On enemy’s war strategy for 2025
The stream is also dedicated to current events in the war.
The first situation is what is happening now in the Kursk region, a major Russian offensive with the use of several Korean special forces, the Korean People's Army, which the Korean dictator has sent to help the Russians.
Secondly, briefly about the situation in Pokrovsk-Kurakhove, what is happening on this front, it is a point of instability.
And the main thing that has happened now is that we are being told about the enemy's war strategy for 2025. Today (16 December - Ed.), an expanded board of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation was held, where Putin and Defence Minister Belousov spoke and things were announced that allow us to draw conclusions about Russia's future plans and actions in the military sphere for 2025.
The first thing we will start with is the situation in the Kursk region. Today (16 December - Ed.), thanks to the soldiers of the drone platoon of the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Mechanised Brigade, we have received a certain amount of videos directly from the scene, and we should thank the soldiers of the 17th Heavy Mechanised Brigade, which is also in that area, who posted a wonderful video of such a large-scale defeat of dozens of Korean soldiers. At this time, the enemy has struck the northern part of the Kursk bridgehead, the demilitarised zone created by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they have used several formations of Korean soldiers in three directions, in a number of forest areas, forest landings. According to Russian channels, these are special forces of the Korean People's Army. From the documents of the killed, which are already at the disposal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, we know that this is military unit No. 93, but we do not know whether this is a real number or a cover-up. I think that in the near future we will receive detailed information, as videos of both the still alive and the killed Korean soldiers have already appeared, and in such good commercial quantities.
Koreans are sitting and looking at the Ukrainian drone. They are sitting there and are not afraid of the drone at all. Soldiers on both sides of the frontline don't usually show this kind of behaviour. When a drone is hovering over you, every soldier tries to hide, tries to run away, tries to shoot at the drone, and here they are sitting, staring at it and don't know what to do. Because in the DPRK's army, of course, I think there are no Mavics in such numbers that all the soldiers have noticed them, and they just don't know how to react to it. Well, there's some kind of thing flying in the air, and they are looking at it with interest. We may already have a video of what had happened to the Koreans looking at drones. There's a top content video that shows close-ups of corpses.
There is a video of the 17th Mechanised Brigade attacking the enemy with drones and cluster munitions, which, I recall, were developed by American weapon makers specifically to eliminate such massive infantry assaults, when masses of Korean infantrymen attacked UN troops, which included American troops during the Korean War in 1950 and 1953.
In the video, there is a column of infantry, the enemy is advancing in columns one by one. There are not one or two of these columns. Cluster munitions are being fired across the field. There is already a wounded body, it is wrapped for evacuation. And this group is trying to pull out the wounded man, who is in a thermal insulation blanket. So they are gradually knocked out one by one and two by two with drones.
During the attack, Korean infantrymen, these special forces groups, do not stop to pick up the dead and wounded. But then there are special evacuation teams that try to take all the bodies, all the wounded. This, by the way, is also a big difference only among Korean special forces.
It was the Magyar pilots who were the first to make this public. These were 23 corpses at the evacuation point, and the enemy cannot collect many more. These are the infantry who were hit by cluster munitions. They are moving in scattered combat formations, but this does not save the enemy from being hit.
The Russian command is using these Koreans quite ruthlessly, and they go all the way until they are completely destroyed. In the video posted by the 17th Brigade, there is an empty field for at least two kilometres, a clean field, and they are running through it in groups straight to the Ukrainian positions. It's an impressive tactic, of course. We used to watch this in films about the Korean War, and now we see it in reality in the russian federation, which obviously needs to replenish itself with Korean cannon fodder. Nevertheless, this is an absolutely serious story of the enemy. The soldiers, we see, are young, with a high level of physical fitness and individual training. The enemy is throwing large forces into the battle, so the battle is still ongoing and it is very difficult. That is, the infantry and stormtroopers are Korean special forces, but the artillery, drones, and aircraft are electronic warfare, as well as Russian troops supporting the Koreans and trying to break through our front. In the north of the demilitarised zone in the Kursk region, positions are being attacked. All attacks have been repelled so far, it's the third day of this battle, and all attacks have been repelled. The enemy has been stopped, there is not much videos yet, but I think there will be much more in the coming days.
This is a close-up shot of the first battalion of the 22nd Mechanised Brigade, where the Koreans were sitting, looking at the drones, and now they are lying down. They are lying in different places of the landing, where they were hit, some of them are still moving, some are walking. And our pilots are working on them. Now our soldiers in this area - the 17th Heavy Mechanised Brigade and the first battalion of the 22nd Mechanised Brigade - need drones.
I have provided bank details of this unit on my channel. If we want to watch more videos of the Koreans, who are basically becoming safe and being neutralised by our pilots, of course, we need more drones. There is a shortage of drones at the frontline now. It is better to fight with drones, because these are disposable stormtroopers - Ukraine cannot and should not fight with people like that. The importance of this video is that we can see the faces clearly. And we, of course, will continue to collect money, we will also send drones for the soldiers of the first battalion of the 22nd Brigade from our fund. Not many drones. But we will, of course, strengthen their surveillance in this area. That is, the enemy is sending masses of infantry there, and we will respond with drones.
So, this is the situation in the Kursk region now. Very heavy fighting is taking place. The enemy has not stopped attacking other parts of the Kursk front. Paratroopers are attacking there. The 76th Air Assault Division, the main force. The 810th Marine Infantry Brigade has withdrawn a large part of the airborne division. They were worn out in the battle, but the enemy is replenishing them. That is, the elite marine infantry brigades there were trying to break through the front. They failed to do so and suffered heavy losses. Now the Russian command has reinforced its groups in the area with reserves, all of which they withdrew from Donbas, with their air assault units. This includes the 11th Air Assault Brigade, the 76th Air Assault Division and other Russian Airborne Forces units. That is, the enemy has concentrated significant forces of its elite units in order to destroy this demilitarised zone, the sanitary zone in the Kursk region, at any cost. Why? What's happening now, I'll just briefly describe the situation in Pokrovsk and Kurakhove.
I will be travelling to the areas to better understand what is happening now. I can say that the enemy is trying desperately to break through south of Pokrovsk. They are throwing all their reserves to break through to Novovasylivka, capture Novotroitske completely, capture Shevchenko village completely. And now the enemy is trying to capture the village of Pishchane. In fact, it is already the outskirts of Pokrovsk. The enemy is close to Pishchane. The situation there is very difficult. Thanks to the fundraisings of viewers, readers, "Censor.NET", and Butusov Plus, we have already sent six drones to one of the battalions of the 32nd Mechanised Brigade. Also six more drones are now being sent to us. And in the next few days, we will also move to this area with a unit of the 155th Brigade, 32nd Brigade. That is, we will send a few more drones. Drones are in short supply. I want to say that despite the critical situation south of Pokrovsk, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's office have not supplied any drones there. This is shocking for all military personnel. Nevertheless, apart from people's help, we cannot provide the soldiers with drones now. There are no other ways. And we see that even such a massive attack by well-trained Korean stormtroopers with such forces, they used in three directions, a total of about 1,500 special forces and infantrymen, they were unable to break through the defence. Why? Because Ukrainian troops can adjust their fire, they can strike with drones. The enemy cannot stop our activity in the air, and cannot provide infantry control without its drones. There is a battle going on now, but we have managed to stop the Korean and Russian offensive and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
Why is there still no drone support in the Pokrovsk sector? Why does the enemy have an advantage in the number of mavics and autels there? Well, what can I say, this is completely inattentive of the Ukrainian leadership. But what is important to talk about and show today is the prospects for the war in 2025. Today (16 December - Ed.), the enemy spoke about its strategic plans. There was an expanded board of the Russian Defence Ministry, Putin spoke, and Defence Minister Belousov spoke. And we have to comment on this, to assess what we have heard.
Minister Belousov's statement. "To reduce decision-making time in the management of units on the battlefield, an interspecies information exchange system based on mobile devices has been created and has proven its effectiveness. More than six and a half thousand of these systems have already been delivered to the troops. As a result of their use, the time for setting tasks has been reduced by one and a half to two times."
What are we talking about? The Armed Forces of Ukraine, the defence forces of Ukraine, have a great advantage over the Russian Federation. We have an advantage in only one component at the moment. These are control and communication systems. The control system, first of all, because communication without integration into automated control, cannot also give decisive advantages by itself. Our commanders, if they are competent, if they have a competently well organised headquarters, can really work better, more efficiently than their Russian enemies. Why? Because Ukrainian volunteers have developed the Kropyva system, a tactical decision support system for commanders, and the Delta system, a situational awareness system, as a volunteer project in 2014 and introduced it into the army on an operational scale, on an operational and tactical scale, on an operational and strategic scale. That is the Delta system and the Kropyva system, in combination with the use of modern communication systems such as Starlink and other devices for fast Internet access at all our command posts, all these systems in combination with the systems that allow us to control swarms, groups of UAVs, such as Discord, Google Meet, such systems, control and communication systems, really provide our troops with an advantage. I can't help saying that there is a problem that none of this has been adopted and is not regulated by official orders. But we are working, and the enemy is trying to use all of this all the time. They use Discord and now they don't want to give it up, even though there is an order from the Minister of Defence to give up Discord. The enemy also buys large quantities of industrial starlinks. They also supply the entire frontline. They also install various other mobile and satellite communication systems. But the enemy has a problem, they don't have, fortunately, they keep talking about it, analogues of Kropyva and Delta. The enemy is aware of this. Of course, they have repeatedly managed to seize Kropyva tablets on the battlefield, because we have it at the tactical level. And the enemy managed to penetrate the Delta system once because one of the officials gave out the password for access to a particular node of the system to which he had access. Therefore, for a short time, the enemy was able to see what one of the officials saw in Delta. Fortunately, this was eliminated, but the enemy has a rough idea of what Delta and Kropyva are. But the enemy cannot reproduce all this in a war, because it requires the correct formulation of the technical task and an understanding of global logic. That's why the Russians are now implementing a system of their own. I don't have any information yet about what it is, what these six thousand and a half devices are, so I won't speculate. I would like to say that Russia has been developing tactical systems for automated control of troops and strategic systems since the early 2000s, right from the beginning of the twenty-first century. They were developing the "Sozvezdiye" complex, the "Andromeda" automated control system, "Sozvezdiye" for ground troops, "Andromeda" for airborne troops. The war came, it turned out that all these ideas did not work, and now the enemy is approaching control in a new way. Of course, I don't know what the Russians have done there, it's hard to say. So far, they are most likely controlling through Telegram, not through any military control systems. Telegram is their main channel of communication and interaction between the troops. And now they are using Discord through VPNs as well. Well, this is what we see from their posts. I don't know what else they have done, it's very interesting, and I would certainly like to see it.
The following is a quote."This year, on average, more than a thousand people are joining military service under contract. Social guarantees for servicemen and their families should be constantly strengthened and developed."
Yes, this is Putin's statement that the enemy made. And he made another statement, and Defence Minister Belousov made a statement that in 2024, Russia recruited 427,000 servicemen for contract service, who were sent to the front, to SMO. What does this figure of 427,000 mean and what does a thousand people a day mean? First, the losses of Russian troops. They sent 427,000 people to the front, they brought several thousand, at least what we see, Korean troops to the front, and all these people have disappeared. That is, they are fighting, but not as actively. That is, a thousand people a day, we see that this is approximately the rate of losses, as reported by the Ukrainian General Staff. Apparently, of course, not all of those 427,000 have been killed, meaning that the enemy forces have the advantage and continue to attack, but every month more than a thousand people have been sent to replenish the army since the beginning of the year, and in many areas this infantry is simply being worn down. This material, 427 thousand, is the price of these Russian offensives. I think it's just not a number of people killed exclusively. I think this is the number of killed and seriously wounded, because the Russian command forbids writing off the lightly wounded. They are thrown back into the battle, as we can see from numerous Russian videos. There are even people who have lost limbs, sent by the enemy, for example, with missing fingers.
I have a video on my channel of how the stormtroopers sent a Russian mobilised man. He wasn't even a contract soldier, he didn't want to sign a contract. He was sent despite his injuries, he had 18 fragments in his body. He was sent to the assault with 18 fragments anyway. And now he needs to be treated in a Ukrainian hospital for those injuries that Russian commanders and Russian doctors refused to treat. So 427,000 a year, a thousand people a day, is the price of the Russian advance. I think that these stormtroopers, this replenishment, the Russian command, of course, do not spare people and will spend them until the end of the year, perhaps even this figure will increase. And they immediately throw all these people into assault units. They replenish them and forward-forward. What does it show? The scale of the enemy's mobilisation efforts. Russians mobilise people by many means.
"Bailiffs have suspended the collection of 1.2 million debts from the participants of the SMO since 2022". This law came into force on 1 December. "This was announced by the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Konstantin Chuychenko". So, just imagine, 1.2 million are those who were driven to the front for large debts. That is, people have accumulated debts of up to 10 million rubles, even more than 10 million. And to escape from these debts, because they understand that they can get both restrictions on their rights and criminal liability, they go to solve their financial problems in Russia. And they solve them in the way that Russian propaganda shows. They say that go there, there are continuous victories, technical superiority, the second largest army in the world, the best weapons, you will have everything. But imagine the scale. That is, they drove only debtors to war - 1.2 million. According to the figures of prisoners, they have driven at least more than 250-300 thousand prisoners to war, according to various estimates. This is in addition to the professional army, in addition to the mobilised who have no debts, in addition to the contract soldiers who have no debts, who are being driven into the army because a large number of people there believe the propaganda and are given money. Putin spoke about financial incentives, meaning that now a Russian soldier who signs a contract, if he survives at least the first two months after signing the contract, he receives more than $20,000 in full. For a Russian province, this is just cosmic, crazy money. And a large number of people who are desperate, who believe the propaganda, of course, think that why not take a risk, maybe they won't kill me, but only wound me. And they go there. That is, Russia has actually sent more than one million people to the war, to the front, to the SMO. These are just the debtors, about one million and two hundred. And each of them, that is, 427 thousand, is only for 2024. Plus the Koreans. That is a huge force. The enemy continues to spin the flywheel of the infantry war. They continue to send a large number of people to the front, so the nature of the fighting in 2025 will obviously be a further use of this human resource. The Russians have serious problems with this, so they send the wounded into battle, they drive everyone they can. Over the course of the year, Putin has raised the contract payment several times. Nevertheless, they still can't recruit people in full, they can't get 100% of the staff, but the flow of people is still going on. We shouldn't tell ourselves that Russia will run out of people right away. We see that the defence forces are inflicting terrible losses on the enemy, because even 427,000 people to process in a year is a big task. And Ukrainian soldiers are doing it. Yes, we also have heavy losses, but it is clear that the Russians have a significant advantage in numbers. We can't fight and match their numbers. We need to change our strategy so that we lose much fewer people, so that we have more drones fighting than soldiers, so that we save lives and fight with more equipment, so that we keep people on pre-prepared defensive lines, on real ones, on a whole range of positions that are camouflaged, covered, hidden, equipped to fight with shells, mines, drones, and not with the lives of people with machine guns. That is, allowing to engage in close combat in such conditions, when there are many times more enemies. This is not an option for us, it is not an option.
What was said at the boards."When building the Armed Forces, it is necessary to take into account the capabilities of the economy. Today, the level of spending on national defence has reached 32.5% of the federal budget." Imagine the amount of money involved. In other words, Putin's destruction of Ukraine is the main financial task of the entire Russian Federation. There is no other area, except for the war with Ukraine, that would be funded in this way. This is about Putin's priorities. All the resources that Putin can allocate in order not to stir up discontent among his population, he throws at the war. Obviously, the enemy manages to use more financial resources. Many, many tens of billions of dollars are thrown at the war. I think that even 32.5% is not the final figure. According to some estimates, defence and security spending, for the entire sector in the Russian Federation, can reach half of the total budget. Because there are other agencies there. And we see that in such conditions, when the enemy has a numerical advantage, a financial advantage, we can resist it and win solely through quality. The quality of the organisation, greater flexibility, faster scaling of successful solutions, successful tactics, technical solutions that are available to us. These are, first of all, drones. And this is an obvious way, which the enemy has spoken about once again today and shown what resources they are allocating.
"It is proposed to form a new type of troops, the troops of unmanned systems. According to the President's decision, we will complete their creation in the third quarter of 2025." This is a statement by Defence Minister Belousov. The enemy has come close to following Ukraine in granting a new status to drones. Drones will now be troops. What is the difference from Ukraine? Ukraine has unmanned systems forces. In fact, what is it? It is a separate command. We thought that it would be a vertically integrated structure that would form policy, tactics, industrial and production plans, and needs. None of this happened. We will not talk about it now. This is a topic for a separate broadcast.
The enemy is trying to get ahead of us. To make systemic, technical, and organisational decisions in terms of drone development. We have to move faster. Our unmanned systems forces are a separate story, a separate group of military units subordinate to Vadym Sukharevskyi, and systemically, there are separate, and now developing, high-quality separate military units within the National Guard and the Land Forces. Unfortunately, instead of coordination and a common logic of development, these structures are constantly competing and lacking unity. What do the Russians want to do? I'm not talking about their implementation. We understand that this is a feudal, totalitarian country, where corruption is higher, much higher than in Ukraine. The proof of this is the numerous cases throughout the Russian Ministry of Defence, the royal luxury of Deputy Minister Shoigu, which was exposed after he had been in charge for 10 years. And we see that there is more corruption there, but we need to pay attention, the enemy wants to approach on a larger scale. They are creating unmanned systems forces so that these UAVs are not a separate force, a separate group of units. They want to create and develop this strategy and organisational structure of UAVs in all other forces and branches of the armed forces. This is the enemy's goal, and it may seem dangerous for us, of course, because what do the Russians want to do? They are losing to us in improvisation, in start-ups, in new projects, but they are trying to gain an advantage and, unfortunately, they are achieving the scaling up of new tactics, new technical solutions, using of troops. And, unfortunately, in the organisation at the front, we can see even the example of the divisional corps-army structure in the Russian army, while in Ukraine the highest form of military unit, the tactical level, is the brigade, there is no operational strategic level, temporary improvised OTGs, TGRs, and OSGTs. We see that the enemy is able to achieve an advantage in the organisation.This is exactly the approach they want to implement here. This is, of course, a topic for thinking and taking measures to develop unmanned forces more quickly. This is the only industry, the only sphere that can compensate Ukraine for the enemy's advantage in money, funding, and the advantage in the number of people. That's it. We can see this from the indicators for 2022, 2023, 2024. The enemy sent more people to the front every year than we did. But in 2022, we had the advantage in quality, in 2023, it was in the quality of infantry, in 2023, the infantry carried everything, and in 2024, the infantry is no longer carrying everything. Because the infantry, in addition to performing the main task of holding the frontline and spending the most physical effort and suffering the greatest losses, the Ukrainian infantry is also a donor for all other new types of forces, for all other units of various purposes. Of course, we have to talk about a qualitative advantage, it has to be changes, we need reforms in the use of organisation, the use of infantry. And, of course, we need reforms in the quality of drone use and in the organisation of drones so that we stay ahead of the enemy and do not allow them to catch up with us. Because this will be a critical story for us in this war. In some areas, in drones, the enemy still has an advantage, but in some areas, Ukraine still has an advantage, in some types of drones. And we must not lose it. We have a catastrophe with the supply of "Mavics", "Autels", and tactical reconnaissance equipment. And we are lagging behind here. This needs to be corrected immediately. And we need other means of organisation. This is a separate conversation, a little later.
The following is a statement by Putin and Belousov."Optimisation of the internal processes of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Use of lean management approaches, reduction of administrative processes. The number of redundant procedures can be reduced by 5-10 times, and the timeframe by 5 times." The Russian bureaucracy, it is not overcome, but what the enemy is paying attention to, what is one of the factors of successful management and warfare to achieve an advantage is the reduction of bureaucracy, and the Russian Defence Minister is talking about this. I do not want to say that the Russians will do this. They do, it's a bureaucracy, a mafia, everything is very bad there. But they are talking about it. This is the right topic for us to talk about. We have the right processes in place in "Army Plus", the electronic application, but these are just small details. A huge array of all this unnecessary, very costly in terms of resources, in terms of the number of people, in terms of time, absurd paperwork. It needs to be reduced. It is getting to the point of absurdity. A few days ago, I saw shocking things in the Donetsk OTG. The deputy commander of the OTG, and I'll tell about this in a little bit of detail, demanded a logbook, it's hard to believe, a logbook of tank use. Imagine, you have to fill in a schedule as one of the units, at what time, at what hours, how many, for what period of time tanks should be used in combat operations. And you have to fill out this log, keep it and send it to the OTG. When the tank moves to the position, fires, warms up, well, you can imagine, OTG is the level of corps. And he needs to know how, when tankers and unit commanders at the tactical level start, where they deploy and fire tanks. This is just absurd in general. An absurd bureaucracy that produces an infinite number of logs, log books and an infinite number of reporting forms. And it's only getting worse. I hope that the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's office and the Minister of Defence will watch the air. Finally, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces will finally understand that even the enemy, these Russians, who are sometimes so arrogantly joked about in our media, even they understand that bureaucracy is bad and needs to be reduced. Why don't we reduce the bureaucracy here significantly? And I'm not just talking about the fact that we need electronic accounting. That is certainly true. I'm talking about reducing the huge pile of reporting forms that are simply unnecessary in a large-scale war. We just need to reduce them tenfold. And absolutely nothing will deteriorate in the army. Nothing at all. It will only improve.
Next."A separate task is to create a mechanism for processing information from military correspondents about problematic issues. The Ministry holds regular meetings. As a result, specific instructions are given to the military authorities to resolve the issues." Well, let's assume that this is Russian information and psychological special operation, propaganda. In totalitarian Russia, the military leadership and the president and commander-in-chief cannot talk to some media representatives. It's impossible. It's a totalitarian country. Do they really do that? Well, I can believe in the management system. But what they do, communicating with journalists, with some media, with some correspondents, and this does not exist in Ukraine, I cannot believe it. This is possible in our democratic country.
"An important area of creating a unified digital environment for the Ministry of Defence". Well, this is understandable, these are words that have nothing behind them yet.
"An integrated information system that would meet the technical requirements of decision-making support." Well, yes, these are good wishes.
"The Russian Ministry of Defence must be prepared for any development of the situation, including a possible military conflict with NATO in Europe in the next decade."
This is a very important statement. It says that Russia is not going to withdraw from the line of confrontation, the strategy of confrontation with NATO. Russia has seen NATO's weakness. The inability of NATO to achieve its goals and guarantee the security of its own and its allies. That is why Russia has for the first time officially announced the possibility of a military conflict with NATO in the next 10 years. And what is a conflict with NATO? With nuclear states. That is, Russia is now threatening NATO that it is ready to fight it with the use of its entire arsenal of weapons. Both Putin and Belousov emphasised in their speeches that they are going to allocate additional resources to build new nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as YARS, Satana, R-36, and RES-22. That is, they are going to build ballistic missiles. They are going to build new YARS, new Topols. And they're going to use a new medium-range system "Oreshnik", as I understand it, and obviously the Russian command is planning to increase the number of these medium-range ballistic missiles in order to strike not only with nuclear warheads but also with conventional warheads. So, in fact, this "Oreshnik" is a ballistic missile, but it is not an intercontinental missile and it is not a short-range missile like "Iskander". It's a medium-range missile, it can be hidden far away in the depths of Russia and strike at a distance of up to 5-6 thousand kilometres. And they will strike, they have separated warheads, and they can strike with several warheads at once at a facility, not only with a nuclear warhead but also with a conventional warhead. This is what Putin is talking about. And this is preparation for the war with NATO. So, NATO, with its peaceful policy, when it tries not to fight, but simply to support the defence of Ukraine, when it does not invest large resources in the war, but tries to act within certain frameworks, within certain limits, leads to Putin's attempts to move forward and threaten war on the whole of Europe. This is just an unprecedented level of statements and an unprecedentedly harsh tone of threats. There is no diplomacy, no words here about reconciliation, we don't hear anything about that. So, you know, this is a greeting to everyone, this speech, this is a greeting to all the people who think that there are backroom deals in the world and that Trump will call Putin and tomorrow the war will stop. It's not going to be that easy.
" The activities of the Ministry of Defence are based on special operations, military presence in Central Asia, Africa, the Caucasus and Transnistria." Note that the countries of Central Asia and Africa are mentioned in general. The Caucasus is mentioned in general. There are several countries there, there are Russian bases, but the only area that is specified is Transnistria. It's the only one. That is, for the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, Belousov's statement emphasises that Transnistria is the same area of Russian efforts as the war in Ukraine. In other words, the special operations in Transnistria are the same zones for the Russian Ministry of Defence. The question arises again that it is in the interests of Ukraine, when such a Russian offensive is taking place, to create certain problems for Transnistria. Transnistria should not create problems for people, but it should be understood that Transnistria is a Russian military base used against Ukraine. For reconnaissance, to distract Ukrainian forces, to threaten Odesa and Bessarabia. Therefore, Ukraine needs to plan actions against the Russian occupation contingent in the territory of Moldova temporarily occupied by Russia. Moldova calls this territory Transnistria, and efforts are needed there to create maximum discomfort, maximum problems and threats to the Russian occupiers. Because this is the same, according to Belousov, the same Russian army, the same front as the war in Ukraine. This is my conclusion.
"The Russian armed forces should become more flexible and receptive to innovation, including in the civilian sector." This is for the use of civilian technologies. The enemy has come to this point, and indeed, in the modern world, in modern warfare, obviously, civilian technologies, high technologies, high-tech weapons based on civilian technologies are broken much faster than an exclusively narrow military segment. Of course, the scaling up of any weapon technology, ammunition, guns, armoured vehicles, drones, communications, EWs etc., should be based on cooperation between the military and civilian sectors. And in most areas, in principle, we don't have any other sector than the civilian one, but of course we should have civil-military cooperation, because the civilian sector fills in all the areas where the military is absent. Therefore, of course, the heads of private, civilian enterprises that provide the army with the most modern types of weapons, which have access to civilian technologies and use them for military purposes, should be involved in the development of military policy, technical development, and the defence forces of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the planning of our military-technical policy does not yet take into account the key role of the civilian sector in military-technical development. That is, the key leadership role of civilian business, civilian enterprises, and the commercial market. This integration should, of course, be based on the fact that it is impossible to maintain this absolutely absurd Ukroboronprom, which is protected from adequate and transparent decision-making by the fact that it is simply a state-owned enterprise with its feudal leadership, which is absolutely unnecessary, which simply covers inefficiency, finances inefficiency and produces shameful results. This also applies to those state-owned enterprises that, for example, were rejected by the Minister of Strategic Industry, i.e. Minister Kamyshin, now an adviser to the President's Office, and Minister Smetanin, who rejected civilian enterprises that had mastered the production of large-scale munitions, such as mortar shells. They rejected them, ignored them, and did not give them an order at all. The entire order was transferred to two state-owned enterprises, and as a result, they failed to produce the munitions at all. They are still supplying massively defective mines to the frontline. And they do so with absolute impunity. That is why we need to fix this and show why Smetanin and Kamyshin did it. First, irresponsibility, big money for their people, for their pockets. We understand that such things cannot be done without corruption. And secondly, instead of relying on those who are responsible and efficient, those who have an audit, those who have engineering staff, we have exclusively administrative decisions, without taking into account the technical side of the issue. No one looks at whether state-owned enterprises are capable of producing a large number of mines in a quality manner. We do not have such an independent, objective, technical view of engineers, designers, manufacturers. There are administrative decisions. The first person to get to the president and get funding is the one who distributes the funds. It is absolutely irresponsible. Our Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Office is simply covering up for Smetanin and Kamyshin, who should actually be in a pre-trial detention centre and testify as to how they planned such ammunition at all, why they planned to purchase and equip ammunition with simply low-quality components. There is nothing. Therefore, the civilian sector is not an empty word, it is something that we need to develop and rely on the civilian commercial sector in the development and equipping of our Defence Forces.
"The rate of advance of the Russian military is 30 square kilometres per day." This is how the enemy has been advancing for the past few months. And we have talked about this problem many times. The problem is that we have no strategic defence at all in some areas. The enemy manages to exploit this. I don't understand Belousov's joy, because the price for this is that they had a million-strong army in 2022, and it failed. They mobilised 300,000 people, they brought in "Wagner", they mobilised another 120,000 people in the occupied territories, and they mobilised anyone they could for 200,000. Now they are mobilising 400-430 thousand a year, sending them to the army to replenish, and they do not have enough of these forces. Now they are also bringing in Koreans. The number of people on this board of the Russian Federation's armed forces has already increased. In '22, the staffing level was one million servicemen, and now Belousov has said that it is already one and a half million, according to Putin's decrees. That is, the staff has been increased by one and a half times. That is, a huge Russian army, which, of course, has a numerical advantage. And we cannot stop it, because it is impossible to stop it as it is now, outnumbered. The enemy cannot be stopped in counter-battles. We need defence lines, high-quality work of drones, artillery, and intelligence. I want to draw attention to these battles in the Kursk region. The Russian command launched an attack with large forces on very narrow three sections of the frontline. Fresh, selected, well-trained Korean special forces and infantry. And our troops have stopped them. Now we will not talk about the details of this operation. But they have been stopped and they have suffered terrible losses. In the near future, I think the defence forces will give more information on this. And we can simply see what the correct organisation of actions in defence is. Although there was no time to even build any powerful defences. All this was done in spades in a very, very short time on their own improvisation and initiative. We have high-quality units there that have been preparing for this. And we were able to stop the enemy. Similarly, if basic organisational and management decisions are made, the enemy can be stopped along the entire frontline.
What else did the enemy say?
"The Ukrainian Armed Forces are being forced to go on the defensive, to use reserves. Manning levels at the front line do not exceed 45-50%". Well, such a statement means nothing. We have higher manning levels, and we have lower ones. I want to say that our enemies have such a manning level that even the wounded are going to attack. This is not a war about manning levels. This is a rather empty statement from a minister who spends thousands of corpses of his soldiers to capture 30 square kilometres. I think this is a superficial judgement.
"More than 3,000 drones are used daily. This figure is constantly growing." I am talking about this, about this statement, only because, in fact, this is something that is only officially supplied by the Russian Ministry of Defence. In fact, the volume of drone use in Russia is much higher. I have just said this quote. We are commenting only because when Belousov, the Minister of Defence, talks about what is happening at the front, what he sees as his achievements as Minister of Defence, he mentions the number of drones as one of the indicators. This is important. We need to talk about it. It is the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence. Defence Minister Umerov does not talk about drones at all. He provided the information of how many drones the Ministry of Defence supplied to the Armed Forces. Well, I don't know. Some things in these figures are very surprising. We will analyse them separately. But how many drones are used? I would like to hear from the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, the number of drones that he has supplied. I'd be really interested to know, because the general figures of what has been shipped and written off are not as interesting as what has actually been received by the troops and is actually being used. And not in the warehouse of the Logistics Command or in the warehouse of military units, because it is of poor quality, unnecessary, overpriced, with poor technical characteristics of equipment that needs to be redesigned at their own expense. This would be interesting. In fact, the Russians are using much more drones, many times more, at the front, because the enemy has what we have taken in the Russian regions. All federal subjects supply their troops and military units from their budgets, and unfortunately, they supply drones in large quantities. I would like to remind you that in November 2023, after 77 billion in personal income taxes were taken away from local governments, this is the central budget revenue, unfortunately, brigade commanders were deprived of money and the possibility of decentralised supply. This had very serious consequences in 2024. Unfortunately, the enemy has an advantage in drones in many parts of the frontline, it is a fact. They have advantage in both "Mavics" and FPVs, a significant number of them are used on fibre optics, wings, lancets, long-range strike drones. Unfortunately, the enemy is launching large numbers of Shaheds. Well, there are problems, and there is something we need to improve and get ahead of the enemy, to fight with him, to compete.
"The Russian military is getting 7 times more tanks, 3 times more IFVs, APCs, 23 times more UAVs." Well, this is just a phrase about priorities. In fact, their production is small, but the production of UAVs manufactured by the Ministry of Defence has grown the most. Yes, this is domestic production, which Russia builds at its own factories, and this is really a figure that is very, very unpleasant for us. And they need many times more tanks and armoured personnel carriers, because they are being destroyed on an industrial scale. Russian factories cannot even cope with the production and renewal of such a mass of armoured vehicles.
Defence Minister Belousov was very concerned about the strikes on the storage bases. And they decided to change the logistics system, they announced, because of the large losses of ammunition, large losses of fuel, as a result of strikes on logistics hubs. And a large number of detonations of Russian arsenals have led to the fact that the enemy is now going to strengthen their security and change the very system of logistics organisation, to move to a network of smaller, but more manoeuvrable, more mobile warehouses that can be better disguised and better protected.
The conclusion I would like to draw is that the enemy is not trying to prepare for any kind of truce now, judging by what we are saying. Russia is preparing for the continuation of this kind of ground infantry war in 2025. The Russian leadership believes that this model, where they use 300-400 thousand soldiers a year, is acceptable to them. They are going to reduce their losses by recruiting in Africa, recruiting in the Middle East, recruiting these guest workers who come to them from Asia, recruiting Koreans now. But the infantry war will continue. And we need to look ahead. Ukraine does not have the resources and strength to fight an infantry war. To throw infantry head-on into counterattacks, into empty landings. We don't have the people for that. This is the main conclusion. The enemy has the resources and will continue to wage infantry warfare in 2025. Russia has a critical situation with manpower. They do not have such a large flow of motivated volunteers, young and trained. The army has a large number of people in their 50s and 60s. But they are going. And to kill them, you need proper organisation and management. They don't just die on their own. For the $20,000 they are given and the $2,000 salary they dream of receiving for at least one month, they go forward. They cannot retreat, because they are immediately told: you took the money, retreat, shooting on the spot. And there are numerous videos about this, hundreds of videos of Russian soldiers fleeing from units, recording videos that we will be killed, we will be zeroed out. Hundreds of videos on the Internet. So they will continue to do this. Russia, as a totalitarian country, has a system of coercion. They can't just force people into the army. They have a great advantage for such a bloody, cannibalistic war, because for them people in their country are zero. And they will drive their people to that war with shovels, sticks, and shootings. This is how they ensure the discipline of following orders. They send people in one direction.
We are not Russia, we cannot send people in one direction. Ukraine needs to look at these statements by Putin and Belousov, compare the potentials that are now at the front, which we can mobilise, which the enemy can mobilise. And move to strategic defence not in words but in deeds. We need to build a solid line of defence along this thousand kilometres of frontline, echeloned and tied to favourable radio horizons, to heights that allow us to use drones and sensors, to favourable positions along water bodies, along favourable terrain. Where reliable shelters must be built, not just dens, so that people can manoeuvre in defence not around one small dugout for the entire landing, but move from shelter to shelter so that the enemy cannot strike and kill our soldiers at a specific point in the landing. We have to build such engineering approaches to the position that ensure the concealment of the manoeuvre, the hidden nature of the movement of people, so that we do not have such terrible losses on rotations, entering the position. There are more casualties entering a position than in holding it. We cannot fight like the Russians. We have to fight differently. Because we will not be able to exchange man for man with this mass. Modern warfare is a war of technology, of quality command decisions, of quality organisational decisions. If they are not made, no miracle will happen. We did lose a large number of settlements in Donbas in 2024. We lost cities. The nearest battles are taking place in several more cities, which, unfortunately, we do not have the strength to defend now, because the enemy has already occupied favourable heights, favourable radio horizons, and entered the urban area. We need to save what we can save - to take up defensive positions and reduce casualties. We understand that the enemy should lose not twice as much, not three times as much. The ratio of losses should be one to ten. Then no less. Otherwise, we will not be able to stop the enemy and win. Before dreaming of negotiations, the right to negotiate must be won. This depends on strategic decisions - managerial, organisational, technological. The war cannot be won with these defective mines that Smetanin, Kamyshin, Umerov give to soldiers at the front, defective mines that do not fly anywhere and do not explode. They say they have sent one million three hundred thousand drones. And how many of these drones had to be re-soldered, reconfigured, and components bought for them? Most of them, maybe even more. Is this absurd way of spending our very limited resources, which are inferior to the enemy, effective? No, it is not. We need the country's leadership to take off their rose-coloured glasses from the mode of reassuring videos that they are doing something and start actually doing something and thinking critically about how to get ahead of the enemy on the frontline. In all components. Now our only advantage is intelligent solutions and their scaling. There is nothing else. We can't use drones. We cannot simply create new units and think that they will defeat the enemy by themselves. These units need to be manned, armed, and we need to supply a constant stream of drones every day. And when we supply more Mavic drones to the frontline than soldiers who are being grabbed in the street and put into buses, it will be a demonstration that we have the right understanding. What are the country's resources? Not the soldiers who are then being paid 15 million hryvnias for the dead. They are priceless. We are losing a citizen, a family member, a taxpayer. We spend money on his training, arming, and payments. But we need to spend money on these miserable 3T Mavic for 150 thousand hryvnias, which actually save lives, which kill instead of a soldier with a machine gun, drone operators kill with a grenade. This is what we need. FPV of different types, hexacopters of different types, wings of different types. All this needs to be done. Technical, technological solutions. We cannot rely on improvisation.
The enemy also watches the same videos on telegram channels of how we destroy them. And he is learning. He is already producing unmanned systems for the army and improving control at the front. Communication equipment, automated decision-making systems. They are learning. If they didn't have it, they are already doing it or planning to do it in the near future. Our responsibility is to make the authorities start acting strategically and planning strategically. That's why I have made this broadcast and paid attention to the strategic issues that the enemy has announced. I am grateful to the Ukrainian soldiers who are holding the frontline in such difficult conditions, defending Ukraine and inflicting such terrible losses on the enemy, which Putin and Belousov have actually acknowledged. 427,000 new recruits to the frontline means that the previous hundreds of thousands in 2022-2023 have already been destroyed by someone. Someone has already knocked them out. And it was all done by the Ukrainian Defence Forces. With respect for the work of Ukrainian heroes and with the hope that we will be able to defeat the enemy on an even larger scale, even more effectively. The enemy does not have an unlimited number of people. If they wanted to, they could recruit 700,000 people into the army. There is just no place to get them.
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