Russia thought it had Ukraine under control, but a massive de-russification push has flipped the script. From gray zones to liberated settlements like Ternove, Ukraine is systematically expelling Russian influence, reclaiming territory, and fortifying defenses ahead of a predicted spring offensive. Russia’s communication failures and shattered lines have only accelerated the collapse. This isn’t just a counterattack—it’s a statement. Ukraine is reshaping the battlefield, and Putin may already be too late.
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here:
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #military #modernwarfare #militaryanalysis
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here:
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #military #modernwarfare #militaryanalysis
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Russia thought it had it all figured out. Take territory and force your influence on the Ukrainian
00:05people. But Ukraine has just slapped Russia upside the head. A massive de-Russification tsunami is
00:11sweeping through Ukraine, eradicating Putin's forces as it goes. The occupied lands are being
00:17reclaimed. The end of Russia's influence is imminent. Something just began, and there's not
00:22a thing that Russia can do to stop it. That something is a push. Deep into the southeast,
00:27Ukraine's forces are taking out Russia's soldiers left, right, and center. Gray zones are now being
00:33cleared, followed by Ukraine recapturing settlements that Russia thought were safe from liberation.
00:38This is a counterattack, yes, and one that is being done to set up a stalwart defense against a Russian
00:44offensive that will come in the spring, as you'll learn if you keep watching. But there's something
00:49deeper going on. For Ukraine, this isn't just about retaking territory. It's about expelling
00:54Russian influence. It's about teaching Putin that no matter how hard he tries, Ukraine is rejecting
01:00Russification at every turn. It all started with the gray zones. In traditional terms, a gray zone is
01:06any area where hostility is present, but that hostility is below the threshold needed for true
01:11state-on-state conflict. Think of the incursions that Russian drones and fighter jets have been making
01:16into NATO airspace over the last few months, and you get the idea. But in Ukraine, a gray zone is
01:21a
01:21little different. It's a region where neither side has true control, though Russia often claims it does.
01:27There are isolated pockets of conflict, but the entire idea, at least from the Russian perspective,
01:32is to create a murky view of the battlefield that allows Putin to claim propaganda victories related
01:37to territory that Russia doesn't actually hold. Russia has been creating these gray zones by sneaking
01:42small units behind the Ukrainian front line. Once in, those units dig down and wait, ostensibly for
01:48backup, but often for the inevitable death that will arrive when Ukraine's forces catch up to them.
01:53Still, chaos reigns in these zones, and they create opportunities for Russia to Russify by claiming
01:59that Ukraine can do nothing to stop what Putin tries to tell the whole world is an unstoppable advance.
02:04Nothing could be further from the truth, and Ukraine's campaign of de-Russification in the
02:09Southeast is the perfect example. It all started with the clearing of the gray zones in
02:13southeastern Ukraine, as Euromiden Press reported on February 25. The operation started about four
02:19weeks ago, in early February, and it has seen Ukraine complete a very immediate and important goal,
02:24clearing the small pockets of Russian infiltrators. Amid the Starlink shutdown that has wreaked havoc
02:29among Russia's forces, Ukraine sent out search-and-destroy squads into the southeast gray zone that
02:34separated Russian and Ukrainian forces. Spanning about 30 kilometers, or about 18.6 miles, from the
02:41Ukrainian-controlled settlement of Pokrovska in Dnipo-Protrovsk Oblast to the town of Huliopola,
02:46which is under Russia's control, and in the Zaporizhia Oblast. That gray zone was in danger of being
02:51Russified if Ukraine did nothing about it. So Ukraine pushed. It searched and destroyed, and now,
02:57with control over the gray zone established, Ukraine has shifted its goals, no longer solely
03:02targeting infiltrators. Ukraine is taking massive steps toward ridding Russian influence from the southeast
03:07forever. Ukraine is retaking settlements and territory. A lot of settlements and territory.
03:12With the gray zone cleared, the advance could begin, and though Ukraine has retaken several
03:16settlements, as we'll go into in a minute, the headliner in all of this is the village of Tanova.
03:21Located in Dnipo-Protrovsk, though close to the borders of both Zaporizhia and Donetsk,
03:26Tanova is tiny. It had a population of a little over 300 before it was ruined by the war.
03:31Now, thanks to Ukraine's forces, it's a symbol of de-Russification. The first settlement that
03:36Ukraine retook in its southeast counteroffensive, and the village that set the stage for everything
03:40that we've seen since. It all started on February 21st. That's when the Thor Kill 65X account posted
03:47images and an account of what happened in Tanova. Units from the 2nd Battalion of Ukraine's 425th
03:53Assault Regiment started a push into the settlement. Therein were the entrenched, though limited,
03:58members of Russia's 69th Covering Brigade, which had taken control of the settlement just weeks
04:02before. The Ukrainian assault didn't last long. It didn't have to. With Russia's forces already in
04:08disarray following their communications breakdown, Ukraine completed the de-Russification of Tanova
04:13in record time. And with control gained over the settlement, Ukraine set itself up for a deeper
04:18push into the southeast, with Berezova landing on the agenda. Tanova was a sign for Russia.
04:24As Euromiden Press points out, Ukraine actively retaking this village was a signal
04:28that the Grey's own clearing operation has morphed into a new kind of campaign.
04:32One that would see Ukraine push Russians out of as many settlements in the southeast as possible,
04:37all in service of ridding those settlements of Russian influence and preparing for Putin's
04:41renewed campaign of Russification that is anticipated to begin during the spring.
04:45It wouldn't be long before Ukraine started pushing deeper. At around the same time as Ukraine's
04:50forces had pushed the Russians out of Tanova, Pravda was reporting that Ukraine had also
04:54pushed the occupiers back near the settlement of Kalinivska. By February 24th, a mere three days
04:59after news broke of the liberation of Tanova, Ukraine had liberated eight settlements in flash
05:04assaults that Russia couldn't stop. Radizna, Andrivka, Nachayevka, Ostapivska and Novozaporizhia all fell
05:11back into Ukraine's hands. With RBC Ukraine reporting that there had been no evidence of the Russian
05:16presidents in these settlements for two weeks leading up to February 24th. Tanova then may
05:21have been the first liberated settlement that we learned about, but it looks like it wasn't the
05:24first settlement that Ukraine cleared. What we see here is a campaign to de-Russify settlements that
05:29appears to have started alongside the grey zone clearing operation. And in many ways that makes
05:34sense. Russia's infiltrators would have chosen the shattered remains of settlements as hiding places.
05:39By clearing those infiltrators out, Ukraine was also liberating villages and towns,
05:43destroying Russian influence in the southeast as it went. By February 23rd, the commander-in-chief
05:48of Ukraine's military, Oleksandr Siersky, was reporting that Ukraine had liberated about 400
05:53square kilometers, or around 154 square miles of territory. Keep that figure in mind. We're going
05:59to be coming back to why it's so important in just a few minutes. But for now, what this amounts
06:02to for
06:03Russia is really simple. Four months of infiltration had gone down the drain in three weeks of Ukraine's
06:08de-Russification campaign. That's according to Clément Moulin, who is a French military analyst
06:13who mapped out what Ukraine had been doing on February 21st, right on the eve of news breaking
06:18about the liberation of so many of Ukraine's southeastern settlements. Moulin reported that
06:22a combination of satellite imagery and confirmation of a massive increase in Ukraine's shelling of
06:27Russia's positions confirmed that clearing had turned into de-Russification. Moulin noted 3,000
06:33additional shelling incidents in the turnover direction, which amounted to Ukraine regaining
06:37control of most of the defensive line that it had held in that sector back in 2022.
06:42An anti-tank ditch, barbed wire, and dragon's teeth came back to Ukraine,
06:46offering the foundation for fortifications that will tear through Russia in the spring.
06:51Using maps of artillery and airstrikes, Moulin demonstrated that Ukraine has indeed advanced,
06:55and that Russia is in retreat in the southeast. Russia's artillery strikes have practically stopped,
07:00which is a clear indication that the forces it had stationed in the settlements that Ukraine has
07:04liberated are no longer in range. In other words, they have been pushed back, and Ukraine keeps on
07:09firing. This situation largely benefits Ukraine. Russia lost in three weeks at least four months of
07:15infiltrations far behind the lines, Moulin says, adding, this will buy time to better Pokrovsk defenses,
07:20as well as the H-15 highway leading to Zaporizhia. Moulin caps off his report by claiming that more is
07:26coming.
07:26Using a handy map, he draws a white line that shows how deep he believes that Ukraine will push
07:31as it de-russifies the southeast. That white line is already loaded with barbed wire, meaning
07:36Ukraine's goal now will be to gain full control over it so that it can both expand its defenses
07:40and push the grey zone deeper into territory that Russia thought it held. This isn't any old counteroffensive
07:46by Ukraine. It's the broad reshaping of the battlefield that has happened in large part because
07:50of the communication breakdown that has racked Russia's military. Before we dig deeper into that,
07:55you are watching the military show. If you haven't subscribed yet, now is the perfect time.
08:00Ukraine's campaign of southeastern de-russification kicked off in early February
08:03because that is the precise time that Elon Musk and SpaceX finally decided to do something about
08:08the illicit Starlink terminals that Russia has been using to coordinate its assaults. These smuggled
08:13terminals have been in use all across the 700-mile front line, Euromiden press reports,
08:18and Russia had been using them to coordinate its units and even conduct drone strikes.
08:22All that disappeared in the wake of the Starlink shutdown. And to make matters worse,
08:26no less than Putin himself decided days later that it would be a good idea to restrict access to the
08:31social media app Telegram. In his desire to maintain his own influence, Putin kicked his soldiers off
08:37the one communication channel that they could use that would have a chance of filling at least some of
08:41the gap that the loss of Starlink left behind. Russia's military was, and still is, in shambles.
08:47Command centers could no longer coordinate assaults. Infiltrators who had bedded into the gray zones
08:51lost contact with their backup. Russia's assault units got lost, scared. All they could do was wait
08:57around, hoping that help would come as they heard Ukraine's drones drawing closer. Without Starlink,
09:03Russia's entire southeastern line collapsed and Ukraine took full advantage.
09:08Eight settlements and counting have been liberated. The occupied lands have been reclaimed.
09:13De-Russification can begin. If this were a game of chess, Putin's decision to snatch Telegram away
09:18right after Starlink was lost would be akin to taking your queen and just tossing it away.
09:23The king is now exposed, lost and cornered as Ukraine's pieces advance. There's an old joke that
09:28you should never play chess with a pigeon. Why? Because the pigeon will kick all of the pieces off the
09:33board, take a dump on it and then strut away, acting like it won. Putin seems to have taken
09:38that joke as literal advice when determining his strategy. His soldiers and his influence are now
09:43dying in Ukraine's southeast as a result. What we're saying here is that Putin made a bad situation
09:48for Russia even worse by making the dumbest decision that he's made so far in the war.
09:53And now, what we're seeing in the southeast is a result of that decision.
09:57Earlier, we asked you to keep Siersky's remarks about Ukraine taking 400 square kilometers of
10:01territory back from Russia in mind. The reason is that this number is special.
10:06While Russian forces run around like headless chickens, Ukraine's de-Russification campaign
10:10in the southeast has seen it making the most significant gains since August 2024,
10:15which is when Ukraine's forces launched a counteroffensive into Russia's Kursk region.
10:19Euromiden Press highlights this, noting that we can combine the territory that Ukraine has retaken
10:23in the southeast with the territory that it liberated in Kupiansk toward the end of December,
10:27all of which adds up to a terrible start to 2026 for Russia's forces. What Putin thought was safe is
10:33now in Ukraine's hands, and it doesn't look like Russia is going to be able to reoccupy what Ukraine
10:37has liberated anytime soon. That's the entire point of the Russification. And we're going to explore some
10:43of the many other things that Ukraine has been doing to rid itself of Russia's influence outside of
10:48the battlefield toward the end of the video. First, it's worth focusing on what happened in Kupiansk,
10:53as that town was something of a precursor to the campaign that Ukraine has launched in the southeast.
10:57Back in November 2025, Russia made the bold claim that it had taken Kupiansk. It repeated that claim
11:03in mid-December. And we say that it was a bold claim, because Russia hadn't actually taken Kupiansk.
11:09The city had been close to falling into Russia's hands due to the infiltration strategy we mentioned
11:13earlier, but Ukraine certainly hadn't lost it by December. Quite the opposite. Ukraine's forces were
11:19actively ridding the city of Russia's soldiers as Putin and his cronies crowed about their control
11:24over Kupiansk. By December 1, Ukraine had shattered the Russian narrative in Kupiansk,
11:29which is in the Kharkiv region. Far from falling to Russia, the city had been practically liberated by
11:34Ukraine. The country's forces held 90% of the city by the same period in December that saw Russia
11:39claiming to have taken control. Ukraine has pushed on in the Kupiansk direction since then.
11:44According to Euromiden Press, Ukraine's forces have retaken at least 183 square kilometers or about
11:5070.6 square miles in the Kupiansk direction between December 11th and 25th, which adds to
11:56all of the territory that it's liberated in the southeast during February. If the liberation of
12:00Kupiansk was symbolic on the de-Russification front, as seen when Ukraine put an exclamation point
12:05on what it had achieved by raising the country's flag in the center of the city, what Ukraine has been
12:09doing in the southeast serves as much of a practical purpose as a symbolic one. Ukraine is preparing
12:15for something. On February 9, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian and international observers all agreed
12:21that Russia has been trying to accumulate strategic reserves that it intends to use for a large-scale
12:26assault against Ukraine in the eastern and southern regions of the country. Part of this offensive will
12:31focus on Donetsk, where Russia is trying to push past Pokrovsk and toward the fortress belt. However,
12:37Russia will also send troops, likely as part of a supporting attack in the summer, toward the major
12:41cities of Zaporizhia and or Kiev. Those supporting forces may head in that direction to divert Ukraine
12:47away from Donetsk, though Putin will also be very happy if his soldiers are also able to capture these
12:52two cities. Ukraine's southeastern campaign of de-Russification takes on a different complexion
12:57with this knowledge. As Euromiden Press points out, Russian troops planned for the spring-summer
13:022026 offensive must now first fight to re-establish defensive positions, then regain lost ground.
13:08Only then can they launch planned operations in the spring or summer.
13:11What Ukraine has achieved, beyond ridding at least eight of its southeastern settlements of Russia's
13:15influence, is forcing a hard reset of Russia's strategy. Before any assault can be launched to
13:21distract Ukraine's forces away from Donetsk, Russia will first have to feed more of its soldiers
13:25into Ukraine's defenses, simply to reclaim territory that it had gained over the four months leading into
13:30February. And remember, Ukraine is reinforcing its defenses in the liberated territories.
13:35It's creating kill zones packed with drones, anti-tank defenses, and artillery ambush points,
13:40which means that Russia will have to work much harder to reclaim what Ukraine has liberated
13:44than it did just a few short months ago. Russia may be planning to distract Ukraine with a spring
13:49push into the southeast, but the reality may end up being that Putin has to sacrifice reserves that
13:54he intended to use in Donetsk just to get Russia back into the same position that it had in January.
14:00What we've seen in the southeast is a process of derecification that began a long time ago,
14:05only accelerated to an extent that Putin never expected. As Le Monde reports, Ukraine has been
14:10trying to rid itself of Russia's lingering influence long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion.
14:15That campaign began with the Maidan revolution of 2014, the outlet says, and it has accelerated
14:20significantly since Putin's forces invaded in February 2022. And while every liberated settlement is a
14:27tangible battlefield manifestation of Ukraine's desire to de-Russify, there is plenty going on in
14:32the country that shows us how it's crafting a new identity that will ultimately see it free itself
14:37of the Soviet shackles that have for so long held it back. Chatham House provides more information,
14:43noting that the period between the Maidan revolution and Putin's invasion had seen Ukraine make some
14:47interesting strides. Ukraine was steadily consolidating its sovereignty in educational, language, media,
14:54religious domains, the outlet says, with a pair of highlights coming in 2019. That's the year that
14:59Ukraine restored the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from Russia, in addition to being
15:04the year when Ukraine passed a new law mandating the use of the Ukrainian language in all education,
15:10media, and public administration settings. Every single one of these actions sent a jolt through Putin.
15:16Russia's leader could feel his influence waning, and that's likely a huge reason why he launched his
15:21invasion in the first place. But all that Putin has really achieved in four years of war is
15:26strengthening the Ukrainian desire for true sovereignty. Every scrap of territory that Ukraine liberates,
15:31including all that it's just retaken in the southeast, is a reminder to Putin that Ukraine doesn't
15:36want Russia in its country. On the more symbolic front, Ukraine's non-combatants are also pushing to
15:42rid their country of Russian influence, even as Putin sends more soldiers to their deaths against
15:46Ukraine's defenses. For instance, October 2025 brought with it a push within Ukraine to get
15:52rid of the Kopech coin, which is a piece of Russian currency that remains in circulation in Ukraine.
15:57As Andrei Pishnyi, who is the chief of Ukraine's national bank, put it at the time,
16:01the Kopech is a piece of Moscow that remains in our pockets, on our price tax, and most importantly,
16:06in our heads. This is the real Ukraine. Putin may try to deny it. He may try to tell anybody
16:11willing
16:12to listen that most in Ukraine want to be controlled by Russia. But time and time again,
16:16Ukraine's own people, from its soldiers to its civilians, prove Putin wrong. If Ukraine wanted
16:21Russification, it wouldn't have spent four years fighting tooth and nail to stop Russia in its tracks.
16:27And now, as Ukraine liberates more territory than it has in years, we're seeing the push against
16:31Putin's influence enter a new stage. The total de-Russification offensive has begun,
16:37and it signals Ukraine fighting harder against Russia than it ever has before.
16:42Ironically, Ukraine may be getting help in the fight for de-Russification from the most unexpected
16:46source of all, Putin. As Ukraine eradicates Russian influence from its own land, Putin's Ukraine war
16:52tunnel vision is leading him to make decisions that are destroying the identity of Russia itself.
16:57You can find out more if you check out our video. And if you enjoyed this video,
17:00make sure you're subscribed to The Military Show, so that you're always among the first to see our
17:05analysis of what's really happening in Ukraine. And thank you, as always, for watching.
Comments