

Knew and they they they trusted me gave me a go how would you say Kyiv independent's role is

Kind of I don't know changed throughout this war or shaped the war because I mean it's it's you have what two english language kind of like Ukrainian kind of what newspapers Kyiv post Kyiv independent Kyiv independent broke from Kyiv post yeah I remember watching that right before

The war started Kyiv post had a great series of articles I was reading all of a sudden it shuts down, I'm clicking and trying to go to the website for a week, and then boom, Kyiv Independent pops up. So it was a very interesting time for the journalism in Ukraine and English language.

Yeah, I mean, it was a funny time for me to arrive, because for those who don't know, Kyiv Independent was founded just three months before the full-scale invasion, because their whole newsroom was fired from Kyiv Post for defending editorial independence. And so they all left and they started their new thing. It was very bare bones. They had a Patreon. They got a few grants just to start up. But very quickly, the intellectual community understood that, okay,

These are the old Kyiv Post journalists. These are the English language journalists who understand Ukraine. And so they kind of switched to them already in the buildup phase when more and more attention was starting to come to Ukraine. And so in that way, you know, it was like, it sounds weird to say, but it was kind of perfect timing for them that they were, you know, they were still, you know, setting everything up.

They barely had enough time to set a proper website up and a newsletter. But when the full scale invasion came, everyone came to them. They all became Twitter celebrities overnight with those who were tweeting actively. And it was just this like adrenaline. I wasn't there, but it was this like adrenaline of just constant news, like getting everything out there as soon as possible. And a lot of people were coming to them. But when I, the world cup for journalists.

Yeah. But when I came, so I missed out on that like hype wave, and the hundreds of thousands of followers. But I see Rob smiling there.

Rob exploded during that period. So, I think, I think I got 300,000 followers the first like 48 hours after the war began.

Yeah but but you know

It is what it is. But then I think what was actually good was that I was coming back like just more mentally prepared. And I was coming at a time when the newsroom was a bit exhausted. They'd been running on pure adrenaline, you know, no sleep for about half a year, you know, from founding the newspaper to the invasion in the first few months. And it was this kind of lull in, you know, the HIMARS was arriving, but it was this summer 2022. We weren't really sure what was next.

And then two, just about three weeks after I started, we had the counteroffensive in Kharkiv and, you know, liberating Izium, then Lyman. And I was like the first one, the quickest one to like jump in a car and go there. and since then, I think they were happy with what I did. And so they sent me to Kherson as well, and then they sent me to Bakhmut, and then the rest is history. I've just been focusing on the battlefield, on the field work.

What role do you think Kyiv Independent plays in media space for this war? Because you said that a lot of great Ukrainian outlets that do a lot of good work, you have frontline reporting from these outlets, but it's primarily in Ukraine. you have foreign outlets that are here they've kind of ebbed and flowed I think at this point they have a presence but a lot of presence has been decreased I think wapo I'm not I'm I think they've decreased. Washington Post shut down mainly. Wall Street Journal's still here.

I mean economist because ft's here other ones are here but they've rotated people but

The interest I mean the interest is still there to some extent but not like it was in 2022 and And for different reasons, there's very little frontline reporting from these places. And sometimes for insurance purposes, they're not allowed to go anywhere near the front. And so it means it's a real dearth of frontline reporting. And again, that's where I think you kind of come in. There's very few people go on the frontline reporting English, especially backed by kind of a big newspaper.

Because there are some freelance journalists who go there. But I think the need for information is greater now than any time. I mean, and it's just a very few, I mean, honestly, it's in between your reports of frontline, there's a gap of like annual frontline reporting, right? And so, yeah, I mean, it is quite difficult. And like the next few months, it is really difficult to explain, here's what the current situation is, because sometimes things come out of lag for mapping updates and so on.

And they actually explain, hey, like, as of now, this is what the atmospherics feel like in Dobropillia, in Kramatorsk, whatever, because you might hear something positive about a strike on Wildberries. And that is true, but you also might have a situation get worse in the Donetsk region and those things are happening at the same time.

Yeah, I mean, I would say like, you know, really big picture. Our job is to communicate Ukraine from an inside, you know, Ukrainian position. The core of the leadership of our newsroom are all Ukrainian journalists. You know, sometimes they lived in the West, they studied in the West, but they're all Ukrainian journalists. and they deeply understand the politics, the personalities, the corruption. I mean, that's what Kyiv Post used to do. They were very good with all the corruption scandals before Kyiv Independent.

And that applies to the war as well. There is, as Rob said, a big communication gap, a big understanding gap that's only getting wider now that bigger international media not sending teams to the front line. And so that's, I mean, we hear from people, whether they're diplomats, policymakers, or often also other journalists. Like I'm very happy for New York Times, for example, to get an idea of something from our coverage, which might not be as deep because we're stretched pretty thin sometimes and

Then go after it and write a big thing about it. And so that's what we try and do. And for me personally, yeah, it's the front line because I think that coverage of the front line in Ukraine and the battlefield, which remains the most important thing for any end of war scenario, like, you know, Ukraine can't get a peace deal that's not a capitulation if they're collapsing on the front line. And the coverage is just sometimes so vague, you know, you see it in the language.

They just say, oh, both sides are bogged down in grinding assaults in the east or whatever. And you just have no idea what's really going on. And we'll talk about this, but there are so many ebbs and flows of momentum on the front line that are just completely lost to an international audience.

So you and Dobropillia recently, you did a report from there, and you were also in Kramatorsk. What was the current situation? I was there early June, but two months window is you're out of touch, I think after like two weeks or so, really honestly. What would you say the feeling is? What's the situation on the front line there? yeah so I was I think in Dobropillia the city now which is at that point it was already like

Maybe seven kilometers from the front line where I was it was actually earlier on because it takes time to actually you know edit the stories and and and put them out but already back then this was like early summer was it early july or I think early june early early June as well, or even late May. But it was actually the most destroyed city I think I've seen. And that's interesting because I was in Pokrovsk the previous summer in the very southern neighborhood,

Only three kilometers away from the Russians, and the whole city was almost surrounded. But it wasn't as much destruction as I saw in Dobropillia. And, of course, that's all due to just mass use of glide bombs. I think the numbers of those for the OSINT people who've been tracking that have been recorded to be particularly high in that area. And I mean, it makes sense because it's no secret that Ukrainian forces have a lot of drone teams in the city.

The city is not contested. It's not right on the front line. but it's the kind of shelter where a lot of drone teams from different brigades are working out of, whether that's FPV teams using fiber optics, retranslators, or vampire teams like heavy bombers doing logistics or strike missions. And the Russian tactic is just to level the place to the ground, and that was why in three hours walking around there, I didn't see a single civilian, which is very different to even again almost surrounded Pokrovsk right near the front line

And and just I mean just to give you an anecdotal idea of what these glide bombs are Like, you know, in three hours we heard, I think, about twelve of them. They usually come in groups of three. And actually the basement we were staying in, which belonged to an FPV team of the 15th National Guard Brigade was destroyed a week later. Just one of the guys, two of the guys we were with, they were rotated out, but one was killed there and you can't even get their body out because you can't bring anything into that city.

It's all deep in the kill zone. But more recently, I went to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, also Druzhkivka. So those are the cities of this like famous fortress belt that are probably, you know, going to form the climax of the Battle of Donbas when we when we reached there. We'll discuss when that will be.

When was this trip there?

That was in July.

July.

And there it was a very clear, like, you get a very clear feeling of the kill zone. Because, you know, in Sloviansk, I mean, it's all in glide bomb range, and it's all technically in FPV range at the time. But Sloviansk is just a little bit further, and you just feel a little bit safer. Most of the FPVs we were hearing were actually Ukrainian interceptors taking off. And that allows for just enough feeling of safety for life to go on, for cafes and restaurants to be working, for children to be playing in the park.

But Kramatorsk, by the time you go there, it was already a very different situation. there were FPVs on the drone detector almost constantly destroyed vehicles restaurants some were still opening but have since closed since I went you know just everything feels on edge very few people around and then and then once you go to Druzhkivka I mean that was almost similar to Dobropillia in the sense like the number of glide bombs the the destruction you see no civilization whatsoever

Apart from a couple of small corner shops quite a lot of civilians still shuffling around I think a lot of them haven't quite realized how bad it is yet, and that's probably changed in the last month. But you could just feel that it seems like this climax is coming sooner and sooner.

For the fortress belt?

Well, I think the last month, the Russians have advanced faster. So, I mean, again, the narratives and kind of the way we talk about the war. So yesterday, what's today? August 14th. So it's probably come out a week later or so. But President Zelensky announced that basically the results of the... Offensive, that was in Dnipropetrovsk direction, right? Where, you know, you said that more than 700 square kilometers were recaptured by Ukraine. The action number, you know, sometimes it's

Disputable. But that began the end of January. So January 29th is when that began. Much of those advances happened in February and then also in May. So I think some in June as well, but basically in July advances there slowed down quite a bit. And I think that's why I kind of updated the map. So So I think people looking at this, and I've already seen this in group chats, have said, oh, like, you know, situation's going well. It's like, well, this mostly happened in the, you know, winter and spring, which is why

I was kind of more optimistic then saying, okay, overall situation is better right now because, yeah, Russia's advancing some, but Ukraine's pushing back. Like we're seeing, you know, maybe on net some months where Ukraine was taking more territory and so on. The last two months, Russia's taken more territory. So it's about 100 kilometers, square kilometers, last two months each. Most of those gains are having the Donetsk region, right? So mostly between Russia's east center and east, sorry, center and south group of

Forces, which are responsible for Dobropillia section, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk area. And so, Dobropillia recently I talked to a number of the units that were there. I, I haven't been there since like last October, I think. I mean, so you keep going after I stopped going these places. I, cause, cause Dobropillia started getting hit by FPVs last summer. I remember last July, there was a day when like the wind changed, like a hundred FPVs at the city. And so it started becoming dangerous.

I was there last July, I was there in October. And then I think that was the last time I went. And even October I went, it was very few civilians. I saw almost no one when we went there. And so we're, you know, driving in, you had to take certain routes and the weather was poor. So, you know, the FPV risk would be kind of reduced, but it was already, had very cleared out over the span of like two months or so. The risk you forget, I think last time was maybe last July too,

Maybe before them. But even then it's like, okay, FPVs are starting to fly. I remember in March, I talked to one of the brigades I was there and they basically said like, or even January, they're like, no, it's not worth it to come anymore. Like we'll meet some, we'll meet Kramatorsk essentially. And now Kramatorsk is moving in that direction essentially, right? And so the coffee shops where I met these guys in January, where it was a safe place, because you couldn't go

To Druzhkivka, now, you know, you can't really do Kramatorsk the same way either. Sloviansk now, FPVs are flying to the city. So there was a video, there were videos last week of, of two or three strikes in the southern part of Sloviansk. And you said, this used to be the kind of safe area. And I think for the guys who have fallen in this direction for a long time, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk were, you know, they weren't like safe cities because, you know, KABs fly there, Shaheds fly there, so on.

But there was some feeling of like, okay, we're not on the front line exactly. Right. You can kind of, you can rest to some extent. You've got kind of some restaurants, you've got coffee shops and things. That's not the case anymore. And there aren't many cities right behind this. So, you know, Izium never fully recovered after occupation. I mean, it's obviously better, but, like, not everything came back. But there aren't other cities that are nearby where you'd kind of stay,

Where there are hotels and other things. Maybe Barvinkove, but that's quite a drive, and it's a very small town, essentially.

Yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare, I think, well, for journalists, but mostly for soldiers, obviously, because so much of their whole apparatus was set up in these cities, which had, you know, big underground areas, industrial areas where they could set up and plenty of just simple housing. But now they're being pushed out. And yeah, the same goes for journalists, I guess. I think we'll see. I'm not sure, like, if I do another trip, for example, in September, like, is that going to be safe to stay in Sloviansk?

Probably I think the decision will be not. but then where to stay Pavlohrad Lozova like all of these places pretty far away and themselves now filling up with soldiers, and it's really difficult to find just an apartment there.

Also the roads are quite poor, and you know, we're not talking highways, we're talking one, one lane roads basically, where if you have oncoming traffic you often have to slow down. Lots of potholes, and you know, that's when — and you've got huge trucks, right? Huge military trucks going. And so even the distance looks small, the actual amount of time it takes to drive from one place to another can take, you know, two, three times, four times what it

Would normally be if you had a normal road. So getting around is much more difficult. But just x wise the the rail lines have stopped operating to a lot of these cities I mean for some time ago the Russians are prioritizing going out the trains right now with with with Shahed seeker drones so I mean it's you know Russian events are not that fast right they're compared to last year the advances are slower. The problem is that there are all these cities that are nearby.

And so any Russian advance in this direction means that the number of FPVs flying to these cities increases, right? And obviously FPVs have been one of the ways of indicating what Russian advances look like, because it may not be updated on the maps you see, but FPVs are flying more often to these cities. You know what's happening, right? The Russians are advancing, they are getting more of a foothold. And that's what we're seeing right now. And, and you know Kramatorsk is now a you know relatively dangerous city last time I was there

It was kind of like okay avoid the eastern part where artillery hitting and FPVs are hitting the center is, like, you know, more or less kind of safe-ish. Obviously we know, like, you know, they've had this counter strikes at Kramatorsk like three years ago that famous case where they hit one of the restaurants but you know you try and minimize risk I think to some extent but at some point it just becomes pretty dangerous, and it makes sense to go there if there's a legitimate

Reason and you get a frontline reporting that's one thing I'm not doing frontline reporting so it's okay I'll go to meet people but you know at some point it no longer makes sense from a just risk perspective to go some places and it's sad because these are cities I mean you've been you spent a lot of time in there I haven't spent nearly as much time as Ukrainians who are there fighting their right but these are the the bastions of like the of the Donetsk kind of like defense

Right and they will remain so and they will be the you know the Russians will probably approach these cities and there will be a big battle for these cities and Ukrainians are going to fight hard for them but there is an aspect of like you know these are places we used to go to we used to stay in like Pokrovsk elsewhere which like okay you may not go back there again because the Russians occupy it they hold it now they destroyed much of it and they're going to destroy probably many of

These cities too because we've seen what happened in all these battles and so Pokrovsk we saw destruction durapilia we're seeing the destruction and you know unfortunately the closest I get to to Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, where we're going to see similar things probably.

Yeah, this is what I was trying to kind of capture, I think, in my last piece, which was about Ukrainian. It was more of like a mini documentary about the Ukrainian-held Donetsk Oblast in general, like also talking to a lot of civilians, just showing what life is like in these different cities. We visited a ceramics factory in Sloviansk. It used to be a big center of ceramics production in Soviet times. And we went to this beach. They have a little lake with like healing mud.

So I swam there, you know, with the locals and the soldiers still mingling together. But there are fewer of them these days.

Did you get the mud treatment?

I kind of like wallowed in it a bit. Yeah, it was good weather. But like just getting back to what you're saying, it's like trying to capture this idea of these Donbass cities as, like, obviously it would have been suicidal for Kyiv to just hand them over in a peace deal for some kind of promise of a security guarantee, which wasn't there, you know.

With the military that has no munitions anymore. Yeah, exactly.

And so, and obviously, like, it would have been morally wrong and the soldiers wouldn't have taken it. But if there was one, like the biggest maybe argument was just not only just a vague idea of a fortress belt, but the fact that the, I mean, I don't know if you agree, but I think the attrition that Russia would have to take in man, in ammunition, in equipment, in resources in general to take these cities by force. And to be fair, they're still a long way away from getting that. That would be what would eventually

Make them run out of steam in their whole kind of ambition to overwhelm Ukraine militarily. And so it's kind of about these cities, which for so long have been the instrument of Russian propaganda and have come to mean so much for the future history of Ukraine, and now kind of sacrificing themselves, basically. For, you know, they will be — whether they're occupied or not, you know, life is leaving them at an accelerating rate. But that is needed to hopefully break I guess Russia's ability to break Ukraine as a whole yeah I mean

Well you know reporting about Russia right and it's always you know always a question of how how accurate it can be. The reporting is suggesting that Putin, this is still his focus, right? He does not win the war until he takes all of the Donetsk region at a minimum. And most of the Luhansk is already Russian occupied. Of course, if he does so easily, then he'll continue pushing and try and take more. But I think that's what a lot of the reporting suggests is that, okay, his bare

Minimum of the war, because obviously we know Russia's objectives were far more ambitious. if we take all of Donbass, because that was the official justification, then he can kind of paint it as, you know, we've achieved something. And, you know, it is possible that Russia will take the rest of the Donetsk region. It will come with hundreds of thousands of casualties, right? It's really difficult to predict, you know, rate of advance because battle of Chasiv Yar,

I think they're Ukrainians who are still nearby, if not in the city. And I remember, you know, the Russians approached it in like April 2022, or 2024, sorry. So this is more than two years ago. That battle has been going on for more than two years. Russians have advanced some directions like, you know, seven kilometers, essentially over two years, right? Of like daily assaults. And so again, how long would it take to get Kramatorsk or Sloviansk? No one knows.

Same with Dobropillia, Druzhkivka. Kostiantynivka, the battle's been waging for some time now. I don't think either side controls it really. We know that, you know, battle for Toretsk took over a year. Selydove was very fast. That was a different kind of case. So it's hard to predict these things. But clearly, the Ukrainians for a long time have kind of said, okay, if you're going to try and take all of the Donetsk region, we're going to fight you for it.

We're going to fight for every kind of meter of land. And these are the two last main cities, right? It's the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk agglomeration. That's where command and control, logistics for everything for the area was run. And again, for guys who've been fighting Russia since 2014, this area is like, it's like a second home, right? Whether they like it or not, it's like, this is where they've been fighting it from. Sloviansk was also one of the main cities in 2014,

Right? Where Girkin had his kind of, you know, his attempt at taking over the city, where Ukrainians push back, right? It's where some of the heroes of Ukraine, like Suhorevsky's other guys, they're known for what they did in 2014 in Sloviansk. So there's a lot of history here. In some ways, they represent also Ukrainian kind of defiance against Russia's occupation. And so I can't convey like the importance of it, obviously cultural, political, and so on.

But militarily, they're still important cities. And this has been coming for some time. We know Russia's been trying to focus on us for some time. I mean, really, ever since the end of the first month of the war, when Russia redeployed from, you know, the northern parts of Ukraine, it became, okay, Donetsk-Luhansk, this is a priority. And it's been a long time. And, you know, Russia still has some ways to go. But we are approaching a time where we may see battles for these cities.

And, you know, it's tragic to see this coming because these are all places we know pretty well at this point that have a lot of, like, resonance for a lot of people. And unfortunately, we know how these battles typically unfold, where the closer Russian forces get, they'll start using FPVs, Molniyas, other things that kind of like make the roads much more dangerous. Head strikes increase, KAB strikes, glide bomb strikes, so on. And then once you're fighting for the city itself, as you said, UAV teams are going to fight to hold these buildings.

There's an advantage because you have the basements of buildings are very good for survivability, especially in wintertime. but also the tall buildings give you better a lot of sight for ew for for UAV antennas and so the cities are very important militarily and so you know Ukraine would never give up these cities unless they have to because militarily there's there's a lot of reasons why they're important and you know the basically the way Russia goes after it they try and turn these teams

Glide bombs the main way they do it and that destroys the cities essentially so you know we'll see how long it takes I know the different different projections about I think you US officials were saying last fall that like, you know, six months or so at nine months, like that, that has proven false, right? It's impossible to predict timelines on these kind of things because it depends on things. But you know, we are probably going to see things get worse, unfortunately.

And I think the, my concern is, you know, all Russian advances basically are in these directions, getting close to Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Dobropillia. And so any of these advances make these cities more dangerous. make the situation more difficult for Ukraine. And if Ukraine wants to reinforce one direction, well, you've got four kind of directions that are quite concerning and you're kind of splitting forces between different directions to hold them. The other issue is that between Dobropillia and

Like Druzhkivka, this has been one of the main kind of pincers that Russia has. So Russia in 2025, their operational objective was to push south west west from Lyman and then north from Dobropillia and to create basically a pincer around Sloviansk Kremators. This is their overall operational objective and to try and meet like bar from the global area. That failed. Lyman is holding quite well. Third Army Corps is pushing back in the Northern salient. At some point, Ukraine will

Announce how much territory they've taken back and we'll see maps update, but we know they've had some success there. So the Northern pincer is not a threat right now, but the Southern one still is. And, you know, we told this on the podcast the week, the Russians had that assault in July 22nd, the mechanized assault in the Azov Corps direction, which was quite sophisticated. But even without that, that one largely failed, but infiltration is still continuing in these

Directions. And they're clearly still advancing towards Dobropillia, towards Druzhkivka. But I think they're only about less than eight kilometers from Druzhkivka in the southwest and in between this area. And Ukraine has to hold that area because there's high ground there. And if Russia advances too far, they'll start putting the road between Oleksandrivka and Kramatorsk under threat, under FPVs. And that's the main logistics kind of route right now.

And so there's nowhere, Ukraine kind of has to defend all these directions or they have to fall back kind of broadly across the front. And that makes it difficult because you don't know where to reinforce one direction itself. And essentially you have two Russian group of forces focusing on this direction and they're going to get prioritized. And so it's just, you know, the way I think we frame 2026 is the way I frame it. The first half unfolded better than I'd say expected.

The front line, Ukraine held well. Ukraine pushed back in several directions. Middle strike became a thing. Now, what did this lead to is still kind of a question. Deep strike increased. Also open question what the ultimate results will be. But the second half of the year, we might see, you know, a more difficult phase where basically Russia maintains the initiative where the advances are coming the wrong directions and

Where things become more difficult well it was actually it was exactly a year ago that that we had this very alarming mass infiltration just east of of Dobropillia but it wasn't pushing towards Dobropillia was pushing north and if you just look on the map you see okay fortress belt is here you know Sloviansk Kramatorsk Druzhkivka there are as as you mentioned the logistics routes If you look at how this was developing very, very quickly, I mean, it's this whole fortress belt could have been surrounded from the other side, you know, completely from not only from the flank, but from behind.

And on one hand, you know, we saw the Azov Corps being redeployed there. We saw a pretty successful operation with 93rd Brigade with assault units on clearing that big infiltration. And they haven't, you know, in a year's fighting, they're pushing in much the same direction, but they haven't reached as far as they did back then, a year ago. So I think it's worth, you know, recognizing that the success of the Ukrainian defense, because it has been a priority area for Russia since then, this whole time.

And of course, just like with third corps in Lyman, you know, I think it's no coincidence that we have third corps in Lyman area and Azov corps, in Dobropillia area, you know, both, corps commanders, which are very respected, very competent, have plenty of resources and now more and more have their native corps brigades. I think just on an operational level, it's important to recognize how crucial it is that these two corps are the ones defending the kind of the flanks of of the Donbas fortress belt

And now it looks like you know from yesterday evening's news maybe Azov Corps could get a big boost in manpower, if you know, depending on how they use the forces from the Skala assault regiment that are assigned to them. But at the same time as we see this operational push in the same direction as the old infiltration a year ago. We're also seeing a little bit going northwest, what you mentioned, infiltration, kind of moving straight to the city of Druzhkivka.

And I guess that's what I wanted to ask. I mean, we've already seen one of the fortress belt cities kind of overrun, let's say, not lost yet.

Which one is that?

Kostiantynivka. And for me, looking at it, it seems to be kind of basically following a pattern that we've seen. Obviously, this depends a lot on the command in charge of the city and the resources available. But I think what we've seen in Kostiantynivka is similar to what we saw in Pokrovsk and to an extent even Kupiansk as well, in that these cities work very well as a fortress and they can form real, they can be the place for really favorable defensive attritional fights until they are breached by at least some kind

Of critical mass, which usually depends, which usually is around 100 to 200 at minimum Russian forces. And I think that's going to be the big challenge for Ukraine going forward, defending this highly urbanized area where these urban areas are actually very often connected by some kind of continuous either a village or a factory. because if the same thing happens to each other city like happened to Kostiantynivka where, you know, once the periphery was breached, the city was overrun pretty quickly. Then that

Could make a huge difference I think in how long and this large kind of Donetsk climax can go on for and how favorable the attritional fight will be for Ukraine so I think I mean

Because it's difficult. Logistics to their city has been very difficult for well over a year. I mean, I remember in January meeting kind of battalion commanders there who were saying, you know, basically you cannot drive to the city. If you drive it to one-way trip, the vehicle will not make it back. UGVs might make the city, but they won't make it back. Even vampires getting to the front line was very difficult. And so basically it was walking into

The city for some time, or like mopeds or bicycles, because it's one main road leading

Into the city essentially yeah I was on that road in may when the Russians were already entering the city, and it was just a complete mess. Like, there were some armored vehicles still going in and out with all of the anti-drone kind of wire and net covering but there and there were UGVs there a lot of destroyed UGVs but they're also scooters e-bikes and some sometimes guys just pushing

Trolleys as well yeah that was one of the interesting things I saw about your report was people talk about how the whole battlefield is going to get roboticized and, you know, taken over by drones and UGVs. But at the end of the day, the human is still the best, you know, logistics resource that Ukraine has. And keeping these roads protected, that's a human job right now. how do you see that you know Ukraine's great hope in being able to hold is outpacing Russia in

Putting as many UGVs and robots and drones on the battlefield as possible to to make up for manpower shortage but I think humans are still really essential how do you see that playing out there in the Donbas region?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a bigger discussion. I think it depends a lot whether you're talking about the future of actual infantry in their positions or not, because we're in this strange, there's this constant paradox on the Ukrainian lines where everyone says that, you know, infantry will never be replaced. But at the same time, and it is true that in the sectors where there is still infantry, there's some kind of coherent line of infantry positions,

The defense tends to hold a lot better. On the other hand, in many sectors, practically de facto, there's so few infantry, and such big holes between infantry positions, and guys basically spending months at a time, barely even putting their head outside of their hole, that brigades are fighting, and sometimes holding, practically without infantry. And so it's already kind of happening. On the other hand, the way I think one commander, actually it was a UGV commander, put it to me, he said the aim isn't to replace infantry, but it's to replace as much of their work as possible.

But at the same time, you know, it's not always clean and easy and a simple transition. because as you mentioned I mean another thing I saw on this highway were like small fire groups of like two people with rifles or shotguns escorting a UGV on on a logistical mission and you just think that doesn't really make sense. But that's where we are now, and it's not like clear if there's going to be a clear end point to that to this transition I mean UGVs

Aren't fighting that much the the strike component is a very small part of the mission they're all often quite expensive. I think it gets exaggerated to some extent. The priority with drones right now, so as you said, it's UAVs are holding the front for, in many cases, much of the front. It depends on terrain and geography because some terrain, right, if it's open fields, okay, it's hard to maneuver through this without being observed. If it's forced, UAVs struggle to hold

That by itself UGVs the I mean both the purpose, right, is keep people on the grounds as much as possible, and then have drones coming out in and out more than people, because rotations, when people get killed most casualties, just so they're in rotations instead of going to the front obviously the closer zero line the the more dangerous it is and so as much as possible UGVs move everything they do casualty evacuation, they move logistics. Vampire drones move the rest of logistics to the

Front line. I think there are other ways UGVs can replace some things. And so we're moving to a direction where vehicles, so like, you know, ATVs are things. When you drop off soldiers somewhere near a position, the ATV can then drive back on its own, or it can be remote piloted. I think we're moving that direction soon. Same thing, we send a vehicle remote piloted to pick up guys with no driver in it. So you're not putting more people's lives at risk than you need to.

Also you know I know some of the guys I go to the front now even with armored vehicle they'll have, they have like a system where they have guys standing on the sides of the vehicle both with shotguns. And so, it's still guys are the best, you know, option of shooting at FPVs right now there's movement to counter UAV turrets but it's still taking time it's not there yet but really it's, you know, it's basically try and keep human beings underground as much as you can.

That is the best way of countering drones, as it has been for other types of weapons for a time. And then have drones do everything above ground as possible, as much as you can. But that's mostly the logistics stuff the the strike mission so on and so I think that's how you try and try and replace them as much as you can but there's a lot of limitations there and you know you still need infantry because again who is in front of your UAV positions and in some places

You know you can hold pretty well with UAVs where multiple kilometers is very little way of Russians being able to maneuver through there but when the weather gets bad again then you know UAVs their effectiveness reduces and if you have really bad weather on some days you definitely need someone there because that can make a difference between Russian advances.

And on the offensive humans are still definitely maybe augmented by UGVs when they can be and obviously UAVs it's infinitely harder to coordinate everything on the offense among UAVs and UGVs to take ground so infantry still I think has a long life left on the battlefield.

I mean, I don't think we've seen UGVs take grounds yet. I know we've seen some articles suggesting this or some anecdotes. I think those have been kind of misconstrued or exaggerated. Again, UGVs right now, they need batteries. They need to get resupplied somehow. And so, you know, there's a story about third assault brigade, one of the leaders in UGV use. They had a UGV kind of held a position for 45 days. In reality, it was UAVs holding that position

For 45 days, right? The UGV played a role. And I know that UGV did actually kill several Russian soldiers, but the batteries are going to last for a few days. So the batteries have to be maintained. And so you need infantry who are there to maintain the UGVs themselves. I think really when you see UGVs on the frontline in infantry role, it's more something where they can kind of spawn as a quick reaction force, right? They can drive up, it can engage Russian infiltration groups, but they need

Come back to some position, right? And so it's not like it's holding this one position for a long time on its own, because someone has to maintain these vehicles. And of course, you know, with you know .50 cals and machine guns they have stoppages the UGV cannot do an I-age roll on a machine gun you have to have someone do this you have to you know use I was called the the lubricant for machine guns I forget we use it with the us military yeah but you someone has to put this

On there, right? And different weather conditions change, so on. Right? So we're still a long ways where you can have an actual UGV or turret on its own operating autonomously. You still need maintenance all the time.

And so that whole argument is just, yeah, we're just not there yet.

I don't think we're close yet.

I mean, yeah, I think it's a good way of thinking about it that like Ukraine needs to keep people underground as much as possible. And that's, you know, going back to your question about attacking and the question of whether Ukraine can attack, you know conduct large counter-offensives in the future given their manpower situation which is not getting better that's the big asymmetry in this war and and I think strategically looking at at Russia their assault kind of philosophy has been based on this constant

Availability of expendable assault infantry that they've mostly gotten through you know through volunteer recruiting, you know, supplemented by prisoners and foreigners and people who were kind of de facto mobilized coercively. And that, I mean, now that's a big question for them, a political question, which takes us all the way back to Kremlin, Kremlinology. But, but Ukraine just doesn't have that option, for now. And, and so like, especially given the geography, just talking about drones, sorry,

I wanted to say a week ago I was on a heat training for journalists where they were doing simulations with FPV drones. And they had some very skilled pilots. And basically our job was to get, you know, and it was from one building to another. We had to like cross a bit of open ground. And. I mean, I just really recommend anyone who wants to understand what modern war looks like, just the feeling of personally being chased by an FPV drone in the hands of a good pilot,

Just the feeling like any open space is death for you. Even if you think you're safe in bushes, they'll find a way. The propellers will chop up the bushes and still kill you. If you're safe in a corridor, the drone will still fly in. And that goes back to, I think, why now it's possible that if Ukraine cannot hold the flanks of the fortress belt in Donbass, or if they can't hold the peripheries of the cities themselves, which eventually fell in Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, that compared to a field and even a village is a 2D space.

You know, it's got some shelters in tree lines. It's got some basements in one story houses. But the urban spaces with big industrial areas, with big basements, with multi-story apartment buildings, just almost, I don't know what you think, like almost make them a liability in a defensive war if they're breached. And that's an area where, I mean, there's no way you can get a UGV to clear a basement or an apartment building.

No, humans are definitely, I've been thinking a lot about resupplying and powering up drones and UGVs. And you look at these Ukrainians that have been in position for 300 days. It's really much easier to resupply and refuel and repower humans. and they have this intense endurance that UGV will just go out at the wrong moment and humans stay alive or find ways to stay alive a lot better. So it's very interesting. And then in an urban environment, yeah, I don't think human skills

And really highly skilled infantry in an urban environment is very hard to replace.

I mean, I think for Kramatorsk Slovians, because they've been so central to planning for a long time, I do wonder what Ukraine has built there for the defense of these cities. So underground or otherwise. We know there's a lot of underground structures. In some of the fighting now, there are some directions where Ukrainians walk five kilometers underground to get to positions.

Yeah.

Maybe not like infantry positions, but to drone positions other places. You know, again, these are things that Ukraine will not, you know, be too open about. And so I don't know the direction and so on, but-

But that's a vulnerability if Russia gets the other end of that underground structure.

Yes, but it does mean that, again, getting around the kill zone is essentially be underground as much as possible. If you can walk underground, again, that's where the Russians use pipes, right? Is to try and avoid the threat from UAVs. But if you have tunnels on the back end, it means you can resupply certain areas, some cities and get to cities more easily by, you know, underground kind of movement. And so I don't know the extent of what they've done in Krematora

Sloviansk. We all know that this has been a hub for command posts, other things. So we know there's probably sophisticated things there. Anyone who knows kind of Ukrainian buildings, you know, Russian buildings, they have pretty good basements. Like they've pretty well fortified basements. I don't think there's any thought process maybe that they'd be used in this way. But like, you know, where command posts are, they're actually pretty well fortified. So as you're saying about the

Attrition of cities, it depends on the geographies, I'd say. It depends on how you can resupply. But for these cities, because there's been so much thinking, maybe, or hopefully, they may have some sophisticated underground structures that can still do resupply and other things to hold and fight for them longer. Look, I remember in Bakhmut, anytime the Russians were about to take a tall building. They were trying to remote detonate them. So they would deny Russians

That kind of advantage. Maybe they do that again in this case. We haven't seen that recently because I didn't see that in Kostiantynivka at all. I don't remember seeing that in Pokrovsk either. I mean, Pokrovsk got hit with the FP-2s, you know, KABs afterwards from Ukraine to knock out some of those buildings. But, you know, there might be some better plans behind what's going to happen Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, there might be better ways to resupply those cities too, to fight kind of

Longer on if there's tunnels and things of that nature. I mean, again, hopefully this is the thought process that has been going on. But yeah, you said, in a lot of these battles, once Russia gets too many people in there, then it just becomes a mess. It's hard to know who is left to right of you. We know Ukraine lacks infantry, so then it becomes Russia's manpower advantage probably becomes more of an advantage there right because there's less open areas

But look it all spends the weather and so if you remember Pokrovsk october last year is when Pokrovsk really got bad. Infiltration begun like June or July, but more than 100 guys got to the city in October, because the weather turned for a few days and drones were not as effective. the risk this time is that the Russians I I think you know when we talk about seasonal dimension wintertime favors defense typically I'd say because you lose the tree lines you lose a lot of the

Camouflage, thermal cameras work better. Before you get to the winter you have October, November, where it's overcast and it's not too cold and you still have tree lines to some extent and so I think I think my concern is that these are two months that might be the biggest problem for Ukraine in the coming months. And then, you know, probably December, January, February probably be you know, kind of okay-ish. But if Russians are near Dobropillia or other cities, and then you have

This weather change, they can then do what they did in Pokrovsk last October. They can get in large numbers into a city, get a foothold, and then it becomes, you know, kind of difficult to extricate them at that point. Now, unfortunately, you know, there's, okay, Dobropillia infiltration groups are already there. You already have guys who've been in Shakhove to northeast of the city who've been taking POW. Russians have a presence in most of the villages south of the

City at this point. So the mine north west of Bilytske, the Russians have advanced pretty quickly in that direction. And so I think there is a risk that we see a battle for Europe in the coming months. But Druzhkivka as well, same thing, right? They're less than eight kilometers in that direction. And it's a bad area of advance because logistics against Kostiantynivka goes through there, right and there's also I mean it looks like the Russians aren't even so much focused on taking

Kostiantynivka they're focused on trying to keep pushing beyond because you know the next village was was it not the I forget the name of it no no it's okay I forget but the village northwest of Kostiantynivka Russians are already infiltrating there and so it looks as though they're trying to to push as deep as they can to force Ukraine to kind of just collapse their their perimeter in these areas. But I do think the next couple months could be really vital.

It depends. Where does Russia get before December? Because for December, January, February, right? Cold weather, it's not fun being outside. You want to hold the cities, right? And Dimas says last podcast, you want to have a basement in a city where it's much easier to survive. If the Russians are in Kramatorsk Sloviansk and hopefully they're not there by that time, then it becomes a much worse like direction if they're in Druzhkivka Dobropillia it's easier for them to kind of

Survive and hold and fight for that if they're outside of these cities and Ukraine holds the next couple months then the the winter though I think will go much better but if they get to these these cities in the end of coming months, then the dynamic will be much

Worse yeah because once that infiltration starts as well if you're thinking about all the Ukrainian drone teams, whether it's Mavics doing the basic tactical recon or the FPVs who were comfortably working out of that city, suddenly they're not focused on defending a line around the edge, but they're focused on trying to find and hit these infiltrators. But that kind of has this chain reaction effect like it did in Pokrovsk, because that means that the kind of opening that

The Russians found to get in is now less and less defended. And so that's, yeah, I agree. I think Dobropillia Druzhkivka is going to be crucial kind of looking before the winter. Although I wanted to still take it back to the strategic picture and think about where we could be. And because if we look at last year, we saw Pokrovsk being overrun. Kupiansk was looking pretty bad, although then they kind of cleared it out mostly. But most importantly, over the whole of 2025, Russia was able to not only mount huge pressure

On basically all of Donetsk, but at the same time, attack in other areas, and particularly the south, where Ukraine was just in a position where they were falling back. And in a basic, like the defense was in a state of kind of slow motion chaos. They had these TDF brigades that were just kind of running away, battalion command points getting overrun, and a lot of territory taken. If we do look at the DeepState figures, they kept saying back then that this is where most of the territory is being taken for the least effort from Russia.

So what does that, I guess, say? Is it not a very promising sign for Ukraine that... you know we understood there's always going to be a brutal grinding attritional fight for Donbas which would always be very difficult but Russian forces at the moment the the army is not capable of putting so much pressure on so many different directions, where you would see this like quick loss of territory and then the question is what happens if they mobilize yeah so yeah I

I mean, this war kind of ebbs and flows between, well, there's always narratives, right? One is Ukraine's losing, Ukraine's winning. And it's like, well, you know, I'm in between, right? Where Russia is advancing. I think Russia like met diminished returns this war some time ago, but they have a lot of people. And they're willing to take heavy costs. And so the longer the war goes on, Ukraine's also taking heavy costs. And in that respect, they're losing, not because they're going to lose like Kyiv or everything

Else, but because people are getting killed. are being killed, their economy is being damaged, and the longer the war goes on is bad for Ukraine. 2026, again, like the first half of 2026 went better than I think most people expected it would because, you know, I remember back in the winter, like, okay, Russian advances usually still down in the winter, but they didn't pick up in late spring and summer. They didn't this year, right? And that's why it was like, okay, May was a great month. I mean, Ukraine took more territory

In May. It took more territory in February. Like you said, it began with Huliaipole, where you had two TDF brigades there that got pushed back. They had a bunch of problems. It looked quite bad. And then, you know, they stabilized that situation. Pokrovsk, they lost the city. The Myrnohrad battle went on, but like very slow advances again. And Russia was taking heavy losses. On net, Russia has not gained that much territory this year, you know, particularly compared to

Like, you know, last year, 2024. A breakthrough I don't think is likely. Although I would say this one mechanized assault in the Azov Corps area was notable because it showed more learning and it could have succeeded. Not necessarily a real breakthrough where it would have been devastating, but like they could have had a, you know, maybe five kilometer advance, something like that, right? It could have happened. As you said, last August, and we went down to the front like a week

Or two after that infiltration happened, really concerning moment because we've been talking for a long time, you know, manpower is getting more difficult, you know, units are like, hey, we're stretch, we have problems, so on. And you never know, is there going to be a point where like, it becomes critical and the Russians break through? Or is it just, it's going to get a little worse, but it's still going to be, we're just, you know, falling back gradually, right?

That was a really bad moment because the Russian infiltration groups made like 18 kilometers past the front line. So they made it very far, very fast. And these guys were walking for several days and there's no one stopping. And like literally the Ukrainians are picking up on SIGINT, like hearing them like, oh yeah, we'll go to 0.2, 0.3 and just kept walking basically. And so it showed a lot of the problems the Ukrainian military were not in the infantry

To hold the front line, coordination issues between units. This is before Azov Corps took over, still had those kinds of problems. A lot of those things have been improved upon. The core reform has improved quite a bit. I think we've had some good leadership. I think Drapatyi will also improve some of these things going forward. This year, we saw a slow Russian advances. And so, as you said, there are positive trends happening this year. There are issues for Russia,

But still the Donetsk region, because they were close to these cities, any advances threaten the cities. And so then it becomes a big issue. And of course, the narrative in the future is going to be a battle for these cities and their populations. It's going to be a big issue. As you said, Russia's approach was volunteer recruitment where they'd pay these people a lot of money. They'd come in, many would be killed or wounded within a month or two of joining and signing

Contracts. The number of them being coerced into signing based on threats from the Kremlin, that has increased. So it's kind of like covert mobilization.

So debtors are under a lot of pressure?

Debtors, I mean, so police officers are given a quota and they're told like, hey, if you, we want you to get one or two guys to sign a contract per month. And if you get that, will also give you a financial bonus. So it's a whole, there's a whole new economy in Russia based around the war where guys who sign contracts get a lot of money, guys who recruit them get a lot of money. It's actually had a weird redistribution, like wealth redistribution in the country itself. The regions are getting rich.

Because like little towns are getting more money. But I mean, people are getting killed, but they also are getting more money. So the prices are up too.

It's been a bizarre thing. But that approach though, you know, the manpower, they are are roughly meeting their numbers, not as much as they want to. They're not exceeding it. They exceeded in previous years, but they're not making enough numbers to overcome Ukraine's defenses right now. And so you said there are a couple of X factors now. One is mobilization, which President Zelensky said that Russia is planning on doing this. Mobilization, it may not be a massive amount

Of people one month. It might just be, we're going to increase the numbers per month we're going to get in addition to regular recruitment. Then the issue is, yes, there's political risk here. There's a reason why Putin hasn't done this since 2022, but none of us know where the breaking point for Russia is. All the talk about refineries, wildberries, other things, all those things have cost for Russia, but where is the breaking point? No one can say. Russia has demonstrated it can

Take very heavy costs. It's not clear when Russians would rise up and say, okay, it's enough. We're not going to do this anymore. Is mobilization at that point? Maybe, but maybe it's not. If it's not, it will be a big problem for Ukraine. Again, Russia has been trying to form new units the last few years. Last year, I think 80% of the new recruits went as combat replacements. This is replacing guys for wounded or killed. They were trying to build a bunch of new divisions and they

Couldn't do it because they didn't have enough new soldiers. This year, the attrition rate is basically where the recruitment rate is. So they don't have enough people to build new units. If they do mobilization, they could form new units. These are not going to be well-equipped units or they're not going to have armor and so on, but it could potentially enable Russia to set up a new front somewhere else. And this is what you were saying, but basically this year, because

The manpower has become more difficult, Russia has focused on narrower places, not as much as front line. They've got pushback in Zaporizhzhia. They lost, obviously, area of the Dnipropetrovsk direction. Lyman direction got pushed back while advancing Donetsk. If they do mobilization, they'll have enough people to potentially push back and add additional kind of fronts. There's been talk about Chernihiv for some time, maybe refocus on Sumy, Kharkiv, so on. Zelensky's also mentioned

North Koreans. He mentioned 30,000 to 50,000 North Koreans are being deployed to Russia, not clear what their purpose is. We know that North Korea is sending, I guess, more ballistic missiles and launchers too. They seem to be playing a more direct role in the war. The soldiers they committed earlier only fought in Russian territory. They only fought in Kursk. They were quite good. They're quite tough soldiers. They were not ready for FPV warfare, but they've learned from it since then. If North Koreans cross the border and are

Use it again to do assaults, this is not an insignificant issue because these guys are tough fighters. These are real infantrymen. And even 10,000 troops, if you add that to Russia's total in Sumy, that is a significant change, right? Where Ukraine would probably have to reinforce that direction in order to kind of counter this. And the last one I'd say is the mechanism of the Azov Corps direction, it showed a lot of learning. Russia has often kind of repeated

Repeated mistakes over and over and over again, Ukraine has been able to hold back even with few infantry with drones, but that has relied on Russia not being that adapted at tactical level. If Russia starts to get better at tactical level, right, maybe then the infantry shortage becomes actually a real problem, right? And what we saw in this direction, it was pretty sophisticated. And if they do it against a different core, if they do it in October or November when

Weather's poor because they didn't assault when it's perfect weather. And so Ukraine ISR could see everything essentially. If they do it on a day with bad weather and they have these different innovations, maybe that's enough to really achieve a breach. So again, when we try and project the future, it's always hard. You never know who's going to get the upper hand innovation, what kind of adaptations could happen, so on. I would say though that there are these different changes,

Potential changes do represent risk for Ukraine. And the current approach is not fully succeeding for Russia. But if they make these changes and they can do so, that could really make things

Much more difficult for Ukraine. I think with mobilization, it's almost, I mean, there is that immediate threat, right? That they could attack more intensely in areas where they're already attacking or they could open a completely new front in general. But I think almost the scarier thing is the final, like, proof of the political conviction to move beyond that clear reluctance, and that clear hesitation, to really commit to a fight that could go for

For years and years more and I think that will be a very dangerous moment for both sides

Because for Russia, once you mobilize again, they're now prepared for it, meaning they're not going to make the same mistakes of letting people over the border. They've got border control set up. They've got e-registration set up. They're going to be much more efficient this time.

And you're right. It's crossing the Rubicon where Putin's basically saying, I'm in this for another three years. So, I mean, I think what we were saying last year.

That basically Russian internal projections is that if we fight too long in 2026, our economy is going to suffer long-term damage. There were senior, my understanding also is that there's senior Russian officials who have come to Putin and kind of said, hey, we can't achieve what you want to achieve in this war. There's very heavy costs associated with this war. Also, our threats are increasing around our territory because we obviously have a huge territory. And that there's

Been a lot of push by different officials to say, we need to end the war now because we're not going to achieve what our objectives are. And you've even had some articles from kind of pro-Russian foreign policy journals that have kind of said, hey, you know, basically we've achieved everything we can achieve in this war. Let's just kind of say we won and then just like focus on other things.

But we can also be a victim of the narrative rollercoaster as well.

But, and so when Putin goes beyond that, it's still him saying, I don't care what they're saying, I can continue this and we can continue this. And the problem is that Putin created this system where basically he has enough control, where he really basically kind of killed the opposition over several kind of successive different things. And we saw protests the first week or two of the war, right? And then a lot of young Russians left who didn't, who were against

The war, okay. We saw some protests for a week or two when mobilization happened the first time, but ultimately didn't lead to anything that significant. We've seen no protests since then that I can think of anything really significant. And so again, it comes back to, you know, is mobilization, another round of mobilization, will that be the critical point? Or is it something that Putin can just, you know, kind of go through again? You know, I think he probably thinks he

Can do it. And he's, you know, he's probably right, honestly. But again, we don't know what that breaking point is. And my, you know, I think we talked on the podcast last time, I think really Ukraine strategy needs to focus on just sustainability because you don't know how long this war can go. Iran-Iraq war went even longer than this war did.

Eight years.

This war could go more years, right?

It's been 12 already.

Right. But it could also, it could have hot phases. It could have like colder phases, right? You could have other things go on. You could have a ceasefire and then you could have a, know restart the war six months later right I think it's it's important to have this kind of longer term perspective, though. This war might go on longer, and then how do you, I mean, how do you manage the human resources in order to do this? Because again, the guys serving for four and a half

Years are tired and exhausted. If you want these guys to be useful two years from now, maybe the worst will go on two years now I hope it's not but maybe it is maybe some of those guys need to take a year off and they come back and can contribute again. But if you have people who have spent five years doing nothing but this with like a week or two of vacation a year, they're going to get burnt out, right? They're going to lose a lot of the kind of abilities they have. So this is still

That big question. It's just how long can Russia stay in this war and how long is Putin willing to stay in this war? And thus far, Putin has doubled down every opportunity he's had when he could have ended it and walked away with something. He's decided against it. Taking the rest of the region, if Russia does capture the rest of the region, it's not going to be 2026. It's going to have to go into 2027 at least and again a battle for kramator slaviansk Chasiv Yar took two years

Right? Kramatorsk-Sloviansk could take longer, right? It's really hard to say. So, you know, it's I don't know it's it's a difficult moment to say this but yeah it is we are approaching that that time when a battle for Kramatorsk-Sloviansk seems like it's coming at some point. And this could be one of the really big battles of the war. It could be much bigger than Bakhmut or the other big battles, because these cities are, you know, arguably more important, and they are the last

Last bastion of of bastion of the Donetsk region and so it is Russia's big priority and I think again Ukrainians are going to fight for the rest of this region they're not going to give up territory you know just because they because they they have to they're going to fight for everything yeah I mean

I agree about focusing on sustainability and for Ukraine going forward but that should have been been the case for a while now, especially when you're talking about the sustainability of your most precious and limited resource, which is manpower. So I won't go into a big Syrskyi rant now. It's a topic for a whole other podcast, but that in a way is a very, I feel a lot better being in this place with a commander in chief who has a track record of actually valuing that

Resource going forward. It would be nice if he was paired with a defense minister who was also being very smart about all kinds of different optimizations of all different processes and using more drones better and solving problems. But hopefully what he's already started to put in place and the kind of school of thought he's brought in in half a year. Well, it will continue because that's more a systemic thing. But the manpower now more than ever,

It's going to be super important for Ukraine to preserve it.

Yeah. And I mean, I think one of the main criticisms of the entire war has been the approach is week by week, month by month, not six months from now, what do we need to do? How do we stop Russia from advancing six months from now, a year from now? And that comes back to, you know, mobilizing guys, people, sooner, so they have more time to train, so they're more prepared for the battlefield when they get there. You know, not letting units become too undermanned. Maybe falling back once the conditions on the battlefield no longer make

Sense. The whole village, maybe you fall back, right? Once the attrition ratio gets bad, okay, you don't have to go all out holding, you know, a very small village. Those kind of choices. But But again, it comes back to President Zelensky had this 40-day operation he announced a little over 40 days ago to try and kind of compel Russia to peace. He said it was successful, but ultimately, Russia is not compelled to go to peace anytime soon. And I think putting these kind of short timelines is just not doable, right?

We're going to have another winter of this war. I think it's pretty clear we're going to have another winter. The winter is going to be difficult. last winter was very difficult here in Kyiv. I suspect a lot of people will leave because if they know another winter is coming, they know the energy is going to be hit. There's, you know, limited protection against ballistic missiles, but also, you know, jet-powered Shahed 2/4/5 are a bigger problem too.

And again, I think Putin just thinks he can out-sustain the pain better than Ukraine can.

In the West.

In the West.

And how do you...

It's interesting because if you look at how the US and Europe has responded since the last couple of years, right? So Trump, yes, Trump is not providing financial benefits the same way the US did under Biden. Yes, we're not providing as many weapons and things, so on. Intelligence sharing has gotten stronger, if anything. US intelligence is playing a role in deep strike. It's playing a role in middle strike. And again, these are the big successes Ukraine has had this year is that US is playing a role

And so I actually think from Putin's perspective, he was hoping Trump would be able to either coerce Zelensky into concessions, which he did not do, right? Whether that went down. And U.S. Support is still very important to Ukraine. And it's still continuing. And so I don't think Putin is that happy about how things have developed, actually, with Trump coming to office. And then with the EU, obviously, so Orbán was replaced a few months ago. The EU passed that huge loan deal.

And that is going to sustain Ukraine's defense spending, defense industry, so on. And so I think, again, if Putin looks at how NATO has responded, I think overall he says, you know what, actually NATO has held together quite well and that we haven't seen the big breaks we have. Okay, there was that Greenland thing and Greenland may come again. But overall, I mean, support to Ukraine has still been maintained and it's been sufficient to prevent a Russian breakthrough or anything imminent, essentially.

And so I think in that respect, again, it comes back to how do you convince Putin that time is not on his side? And I don't think we've seen a break in NATO or a break in foreign support for Ukraine that has given him a reason to believe this is going to happen soon. him. But I think it still comes back to his own perceptions of what's happened in the battlefield. We know he's getting false reports. Again, because of the commander of West Group of Forces,

Told him that Kupiansk was encircled almost a year ago, told him Kupiansk was taken. Neither of those are true. He's still in charge for some reason. And it shows that whatever's happened in the Russian military, you are not firing commanders for significant failures, even when these are very clear failures. And his commanders are probably telling

That Ukraine's announcement of however many villages being liberated is all not true. So who knows what his perception of that is?

There have been videos when the Minister of Defense or other people have gone to command posts, and they've shown the maps they have on the wall and overlaid that with what the regular maps said. And even like pro-Russian open source mappers. And it's significantly beyond what that shows. Not even including this, we're talking about infiltration, which is a big gray area. there is a lot of misinformation reported up the chain of command in Russia at some point though he

Has to have some inkling this is happening, right? It's like, okay, Kupiansk, you know, we're not not seeing commanders of Kupiansk right now. Obviously, you know, they said they took it last year, obviously not true. So you know, the system he's created is still, you know, feeding him bullshit, right? Things he wants to hear, things that are not true. The system is not reforming fast.

You know. And again, we are fortunate in this case because if the Russian military was adapting faster, if they were responding and punishing failure, punishing dishonesty, so on, the Russian military would be much more effective and it'd be a much bigger problem. So we are lucky that in some respects, Putin is still enabling a very flawed system, that Gerasimov is still overseeing this very flawed system. And hopefully he stays in charge because it could get worse if he had a better commander

There. I think one of the best developments of the war was in Surovikin and was replaced by Gerasimov. And we've seen the Russian military kind of not perform nearly as well since then. But look, I mean, I'd say we combat Russia's approach right now, infiltration, Ukraine has kind of figured out how to deal with it. Not perfectly, but to prevent it from being catastrophic. The approach Ukraine has with few infantry, frontline held by drones, that has worked against

Russia's approach that we've seen. If Russia changes that approach, whether North Koreans, significant injection of new manpower, or they get better to combine arms, then that approach may not be sufficient. Then maybe Ukraine has to adjust what it's doing. Maybe what's working now will not work in October, November when the weather gets worse. I think we have to keep this in mind that things can always get worse. The situation this year has been better than last

Year overall. I think the coming months are going to become more difficult. My concern is October, November in particular. Hopefully if Ukraine can prevent Russia from really advancing, taking advantage of weather changes, the winter should be okay on the front line, I think. But that's something to keep in mind. I think the last two months Russia has increased of advance it's not as much as last year but it is more than we saw earlier this year well Francis

Thank you again for for joining us I'll I'll let you sum up for everyone give some final thoughts here again it was great to have you on we hope to have you more often in the future as you

Come back from your frontline trips yeah thank you I mean it's an interesting the the way to finish the topic of being disconnected from reality, because it's something that both sides suffer from. And when one is disconnected from reality, whether they're responsible for something, whether they're commanding someone, making important decisions, or if they're just someone who cares about Ukraine and wants to follow it from a distance, the price paid for

Being disconnected for too long and too far, whether that's paid in human lives or just for someone kind of watching and being interested from far away in emotional pain or disappointment. It's just one of the, I think, a good reminder of why we need to be focused on what's really going on the ground, going on, rather than the narrative. They have a relationship between themselves, especially when we're talking about the Trump administration and the next comment

He's going to make. But otherwise, but first and foremost, it's the reality on the ground we need to understand. And for that we need to be on the ground, we need to go there. And so, and more conversations like this between yeah connecting all the all the dots I think are

Important so very much a pleasure to be here I will add some details so we were down at the front last year when the oval office meeting happened and so I remember we we watched it in and one of your friends apartments that night right as the Ukrainian service member yeah and so we're watching it there and I I'm a little like I'm like I'm not american here and it's like it's a very you know not not great you know moment and I'm like I don't know I don't know what these guys

Are gonna think of me after this but I I find it interesting because you know we're talking them and they're watching, you know, they're watching all the big news, right? These These are guys who are fighting. And they're like, okay, this is like not good, you know, but like, you know, it's politicians, politicians do whatever. You know, obviously he didn't blame all Americans or anything along those lines. But it was bizarre seeing that being, you know, near the front with guys who are fighting and then seeing the political level, this kind of like, you know, fractious relationship.

Like, what does this actually mean? And, you know, and you can describe it better than I can, but my takeaway from it was like, look, tomorrow the war is continuing. I have to go I have a job tomorrow I've got to do I have to support infantry guys who are flying the front line in this part of the front line and I can't focus on what's happening you know on TV or wherever else. It's like, this is not a good video, this is clearly not a good development but I think he kind of I mean I think the guy's kind of like okay like that's

Interesting and like we got we got work to do tomorrow but I do I mean again even just the the Trump era, him being back in office, it has been an interesting period of ebbs and flows and so on. The war continues though. And the guys were fighting, they continue doing what they're doing. And there's some, I probably can't articulate this. Well, there's some normalcy where you know what the job is, regardless of anything going on else in the world, you have a job to do

The next day and you know what your responsibilities are. And that kind of makes it clear though. them. But I had another question for you, if we got time. Okay. So one thing that I'm interested in, this war is more covered on social media than any war in history. I think Syria was probably the first social media war, but this one now, you see things on Twitter, you see things on Telegram, and then you go to the front line, you talk to the units. Can you talk about to what extent do

You think what you see on social media is representative of what you see at the front, Are the atmospheres different? To what extent do you think people who follow the war on Twitter have a good understanding just based on Twitter and the videos that are put out from both sides compared to like, you know, what you see when you're down there reporting like on the ground

Itself? Yeah, good question. I mean, you could divide Ukrainian language and English language Twitter because I follow both. But I mean, if we're just talking about, obviously, Ukrainian language Twitter I mean these are all people mostly who are in Ukraine some not but who are invested in in the war you know who who have I guess skin in the game but who also have understanding of the local politics. But it's also very much infused with all of the emotions

Surrounding mobilization, and local political kind of alliances and stuff. If you look at English language Twitter I guess that is the main thing that it's lacking in the sense that obviously there are you know especially some of the the OSINTers who I don't really know what they do for their day job — or maybe this is their day job — but, you know, some of the work that is put out there on a regular basis, the efforts put into maps and investigations, and

People who monitor so many more Telegram channels than I would ever have time to do. It can be very impressive. The danger is when that being the main raw data that's coming in, connected with everything else that's on the surface level of the news cycle, and that being fed into, once again, this narrative pipeline, pipeline which is amplified by some commentators who are more focused on the narrative war than the real war that's when it gets dangerous and I think going back to your question

What is lost in times like that is just the human factor. The understanding of, like, who are these, like, hundreds of thousands of faces who are actually doing the fighting on the ground, whether they're an infantryman in a trench or a commander in a control point or a drone pilot who's killing heaps of Russians, but barely surviving from glide bombs. And that human factor is connected to not only the day-to-day developments of the war that someone might mark on a map, but long-term, how long can Ukraine as a society, as a military,

Still stay in the war? Like, what are the people thinking? What's mobilization really doing to the country? What's the deal with desertions and AWOL? And that's one area where legacy media often they do focus on because they come and they focus on real human stories, but then that still comes with the vagueness of the lack of understanding. you know, they might ask me on a five minute radio interview, oh, how's morale out there on the front it's like do you want the short answer or the long one you know and so I think yeah for

Anyone just wanting to really get under the skin of what's going on, is just as much proximity as possible — whether it's physically coming and visiting here, talking to people or just consuming kind of stories that are about the Ukrainian people and and who they really are fighting supporting back in the rear because that's what will decide this war so I

Think and I get your take on this one thing I've noticed when we go when I go to the front the guys I talk to are often more pessimistic than you'll hear elsewhere and it's it's it's difficult sometimes to frame this when I talk to other audiences because if you if you were in a brigade and your brigade is getting pushed back, you're gonna be pessimistic, saying we're losing area. And strategic level, this might be a very small amount of territory, right?

It may not be strategically disastrous for Ukraine, and maybe it's good attrition ratio, so it's like, it's okay. If you were the battalion commander and you were losing people, regardless of what the attrition you're inflicting is, you could very well be depressed, saying, I'm losing this many people every day. We're getting pushed back. We're losing areas, right? And so when you talk to them, particularly on what day it is and so on, they may give

You a very pessimistic kind of approach, saying, you know, like, things are not going very well. some commanders I've talked to have been way too pessimistic well their predictions are like we are going to lose a lot of things and like I'll see them a few months later and like that did not happen. Like, you know, you guys are holding pretty well, it looks like, you know, so on. And like, yeah, okay, fair enough. That's always been an interesting thing to try and convey,

Because you hear different anecdotes. Some guys would be very confident. Now, are they being confident for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons. Some would be very pessimistic. And then some of the pessimism is not warranted, but it still is there and it's still important to kind of understand.

Or maybe the pessimism makes them sharper in their job.

Yeah, I mean, it can reflect a bunch of things, I guess, like just being tired or so on. But things are relative, I think. And that's one thing that's difficult to say because when you talk about the Ukrainian military, you talk about the AWOL issue, talk about morale, tired, exhaustion, so on. If you only focus on, and of course, like, look, we talk to the Ukrainian military. I don't talk to the Russian military. I don't have contacts there. So I'm not hearing those things from whatever. So it's sometimes easy to focus on the Ukrainian

Side of, okay, here are the problems you've got on the Ukrainian side. Yes, but everything's relative. The Russians have worse morale issues, other issues on that side too. It's sometimes difficult to put this into perspective, all this information together, because we have some sources that are quite good, some that are not very good, some that we have good contacts might be too pessimistic and wrong, and even though they are in a good position to know something and vice versa.

So I always have difficulty trying to figure out how do you put this information together? How do you convey it in an accurate way? Based on your trips up front, what have you kind of noticed from this? And how have you learned to kind of try and convey the battlefield reality to an

International audience? I think it's a great question. I think the answer to it, I think, first started to come to my mind on the same trip in winter 2025 with the Oval Office meeting and everything. But whether it's a reporting trip or whatever, like more and more, I feel this way that a lot of it depends like on not only who you're, like which unit you're speaking to, but like more broadly, at the end of the day, there are almost like two Ukrainian militaries, like,

Like kind of existing, coexisting at the same time. One of those, and this is obviously, you know, best seen in units like USF, like Unmanned Systems Forces, or, you know, top drone units or elite brigades in general, where there's just such a concentration of motivated, intelligent people who are here on a volunteer basis, and they're fighting the war of the future, and they're being extremely efficient. You know, there's one way to really feel more optimistic about the war is like I did in May,

Like embedding with a top drone team from Signum in North Donetsk, just like killing 10 Russians a day through the forest, not giving them a chance to get close to the front line. But then there's the other Ukrainian military, which is the kind of legacy, either like old mechanized brigades that have just been exhausted and worn down over years of fighting, or the new ones that have been formed out of nothing, and random officers brought from here and there, just filled with unmotivated mobilized troops. You know, other brigades

Like that don't even start about the assault forces you know and like the the I guess the atmosphere in that kind of brigade and you mentioned battalion commanders like the I think those people, you see more than battalion, company commanders, because they see the human cost of the Russian advances, but also of all of the systemic problems within their own military. And they just look at you with this kind of glassy face, talking about how their battalion

Has been churned through several times over the last few years. And then you can get an extremely pessimistic picture. So it's about, and I think that, I mean, in some ways we'll see what Drapatyi does, But, you know, those two things will only continue to diverge as mobilization gets more difficult. And understanding the relationship between those things, I think, is also going to be key to getting a more accurate human face of the Ukrainian military going forward.

Francis, thanks again for joining us. You've been a huge friend of the foundation and you and your team from Kyiv Independent helping host the last Ukraine Freedom Summit. We're doing the next one in February of 2027 in Dallas. We'll definitely try to recruit you guys again for that. And, you know, appreciate your support of our historical mission. You are writing the first draft of history, truly. You and Rob from the military analyst community and you from the straight journalistic tradition.

And as a historian, it's great to just sit back and watch you guys work and bring it together and try and connect this to Ukraine's, I think, long and largely unstudied but should be studied military history tradition that is, I think, finally getting its respect it deserves and will continue to do so. And I'd love to go into a lot of those topics in the future with you, your historical view of a war that is now four years of full-scale invasion and some of the things you've lived through.

So we'll definitely try and have you back. So thanks again, Francis. Thanks, Rob. Another great episode. And thank you for tuning in to the Ukraine Military History Podcast. Hi, it's Sam Cook. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ukraine Military History Podcast. I hope that you found this information informative, and it's something that will help increase your understanding of warfare and however you are participating in the national defense of the United States or another, hopefully, friendly country that is supporting Ukraine in the West.

And whether you're a military professional and want to learn these lessons to become a better professional soldier, or you're in the defense industry, or you're a government official who deals with defense policy, or you're an investor in defense industry companies or considering that, I hope you share this with other people that would find this information useful. if you like this please subscribe to it so you get notified on YouTube or your podcast app. However you listen to or watch this podcast, if you're listening

To this podcast you can go watch the videos on YouTube and vice versa if you're watching this on YouTube the links to subscribe to this podcast and get it downloaded to your favorite podcast app are also in the show notes below. And finally, if you enjoy what we're talking about here and you'd like to learn more, if you're a defense industry founder, I've actually produced a free video series called Ukraine for Founders. The first part of that talk is absolutely free. It's called Why War Matters.

And it's my introduction to a little bit of theory and things that you should be thinking about as a founder getting into the defense industry if you're serious about being successful. And then finally, if you want to go to Ukraine and work here, you can sign up for the second and third parts of our talk and get a lot more information from me and my team about how you can work more deeply inside Ukraine. So if you enjoyed this podcast, please go check out that

Free talk, Why War Matters, if you're in the defense industry and you think that would be useful for you. I'd love to get your feedback on that. Then finally, the Ukraine Freedom Summit, March of 2026 in Dallas. Myself, our co-host, Rob Lee, Dima Pudyatta, a lot of the guests that are on this podcast. We're going to invite a lot of active duty soldiers, which we pay to get their American visa and bring them over to the United States to experience American culture,

Hospitality, Texas style, meet with defense industry executives, military leaders, governmental policy leaders, journalists in the field of defense and national security, and have a four-day summit discussing what this war means for the future of warfare and defense policy and our industry and our innovation. So tickets for that are already going to be on sale, early bird tickets. Please go to our website and check that out if you're interested in joining, or if you're a

Defense industry company that would like to sponsor an exhibit at our defense industry exhibit at the Texas Frontiers of Flight Museum and actually show your technology off to members who are joining the summit. And we're going to make a free entrance to this exhibit for all the members of the Dallas community on the day of the exhibit. Please go and get more information on that on our website, UkraineFreedomSummit.org. So again, if you like what we're doing, you want to support us, you can

Also go to theborderlandsfoundation.org. Please donate to support the Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress and our initiatives there of helping Ukrainian veterans recover from the psychological cost of war and get all the information on that website on our podcast that we published, including transcripts, notifications of future episodes. You can sign up for our email list at ukrainemilitaryhistory.org. So thanks again for watching another episode of the Ukraine Military History Podcast.

Subscribe, like, share, review us on your favorite apps, and we'll see you on the next episode.