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⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 Ukraine Just Scored A Massive Win Before Total Russian Collapse
17:25 INSANE! Putin is About to Decimate Russia
34:27 Russia Can't SEE It… Can't CATCH It… Can't STOP It… Ukraine Built Something TERRIFYING
52:22 Putin Thought He Was UNTOUCHABLE… Then Something BAD Happened To His Palace
01:09:21 Ukraine’s Idea Was SO Good… The U.S. Marines Turned It Into a Monster

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Transcript
00:00:00Russia thought June was hell. The worst month of 2026 so far and one of Russia's worst since
00:00:06Putin launched his invasion left the entire nation battered and bruised. Taking the Donbass
00:00:13seemed further away than ever. Russian troops were dying left and right and the summer offensive
00:00:18had become a failure before it ever really got off the ground. Then July came and Russia found
00:00:25out that it could get much, much worse. The month that will break Putin has just concluded and yet
00:00:31utterly lost in his delusion Putin still tries to claim that everything is going to plan.
00:00:37His fantasy world has come crashing down and he is the last to know. June 2026 was an absolute
00:00:43nightmare for Russia and the numbers from the month backed that up. Nothing went to plan for
00:00:48Putin's patsies. By the end of the month Russia's obsessed leader had churned through another
00:00:5239,490 of his people, representing a high watermark in the first half of 2026 when Russia had already
00:01:00been averaging over 30,000 losses per month. Recruitment wasn't keeping up, volunteers were
00:01:06signing up at a rate of as little as 24,000 per month, marking the first time since the war
00:01:11began
00:01:11that Ukraine was eliminating more soldiers than Russia could bring to the field. And in the Donbass,
00:01:16which Putin has demanded be claimed by the end of 2026, Russia's progress was so glacial that Al Jazeera
00:01:23reported that it would take another 14 years for Russia to claim Donetsk if it continued at its
00:01:28current rate. 39,490 soldiers at a rate of advance of just 1.03 square kilometers per day would have
00:01:36been a catastrophe in anyone's book. And it was. But one bright spot, Russia must have thought, is that
00:01:42it surely couldn't get much worse. Ukraine's meat grinder would have to break down at some point.
00:01:47Maybe it will. But that point sure as hell didn't come in July. Off the back of experiencing a month
00:01:53so bad that it should have left Putin red-faced, Russia has only gone and topped itself with more
00:01:58casualties in July. On August 1st, Ukraine's general staff took to Telegram to deliver the big number.
00:02:0642,860 casualties suffered by Russia in July. That isn't just a record-breaker for 2026 so far.
00:02:13It's an embarrassment to Putin at the height of a summer offensive that is supposed to collapse the
00:02:17Donetsk fortress belt. That isn't going to happen. Russia won't even come close. What Putin has just
00:02:23seen here is yet another example of the fact that the running cost of his invasion is so high that
00:02:28Russia simply can no longer sustain it. 42,860 casualties in July breaks down to about 1,382
00:02:36soldiers killed, injured or captured every single day in Ukraine. It also adds to a 2026 running total
00:02:43that has now reached 238,650. We also can't ignore the fact that July's casualty figure is over 3,000
00:02:51more than we saw in June. This can't be explained by July having an extra day than June. Something deeper
00:02:58is going on here. Month by month, Ukraine is becoming more lethal and the sacrifices that
00:03:03Russian forces have to make are growing higher. The numbers prove it. Let's head back to January.
00:03:08That month saw Ukraine kick off its 2026 campaign with a bang. By the end of the month, 31,700
00:03:15Russians
00:03:16have been killed or otherwise eliminated from the fight. A good start to the year, but by the end of
00:03:21February, Putin might have thought that he had a reason to cheer. The casualty rate went down dramatically.
00:03:27Russia only lost around 26,100 soldiers in February. Sure, that's still over one and a half times more
00:03:34than it lost in its entire decade-long war with Afghanistan back in the 1980s, but it was a start.
00:03:41The number was coming down. However, raw numbers can be deceiving. February has three fewer days than
00:03:47January, which played a role. At a February casualty rate of 932 soldiers per day, those extra three days
00:03:53would have added almost 2,800 more Russians to the monthly figure. That would mean the month would
00:03:58wind up 100 shy of 29,000 casualties, still less than January. But not by so wide a margin that
00:04:04Putin
00:04:04could start celebrating. By spring, Putin felt pretty confident. Russia had its massive spring and summer
00:04:10offensive lined up. The harsh Ukrainian winter was finally over, and that meant that Russia could
00:04:15spend the next six months or more launching stronger attacks against Ukraine's fortifications.
00:04:20Ukraine was going to break. Putin just knew it.
00:04:23But Russia's leader was wrong. In March, Russia's casualties rocketed back up to 31,960,
00:04:30far more than February and just a touch above the already ridiculous January figure.
00:04:34And from there, the numbers kept rising. 32,980 in April, 33,760 in May, June added almost 6,000
00:04:44to
00:04:44the monthly casualties, and July has added another 3,000 and change. We are not seeing any one-offs here.
00:04:50This is a pattern. A month-by-month demonstration of how Ukraine is becoming more lethal.
00:04:56What Putin faces now is a 2026 that could very easily result in Russia losing 500,000 of its
00:05:02soldiers by the end of December. If Ukraine maintains the same rate of attrition that we
00:05:07saw in July for the next five months, Russia loses another 214,300 soldiers. That would be almost
00:05:14453,000 lives flushed down the drain for Putin's Ukraine obsession, and over 1.66 million in total
00:05:22since the invasion began. But remember the pattern. Every month bar one in 2026 has seen Ukraine
00:05:28eliminate more Russian soldiers than it did the month before. Russia has lost over 11,000 more
00:05:33soldiers in July than it lost in January. If Ukraine keeps up this pattern, it's not outside the realm of
00:05:39possibility that Russia will be at 50,000 losses per month by the end of the year. That wouldn't be
00:05:44a
00:05:44coincidence. 50,000 per month has been Ukraine's plan all along. Back in January, then newly installed
00:05:51and now former Defense Minister of Ukraine, Mikhailo Fedorov, declared that 50,000 soldiers was the
00:05:56magic number. If Ukraine could reach that monthly target, Russia wouldn't be able to replenish its
00:06:01losses anymore without a damaging round of mobilization that makes Putin vulnerable socially and
00:06:06politically on his own turf. They view people as a resource and shortages are already evident,
00:06:11Fedorov said at the time. July has just proven that and Putin's big problem now is that he's
00:06:16running out of the one resource he needs to stand a chance against Ukraine. Okay, Russia's military
00:06:22command might think. We'll just not mention the massive casualty figures to Putin. He doesn't need
00:06:27to know and we don't need to have accidental falls out of windows. What we'll do instead is showcase the
00:06:32amazing advances that Russia made in July in return for these sacrifices. Yeah, about that.
00:06:37Russia coupled its worst month of 2026 so far with a rate of advance so pathetic that you could barely
00:06:43call it an advance at all. The very best that Russia can claim is that it at least managed to
00:06:48steal more territory in July than it did in June. And it did by just 0.19 square kilometers per
00:06:55day.
00:06:55That's according to the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, which reports that Russia managed to
00:07:01claim, not infiltrate, actually claim just 37.85 square kilometers of Ukraine in July.
00:07:08Context, that means Russia burned through around 1,132 soldiers for every square kilometer that it
00:07:13managed to fully occupy in Ukraine in July. That's low. Not the lowest Russia has achieved in 2026,
00:07:20but very low. In July 2025, Russian forces managed to capture 455.74 square kilometers. A year later,
00:07:27it hasn't managed a tenth of that figure, despite being in the midst of the summer offensive that
00:07:32was supposed to bring about the collapse of Donetsk and the fall of the Donbass.
00:07:36And that's another point. This big offensive that we keep talking about. According to ISW,
00:07:41it's managed to achieve the sum total of zero operationally significant gains. Russia hasn't
00:07:47managed to capture anything of consequence. It certainly hasn't put the massive dents into the
00:07:52fortress belt that Putin anticipated. The best it has managed is to send infiltrators into Konstantinivka,
00:07:57while actually only claiming a very small portion of the city. Konstantinivka still stands,
00:08:03and three even more fortified cities in the belt will have to fall if Russia does manage to break
00:08:08through. Keep that city in mind, by the way, we'll be coming back to it.
00:08:11A change in Ukrainian strategy has played a huge role in Russia's woes, not just in July, but throughout
00:08:162026. Targeted counterattacks have led to Ukraine reclaiming territory, especially in the south.
00:08:22That forces Russia to divert soldiers that would otherwise have been destined for Donetsk.
00:08:27Ukraine's drone dominance both in the kill zones that stretch for kilometers beyond the front and
00:08:32in the middle strike range, where drones are destroying Russian logistics, is also massive for
00:08:36Ukraine and devastating for Russia. Russia's big problem now is that its entire campaign is
00:08:42optimized around positional warfare, in a conflict where maneuver warfare is more important than ever,
00:08:47the ISW says. And there's one more little insult to Russia's July injuries to add before we get to
00:08:53Putin and his delusions. On August 3rd, the Kiev Independent reported on findings by the Russian
00:08:58outlet MediaZona. Working alongside the BBC's Russian service, MediaZona has been able to confirm the
00:09:04identities of 236,066 Russians who have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Those
00:09:12figures break down into 86,600 volunteers, 26,200 prisoners recruited into the fight, and 19,000
00:09:20mobilized soldiers. You can also add close to 7,500 Russian military officers to the list. Now you might
00:09:27have just heard these numbers and thought they sound a little strange, almost like they don't gel with the
00:09:32casualty figures we've already shared. You'll be right, and there's a reason why. The 236,066 dead
00:09:38are just those that MediaZona can confirm. The outlet says that the real number is significantly higher,
00:09:44as its information comes from obituaries, regional media reports, local authorities, and social media
00:09:49posts by relatives. If families, press, and authorities aren't talking about a soldier's death, which is
00:09:55more likely than not in Russia, then it isn't getting recorded, and it can't be verified. Ukraine's
00:10:00President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself says the real number is much higher, 700,000 Russians dead,
00:10:07at a time when Ukraine has achieved a ratio of one of its soldiers killed in action for every 14
00:10:12Russians.
00:10:13Add injuries and captures to that figure, and it's easy to see how Ukraine is breaking records for
00:10:18monthly casualties in 2026. And still, Putin doesn't seem to see any of it. Quite the opposite. He's
00:10:23claiming that everything in Ukraine is going according to plan. It isn't. And you're about to find out why
00:10:28Putin is so insane that he thinks Russia is winning. But before you do, this is a reminder
00:10:33that you're watching the military show. There's a lot more where this comes from,
00:10:36so make sure you're subscribed to the channel and have notifications enabled so you don't
00:10:40miss what's coming next. We take you to a July 26th meeting that involved Putin and Russian Navy
00:10:46personnel. Putin officially lost the plot during this meeting. Beyond claiming that there is no
00:10:51aggression whatsoever on Russia's part in Ukraine, and that Russia had been forced to start its so-called
00:10:57special military operation due to the Western side and the Kyiv regime, Putin ranted and raved
00:11:02about how Ukraine would fall, and that was just the start.
00:11:06I'm certain, by the way, that sooner or later, Ukraine will lose these Western lands. And what
00:11:10used to belong to Poland, Hungary, Romania will sooner or later, maybe not tomorrow, not the day after,
00:11:15in a year or two, 10 or 15 years, but everything will historically fall back into place, Russia's
00:11:21leader declared. Putin, please. You'll be lucky to have Donetsk in 10 or 15 years, never mind Poland
00:11:26or Romania. Putin is suggesting that everything is going according to plan in Ukraine, even though it
00:11:31isn't happening because there's no actual aggression. Except there is. And it's all the West's fault,
00:11:36and the Kyiv regime, and... Hold on a second, our heads are spinning. What we see from Putin here is
00:11:41outright delusion. Nothing is going according to plan, but Putin acts like it is, and there's more
00:11:47to come. The only question we can ask at this point is how Putin can make these types of claims,
00:11:52four and a half years into a war, that has cost Russia so much, and on the back of the
00:11:57country's
00:11:57worst month in 2026. The answer is simple. Putin may genuinely think that Russia is winning because
00:12:03his generals lie through their teeth to hide the truth away from him. That's according to the ISW,
00:12:08and we'll let the think tank do the talking here. The Russian Northern Grouping of Forces and High
00:12:12Military Command are likely lying to the Kremlin about the extent of Russian gains in Northern
00:12:17Ukraine in order to further the narrative that Russian forces are actively advancing across the
00:12:22entire theater, including a part of the front line that has been largely stagnant for nearly two
00:12:26years, the ISW declared in its July 31st assessment of Russia's offensive campaign. What we're
00:12:32seeing there is likely a microcosm of something that's been happening from the moment that Putin
00:12:36launched his invasion. This is a man who surrounds himself with toadies and sycophants. He shouldn't
00:12:41be surprised that none of them will tell him the truth, and will instead use artificially generated
00:12:46footage and other fake informational tools to make it seem like Russia is doing much better than it is.
00:12:51The ISW points to Russia's Northern Commanders as culprits, but we have seen this lying being used to
00:12:57influence Putin in the Donbass. In mid-July, Russia claimed that it had captured Konstantinivka.
00:13:02You may remember that city. If Russia is to be believed, Konstantinivka has been occupied,
00:13:07and it can move on to the rest of the fortress belt. It's all lies. The city is still a
00:13:12battleground
00:13:12and looks likely to remain that way for the rest of the year at least. The best that Russia has
00:13:17managed
00:13:17is infiltration, where it sends tiny units of two or three soldiers to go and hide away from Ukraine.
00:13:22Those infiltrators are present in almost all of Konstantinivka, that much appears to be true.
00:13:27But infiltration isn't occupation, not by a long shot. Scattered and isolated units of
00:13:33infiltrators can't do much once they reach their hidey holes, they exist to wait for support or get
00:13:37killed by Ukrainian search and destroy squads, usually the latter. If this is all according to plan,
00:13:43as Putin is claiming, then the plan is ridiculous. The reason why Russia's advance is so slow and bloody
00:13:49is that the infiltration strategy makes Russian soldiers vulnerable, both as they trek through
00:13:54the drone-infested kill zones and when they've reached their destinations. Putin accepts the
00:13:58casualties either because he doesn't actually know about them or he believes the sacrifices are worth
00:14:03it because Russia is making rapid progress. Only the progress is fake. Russia's leader,
00:14:08isolated from those who might tell him the truth, is now unhinged, lost in a delusion that makes him
00:14:13impossible to negotiate with and is leading him closer to mobilizing 500,000 soldiers because he
00:14:19thinks they will give Russia the final push it needs to win the war, despite Donetsk still being nowhere
00:14:24close to falling. Putin has lost his mind. And to paraphrase Stanley from the office, boy will Ukraine
00:14:31help him find it. The reality that drowns out Putin's delusion is that July has broken Russia.
00:14:36Putin isn't a strong leader. He's a man who has never been more trapped than he is right now,
00:14:41stuck between his imperial obsession and the reckless escalation that has led Russia into this
00:14:45casualty-riddled dead-end in the first place. Le Monde says that Russia is now being held hostage
00:14:51by Putinism and it's bang on the money. The only thing that Putin has achieved since February 2022
00:14:57are the complete isolation of Russia from the Western world, the destruction of his own nation's
00:15:02economy and the loss of geopolitical influence as the special military operation proves to those who
00:15:07once relied on Russia for protection that Russia isn't anywhere near as strong as it claims. Putin
00:15:13is a man obsessed, unable to comprehend a version of Russia that must exist within the borders drawn
00:15:17up in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. So he has created a fantasy world where Putin is
00:15:23king
00:15:24and he leads Russia to the reclamation of all the lands that were taken from it. Only none of it
00:15:28is
00:15:29real. What is real are 42,860 Russians dead, injured or captured in July. Reality is the 1.4
00:15:37million plus and counting who have had their lives destroyed by Putin, all for a war that grinds on with
00:15:43seemingly no end in sight. Putin is a man obsessed with ideology and his own twisted version of history.
00:15:49Perhaps he looks at what happened in July as an opportunity for his legacy to be celebrated.
00:15:54These sacrifices will go down in history, much like the Soviet sacrifices during World War II and will
00:15:59become part of the Russian mythos. Again, it's all in Putin's fantasy. And Russia's leader prefers
00:16:04these delusions because the reality is that Ukraine is strong and getting stronger. Our teams understand
00:16:10that right now we have a window of opportunity. Ukraine has become stronger both on the battlefield
00:16:15and in the air, and everyone sees the corresponding results, Zelensky declared on July 9th.
00:16:20It's hard to argue with him. And as Ukraine grows stronger still, the genius of its strategy will
00:16:25shine through. Ukraine doesn't need to win against Russia. It doesn't need to push Putin's forces back
00:16:31so far that they end up on the other side of the border. Ukraine's approach is all about attrition,
00:16:36make the cost of the war so heavy that nobody inside Russia, not even the delusional Putin,
00:16:41will be able to ignore it. The 50,000 per month goal that Fedorov set for Ukraine in January now
00:16:46seems
00:16:47more attainable than ever. Russia is losing hundreds, even thousands of soldiers for every
00:16:51square kilometer that it gains. This is how Ukraine wins. Inflict so much death that Russia can't go on
00:16:58any longer. July was a catastrophe for Russia, and though Putin will continue to live in his own little
00:17:03bubble, babbling about how everything is going according to plan on the few occasions when he
00:17:07emerges from his bunker, the Russian people can see the collapse of their country coming. Now we wait until
00:17:12the end of August. It's almost inevitable that we'll be telling you about another record broken.
00:17:18And if Putin thought that high-level military shake-ups in Ukraine might have given Russia
00:17:22some reprieve, he has another thing coming. Putin's so-called special military operation
00:17:29in Ukraine has been barbaric, brutal, and deadly. Obviously for Ukraine, but also for Russia's people.
00:17:36Unable to move on from the Soviet-era tactics, where soldiers are little more than cannon fodder to
00:17:41sacrifice for the greater good, Russia has churned through 1.44 million soldiers and counting,
00:17:48and it will likely have gone through well beyond the 1.5 million mark by the end of 2026.
00:17:54Putin's war has taken a huge toll on Russia. Now Putin is planning something that will devastate
00:18:01the entire country. A sacrifice so dark that it would make even Stalin look away as being planned.
00:18:08500,000 Russians have just been put on notice, as Putin prepares to make the most horrific move
00:18:14he's made so far in the Ukraine war. On July 27th, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered
00:18:20the warning. Russia is preparing to forcibly draft up to 500,000 soldiers, all so that Putin can sustain a
00:18:27war that has already failed to achieve every goal that he set for it back in 2022. This is mobilization
00:18:34on a
00:18:35scale not yet seen during the conflict, as Putin is preparing to tell his people that they must
00:18:39sacrifice even more than they already have to see his vision for a subjugated Ukraine come true.
00:18:45Putin isn't ready to end the war, Zelenskyy warns, and he has been putting steps in place to allow
00:18:50him to execute immobilization as secretly as possible so he can avoid the wrath of his own people. He will
00:18:56do it at the beginning of October if we do not create problems for him with logistics, weapons,
00:19:00gasoline, diesel, and if our partners do not introduce total sanctions for his aggression,
00:19:05Zelenskyy declared. That month is important. Putin is choosing it for a reason.
00:19:09Between September 18th and 20th, Russia will hold its first State Duma elections since Putin launched
00:19:15his invasion. The new Eurasian Strategies Center says that 450 deputies will be elected via both party
00:19:22lists and single-member constituencies. Russia is also using these elections as a chance to showcase
00:19:28its supposed hold over the Ukrainian territory that it is occupied. Voting will take place in
00:19:3311 single-member constituencies that Russia has created in the occupied territories in a brazen
00:19:37attempt to force Ukraine's people into taking part in the Russian parliamentary process. Though these
00:19:43elections are meant to signal strength, they also pose a risk to Putin. Though he has always
00:19:47technically been an independent, Putin has long held close ties to the United Russia Party,
00:19:52which is Russia's ruling political party. For these upcoming elections, that party is openly
00:19:57campaigning with Putin for the first time in almost two decades, the Financial Times reports. Putin
00:20:03is making it clear where his bread is buttered, and he will want the best possible result for United
00:20:07Russia in September. Unleashing mobilization on the voting populace any time before these elections
00:20:13could spark a political catastrophe for Putin, so he'll wait until October. And when he has what he
00:20:18and United Russia want, then he'll force more unwilling Russians onto the drone-infested front line in Ukraine.
00:20:24Putin has been preparing for mobilization for a while now. Back in February 2026,
00:20:29United24 media reported that legislation passed toward the end of 2025 has cleared the way for
00:20:35Russia's Ministry of Defense to tap into a reserve army that is two million strong. A levy has been
00:20:41placed on reservists at recruitment offices, the outlet says. Key to this new law is that it changes how
00:20:47Russia uses reservists. Since the start of the Ukraine invasion, reservists have only been used to
00:20:52protect critical infrastructure inside Russia, the Kremlin claims. How true that may be is difficult
00:20:57to determine. But now it doesn't matter. The 2025 law opens the door for these reservists to be sent
00:21:03into Ukraine if Putin decides that it's necessary. A foundation for mobilization has been laid.
00:21:09Fast forward to today, and Zelensky's claims of an upcoming mobilization are supported by other moves
00:21:14being made. On July 27, Militanyi reported that Putin has granted Russia's Defense Ministry access
00:21:20to Russia's civil registry data for military registration purposes. Again, the Kremlin is
00:21:26trying to hide what it's doing here. It claims that this move has been made to simplify the process of
00:21:31providing support to military personnel and their families. Amendments have been made to Article 13 of
00:21:37Russia's On Civil Status Act, allowing the Ministry of Defense to obtain information from the civilian
00:21:42registry to promptly provide the prescribed social guarantees and compensation to military personnel,
00:21:48veterans and their family members, Militanyi says. But behind this lies a caveat. The data the
00:21:54Ministry can now access will also be used for military registration purposes. In other words,
00:21:59the Kremlin has given the Ministry of Defense, as well as Russia's National Guard, access to a civilian
00:22:04database that essentially allows both to hunt down reservists ahead of forced conscription.
00:22:09There are other signs that a new wave of Russian mobilization is coming. Ahead of this law change,
00:22:15regional authorities within Russia started holding training sessions to prepare for mass mobilization.
00:22:20The first of those sessions was recorded in Volgograd, though representatives from Rostov,
00:22:25Kalmakia, Astrakhan, and the occupied regions of Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk also took part.
00:22:31So if we're looking for clues as to where Russia will likely start mobilizing soldiers,
00:22:35these seven regions would likely be a good place to start. Also on July 27th,
00:22:40UA.News reported that Russia's National Guard has made an interesting alteration to its civil defense
00:22:45regulations. Those alterations regard the protection of Russia from threats during periods of mobilization,
00:22:52martial law, and wartime. In other words, Russia's National Guard is ensuring that it has the legal
00:22:56structures in place to put down protests and other so-called threats that could result from Putin
00:23:01deciding to mobilize soldiers. The evidence is stacking up. Putin isn't ready to announce it
00:23:06until after the State Duma elections, but he is clearly preparing for a round of mobilization that
00:23:11he promised would never happen. In fact, the Kremlin is still making that promise.
00:23:15In response to Zelensky's claims, representatives from Russia's State Duma have dismissed any notion
00:23:20that mobilization is being prepared. Among them is the head of the State Duma Defense Committee,
00:23:25Andrei Kartopelov, who said,
00:23:27I heard Zelensky said something about this, but I can only attribute that to the fact that he
00:23:31probably overindulged over the weekend, leaving his imagination running wild. Kartopelov then went
00:23:36on to assert that Russia's primary method for replenishing military personnel remains,
00:23:40and will continue to be, the recruitment of volunteers who sign contracts with the Russian
00:23:45military. Um, about that, Mr. Kartopelov. The very fact that Russia relies on volunteer recruitment
00:23:50gives us yet another sign that Zelensky is right, and that a wave of mobilization is coming.
00:23:55Recruiting volunteers hasn't been going all that well for Russia in 2026.
00:24:00On May 4th, Pravda reported that Russia had recorded its fifth straight month of losing
00:24:04more soldiers in Ukraine than it had been able to recruit to replenish the numbers.
00:24:08Between December 2025 and April 26th, Russia had managed to recruit 148,400 personnel,
00:24:16but had lost 156,735, leaving a shortfall of a little more than 8,000.
00:24:22The Kiev independent offers different figures, courtesy of Zelensky's July 25th evening address,
00:24:27that cover all of 2026 so far. Ukraine's president says that Russia has sustained 225,500 losses so
00:24:35far this year, and has enlisted 221,000. The shortfall is smaller, but it's still there,
00:24:41showing us that Putin's recruiters are being forced to repeatedly dip into a well that is starting to run
00:24:46dry. Russia isn't quite facing a full-blown recruitment crisis yet, but as monthly death
00:24:51counts continue to spiral, with June breaking records for Ukraine in 2026 with 39,490 Russian
00:24:59casualties in that month alone, the problem that already exists will develop. Russia is running out
00:25:05of people who are willing to take the massive payouts in exchange for dying in Ukraine, which leaves Putin
00:25:10desperate. So desperate that he's laid all of the groundwork for mobilization. What comes next is
00:25:16almost inevitable. Knowing that Russia's losses are becoming increasingly unsustainable, Putin is
00:25:21trying to exhaust every avenue that is available to him until October. United24 media reports that
00:25:27Russia is now pushing for 30,000 North Korean soldiers and fresh missile launchers from the
00:25:31same nation to arrive in the country. Again, this comes from Zelensky, who claims that Russia has even
00:25:36prepared facilities in the Voronezh region to accommodate the incoming North Korean soldiers.
00:25:40This is a threat not only to Ukraine. Russia is helping North Korea learn warfare,
00:25:45improve its weapons, and gain real combat experience. All of this is a threat to everyone in Asia within
00:25:50range of North Korean missiles, Zelensky said. A threat it may be, but it's also a sign that Russia
00:25:56is running out of its own soldiers for positions in the rear. Reservists have been serving in these kinds
00:26:01of roles. Perhaps another sign that those reserves are going to be sent to the front has emerged.
00:26:07The Kyiv Post adds that Russia has also expanded its recruitment from prisons via a new bill that
00:26:12baldens the potential pool of people who can be brought into the army. Russia is now so desperate
00:26:16that it's willing to add people convicted of offenses related to organized crime and mishandling state
00:26:22secrets to the murderers, rapists, and drug abusers that it's been sending from its prisons to Ukraine.
00:26:27Sending people who have mishandled state secrets seems smart. There's definitely no chance that
00:26:32Ukraine could pounce on these people and turn them against Russia. None of this is going to be
00:26:36enough. 30,000 North Korean soldiers account for about a month's worth of losses for Russia.
00:26:41Recruiting from prisons is a tactic that is already in play, and adding a few new types of criminals to
00:26:46the list isn't going to impact Russia's numbers as much as Putin needs. And the volunteer recruitment
00:26:51issue means that Russia has been in the red for all of 2026 and the latter months of 2025,
00:26:57mobilization has to happen sooner or later. Putin is gearing up to do something devastating to his
00:27:02own people. But how devastating will that be? And will this forced sacrifice be enough to get
00:27:07Russia over the line and at the very least enable the capture of Donetsk? Before we answer those
00:27:12questions, this is a reminder that you are watching the military show. If you haven't subscribed and
00:27:17enabled notifications yet, then now is the perfect time to hit the buttons and then get back to the video.
00:27:22Russia's pending mobilization will have two key impacts. It will change the situation on the
00:27:27front and cause massive issues inside Russia. Starting with the front, Ukraine is under no
00:27:31illusions that an influx of 500,000 soldiers is bad news. Ukraine's entire strategy at this
00:27:37state of the war is to force so much attrition of Russian forces and equipment that Putin is forced
00:27:41to negotiate peace because the losses have grown so severe. We see that in everything that Ukraine is
00:27:46doing. The vast kill zones cause casualties on a massive scale. Strikes inside Russia damage
00:27:52Putin's economy and his war machine from the inside. And with the mid-range drones,
00:27:57Ukraine is ruining Russian logistics and creating opportunities for counter-attacks.
00:28:00If Russia pours 500,000 soldiers into Ukraine, that strategy doesn't go away. However, it becomes a
00:28:07lot harder to execute as Russia will be able to plug gaps in the front line, reinforce defenses,
00:28:12and throw even more meat at Ukraine's fortifications. If this works as Putin hopes, it could speed up the
00:28:18capture of the Donetsk fortress belt cities. However, Russia has a problem, and that problem is explained
00:28:23by Zelensky. Scaling up by forcibly recruiting 500,000 soldiers sounds great on paper for Putin.
00:28:30However, major operational problems would emerge, many of them related to the infrastructure that
00:28:35Russia needs to have in place to make these conscripts effective. He will not be able to
00:28:40quickly prepare these people, Zelensky says, adding, this again means that he will send poorly prepared
00:28:45people to the battlefield, and this in turn means heavy losses. Commanders will be forced by Putin to
00:28:50send poorly trained and unready soldiers to the front. Though many of those that Putin mobilize
00:28:55are reservists, most will have only received basic training, and will have no idea about the drone
00:29:00infested hellscape that awaits them in Ukraine. They'll just be told to pack their stuff, engage in
00:29:05a couple of days of training, and then off they go. And if you think that we're exaggerating here,
00:29:09then think again. The awful quality of Russia's training has long been known. As far back as May 2025,
00:29:16the Institute for the Study of War was reporting that Russia had started to rely on the
00:29:20simple and stupid tactic of sending barely trained recruits into assaults. The idea is simple,
00:29:25those recruits can't do much of anything offensively, but they can soak up bullets and
00:29:30force Ukraine to burn through its drones. In death, they play a small part in helping
00:29:35Russia break fortifications through its own bloody version of attrition. February brought with it a
00:29:40report by United24 media, which revealed that some Russian soldiers get as little as five days of
00:29:45training before they're shipped out to the front. Russia is offering little more than a crash course
00:29:49on how to become a casualty already. If up to 500,000 soldiers suddenly have to be prepared for war,
00:29:56the country's strained training grounds won't be able to cope. The mobilized will be lucky to even
00:30:01get the handful of days of training that recruits are receiving now. Putin won't care, of course.
00:30:05To him, the mobilized are barely even human. They're just cannon fodder that he can use to batter
00:30:10Ukraine's defenses with meat. The deaths and injuries don't matter to Putin, nor do sacrifices
00:30:15made by the soldiers and their families back home. The only thing that matters to Putin is that he can
00:30:20use Russia's people to secure his legacy as one of the country's great wartime leaders. But Putin
00:30:25should care about the effect of the sacrifice he is demanding. As impactful as mobilization will be
00:30:30on the front, the effect it will have on Russia itself could be enough to spell the end of Putin's
00:30:34reign.
00:30:35We take you back to September 2022. After the special military operation completely failed
00:30:40to topple Ukraine as quickly as Putin claimed it would, Russia had a problem on its hands.
00:30:45Ukraine was fighting back. Hard. The soldiers that had been committed to the invasion weren't going
00:30:50to be enough, meaning the Russian military needed an influx of new troops. A partial mobilization was
00:30:56the solution that Putin landed on. Reports indicated that Russia activated 300,000 reserves during this
00:31:02partial mobilization, and many of the problems that Zelensky anticipated for the second round occurred.
00:31:07Identifying, training, and evaluating all those who were supposed to enter Ukraine took an eternity,
00:31:12held up by bureaucratic red tape that Russia has since tried to cut with its new laws.
00:31:16However, far more worrying for Putin was the response from the Russian people.
00:31:20This initial round of mobilization happened when support for the Ukraine invasion and for Putin were
00:31:24still quite high. And even then, September 2022 sparked protests all over Russia and,
00:31:30according to Newsweek, led to tens of thousands of Russians running from their own country to avoid
00:31:35having to serve in the military. Now here we are, almost four years later, and Putin seems to be
00:31:40planning to do the same thing again, only on a larger scale. Only he's making those plans as the
00:31:45appetite for war in Russia declines, along with his own popularity. Putin's people are frustrated
00:31:51over the state of the Ukraine war right now, and we can see how frustrated they are in the polls.
00:31:55In a July 1 report, TVP World said that a survey carried out by Ukraine's Institute of Conflictology
00:32:01and Analysis of Russia had revealed that 81% of Russians want an immediate end to the Ukraine war.
00:32:07The same survey also found that 73% of 1,600 people quizzed opposed a second wave of mobilization.
00:32:14Putin's approval ratings are also on the wane. On July 20, United24 media reported on the latest
00:32:20results of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center's polling. That center, which is Kremlin-aligned,
00:32:26and does everything it can to massage its figures for Putin, found that only 65.1% of Russians approve
00:32:32of Putin's performance. That's a low point for 2026, and it shows that Russians are getting war-weary.
00:32:38Though 65.1% might seem high, remember that this number comes from a polling organization that is
00:32:42essentially controlled by the Kremlin, and many in Russia are hesitant to express disapproval,
00:32:47the fear of a knock on the door that might come from Russia's secret police.
00:32:51For any other world leader, a 65.1% approval rating is great. For Putin, who is a dictator
00:32:57running a police state, it's a massive sign that he has become unpopular. It's into this powder keg
00:33:02that Putin plans to throw the lit match of a new round of mobilization. Russia's economy is already
00:33:07crumbling, as the country's budget deficit has reached nearly $77 billion, forcing the Kremlin to
00:33:13request loans from the central bank to cover Putin's insane war spending.
00:33:17The country's labor shortage has reached historic levels, United24 media reported on June 5th,
00:33:23which is making it difficult to attract overseas investment due to there being no guarantee
00:33:27that Russia will be able to provide the workers that businesses need.
00:33:31And now Putin wants to just pull up to 500,000 people out of Russia to send to Ukraine.
00:33:36It will be a sacrifice too far for Russia, and it's a move that's destined to blow up in Putin's
00:33:41face.
00:33:42There's a reason why National Guard laws are being redrafted and training sessions are being held to
00:33:47ensure Russian regions are ready for mobilization. None of that has anything to do with the mobilization
00:33:51process itself. Putin and his cronies know that mobilization will bring with it waves of protests,
00:33:57an exodus of Russian reserves, and a new level of discontent that is far beyond what was seen in
00:34:02September. Russia's people are already tired of Putin's war. They're tired of family members dying and
00:34:07having to endure a damaged economy, crippled fuel supply lines, and the constant Ukrainian drone
00:34:12strikes against which Putin seems unable to protect them. Mobilization will be political suicide for
00:34:18Putin. And waiting until after the state doomer elections to do it won't change that fact.
00:34:23But then Putin may be thinking that he's in for a penny, so he might as well go in for
00:34:27a pound.
00:34:28On July 19, 2026, Ukraine's Interior Ministry announced something that, on the surface,
00:34:35looked like nothing really out of the ordinary. What they unveiled on that day
00:34:39appeared to be just another in a long line of naval drones Ukraine has fielded since 2022.
00:34:45This one, an unmanned surface vessel built by a combat diver unit. But the detail that made this
00:34:51one worth notice wasn't the boat itself, it was who built it. The unit is Omega, the Ukrainian
00:34:58National Guard's special purpose center. Its diving detachment is the same team that days earlier
00:35:04had, via drone, destroyed a Russian Su-24M bomber at the Saki Air Base in Occupy Crimea,
00:35:11demolishing it before it could take off on a strike mission.
00:35:13The people who blew up that Russian bomber with weapons that rained down from the sky,
00:35:18were the same people designing the boats that will carry the next generation of
00:35:22Ukrainian drones out to sea. We want to spend this video on that boat,
00:35:26as well as what it says about how Ukraine fights a naval war with a very limited navy,
00:35:31and on the multi-year arc of naval drone innovation that made all this happen.
00:35:36The bomber operation is important here, because it's the reason this particular boat story matters
00:35:41beyond the usual drone-of-the-week coverage. Su-24Ms are just one of the types of aircraft
00:35:46that have been used to drop glide bombs on Ukrainian cities and frontline positions,
00:35:51so removing one before it ever gets airborne is much more strategically important than shooting
00:35:56down a drone or damaging a ship at sea. However, it's also significantly more difficult,
00:36:02requiring people physically getting close enough to a heavily defended Russian airbase to do the job
00:36:07pretty much by hand. That's the resume of the unit that then turned around and built its own naval
00:36:12drone. It isn't a research and development team learning about combat secondhand from someone
00:36:17else's after-action reports, it's a special operations unit designing hardware based on
00:36:23missions its own people just ran. Let's start with what the Omega team actually built,
00:36:28because the details matter. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs,
00:36:32the vessel was developed by the Diving Detachment's own engineers working in partnership with the
00:36:37Ukrainian civilian IT company, not through the country's centralized defense procurement system.
00:36:43Photos released by the Ministry show the boat powered by a Japanese-made Suzuki outboard engine
00:36:48and fitted with a satellite communications terminal, which suggests a platform designed to operate and
00:36:54stay in contact with its controllers well beyond visual range. The boat was bluntly described as a
00:36:59mothership that carries FPV drones, which then fly on to destroy the enemy. That's the whole concept in
00:37:05one sentence. So the boat itself isn't a weapon but just a fancy delivery truck, closing the distance
00:37:11to the target zone. Then come the actual killing machines, which are the tried and true first-person
00:37:17view drones, which need to launch from as close to the enemy as possible and arrive with enough battery
00:37:22left to maneuver and strike. The idea apparently came out of the Zaporizia sector, where Omega's teams
00:37:27were already flying FPV drones against Russian logistics and equipment behind the front line.
00:37:33There, they were running into the same wall every operator in this war eventually hit.
00:37:38Batteries only carry a drone so far before there's no power left for the strike itself.
00:37:42But with a delivery system, you can theoretically extend that range much further. A naval platform
00:37:47solves the range problem the same way a forward operating base solves it for infantry. Get closer before
00:37:53you commit the expensive, fragile part of the system. The National Guard had suggested it was already
00:37:59having unmanned teams operating in southern Ukraine with this broader approach. Small boats plus FPV
00:38:05drones plus the diving detachment's own tactical experience to destroy Russian vehicles, armoured
00:38:10equipment, fuel tankers and electrical infrastructure. The goal is for the so-called technology, which
00:38:16translates to drones and remote operated systems, to save the lives of Ukrainian fighters while increasing
00:38:22the rate at which Russian forces are eliminated. And the unit isn't stopping at strike missions. One
00:38:28report indicated that possible iterations of the boat are meant to carry FPV interceptor drones,
00:38:33turning the same hull into a piece of mobile coastal air defence. The Interior Ministry has not
00:38:38released the vessel's official name or its technical specifications, so consider the engine and
00:38:44communications details as based only on what the photographs show rather than a full-spec sheet.
00:38:49But the intent behind the boat is not ambiguous. But the concept of the naval mothership isn't really
00:38:54new. Ukraine has been fielding FPV-carrying sea drones for a few years by this point, from the Navy's
00:39:01Barracuda system to Defense Intelligence's Katran. What is new is who's doing the building. A frontline
00:39:08special operations unit, the same divers who plan and execute underwater sabotage missions against Russian
00:39:14aircraft designed and built a naval drone with a private tech partner, rather than waiting on the
00:39:19normal defence industry pipeline. That's part of a pattern that increasingly defines how Ukraine fights
00:39:25this war. The operators who use the weapons are becoming the people who make them, cutting out layers
00:39:30of procurement and iterating at the speed of the front line rather than the speed of a ministry.
00:39:35To understand why that pattern matters so much for the naval war specifically, we need to back up to
00:39:40where Ukraine's sea drone program started. Because this is a story about a country that began the
00:39:45full-scale invasion with essentially no navy and ended up, four years later, running one of the most
00:39:51closely watched experiments in unmanned naval warfare anywhere in the world. When Russia invaded in February
00:39:572022, Ukraine's conventional navy was not a serious factor in the Black Sea. Its most capable surface
00:40:04combatants had already been lost or scuttled in the opening days of the war to keep them out of Russian
00:40:09hands, and Russia's Black Sea fleet, based at Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, had effective
00:40:14control of the water. That fleet blockaded Ukrainian ports, threatened amphibious landings near Odessa,
00:40:20and served as a floating missile platform, launching missiles at targets across the country.
00:40:26Ukraine's first real answer was the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, the fleet's flagship in April 2022,
00:40:32using Neptune anti-ship missiles. That was a shock to Russian naval planning and the first sinking of an
00:40:38enemy flagship since the Russo-Japanese war in the early 20th century. But this was a one-off
00:40:43missile strike, not a repeatable system. Ukraine needed something it could build at scale, cheaply,
00:40:49without a shipyard. That something turned out to be a small, low-profile, explosive-laden boat
00:40:54that barely rises above the waterline, hard to see on radar, and even harder to hit. Ukrainian developers
00:41:00began designing what would become the Magura series in the spring of 2022. By October, early prototype
00:41:07boats that preceded the operational Magura V-5 took part in a raid on Sevastopol harbour itself,
00:41:13the Russian Black Sea fleet's home base. The initial raid damaged the fleet's newest flagship
00:41:17at the time, the frigate Admiral Makarov, along with a minesweeper. The drones didn't sink anything
00:41:23that night, but the raid proved the concept worked. A handful of cheap, uncrewed boats had gotten deep
00:41:28inside Russia's most heavily defended naval base in the Black Sea. From there, the programme moved fast.
00:41:34Ukraine's Military Intelligence Directorate, or the GUR, became the lead operator of the Magura
00:41:39family. And by 2023, the boats were already ranging far from Ukrainian shores. In May 2023,
00:41:47three Magura drones struck and damaged the Ivankurs, a large Russian intelligence collection
00:41:51ship hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU,
00:41:56fielded a parallel naval drone family called Sea Baby. And in July 2023, Sea Baby drones loaded with close
00:42:03to a tonne of explosives struck the Kerch Strait Bridge, the physical and symbolic link between
00:42:08occupied Crimea and mainland Russia. Sea Baby drones were later adapted to lay naval mines,
00:42:14to carry rocket launchers, and to strike additional Russian vessels near Novorossysk once the fleet
00:42:19relocated there. The turning point that really cemented naval drones as a strategic weapon,
00:42:24rather than a nuisance, came at the start of 2024. In late January, Magura V-5 drone sank the Tarantul
00:42:31-class
00:42:32missile corvette Ivanovetsk, and in mid-February, they sank the Repucha-class landing ship,
00:42:37Cesar Kunikov. Those were the first confirmed sinkings of enemy warships by naval drones in the
00:42:42history of naval warfare, not just in this war, but full stop. Within roughly a year of that first
00:42:48Sevastopol raid, according to reporting from outlets that have tracked the campaign closely,
00:42:53Ukrainian sea drone and missile strikes combined had sunk or damaged around two dozen Russian vessels,
00:42:58and by 2023 and into 2024, the bulk of the Black Sea Fleet had relocated from Sevastopol several
00:43:05hundred kilometres to the east, to a more distant and initially safer base at Novorossysk,
00:43:10although that protection proved temporary. That relocation is one of the starker outcomes of the
00:43:16entire war. A country without a meaningful navy helped force the large portion of a nuclear-powered
00:43:21Black Sea Fleet away from its traditional base at Sevastopol, using boats that, individually, cost a few
00:43:27hundred thousand dollars each. Even the retreat to Novorossysk didn't fully solve Russia's problem.
00:43:33Ukrainian sea drones kept extending their range, eventually striking targets close to 500 miles from
00:43:38the Ukrainian-controlled coastline, and the Magura family kept adding capability. By early 2025, Magura V-5
00:43:46drones, fitted with what Ukraine has called the Sea Dragon infrared homing missile, adapted from the old
00:43:52Soviet R-73 air-to-air missile, shot down Russian Mi-8 helicopters operating near Crimea, the first
00:43:59confirmed case of a naval surface drone killing an aircraft. A larger variant, the Magura V-7, has since
00:44:05been fitted with air defence missiles of its own. What started as an improvised speedboat with an explosive
00:44:11charge in the bow, had within about three years become a multi-role naval platform capable of striking ships,
00:44:17hitting land targets, and shooting down aircraft. That capability curve is the direct ancestor of the
00:44:24mothership concept behind the Omega boat. Once Ukraine had reliable radar-evading surface drones
00:44:30that could survive a transit across open water, the logical next step was to stop treating them purely
00:44:35as one-way explosive craft and start using them as delivery platforms for other systems. The Navy leaned
00:44:41into this publicly in mid-July 2026, demonstrating a multi-layered naval drone operation in which
00:44:47its Barracuda drone boat system attacked an observation post, while a separate drone-carrying
00:44:52surface vessel launched reconnaissance and FPV strike drones. The boat's onboard drones can loiter,
00:44:58confirm a target, and hand off a strike faster than a single-purpose kamikaze craft ever could,
00:45:04which directly increases precision and effectiveness. The other branch of this mothership trend has been
00:45:10air defence, and it may end up being the more consequential one for the war's next phase. But before we
00:45:15get there, make sure you're subscribed to the military show for daily news.
00:45:19In April 2026, an uncrewed Ukrainian sea drone shot down a Russian Shahid drone using an interceptor
00:45:26launch from its own deck, an event Ukraine described as a world first for naval platforms. This comes from
00:45:31the fact that sea drones are a practical launch platform for interceptor systems like Sting,
00:45:36precisely because they can sit offshore along the Black Sea coastline and defend cities from
00:45:41directions and distances that ground-based air defence can't easily cover. Ukraine's military
00:45:46intelligence directorate has also described an incident in which Russian coastguard personnel
00:45:51tried to stop a group of Ukrainian naval drones with small arms fire, only for the platform to
00:45:57launch FPV drones that surrounded and destroyed several of the Russian personnel involved. But this
00:46:02doesn't only affect sea combat. Ukraine's mothership logic has been showing up across every domain,
00:46:08where it operates uncrewed systems, so this is just one branch of a much wider structural shift.
00:46:13On land, in mid-July 2026, Ukraine's 123rd Separate Territorial Defence Brigade
00:46:20used an improvised landing craft, ferrying a machine-gun-equipped ground robot onto the Russian-occupied
00:46:26shoreline at the Kimburn Spit in Mykoliv Oblast and deploying it directly into a combat role.
00:46:31This was reportedly the first time a maritime platform has delivered, landed,
00:46:35and enabled a ground robot to carry out a mission on an occupied coastline.
00:46:40In the air, Ukrainian forces are using heavy bomber-type UAVs to transport one-way attack
00:46:45ground robots for follow-on strikes on Russian positions. This extends the operational range
00:46:50of those ground robots, while keeping the larger and more expensive bomber drones farther from Russian
00:46:55air defences during the actual attack run. Put all of that together, boats launching FPV drones and
00:47:02interceptors, boats delivering ground robots ashore, bombers delivering ground robots inland,
00:47:07and a clear doctrine emerges. Ukraine has built an entire logistics layer out of uncrewed platforms,
00:47:13whose only job is to get a smaller, cheaper, more expendable weapon close enough to matter,
00:47:18without risking a person or an expensive asset to do it. This is also where the who-built-it detail
00:47:23comes in. Ukraine's drone industry has never been a single top-down program the way a traditional
00:47:29defense procurement system usually works. It's a decentralized ecosystem of private manufacturers,
00:47:35volunteer-funded workshops, and now, increasingly, frontline units themselves designing hardware based
00:47:41on what they've learned from months of actual combat use. For example, Ukrainian manufacturers like
00:47:47Frontline Robotics report making minor design changes to their drones as often as 20 times a month,
00:47:52with major updates roughly every six months. This is an iteration speed that would be almost
00:47:57unimaginable inside a conventional defense acquisition process in most western militaries.
00:48:03Omega's diving detachment, building its own boat with a private IT partner,
00:48:07fits squarely inside that same culture. These are the operators who know exactly where their FPV drones
00:48:13will run out of battery, exactly how Russian coastal defenses respond to a low, fast-moving hull,
00:48:19and exactly what a diving team needs from a support platform during a special operations mission.
00:48:24And instead of writing up requirements and waiting for someone else to build it,
00:48:28they built it themselves. Ukraine's naval drone program has also started shaping how other
00:48:33militaries think about this kind of warfare, which is its own signal of how far the technology has come
00:48:39from those first shaky prototype runs into Sevastopol Harbor. The United States military used armed,
00:48:45uncrewed surface vessels in combat for the first time during operations in Iran. And before that,
00:48:51US Special Operations Forces had tested Ukrainian Magura maritime drones during exercises in the
00:48:57Philippines, a region with its own obvious interest in cheap, fast, hard-to-detect naval strike craft,
00:49:03given the tensions in the South China Sea. None of that means the Magura family or its offshoots
00:49:08are about to become standard-issue equipment for the US Navy. But it does mean the operational lessons
00:49:13Ukraine has generated fighting a much larger navy with almost no fleet of its own are being studied,
00:49:19and in at least one case directly borrowed by the country's largest military backer.
00:49:23That's a fairly unusual position for Ukraine to be in. In most areas of this war, Ukraine has been on
00:49:29the receiving end of Western technology and doctrine. In naval drones, the flow is partly reversed.
00:49:34It's also worth being precise about what Katran and Barracuda actually are, since both names get used
00:49:40loosely in coverage of this story, and they aren't the same thing. Katran is operated by Ukraine's
00:49:45Defense Intelligence Directorate, and like the Magura family, has largely functioned as a strike and
00:49:50reconnaissance platform in its own right. Barracuda belongs to the Navy, and per the Navy's own July 14
00:49:56demonstration, it's built specifically around the mothership role, attacking a target directly with its
00:50:01own onboard systems, and then launching subordinate FPV drones to extend the engagement. The Omega boat sits
00:50:07closer to the Barracuda concept than to a single-purpose strike drone like the early Magura variants,
00:50:13a carrier first, a weapon second. What distinguishes it from either government program is simply its
00:50:19origin, a combat unit's own engineers working with a private partner outside the formal procurement
00:50:24channel. It's also worth putting a number on how fast this ecosystem is scaling more broadly.
00:50:29Ukraine produced roughly 10,000 ground robotic systems in 2025 and is aiming for around 50,000 in 2026,
00:50:36a five-fold jump in a single year. The European Union, for its part, has been moving to formalize
00:50:42its support for exactly this kind of production base. In mid-July 2026, the EU and Ukraine signed
00:50:48a drone deal intended to strip away bureaucratic barriers so that Ukrainian and European companies
00:50:54can more easily form joint ventures, and the European Commission launched a parallel EU-Ukraine
00:50:59drone alliance bringing together companies, researchers, and armed forces from both sides. With its first meeting
00:51:05of 18 founding members expected in Brussels in September, none of that money or policy framework
00:51:10built the Omega boat directly. That vessel came out of a diving unit and a private Ukrainian IT company
00:51:16working on their own initiative. But it's the broader current the story is swimming in. A wartime economy
00:51:22that has learned to treat frontline improvisation as a legitimate source of new weapons rather than
00:51:27something to be centralized and slowed down. So where does this actually leave Russia's position
00:51:32in the Black Sea by the summer of 2026? The core picture hasn't changed much since the fleet retreated
00:51:38to Novoluzsk, but the pressure keeps compounding. Russia's Black Sea fleet has been forced to keep adapting
00:51:43its operations and has seen its opportunities for major Black Sea actions drastically cut down compared to
00:51:49earlier in the war. What's also changed is the shape of the threat facing Russian forces along that coastline.
00:51:55It used to be enough to keep large warships away from a handful of known drone launch points.
00:52:00Now Russian planners have to account for small boats that might be carrying an explosive payload,
00:52:05an FPV swarm, an interceptor drone, a ground robot, or some mix of all of the above,
00:52:10launched by anyone from Navy crews to intelligence operators to a special operations diving unit working
00:52:16independently. That unpredictability is the actual strategic asset Ukraine has built here.
00:52:23Putin thought he was untouchable. When he launched his so-called special military operation he knew
00:52:29with absolute certainty that Ukraine wouldn't be able to strike back. Even after the initial invasion
00:52:35failed it wouldn't matter to Putin. Ukraine didn't have long-range weapons, the conflict would be
00:52:40contained on the territory of the nation Russia invaded, and that would be that. Oh how times have changed.
00:52:46The untouchable leader is now well within reach, and with a single drone Ukraine has just shown
00:52:52Putin that he can be struck at any time. We take you to Gelenzyk in the Krasnodar region. This stunning
00:52:59estate which overlooks the Black Sea and has cost Putin well over a billion dollars to transform into a
00:53:04luxury palace he can use whenever he wants to take a break is supposed to be untouchable. Known to the
00:53:10world as
00:53:11Putin's palace, this sprawling estate has everything that an insane despot could ever need. In the past
00:53:17this palace has been filled with the most opulent furniture that you could imagine, much of it gifted
00:53:22to Putin by the oligarchs that he has made rich since he came to power. At one point around 1
00:53:28,500
00:53:28people worked on the construction and renovation of this lavish building. It had a Japanese garden,
00:53:34a floor level pool, and a massive gym constructed almost entirely of marble. Sure, it was basically made of
00:53:40plasterboard, and in later years some of it got covered in a nasty green mold. But if anything, that just
00:53:46proves that
00:53:46Gelenzyk truly was Putin's palace, impressive on the outside, but rotting at the core. This palace was a
00:53:53monument to the increasingly insulated world that Putin has created for himself. A mansion away from home, heavily
00:53:59protected and far removed from the average Russian. This is where Putin went to relax, firmly of the
00:54:05belief that nobody could touch him when he was within the palace walls. Then, everything changed.
00:54:11On August 3, the news broke that a Ukrainian drone had fallen mere kilometers away from Putin's palace.
00:54:17Ukraine hadn't scored a direct hit. It isn't even known if the palace was the target. It's unlikely that it
00:54:23was, as the drone that crash landed was reportedly shot down just 300 meters shy of a facility that has
00:54:28been
00:54:28linked to Russian missile production. That seems the more likely target. But for Putin, that facility,
00:54:34along with the six people killed and the 40 who were wounded when Russia made the insane decision to
00:54:38shoot down Ukraine's drone over a populated beach, don't matter. What matters to Putin is that this
00:54:44single drone could have killed him. It was brought down a mere 24 kilometers away from Gelenzyk, showing
00:54:50Putin once and for all that even the most heavily protected corners of the Russia that he has created for
00:54:55himself, now lie within Ukraine's reach. Ukraine may not have been targeting the palace, but it
00:55:00could have been. It can, at any time. The war that Putin started is now closer to him than it
00:55:06ever was
00:55:06before. What Putin thought would be an invasion that would offer no blowback to the Russian people
00:55:11has transformed into a full-blown war that threatens everybody in Russia. The political elite, with Putin
00:55:17at the head of the beast, thought that it was safe behind an invisible wall created by Ukraine's
00:55:22inability to strike them at their homes. That wall has come tumbling down, and Putin has heard the
00:55:27message loud and clear. There is nowhere left for him to hide in Russia where Ukraine can't reach him.
00:55:33As the Kyiv Post reports, one Russian commenter is claiming,
00:55:36there is no longer a single battlefield, and there is no longer a rear area where one can simply hide.
00:55:41There is nowhere to hide in Russia. That commentator is right. Though it was just one drone that
00:55:46caused the panic at Gelenzyk, and you're soon going to discover how Russia reacted, the reality is that
00:55:52Ukraine has built up a stockpile of what it often calls long-range sanctions that could potentially
00:55:57strike Putin almost anywhere other than Russia's freezing cold and isolated Far East. And even that
00:56:03region may not be safe for much longer. On June 21, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed
00:56:09that Ukraine has drones that can now travel up to 3,000 kilometers, as he vowed that Ukraine would now
00:56:14carry out daily strikes against Russia in the occupied territories. We didn't have to wait long for
00:56:20Ukraine to prove these range claims. On July 7, the news broke that Ukraine had carried out a strike
00:56:25against the Omsk oil refinery in Siberia, causing a huge fire. Any doubt that Putin might have had
00:56:31about Ukraine's claims was dispelled in an instant. This was a record-breaking strike when it came to
00:56:36distance, as Omsk is around 2,500 kilometers away from Ukrainian-held territory. Zelenskyy made a promise
00:56:42Ukraine's drone operators delivered. That should make Putin very worried, as Zelenskyy has made another
00:56:48promise. On July 24, in the wake of the Omsk strike and just ahead of the single drone that
00:56:53has caused Russia to panic in Gelenzyk, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is working on new drone technology
00:56:59as we speak. That technology will soon give Ukraine's drones the ability to fly up to 5,000
00:57:05kilometers. And this new generation of long-range sanctions isn't some far-off concept. Drones exceeding
00:57:114,000 kilometers are expected to be in the hands of Ukrainian operators by the end of 2026,
00:57:16and those exceeding 5,000 kilometers by the end of 2027. Ukraine isn't going to rest on those laurels
00:57:23either. It's working on drones that can travel up to 10,000 kilometers, which will practically put
00:57:29every part of Russia that matters within reach. Those drones won't be arriving in 2026. Russia will
00:57:35have to wait until 2027 to start dealing with Ukrainian weapons flying deeper into its territory
00:57:40than anybody ever believed that they could. And that's the point of Omsk, of Gelenzyk,
00:57:45and of every drone that Ukraine sends into Russia. All of them break the contract that Putin put in
00:57:51place when he launched his so-called special military operation. Putin sold his people a very specific bill
00:57:57of goods when he invaded Ukraine in February 2022. They would not be touched. None of Russia would be.
00:58:03The bargain was simple. Support Putin in the special military operation and those Russians would be
00:58:08repaid with the reuniting of Russia and Ukraine, along with all of the prosperity that a nation
00:58:13with an estimated 15 trillion dollars in mineral wealth promises. Four and a half years after selling
00:58:18that bill, Russia should be asking for a refund. Missiles and drones flying into Russian territory
00:58:24every day. There are blackouts, water shortages, the scent of burning oil in the air, and so much more,
00:58:30all of which Putin promised would never be a problem. The drone crashing at Gelenzyk is just
00:58:35another example that the contract has been broken. Only it's an example that makes Putin look even
00:58:40weaker than he did before. It's not just the Russians in far-flung regions that have minimal defenses that
00:58:45have to worry. Every Russian should be scared, because there is no such thing as a safe rear in the
00:58:51country anymore. Safe Moscow is no more, blared the headline of a June 18th Euromiden press report,
00:58:57which came in the wake of Ukraine carrying out its second strike in three days against the Moscow oil
00:59:02refinery that is just a stone's throw away from the Kremlin. Ukraine has been striking Russia's
00:59:07central nervous system throughout 2026, the Center for European Policy Analysis argued on July 15th.
00:59:14Power plants, refineries, infrastructure, military bases, and heating systems are all targets of long
00:59:20range weapons that have reshaped the war and forced Russia to constantly re-evaluate its military calculus.
00:59:26Russia's 2026 reality is so far removed from Putin's 2022 promises that it may as well be in another
00:59:33dimension. And as for Gelenzyk, whatever aura may have once surrounded Putin's crumbling palace is
00:59:39officially gone. The single drone that reached Russia's Black Sea corridor on August 3rd isn't
00:59:44the first to have placed Putin's palace under threat. August 2025 saw debris from a downed Ukrainian drone
00:59:50spark a forest fire just 10 kilometers away from the palace, again showcasing that Ukraine's drones
00:59:56could hit the massive building if Ukraine really wanted them to. Another fire was reported near
01:00:02Gelenzyk in early 2026, again the result of a drone being down. So far, Russia's air defenses around Putin's
01:00:09palace have held up, but we should have expected them to. Ukraine hasn't unleashed a full-blown swarm against
01:00:14the palace. Every drone that Russia has shot down has been an isolated unmanned aerial vehicle that
01:00:20was likely on its way toward a different target. But Gelenzyk could easily have been that target.
01:00:25It may yet be in the future.
01:00:27And when it does become a target, it will be interesting to see how the palace's defenses hold
01:00:31up when faced with dozens, maybe even hundreds of drones, rather than the occasional one.
01:00:36There's one thing we can say for certain about what just happened near Putin's palace,
01:00:40Russia is panicking. We can see that from the response to the attack. That panic is real,
01:00:45and it should be. It's also tinged with hypocrisy, and it provides us with some insight into Putin's
01:00:50manipulative media tactics, as well as the fear he now lives with every single day.
01:00:55But before we go deeper into that, this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.
01:01:00If you haven't subscribed yet, now is the perfect time to hit the button
01:01:03and enable notifications so you never miss a video.
01:01:06Russia's response to what happened in Gelenzyk was exactly what you would expect,
01:01:10after hearing that civilians had been casualties of Ukraine's drone.
01:01:14An opportunity to cast Ukraine as the bad guy appeared. Russia's foreign
01:01:18ministry seized that opportunity with both hands. Ukraine had resorted to international terrorist
01:01:24activities, blared spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. A terrorist gang had seized control over the
01:01:30Ukrainian state, and the West was complicit in supporting this terrorism.
01:01:35There's a reason why the word terrorist is repeated so often. Russia wants to drill this
01:01:39narrative into its people's heads because casting Ukraine as a terroristic nation that attacks civilians,
01:01:44feeds into Putin's justifications for his invasion. Russia had to launch the special military
01:01:50operation. It had to stay in Ukraine, even after it became clear that the initial invasion had failed.
01:01:55These Ukrainians are trying to kill all Russians, and it's only brave Putin and the Russian military
01:02:00that can save you. The hypocrisy is on another level. And the reality of what happened at Gelenzyk
01:02:06is very different. You'll already picked up on that if you remember what we told you earlier.
01:02:10Ukraine clearly had a military target in mind. A facility that serves Russia's missile pipeline,
01:02:15was just meters away from where Ukraine's drone crashed to earth. As for the drone,
01:02:19it was shot down by Russian air defenses. And as for that decision to fire, Andrey Kovalenko,
01:02:24who heads Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, had some choice words to deliver to Russia.
01:02:30This was the work of Russian air defense forces, which shot the drone down over a beach full of
01:02:34vacationers and pathetic efforts by the Russian authorities, who often conceal air raid alerts or fail
01:02:40to do everything necessary to ensure Russian safety during such alerts. Kovalenko declared,
01:02:45noting that Russia made the conscious decision to shoot Ukraine's drone down over a populated beach,
01:02:50and that Ukraine only attacks targets that are part of Russia's military industrial complex,
01:02:55or otherwise help Putin to fund his war. A CNN analysis of the video of Ukraine's drone
01:03:00crashing down reveals that automatic gunfire from at least three weapons can be heard moments before
01:03:06the drone lands. Ukraine's drone then veers and dive bombs into the beach, as control over its
01:03:11trajectory is lost. Russia did this to itself, but it claims terrorism. Let's focus on the hypocrisy
01:03:18of that for a moment. Russia says that Ukraine is a terrorist state because Russia shot down a
01:03:23Ukrainian drone over a populated beach. At best, this is a Russian accident that is being used to
01:03:29disparage Ukraine. At worst, Russia purposefully shot down this drone, offering no warning of what was
01:03:35incoming, so that it could cause casualties that it could pin on Ukraine. Either way, Ukraine didn't
01:03:40intend those casualties. That's something we can't say about Russia and its long-range attacks against
01:03:45Ukraine. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
01:03:49Russia has killed 16,431 Ukrainian civilians between February 24, 2022 and June 30, 2026.
01:03:59Another 48,613 civilians have been injured, many of them by Russia's missiles and drones. In fact,
01:04:06just days before what happened at Gelenzyk, Russia launched a ballistic missile strike against Kyiv
01:04:10that killed nine and injured dozens more. This is the difference between Ukraine and Russia.
01:04:16Ukraine aims for military targets, with civilian deaths being accidents. Russia targets civilians,
01:04:22purposefully. It's been doing it since the beginning of the invasion, and it will continue
01:04:26to do it because Putin believes that inspiring fear in the hearts of Ukraine's civilians could lead
01:04:31them to turn against Zelensky and accept Russia. When Zakharova claims terrorism for what happened near
01:04:37Putin's palace, the words ring hollower than Kevin Bacon in a schlocky 2000s sci-fi flick.
01:04:42You simply can't take Russia seriously when it's purposefully committing travesties that it doesn't
01:04:48even attempt to justify. Putin is a war criminal, that much is clear. But what just happened at
01:04:54Gelenzyk also shows us that a man who once thought himself untouchable could now be hit at any time,
01:05:00and that will make Putin very scared. A criminal constantly on the run, unable to move freely on
01:05:07his own land because he knows that one day, Ukrainian drone operators might actually target him.
01:05:13There's another reason why Russia has been so quick to launch its latest round of condemning
01:05:17Ukraine for an incident that wasn't Ukraine's fault. It's not just about claiming Ukraine to
01:05:21be a terrorist nation. Putin is using what happened at Gelenzyk as propaganda, as he attempts
01:05:26to convince the world that Ukraine is actively trying to assassinate him while he is the sitting
01:05:31president of Russia. We know this because Putin has a history when it comes to this sort of thing.
01:05:36Toward the end of 2025, Russia claimed that Ukraine had launched a drone attack against Putin's
01:05:41residents in the northern Novgorod region. Russia went all in on this claim. It even released footage
01:05:46purportedly showing Ukrainian drones that had been shot down on the ground somewhere outside the
01:05:51residence. In total, Russia said, Ukraine had unleashed 91 long-range drones against Putin's home.
01:05:57Only one or two were shot down in the footage and there was no video of the drones being shot
01:06:02down.
01:06:02The conspiratorially minded might have instantly assumed that Russia had planted Ukrainian drone
01:06:07debris from other strikes at Novgorod to make it look like Ukraine had tried to kill Putin.
01:06:12The conspiracy theorists would have been right. That's exactly what Russia seems to have done.
01:06:16Ukraine instantly denied Russia's claims and on January 5th, about a week or so after the attack,
01:06:21a US investigation into the supposed strike revealed that no Ukrainian attack
01:06:26had actually taken place at Novgorod. President Donald Trump, who initially described himself
01:06:31as very angry about the attack, said, I don't believe that strike happened. We don't believe
01:06:36that happened. Now that we've been able to check. Why does all of this matter? When Russia made its
01:06:41claim, it was in the midst of peace talks at the time. After the alleged attack, Russia said that it
01:06:46wouldn't be able to continue those talks. This was all purposeful, as Putin tried to play on his very
01:06:51real fear of Ukrainian drones to manipulate the US into siding with Russia. It didn't work.
01:06:57But now Russia has an attack that is confirmed to have happened near Gelenzyk. Putin's patsies
01:07:02haven't made the link between that attack and an attempt on Putin's life yet. But the strike
01:07:07and Russia's condemnation come right as rumors swirl that the US and Ukraine are working on a plan for
01:07:12an air ceasefire that may soon find its way onto Putin's desk. It wouldn't surprise us if Putin tries
01:07:18to use the Gelenzyk incident to refuse that plan, should it become tangible. Only this time the
01:07:23worry will be real. Ukraine's drone did get close to Putin's palace. Putin may try to twist all of
01:07:29this, but his response will be terror. This is a man who already lives in fear of attack, be it
01:07:34from
01:07:34Ukraine's drones or members of his own inner circle. It's been well documented since at least May that
01:07:40Putin now spends most of his time hiding away in underground bunkers, only emerging when he is
01:07:45called upon to make one of his increasingly rare public appearances. Forbes says that Ukraine's
01:07:50drones have inspired this bunker dwelling, as Putin is actively avoiding the lavish properties
01:07:55he once called home. The Independent says that at least one of those bunkers is in the Krasnodar
01:08:00region, which happens to be where Putin's palace is located. It's almost as though Putin is trying to
01:08:05stay as close as he can to the life that he once knew, though he knows that he won't live
01:08:09it again for
01:08:10as long as the Ukraine war drags on. That fear is the point of all of this for Ukraine.
01:08:15It may not have been actively targeting Putin's palace on August 3rd, but Ukraine won't mind that
01:08:20one of its drones came so close to it. Now that drone can serve as another example to the Russian
01:08:25people that their strongman leader is not what he claims to be. Another promise broken,
01:08:31just like the special military operation contract. Putin is supposed to be the great protector of Russia,
01:08:36the man who stands up for his nation and defends it at all costs. That's the narrative that he has
01:08:41spun around himself for more than two decades, and it's all come crashing down. Putin isn't a strong
01:08:46man. He's a man who spends his life in bunkers, cancels military parades, and restricts discourse in
01:08:52his own country to prop up his image. The armor that Putin wears has been battered over the last four
01:08:57and a half years. Now just one drone in Gelenzyk has put yet another massive dent into that armor.
01:09:03Everybody in Russia knows it now. Putin could be a target for Ukraine whenever Ukraine wants him to
01:09:09be. And if he isn't, Ukraine can strike at the entire fabric of Russian society,
01:09:14all because Putin has twisted every aspect of that society to serve his obsession with Ukraine.
01:09:21For the past three years of the war, the major transformation of the war in Ukraine
01:09:26has been the humble FPV drone. Ukraine turned a $500 quadcopter into one of the most feared
01:09:32weapons on the frontline, and every major military on earth has spent the last two years scrambling
01:09:37to catch up. But the United States isn't just watching from the sidelines anymore. Instead,
01:09:43it's begun to actively import it. This includes tactics, doctrine, the manufacturing playbook,
01:09:48and in some cases the actual drone companies and the people who built this style of warfare in the
01:09:53trenches of Donbas. But if we dig a bit further, the United States isn't just copying Ukraine's
01:09:58homework, but taking Ukraine's genius idea and building something even better with it.
01:10:03So let's start where this all began, because we can't delve into what the US is doing right now
01:10:08without understanding what Ukraine was forced to invent first.
01:10:12When Russia rolled across the border in 2022, Ukraine didn't have the artillery stockpiles,
01:10:18the air force, or the armored formations to fight Russia symmetrically. What Ukraine had was a
01:10:23desperate, decentralized, wildly creative civilian tech culture, and an urgent need to make Russian
01:10:29soldiers afraid to move. The answer was first-person view or FPV drones, the kind that hobbyists were
01:10:36racing through backyard obstacle courses for fun, were used to take wedding photos. Once you strapped a
01:10:42warhead to the quadcopter and put a soldier in a trench a few kilometers back with a pair of video
01:10:46goggles, suddenly you got a precision-guided munition that costs less than most other weapons in
01:10:51existence. And that weapon can find and possibly even destroy a tank through a tree line.
01:10:57And the economics of a war where drones dominate directly influence the conversation inside the
01:11:02Pentagon. By April 2025, some estimates suggested drones have been responsible for 80% of Russian
01:11:09losses. In some areas of the front, that statistic climbs up to 90%. That's 9 in 10 vehicle losses
01:11:16directly because of drones. There's practically nowhere left to hide on the modern battlefield.
01:11:21Every road, every tree line, every staging area is watched by something small, cheap and armed.
01:11:27Of course, Ukraine isn't the only country with a steady drone supply, as Russia adapted and in some
01:11:33cases made significant developments in drone warfare. Russian FPV and kamikaze-style drones have been
01:11:40knocking out western tanks, in particular the Leopard 2A6, which is directly comparable to America's M1
01:11:46and Abrams. In the first year of the war, Ukrainian tank losses such as Leopard's were mainly attributed
01:11:51to drone warfare. This suggests that neither side was truly immune to having some of its most hardened
01:11:56structures or weapons being obliterated by cheap and replaceable drones. But Ukraine didn't stop at
01:12:02improvising drones in a garage. It built an entire industrial and bureaucratic ecosystem around this
01:12:08idea, and that ecosystem is arguably the more important export than the drones themselves.
01:12:13Ukraine's Ministry for Digital Transformation runs a platform called BraveOne, essentially a digital
01:12:20marketplace where frontline commanders can browse hundreds of drone models and order equipment the
01:12:25way you'd order something off Amazon with delivery in as little as a week. Ukrainian drone units then
01:12:30document their strikes on camera and earn points based on the value of what they destroy,
01:12:35and then redeem those points to unlock more advanced drones on the same marketplace. Damage units can get
01:12:40emergency repairs from frontline workshops in hours instead of the weeks it would take through a
01:12:45traditional military supply chain. Then came the strike that made the entire world take Ukraine's drone
01:12:51program seriously as a strategic weapon and not just as a battlefield nuisance. In June 2025, Ukraine smuggled
01:12:58a swarm of low-cost FPV drones deep into Russian territory, hidden inside the roofs of civilian cargo
01:13:04containers, then launched them remotely against five Russian air bases in Operation Spiderweb.
01:13:10Ukrainian officials say the strike used up to 117 drones and hit 41 aircraft, including 295 and 222
01:13:18strategic bombers, some of Russia's most expensive and hardest to replace military assets. It estimated
01:13:24$7 billion in damage. Regardless of the actual scale of damage, the message and ramifications were clear.
01:13:30Cheap drones now could threaten strategic assets thousands of kilometers from any frontline,
01:13:36without a single manned aircraft crossing a border. Russia was quickly forced to adopt a different
01:13:41strategy to protect its far-off bases, in some cases putting tires on planes to make them less
01:13:46visible from satellite imagery. And this didn't stay a Ukraine-Russia conflict since the tactics spread to
01:13:52the other major conflict going on simultaneously. The Guardian reported in May 2026 that Hezbollah
01:13:58has adopted fiber-optic FP drones in Lebanon, explicitly adapting techniques pioneered in Ukraine
01:14:04to slip past Israeli electronic warfare, one of the most sophisticated jamming environments on the planet.
01:14:10When the US entered its own conflict with Iran at the end of February, Tehran responded with barrages of
01:14:16drones across the region, and American and allied forces shot down many of them. But the sheer scale of the
01:14:21attacks exposed just how hard and how expensive it is to defend against cheap, mass-produced systems
01:14:26using exquisite expensive interceptors. The problem here is that the previous weapons the US used were
01:14:32extremely effective in terms of battle readiness, operational capabilities, and power projection.
01:14:38But what they weren't is cost-effective. Take the most prominent long-range drone the US has.
01:14:44By July 2026, US officials suggested that over 30 Reaper MQ-9 drones were destroyed as a result of
01:14:51operations in Iran. These drones were last reported to have a per-unit cost somewhere in the line of
01:14:56$16 million. When pitted against low-cost expendable drones, the balance of power shifts in favor of the
01:15:03weapon that you can chuck at the enemy and not worry if your investment is safe. So that's the main
01:15:08discrepancy between how the US and Ukraine have been running things and their respective conflict.
01:15:13But how is the US changing things all of a sudden? Let's start with the doctrine,
01:15:17because the US Army is tearing up decades of its own playbook.
01:15:21Army Chief of Staff General Randy George told Congress in 2025 that technology is moving too fast
01:15:27to keep relying on big procurement programs that take years to develop and can be obsolete the moment
01:15:32they're fielded. War Secretary Pete Hegseth also signed a directive in July 2025, ordering every
01:15:39Army squad to be equipped with unmanned systems by the end of 2026, and he didn't mince words about
01:15:44why the Pentagon had been slow to get here, writing that drone technology has been the biggest military
01:15:49advancement in a generation. By then, some small-scale changes were already being implemented.
01:15:55In January 2025, the Army's 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, fielded 144 experimental drones
01:16:03during a rotation in Germany, more than any unit had ever brought to a training exercise before.
01:16:08It also built three 80-soldier strike companies designed to operate ahead of battalions, each one
01:16:14built around a scout platoon, a mortar platoon, and a dedicated drone platoon flying surveillance drones,
01:16:20loitering munitions, and counter-drone systems. The units have been suggested to use
01:16:25anduril ghost drones that can loiter for over an hour, PWC-100 reconnaissance systems, and
01:16:31switchblade 600 loitering munitions that share a warhead with a Javelin anti-tank missile.
01:16:36At the same time, soldiers from the 101st Airborne are flying drones built with 3D printed parts,
01:16:42and troops from the 10th Mountain Division are carrying Skydio X2D systems in their rucksacks.
01:16:48The Army also created its first official drone course at Fort Roca, now known as Fort Novosel,
01:16:54in August 2025, a three-week program mixing 20 to 25 hours of video game-style simulator flying
01:17:01with hands-on training on live systems. There's also instruction in 3D printing and CAD design,
01:17:07because keeping these things flying in the field means being able to fabricate parts on the spot.
01:17:12The course director, Captain Rachel Martin, called it a mere catch-up effort, suggesting that the US was
01:17:17behind globally in that area, and this was the aggressive attempt to close that gap. Meanwhile,
01:17:22Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, has suggested that battalions need to get leaner,
01:17:27and stop pushing as far forward as they used to, because the sensor density Ukraine has demonstrated
01:17:32means a $10 million tank can be found and killed by something that costs less than a used car.
01:17:37The Marine Corps is running an even faster, and frankly, a scrappier version of the same
01:17:42transformation. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit spent three weeks at Camp Lejeune training on the
01:17:48Nero's Archer. The Archer is an eight-inch quadcopter built in El Segundo, California,
01:17:54which cost around $2,000 and has been cleared by Blue UAS, meaning it doesn't have Chinese components
01:18:00that dominate the commercial drone market and could impact the supply chain in a potential broader
01:18:05conflict between the US and China, even through proxies. The Marine Corps also placed a roughly $17
01:18:10million contract for about 8,000 Archer drones. But that three-week compression camp is also indicative of
01:18:17just how much the US needs to catch up to existing players. Russia and Iran have had years of live
01:18:23combat to refine this craft. The Marine Corps is trying to compress that curve into three weeks,
01:18:28because the alternative is deploying marines with no answer at all to a threat every adversary now
01:18:33fields by default. Now, here's where the volume problem comes in, because training marines and
01:18:38soldiers to fly drones doesn't matter if there aren't enough drones to hand out. The Department of
01:18:43Defense set a goal of fielding tens of thousands of FPV drones by the end of 2026. For comparison,
01:18:50China and Russia can produce millions per year. But there's a big discrepancy in the number of
01:18:54drones planned and the manpower and training needed to fly them. If you handed the Marine Corps millions
01:18:59of drones tomorrow, all but a few thousand would sit on a shelf simply because there aren't enough
01:19:03marines trained to fly them yet. The Pentagon has responded to the bottleneck by throwing money at both
01:19:09problems at once. The Army announced plans to acquire at least one million drones over the next
01:19:13two to three years. The Drone Dominance Program ran its first evaluation phase, nicknamed the Gauntlet,
01:19:19at Fort Benning in February, targeting 340,000 small attack drones fielded across combat units by
01:19:26the end of 2027. And the FY27 Pentagon budget request set aside $75 billion for drones and counter-drone
01:19:33systems, with $54.6 billion of that flowing through the Defense Autonomous Working Group.
01:19:39This is not a pilot program anymore. This is the Pentagon trying to build, in a handful of years,
01:19:45the kind of drone industrial base Ukraine built out of pure necessity in a single winter. And while
01:19:50money is important, Ukraine is something much more worthwhile still. But before we go into that,
01:19:56make sure you're subscribed to The Military Show to get the latest news on the war in Ukraine
01:20:01and global geopolitical and military development. Ukraine has information on how exactly drones
01:20:07work, which systems they're most effective against, and years of actual battlefield statistics and
01:20:12footage to back it all up. So Hegseth told the Senate that he has personally approved additional
01:20:17American personnel to be present in Ukraine, specifically to study the drone battlefield,
01:20:22both offense and defense. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went even further in a Fox News interview,
01:20:28calling Ukraine's armed forces the strongest, most powerful military in Europe,
01:20:32built on new tactics and techniques, forged under the pressure of an existential war.
01:20:37When Iranian-linked drone barrages hit the Middle East in response to the US operations,
01:20:42Ukraine actually offered to send drones and a team of drone experts to help protect American bases in
01:20:47Jordan. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also suggested he had already proposed a $50
01:20:52billion drone production deal with the US, which has not yet received an official response.
01:20:57So it seems that the US is trying to walk two lines simultaneously,
01:21:01using domestic drone production and a combination of domestic and foreign tactics to shore up its
01:21:06weaknesses. But it's not just tactics and personnel crossing the Atlantic. While the US government
01:21:11didn't sign official drone production deals with the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian drone companies
01:21:16have started setting up shop on American soil. F-Drones, a Ukrainian manufacturer founded in 2023,
01:21:23that's become a major supplier to Ukrainian forces, thus became the first Ukrainian company authorized by
01:21:29the Ukrainian government to export military drone systems to the United States. Through its American
01:21:34arm, Ukrainian Defense Drones, the company is building its first US factory in Holland, Ohio.
01:21:40This investment is directly backed by a Pentagon contract under the Department of Defense's drone
01:21:45dominance program for an initial order of 2000 FPV drones. The key weapon here is the F-Drones' F-10
01:21:52strike drone, which was combat proven in Ukraine, subsequently going on to place six in the first
01:21:57phase of the drone dominance evaluation. The company is also bringing over its F-7 counter-drone
01:22:02interceptor, a system built to chase down and destroy cheap kamikaze drones at the Iranian Shahid,
01:22:08the same family of weapons to have destroyed American aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia back in
01:22:13March. F-Drones is also one of 48 companies competing in the second phase of the drone dominance
01:22:19program, which is expected to produce up to 10 winners and could see the Pentagon buy as many as
01:22:2460,000 more drones. But these are still arguably rookie numbers. Ukraine's defense industrial complex
01:22:30has grown from roughly $1 billion before the invasion to more than $50 billion now, and the country
01:22:36plans to produce over 8 million unmanned systems in 2026 alone, compared to roughly 3,000 FPV drones
01:22:43the United States managed to produce in all of 2025. So a draft U.S.-Ukraine defense memorandum reported
01:22:50by CBS News would go even further, allowing Ukraine to export military technology to the United States
01:22:56and manufacture drones through joint ventures with American companies. So that's the import side of the
01:23:02story. Doctrine, personnel, and now actual manufacturers. But here's the part that brings
01:23:07us back to where this video started. Because the United States isn't just copying Ukraine. There are
01:23:13specific places where American engineering, American industrial capacity, and American combined arms
01:23:18doctrine are already positioned to take Ukraine's genius idea and make it meaningfully deadlier. The first is
01:23:24modular munitions built from existing military stockpiles instead of purpose-built warheads. Take the
01:23:30Nero's Archer program the Marine Corps has been building around. Every piece of military ordinance
01:23:35normally needs a Department of Defense identification code, a Dodik which requires extensive technical
01:23:41evaluation, and a dedicated manufacturer before troops can touch it. That process is exactly the
01:23:47kind of years-long bureaucratic drag that Ukraine had never had time for and the Pentagon has historically
01:23:53been terrible at accelerating. The Marine Corps' answer with the Archer was almost embarrassingly simple.
01:23:59Take a C-4 plastic explosive and a standard electronic blasting cap, both of which already
01:24:04have Dodik numbers and already sit in American inventories by the ton, pack the C-4 into an
01:24:09enclosure, run the blasting cap through the back, and then screw on either an anti-personnel fragmentation
01:24:14disk or a shape-charged explosively formed penetrator on the front, depending on whether the target is
01:24:20infantry or armor. Because the warhead itself contains no energetics until it's assembled,
01:24:25it never needed its own Dodik number, and Marines never had to relearn how to handle a new class of
01:24:30explosive, as they already train on C-4 constantly. That single workaround is what let the Marine Corps
01:24:36take this weapon from a concept just after Christmas in January of last year to a fielded live-fire
01:24:42capability at Camp Lejeune in little over a year, in less time than it often takes the Army to get
01:24:47a
01:24:47single spare part off backorder. It's a distinctly American solution, using the depth and standardization
01:24:53of an existing global logistics chain to root around a procurement bottleneck rather than trying
01:24:58to out-manufacture Russia and China unit for unit. The second is jam resistance through deliberately
01:25:04old-school analog and fiber-optic control links. Ukraine's electronic warfare environment against
01:25:09Russia is one of the densest and most sophisticated in the world, and both sides have learned that digital
01:25:14control and camera systems, while sharper and more precise, tend to die the moment they're jammed.
01:25:19The Archer platform intentionally uses an analog camera and control system rather than digital,
01:25:25which degrades gradually under jamming instead of cutting out all at once. Buying an operator just
01:25:30a bit more time to fly the drone home or complete a strike even in contested electromagnetic conditions.
01:25:36In fact, Ukrainian and Russian forces have converged on fiber-optic spooled drones for the same reason,
01:25:42since physical wire can't be jammed at all, and American units are already testing that same
01:25:46fiber-optic approach, with fiber-optic Archer variants unveiled in late 2025. Pairing that kind
01:25:52of resilience with America's far deeper investment in electronic warfare research and signals intelligence,
01:25:58built up over decades of a much larger defense R&D budget than Ukraine or Russia have ever had,
01:26:04is a genuine area where the US can extend what Ukraine started rather than merely replicate it.
01:26:09The third is autonomous guidance, which is really an artificial intelligence and precision
01:26:14engineering advantage the United States is uniquely positioned to exploit. Ukraine's FPV drones are
01:26:20overwhelmingly manually piloted, which means their effectiveness is capped by the skills of an
01:26:25individual operator staring at an analog video feed. But the F-7 interceptor that F-Drones is now
01:26:32building in Ohio points towards where this goes next. During the terminal phase of an engagement,
01:26:37the pilot only controls the drone's speed, while automatic guidance handles everything else,
01:26:42essentially letting a cheap airframe fly itself onto a target with precision that doesn't depend on
01:26:47a human's reaction time or nerve under fire. Marrying that kind of onboard autonomy to America's
01:26:53semiconductor base, its computer vision research ecosystem, and its far larger pool of software
01:26:59engineering talent than either Ukraine or Russia can draw on, is a lane where the United States can leapfrog the
01:27:04manually piloted swarm entirely. The fourth is the so-called combined arms deconfliction discipline,
01:27:11which sounds overly technical, but is actually one of the hardest problems in drone warfare,
01:27:15and one the US military has spent 80 years getting good at. For fire support coordination,
01:27:20the American military doesn't treat a one-way attack drone as fundamentally different from an F-18,
01:27:25because both are lethal effects that have to be separated from friendly troops maneuvering nearby.
01:27:30But the US already has extensive measures in place surrounding its other aerial offensive options,
01:27:36and the same concept can apply to drones. And since the US has been slower to adapt drones at scale,
01:27:42it actually has the opportunity to implement drone employment into a combined arms doctrine from the
01:27:47start, rather than bolting it on after the fact. And the fifth and last part is the industrial base itself,
01:27:53the sheer scale of American manufacturing, semiconductor production, and defense sector capital that
01:27:58Ukraine never had access to. Ukraine built a $50 billion drone industry from a standing start
01:28:04under wartime pressure, an extraordinary achievement by any measure. The United States is trying to use
01:28:10the same technological and innovative foundations behind that industry and directly port it into its
01:28:15domestic military industrial complex. Remember, the Pentagon budget for unmanned aerial weapons for 2027 is
01:28:22$75 billion, 50% larger than Ukraine's entire industry. If that industrial capacity actually gets
01:28:29applied at the scale the budget numbers suggest, the United States has a path to eventually outproduce
01:28:34Ukraine by a large margin, especially given that it already has a lot of its own prototypes to begin with.
01:28:40But perhaps even more importantly, the US hasn't just been watching how to field the drones,
01:28:45it's been trying to counter them. One weapon that it's developed has already been sent to Ukraine for
01:28:50actual testing. To learn more check out this video and as always make sure to subscribe to the military show
01:28:57for daily news.
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