MASSIVE Fireballs Just ERASED Russia's Naval Port From the Map

Name: MASSIVE Fireballs Just ERASED Russia's Naval Port From the Map | Other War Stories
Uploaded: 2026-08-26T03:21:38+00:00
Duration: 1 h 27 min 46 s
Channel: The Military Show

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00:00 Massive FIREBALLS Just ERASED Russia’s NAVAL Port From the Map!
18:00 Ukraine Just Scored A FINAL Win Against The Russian Economy… THIS Is Devastating
34:55 Ukraine's Historic 40-Day Drone Blitz Just Broke the Russian War Machine
52:05 Ukraine Scored a MASSIVE WIN in the South… It Will Cost Putin the War
01:10:31 Germany Is About to STRIKE Russia FIRST

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00:00:01The Novorossiysk naval port in Krasnodar Krai is everything to Russia right now.

00:00:07The one port from which it can send oil and grain out via the Black Sea in the Sea of

00:00:11Azov and into the rest of the world.

00:00:13The new home of the Black Sea fleet after it was chased out of Crimea's Sevastopol port.

00:00:19If Novorossiysk goes down, what's left of Russia's naval presence in Ukraine goes down with it.

00:00:25Ukraine knows that. It just hit Novorossiysk hard.

00:00:29Massive fireballs have erased key assets at Novorossiysk from the map.

00:00:34Ukraine just broke the port, and with it goes a lifeline that was keeping the heart of the Russian war

00:00:39machine beating.

00:00:41Last night, Ukraine's defense forces carried out a unique operation targeting the naval base in Novorossiysk,

00:00:47the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, more than 300 kilometers from the front line,

00:00:53declared Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky in an August 12th ex-post.

00:00:59Ukraine didn't hold back. Jet-powered aerial drones, unmanned maritime systems, and a horde of Neptune missiles all converged on

00:01:08one target,

00:01:09wrecking everything from piers to air defense positions and seaport infrastructure.

00:01:15Novorossiysk is shell-shocked. The sailors and port workers are barely able to believe that Ukraine's assault not only got

00:01:21through the port's defenses,

00:01:23but managed to cause as much damage as it did. And nowhere is that pain felt more deeply than in

00:01:28the one asset that Putin thought would be a war winner for Russia,

00:01:32the Black Sea Fleet. That fleet had a very bad night.

00:01:37Ukraine's non-stop overnight blitz has taken four of Russia's warships out of the game,

00:01:43ensuring Russia will never again be able to use them to threaten Ukraine in the Black Sea or launch missiles

00:01:48into Ukrainian territory.

00:01:50Among the ships Ukraine hit were a pair of Project 11356 frigates, Euromiden press reports.

00:01:57The Admiral Essen and the Admiral Makarov, which are among the newest missile cruisers that Russia has introduced into the

00:02:03Black Sea Fleet,

00:02:04are burning following Ukraine's strikes. Both ships are lethal, capable of launching caliber cruise missiles,

00:02:10which have ranges up to 2,500 kilometers, can carry 450 kilogram warheads, and are also believed to be nuclear

00:02:18capable.

00:02:19These ships are key to the naval strategy that Russia has been forced to pursue in the Black Sea.

00:02:24Keep these ships as far away from Ukraine as possible and strike from distance.

00:02:28Ukraine can strike from distance too. It just proved it.

00:02:32And two of Russia's best missile cruisers just got a bitter taste of their own medicine.

00:02:37These two cruisers aren't the only missile-launching ships Ukraine struck in its overnight assault.

00:02:42A Bayan M small missile ship also went down under fire.

00:02:46Also capable of launching caliber cruise missiles, this ship may not be as shiny and new as the two Project

00:02:5111356 frigates that Ukraine hit,

00:02:53but it's just as important to Putin's missile-laden strategy.

00:02:57And finally, as a nice little bonus, Ukraine also took out the Vasily Bykov,

00:03:01a patrol ship that has been visited by Ukraine's drones before.

00:03:04The vessel may not be the most important of the Russian warships hit in the early hours of August 12th,

00:03:09but the fact that the ship was hit at all will reinforce the message that Ukraine just drummed into Putin's

00:03:15head.

00:03:15The Black Sea fleet is no longer safe in Novorossiysk.

00:03:19Scratch that, Novorossiysk itself isn't safe.

00:03:22Beyond the ships, there is the burning.

00:03:24Footage is already making the rounds on Telegram and X,

00:03:26shared by independent Russian outlets that risk it all to show what really happens when Russia claims to have repelled

00:03:32a Ukrainian drone assault.

00:03:34Xilenova Plus has photos and videos of the massive blaze sparked at Novorossiysk by Ukraine's strike.

00:03:40One video shows a strike in action as we hear the ear-splitting explosion that rings out as one of

00:03:46Ukraine's projectiles finds its mark.

00:03:48The Crimean Wind Telegram channel offers more reports on fires,

00:03:52citing satellite imagery to showcase that Ukraine's drones and missiles sparked blazes at the military harbour that hosts ships from

00:03:59the Black Sea Fleet,

00:04:00an administrative building, and the Sheskaris oil terminal berth at the port.

00:04:04Perhaps it's the oil stored in that terminal or even the tankers that were collecting that oil

00:04:09that are the fuel for the fire that still rages in Russia's most important Black Sea port.

00:04:14The damage done is brutal and deliberate.

00:04:18It alone would be enough to grab all of the headlines.

00:04:21However, it's the attack itself that is truly special.

00:04:24This wasn't your standard Ukrainian drone strike. Far from it.

00:04:27As Zelensky himself pointed out, Ukraine threw everything but the kitchen sink at Novorossiysk to get its results,

00:04:34in an all-out onslaught that included 400 drones.

00:04:37This was one of the biggest single strikes that Ukraine has carried out in the war so far,

00:04:42and it will go down as one of the most impressive coordinated assaults in the country's history.

00:04:47Ukraine just created its own blueprint for combining aerial and naval power to hit Russia where it hurts,

00:04:53and we know exactly which weapons it used to do it.

00:04:57Ukraine's Palyanitsya rocket drone was the superstar of the show.

00:05:00Jet-powered and capable of traveling up to 650 kilometers,

00:05:05the system carries a 100 kilogram payload and has a cruising speed of 900 kilometers per hour.

00:05:11Flying as low as 15 meters from the ground,

00:05:14it's also incredibly difficult to stop using traditional air defense systems.

00:05:18Ukraine knew what it was doing when it deployed this drone,

00:05:21and not just when it comes to how hard this drone missile can hit.

00:05:25Palyanitsya is the name of a traditional bread in Ukraine.

00:05:28Novorossiysk is a key export port for Russian grain.

00:05:32Bread to bread, Novorossiysk in ashes.

00:05:35The Palyanitsya turned out to be one of the 15 different weapons systems,

00:05:39every single one of which was designed, developed, and manufactured in Ukraine,

00:05:43that were used against Novorossiysk on the overnight blitz.

00:05:46The Kyiv Post details the others in its August 13th report.

00:05:51Joining the Palyanitsya on the aerial drone front were the Mish,

00:05:55Sishen, Trust, Bober, Dovbush, Karyok, Ramsey, Firepoint, and Lyuchi drones.

00:06:02Russia's air defenses would have had no idea what to target first,

00:06:05as Ukraine unveiled the true scale of its long-range drone projects,

00:06:09showing Putin just how far the nation that was supposed to never be capable of hitting Russia has come.

00:06:15Ukraine also deployed other drone-missile hybrid systems beyond the Palyanitsya.

00:06:19The Peklo was among them.

00:06:21First provided to Ukraine's forces in December 2024,

00:06:24that drone missile can travel up to 700 kilometers,

00:06:27and has a top speed that matches this range per hour.

00:06:30The Bars is similar, with a range of up to 800 kilometers.

00:06:34It is capable of carrying a warhead weighing between 50 and 100 kilograms,

00:06:38and it rockets towards its targets using turbojet engines.

00:06:41As if drones and drone-missile hybrids weren't enough,

00:06:45Ukraine also sent its Long Neptune missiles into the fray.

00:06:49Described by United24 media as the

00:06:52long-range cruise missile Europe still can't make back in October 2025,

00:06:57the Long Neptune, or RK-360-L if you want to get technical about it,

00:07:01is an extended-range version of Ukraine's Neptune D missiles.

00:07:05It was also the heaviest hitter of the aerial projectiles that Ukraine sent Russia's way on August 12th.

00:07:11Capable of traveling about 1,000 kilometers, the missile could reach Novorossysk with ease.

00:07:16The Long Neptune carries a 260-kilogram warhead,

00:07:20and is believed to use a guidance system similar to that used by scalp and storm shadow missiles

00:07:25that the UK and France have sent to Ukraine.

00:07:27The brilliant technical minds in Ukraine must have reverse-engineered those missiles

00:07:32and figured out how to develop something similar only with greater range.

00:07:36And finally, there were the maritime drones.

00:07:39Russia may have been expecting the infamous Sea Baby.

00:07:42What it got were Ukraine's Sargan and Mumai unmanned surface vessels.

00:07:47Specifications for the former are still classified,

00:07:49though there was speculation back in April that Ukraine had unleashed a machine-gun-toting Sargan 3000 into the Black

00:07:55Sea.

00:07:56We know that these drones can also be loaded with missiles,

00:07:59so perhaps it was responsible for launching a few of Ukraine's drone-missile hybrids at Novorossysk.

00:08:04Why send a missile cruiser to do a drone's work, eh?

00:08:07We know a little more about the Mumai.

00:08:09Back in December 2023, Militanyi dubbed this maritime drone the fastest thing in the Black Sea

00:08:15due to its ability to reach a top speed of around 59 knots.

00:08:19Throw a 450-kilogram warhead into the mix,

00:08:22and you get a drone that can catch anything and hit hard.

00:08:25Not that Russia's stricken ships were trying to sail away.

00:08:28They were hit while hiding in the one Black Sea port that Russia thought was safe.

00:08:33The strike on Novorossysk was so severe that Russia might be considering sending the Black Sea back to Sevastopol.

00:08:40That wouldn't be a good idea.

00:08:42As Novorossysk was being absorbed in a blanket of hellfire, Ukrainian drones were also en route to Sevastopol.

00:08:47Over 30 were shot down, claimed the city's Kremlin-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozaev, but he also happened to mention that

00:08:55fires had broken out all over the port city.

00:08:57Later, according to a Pravda report, a blackout swept Sevastopol, suggesting not all of Ukraine's drones were shot down.

00:09:04Some of them hit power infrastructure as a nice little reminder to the ships that remain in the Black Sea

00:09:09fleet that they have nowhere to run now that Novorossysk is a target.

00:09:14Sure, they could head back to Sevastopol, but Ukraine's aerial and naval power can still find them just as easily,

00:09:19if not more so in that Crimean port.

00:09:22Razvozaev's statement wasn't the only Russian response we received following a night that has broken whatever naval power Putin still

00:09:29thought he had in the Black Sea.

00:09:31The Krasnodar regional governor, Venyamin Kondratyev, reported that Russian air defenses had

00:09:37repelled a massive attack by several hundred Ukrainian armed forces drones.

00:09:42Wait a second, what? How did you repel them? Did you physically launch missile cruisers and a port at them?

00:09:48Because that's the only reason we can come up with for them being on fire due to the drones that

00:09:52were supposedly repelled.

00:09:54Maybe Russia's air defense problems really are that bad.

00:09:57Kondratyev made no mention of the burning port or the destroyed ships,

00:10:01instead preferring to point out that debris from projectiles that Russia did manage to shoot down fell on 21 residential

00:10:08buildings and caused some casualties.

00:10:11Ukraine didn't strike any of those targets deliberately.

00:10:14Russia made the conscious choice to shoot down drones and missiles over its own people.

00:10:18Russia says it repelled Ukraine's strike. It didn't.

00:10:22And the cost of that failure is much greater than you may initially expect.

00:10:26Novorossysk isn't just any old port, it's everything for Russia in the Black Sea.

00:10:30But before we explain more, this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.

00:10:35If you're getting insight from our channel, we have plenty more videos coming up.

00:10:39Remember to subscribe and enable notifications so you don't miss a single one.

00:10:45We'll start with something that we've mentioned a few times before.

00:10:49Novorossysk is the new home of the Black Sea Fleet.

00:10:51Russia never wanted the port to host its warships.

00:10:54It was forced to make the switch from Sevastopol because of a devastating Ukrainian campaign

00:10:58that had destroyed or seriously damaged about a third of the fleet that Putin thought could dominate the Black Sea.

00:11:05Much of the damage that Ukraine caused had happened by the end of 2023,

00:11:09sparking the decision to switch to Novorossysk as the Black Sea Fleet's main operating base.

00:11:14Throughout 2024 and 2025, warships did the opposite of what they were built to do.

00:11:18They sailed as far away from Ukraine as they could get,

00:11:21leaving Sevastopol practically abandoned by the Black Sea Fleet by mid-2025.

00:11:27Novorossysk was the desperate option.

00:11:29Yes, it's a massive port, but it's also a port built for merchant ships, not warships.

00:11:33It has no repair facilities, and it lacks a dry dock.

00:11:37Novorossysk is also exposed to worse sea conditions,

00:11:40Defense Viewpoint notes, which creates its own set of maintenance issues.

00:11:44Still, Russia had no choice.

00:11:45Prior to Ukraine's attack, Russia was even developing plans to relocate the remaining command and control units

00:11:51for the Black Sea Fleet that remained in Sevastopol to Novorossysk.

00:11:55That's according to the Kyiv Independent, which says that subdued officers

00:11:58were basically being forced to arrange the relocations of their families

00:12:02and to sell property they couldn't take with them ahead of their transfers.

00:12:06The one upside of all of this is that Novorossysk,

00:12:09though certainly not out of the range of Ukraine's drones and missiles,

00:12:11was supposed to be safer than Sevastopol.

00:12:14Crimea is a war zone and has been for a while.

00:12:17At least at Novorossysk, there was less chance that the Black Sea Fleet would be hit with a massive attack

00:12:22that destroyed ships and left the entire port burning.

00:12:25Ahem, that didn't work out so well for Russia and its ailing fleet.

00:12:30Novorossysk is safe no more.

00:12:31300 kilometers is practically nothing for Ukraine's newest generations of drones,

00:12:36missiles and maritime unmanned vessels to travel.

00:12:38The port isn't out of reach, it just takes a little longer for Ukraine to bring its firepower.

00:12:43And now that we've just seen how massive a Ukrainian strike against Novorossysk has the potential to be,

00:12:49we can say with confidence that Ukraine is winning in the Black Sea.

00:12:53All that Russia's fleet can now do is rely on its dwindling fleet of missile cruisers to launch attacks from

00:12:59range.

00:12:59And when one of those cruisers gets hit, it's in a port that lacks repair facilities to bring it back

00:13:04online.

00:13:05Bit by bit, Novorossysk could be the death of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

00:13:09But as painful as that will be for Putin and his Kremlin cronies,

00:13:13there's another, far more damaging problem that Russia has to deal with.

00:13:17Novorossysk is primarily a trade port.

00:13:19And when that sort of port is on fire, Russia can't get its oil and grain out to the rest

00:13:24of the world,

00:13:25which means the Kremlin's war coffers lose out on a whole lot of money.

00:13:28Russia has been using Novorossysk as a hub for its shadow fleet throughout the Ukraine invasion.

00:13:34Ballast Markets offers the basic statistics for 2024,

00:13:38reporting that Novorossysk is the 77th largest port in the world based on vessel traffic.

00:13:43In 2024, approximately 4,478 vessel calls were reported at the port,

00:13:491,578 of which were made by oil tankers.

00:13:53You may remember we mentioned the Sheskaris oil terminal earlier.

00:13:57Keep that terminal in mind because it's going to become important in a moment.

00:14:01Ballast Markets reports that Novorossysk's primary commodity is crude oil,

00:14:05which accounts for 45% of all vessel calls.

00:14:08Refined petroleum is next with 25% of vessel calls,

00:14:11followed by grain and coal metals, each of which accounts for 15% of the vessel calls.

00:14:17This is a trade port.

00:14:18And it's one where 75% of the recorded traffic comes from Russia's shadow fleet.

00:14:23Every year, billions of dollars worth of commodities flow through Novorossysk.

00:14:28The revenue generated by this trade can be taxed by the Kremlin,

00:14:32with that money being pumped into Russia's war effort.

00:14:35Now, remember Sheskaris.

00:14:37Beyond the Black Sea fleet warship that Ukraine took out on August 12th,

00:14:40this oil terminal may have absorbed the heaviest damage from the overnight strike.

00:14:45Militanyi reports that many of the fires we told you about

00:14:48are being recorded in the area around this oil terminal.

00:14:51Meaning Ukraine has just taken out the one part of Novorossysk

00:14:54that is dedicated to getting illicit oil onto sanctioned ships.

00:14:58The Sheskaris terminal is the endpoint of Russian oil company Transneft's main oil pipelines.

00:15:04And it's one of the two major industrial sites at Novorossysk.

00:15:07The other being Groshavaya, which is about 12 kilometers away.

00:15:11Sheskaris has a capacity of 75 million tons per year,

00:15:15along with a massive tank farm that can hold 1.28 million cubic meters of oil.

00:15:19If we were betting people, we'd suggest that the blaze rising up from Novorossysk right now

00:15:24has been caused by Ukraine scoring direct hits against this tank farm.

00:15:28And that's a problem for Russia.

00:15:30The more of its oil that burns, the less money it can make to pump into the war machine.

00:15:35With Sheskaris down, that's up to 70% of Russia's oil and refined petroleum trade

00:15:41quite literally going up in smoke until Russia can put out the fires and make repairs.

00:15:46But the problem only gets worse the closer you look.

00:15:49Along with the oil terminal, Ukraine's drone strike has also shut down a pair of grain terminals at Novorossysk.

00:15:55That's according to Reuters, which reports that these terminals are among the largest in Russia.

00:15:59One of them has a capacity of 8.5 million tons per year, an anonymous source told the outlet,

00:16:05and has been forced to suspend its operations pending an investigation into damage done by Ukraine's drones and missiles.

00:16:12The other handles 7.1 million tons of grain annually,

00:16:16and has been forced to suspend operations due to the damage.

00:16:19That's a pipeline that handles a total of 15.6 million tons of Russia's grain exports

00:16:24that has just been shut down, all in a single night.

00:16:28So what we saw on the night of August 11 and into August 12,

00:16:32was one of Ukraine's most impressive strikes for a number of reasons.

00:16:36The sheer level of coordination between 15 different weapons systems is astounding.

00:16:41Ukraine showcased a huge portion, though certainly not all, of its long-range capabilities.

00:16:46And it did it in a way that both delivered an explosive message to Russia,

00:16:50and highlighted Ukraine's improving ability to carry out coordinated long-range strikes.

00:16:56Then there's what Ukraine hit.

00:16:57The Black Sea fleet has been further weakened, further expanding Ukraine's claim of controlling the Black Sea.

00:17:03But beyond that, there's a second layer to the strike.

00:17:06A layer that has likely already cost Russia millions of dollars, and that would be a low-end estimate.

00:17:12Oil has burned.

00:17:13Grain and oil terminals have been shut down by damage and flame.

00:17:17Russia's air defenses at its most important Black Sea port weren't able to stop any of it.

00:17:22Novorossiysk has now been established as a target, and Ukraine just keeps on getting better at hitting targets at range.

00:17:29Russia will put out the fires, it will carry out repairs.

00:17:32But it will also know that all of this work could be undone in an instant if Ukraine decides to

00:17:37follow up with a similar attack.

00:17:38The goal now is to make Novorossiysk as useless to Russia as Sevastopol has become.

00:17:43Ukraine has the aerial and naval options needed to make that happen as the once safe harbor has become the

00:17:49latest Russian asset to be forced into a war that Putin promised would never cross the border with Ukraine.

00:17:55Putin's reputation as Russia's great protector has been damaged once more.

00:18:00Ukraine just keeps on picking those wild berries.

00:18:03The warehouses and logistics infrastructure of Russia's largest online retailer continue to burn, as Ukraine rains a hailstorm of drones

00:18:13onto them.

00:18:14The company's CEO is furious.

00:18:17Russian entrepreneurs who rely on wild berries for their businesses and customers who purchase from the site are frothing with

00:18:23even more rage.

00:18:24But as for Putin, he's worried, and he should be.

00:18:27That's because Ukraine's wild berries strikes aren't just about shattering one of Russia's largest domestic e-commerce companies.

00:18:35It goes deeper than that.

00:18:36These strikes are the catalyst for something that nobody expected.

00:18:40The complete collapse of the Russian economy.

00:18:43We head first to Ryazan.

00:18:45In this city, only a couple hundred kilometers from the Russian capital Moscow, sits the fifth largest logistics hub belonging

00:18:52to wild berries.

00:18:53Or should we say, sat.

00:18:55It isn't there anymore.

00:18:56The hub, which is part of a massive network operated by a company that is often referred to as Russia's

00:19:02version of Amazon, lies in ruins after a devastating Ukrainian drone strike tore it to pieces.

00:19:07Black smoke rose over the warehouse following the attack, which was so massive that it tore through the building's roof

00:19:14and even ignited a nearby oil refiner.

00:19:17Emergency evacuations were triggered.

00:19:20Wild berries employees were evacuated and even some casualties were reported.

00:19:24But the headline for Ukraine was that it had just cost wild berries millions, perhaps even billions of dollars.

00:19:30With an attack designed to be part of a larger strategy to paralyze the grey market giant that plays a

00:19:36bigger role in Russia's war economy than Putin ever wants to admit.

00:19:39What happened in Ryazan has been happening all over Russia.

00:19:43Wild berries facilities are going down left, right and center.

00:19:46The numbers vary, but the results are the same.

00:19:49On August 2nd, Technology.org reported that Ukraine had successfully hit 11 of Wild Berries' 25 Russian warehouses.

00:19:57The New Voice of Ukraine put the number at 12, likely because it counted an attack against a facility in

00:20:03Russia's Vladimir region on August 3rd that happened after the Technology.org article.

00:20:08The New Voice of Ukraine also said that this Vladimir strike meant that Ukraine had hit 12 of the company's

00:20:1315 largest warehouses,

00:20:16suggesting that Ukraine is following a strategy of taking out the biggest facilities first, then it's going to work its

00:20:21way down to the rest.

00:20:22In fact, it's already doing that.

00:20:24On August 4th came another attack.

00:20:27This time, Ukraine's drones found their mark at two Wild Berries warehouses,

00:20:31along with attacking another logistical site that is reported to be part of the company's network near Moscow.

00:20:36This time, Ukraine struck warehouses in the Tver and St. Petersburg regions.

00:20:41The latter strike will really rattle Putin.

00:20:44St. Petersburg is his hometown.

00:20:46It's one of the jewels in the Russian crown, and it's meant to be one of the most well-defended

00:20:50cities in the entire country.

00:20:52None of that mattered on August 4th, as there seemed to be nothing in place to protect the city's Wild

00:20:57Berries warehouse.

00:20:59And even as we were in the process of creating this video, more strikes were happening.

00:21:03August 5th brought with it news of attacks against Wild Berries warehouses in Tatarstan and Tula, with the same results

00:21:10that we've been seeing for the last few weeks.

00:21:12Massive fires, plumes of smoke, untold amounts of products that were supposed to be sold via Wild Berries getting destroyed.

00:21:19By the time you're watching this video, Ukraine may have carried out even more strikes.

00:21:24The damage done is still being calculated, likely because it changes every day as more warehouses burn.

00:21:30On August 4th, AA suggested that potential losses to Wild Berries sellers may be as high as $3.5 billion

00:21:37already, none of which has been repaid to the sellers by Wild Berries.

00:21:41The company has spent around $500,000 on compensation, though that money has been sent to the families of those

00:21:47who have been injured or killed in Ukraine's attacks.

00:21:49That mention of victims does bring up a possible moral grey area.

00:21:54Russia will argue that civilians are dying in the Wild Berries strikes.

00:21:57That's certainly the argument put forth by Wild Berries CEO, Russia's richest woman, and a Putin supporter, Tatiana Kim.

00:22:04In a statement that reads as much as a desperate plea for Ukraine to stop as it is a condemnation

00:22:09of the strikes, Kim declared,

00:22:27A few things about that statement, Kim.

00:22:30There's nothing alleged about it when it comes to selling military goods.

00:22:33Wild Berries does it, it's been doing it for years, and we're going to show you how deep that rabbit

00:22:37hole goes in a moment.

00:22:38But it's the references to global marketplaces and there being no logic to Ukraine's strikes that are the most ridiculous

00:22:44statements made.

00:22:46Kim can talk about Amazon and Alibaba all she wants, but she conveniently ignores the fact that neither has a

00:22:51presence in Russia,

00:22:52and despite what they sell, neither is actively supporting Putin's invasion efforts against Ukraine.

00:22:57As for no logic, it's quite the opposite. There's plenty of logic.

00:23:02Russia's economists can tell you that, as will we.

00:23:04Now let's get back to this whole allegedly selling military goods angle that Kim makes.

00:23:09The Kyiv Post ran an interesting expose on what Wild Berries sells at around the same time as Ukraine began

00:23:14its Wild Berries attacks.

00:23:16Before those strikes, you could type in the word drone and find a massive selection of drones,

00:23:21including Mavic 3 and Mavic 4 drones that are easily converted into FPV strike drones plastered all over Wild Berries.

00:23:28You could also find plenty of quadcopters labelled as FPV in a clear signal to soldiers who use these types

00:23:34of drones on the front.

00:23:36Searching a little deeper, it was possible to find payload retention and bomb release mechanisms for these drones,

00:23:41often hidden away in nondescript categories such as electronics or auto parts.

00:23:46And in the clothing section of Wild Berries, you didn't have to look far to find tactical gear,

00:23:51such as chest rigs that are worn over body armour and can be used to store magazines for rifles.

00:23:56There was even a category on Wild Berries for the special military operation.

00:24:00As we said, there's nothing alleged about what Ukraine claims Wild Berries sells.

00:24:05However, we used the past tense in that little segment for a reason.

00:24:09Wild Berries has been working hard to scrub any traces of these items off its online storefront,

00:24:13likely to prop up Kim's claim that Ukraine alleges military hardware is sold but doesn't have proof.

00:24:18On July 26th, the Kiev Independent reported that military goods sold on Wild Berries are being hidden in search results.

00:24:24The goods are still technically there, but Wild Berries is trying to make it seem as though they aren't

00:24:28by making it harder for customers to find them.

00:24:30Specifically, Wild Berries has started hiding results for search terms like SVO,

00:24:35which is the Russian abbreviation for the special military operation.

00:24:38This is a weak attempt to hide what the platform has sold in the past,

00:24:41and continues to sell now if you look hard enough.

00:24:44Before Ukraine strikes, a search for everything for the SVO returned over 200,000 results,

00:24:50the Moscow Times says.

00:24:51Now, it's zilch, nada, nothing.

00:24:54But there's a catch.

00:24:55All that Wild Berries has really done is blacklisted the SVO abbreviation.

00:24:59All of the products that would have popped up for these types of searches are still available on Wild Berries,

00:25:04says United24 Media.

00:25:05You just have to use different search terms to find them.

00:25:09The outlet says that a Russian media source named Boktak has proven that by finding helmets marked as

00:25:15tested in the SVO by using other keywords.

00:25:18And the SVO blacklisting doesn't even work well.

00:25:21Searches for SVO goods, SVO supplies, and SVO accessories still produce results.

00:25:27If Kim's goal is to reinforce her argument that the Wild Berries strikes serve no military purpose,

00:25:32then she isn't doing a good job of it with this half-cocked attempt to hide the military products that

00:25:36are sold on our platform.

00:25:38They're still there.

00:25:39They can be found and bought just as they could before.

00:25:42Well, some of them can be.

00:25:43A lot of what was being sold is little more than ashes in the ruins of warehouses now, all due

00:25:49to Ukraine's attacks.

00:25:50We clearly see a military purpose behind Ukraine's Wild Berries strikes,

00:25:54which immediately contradicts Kim's claims there is no logic to what's happening.

00:25:58But it goes much deeper than that, almost to the point where taking military hardware off the market is a

00:26:03bonus,

00:26:03rather than the main objective.

00:26:05For Ukraine, it's what these strikes have triggered in Russia that is the real goal.

00:26:10Economic damage is what Ukraine wants, and boy, has it achieved that damage.

00:26:14But before we go deeper and highlight why Wild Berries strikes change everything for the Kremlin,

00:26:19this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.

00:26:22If you're getting insight from our channel, then remember to subscribe and activate notifications

00:26:26so you see more of what we have coming up.

00:26:29Wild Berries is vital for Russia's economy,

00:26:32certainly far more important than the Kremlin would ever want to admit.

00:26:35Remember that this is the Russian version of Amazon,

00:26:38and like Amazon, Wild Berries basically serves as a hub for thousands upon thousands of business owners,

00:26:44who all rely on the platform for sales and the warehouses for stocking and shipping the products their customers purchase.

00:26:50Wild Berries isn't just an online retailer,

00:26:52it's a massive logistics network that a huge portion of the Russian economy relies upon.

00:26:57Around 10% of the company's warehouse space has been destroyed by Ukraine's attacks by July 29th,

00:27:03along with the stock that space held.

00:27:05The percentage will be much higher now, as Ukraine's relentless attacks have continued.

00:27:10Sellers are already cracking as they lose big.

00:27:12One seller told the BBC that she'd lost almost $13,000 of stock.

00:27:17And another said,

00:27:18We're already getting screwed over from every direction as it is.

00:27:21Wild Berries, along with its main rival Ozon,

00:27:24is used by up to 90% of Russia's economically active population.

00:27:28This is no small business that Ukraine is targeting.

00:27:31For many in Russia, Wild Berries is everything,

00:27:33it's their source of income, where they get their clothes and accessories they use at home,

00:27:37and one of their key lifelines in a war that has unexpectedly arrived at their doorstep.

00:27:42And that's the point.

00:27:43None of this economic pain at the personal level is accidental.

00:27:46Ukraine wants to inflict it.

00:27:48Unlike Russia, Ukraine doesn't target civilians directly with its drone strikes.

00:27:52What it can do is attack militarily relevant facilities that also happen to be used by civilians,

00:27:58and Wild Berries falls under that umbrella.

00:28:00This is Ukraine bringing the war back home to Russia,

00:28:03and it's an incredibly effective technique.

00:28:06Damage a linchpin of the Russian economy and the people who rely on that linchpin get angry.

00:28:11Perhaps so angry that they'll call on Putin to end his insane war.

00:28:15Sellers are losing out big now that so many Wild Berries warehouse is burning.

00:28:19We mentioned the $3.5 billion in destroyed stock already.

00:28:22That will obviously hurt Wild Berries.

00:28:25But that's $3.5 billion of money that the platform sellers won't be making,

00:28:29which also means that it's $3.5 billion that could have been spent on things like building businesses,

00:28:34hiring employees, or just covering the day-to-day expenses of Russians who relied on Wild Berries to make a

00:28:40living.

00:28:41According to Medusa, Wild Berries has recently started offering some compensation to its sellers, but not much.

00:28:47Only small companies and individual entrepreneurs have received anything from the company,

00:28:51and what they receive is only a fraction of the value of the products that they've lost.

00:28:56Support keeps on being promised, but it's yet to come in any meaningful fashion.

00:29:00And as more time goes on, a lot of Russia's small businesses are going to collapse due to cash flow

00:29:05issues.

00:29:06As for buyers, what can we say other than the rules of supply and demand are a b****?

00:29:12Imagine what would happen if Amazon lost a bunch of its warehouses in fires, taking stock with it.

00:29:17Supply would fall off a cliff, and suddenly that $10 top you were planning on buying would cost $20.

00:29:22That's basic supply and demand economics, and Russians who use Wild Berries are already feeling the impact of Ukraine's strikes

00:29:28on their bank balances.

00:29:29In an August 1st report, the Key Post revealed that prices on Wild Berries had surged by between 10 and

00:29:3630%.

00:29:36This is inflation at warp speed, and it's only going to get worse as more of Wild Berries' locations go

00:29:42down under Ukrainian drone fire.

00:29:44Companies that sell via Wild Berries are doing everything they can to cover spiraling costs,

00:29:49including cancelling discounts and choosing cheaper delivery options.

00:29:53What Ukraine has found here is perhaps one of the most unexpected pressure points of the entire war so far.

00:29:59Ukraine's goal is to cripple Russia economically, ensuring that Putin can't fund his invasion in the process.

00:30:05Wild Berries for so long had been untouched.

00:30:08But what we're quickly finding out is that these attacks could be the key that unlocks the door to Russia's

00:30:12economic ruin.

00:30:14Wild Berries is a choke point for a huge portion of the Russian economy, DW News points out.

00:30:19It's also a company that carries $10 billion worth of debt, which it can do solely because it's supported by

00:30:25Russia's state-owned banks.

00:30:27This is where we see a link to Putin's war chest emerge.

00:30:30If Putin wants to keep Wild Berries running, and he should due to the impact this platform has on the

00:30:35lives of his people,

00:30:36then he is going to have to tell the banks to bail the company out.

00:30:39That money has to come from somewhere, and it will be the same sources that Russia relies upon to fund

00:30:44the war.

00:30:45And if Putin chooses not to help Wild Berries with state funds, he risks causing a domino effect of economic

00:30:50catastrophe.

00:30:51Wild Berries will collapse, the businesses owned by its many sellers will follow suit,

00:30:56and consumers who are already dealing with supply and demand issues can do nothing as their alternatives all jack up

00:31:02their prices,

00:31:03because one of their biggest competitors has crumbled into dust.

00:31:06It's a lose-lose situation for Putin, just as Ukraine planned it.

00:31:11It seems like Putin and his state-run banking system have already made their collective choice.

00:31:15In a July 29 report, CNBC revealed that the Kremlin has already acknowledged that it will likely need to step

00:31:22in to prop up Wild Berries while these attacks are ongoing,

00:31:24and that the state-controlled bank VTB will likely play a crucial role in what would inevitably become a bailout

00:31:30program implemented at a cost to the Russian taxpayer.

00:31:34Other banks, such as Sparebank, have announced loan restructuring programs targeted at Wild Berries' investors

00:31:39because it's terrified that the loss of more warehouses could lead to a spate of bankruptcies,

00:31:44or put the bank in a very bad position of losing out on thousands of loans that it has approved

00:31:49for Wild Berries' sellers.

00:31:50In an August 4 report, Global Data added that the Kremlin is now looking at programs to support vendors,

00:31:56likely for the same reasons as Sparebank.

00:31:59Several options are being discussed.

00:32:01Sellers may be allowed to suspend loan repayments for up to a year, which we're sure Russia's banks are going

00:32:05to love.

00:32:06There's the restructuring we mentioned earlier, along with subsidized working capital loans offered through microfinance institutions with state backing.

00:32:14So, more loans on top of the loans that vendors can't pay.

00:32:17The Kremlin is scrambling for solutions.

00:32:19And every passing day only makes the situation worse because Ukraine's drones just won't stop coming.

00:32:25Ukraine has opened up a brand new front in the war with Russia, and it's a front that is confined

00:32:29within Russia itself.

00:32:31This is an attack on the country's logistics.

00:32:33It's the destruction of military hardware coupled with the economic pressure being placed on vendors, buyers and banks.

00:32:39Every attack that Ukraine carries out doesn't only incur costs related to lost stock and rebuilding.

00:32:45Wild Berries and Russia itself, if the state-backed solutions come into play, has to figure out how to deal

00:32:51with increased business operating costs, loan servicing due to cash flow issues and sellers who may migrate to other platforms

00:32:57after losing so much with Wild Berries.

00:32:59As we said, it's a domino effect.

00:33:02If Wild Berries falls, it takes a huge chunk of Russia's economy with it.

00:33:06On the back end of all this are inflationary risks, which we're already starting to see come into play.

00:33:11RBC Ukraine also points out that the median revenue of a Wild Berries vendor is just $7,500, which means

00:33:18they don't have much wiggle room financially.

00:33:21A week or two's worth of shocks can be enough to push many of these small business owners into negative

00:33:26cash flow situations, and that's happening as we speak.

00:33:29All of this couldn't have come as a worse time for Russia, which is already dealing with a difficult economic

00:33:35situation that reveals just how much of a mistake Putin made by transforming the country's economy with his focus on

00:33:41the military-industrial complex.

00:33:43In a July 13 report before the Wild Berries strikes began, Forbes labeled Russia's economy as one that is slowly

00:33:50sinking.

00:33:51It's difficult to argue that point.

00:33:53In 2026, Russia itself predicts that its economy will only grow by 0.4%, which puts the country on the

00:33:59edge of a recession.

00:34:01This is also an optimistic projection.

00:34:03Forbes says that Putin's war is going to run at least $28 billion over budget in 2026, and that number

00:34:09will rise by a further $54 billion in both 2027 and 2028.

00:34:14The only reason why Russia isn't doing worse than it already is in 2026 is that the war in Iran

00:34:19gives it a slight reprieve due to its impact on oil prices.

00:34:23Without that, Russia would be in even more economic trouble.

00:34:26Losing Wild Berries or having to spend billions on supporting it only adds to these problems.

00:34:31Will the destruction of Wild Berries' warehouses alone be enough to cripple the Russian economy? No.

00:34:36But this strategy is another piece of the puzzle locked into place by Ukraine.

00:34:40So if Kim is looking for the logic in all of this, she just found it.

00:34:44Wild Berries is a target for all of the reasons we just explained.

00:34:47Kim got into bed with Putin.

00:34:49She's just woken up to discover that her company's warehouses are being covered in drone-shaped explosive fleas.

00:34:56Once upon a time, there was an insane Russian leader named Vladimir Putin.

00:35:01Consumed by his desire to go down in history and knowing that the spectre of death looms ever closer as

00:35:07he creeps deeper into his 70s,

00:35:09that man launched an invasion.

00:35:11It didn't go well. It still isn't going well.

00:35:15As recompense for his madness, that leader's enemies has unleashed drones that fly deep into Russia and destroy everything that

00:35:22they see.

00:35:22For 40 days and 40 nights, the drones flew.

00:35:26Russia was pummeled.

00:35:27100 targets were taken out in a month and change of hell.

00:35:31And as for that insane leader, he was just read the best bedtime story ever told.

00:35:36He didn't like it, one little bit.

00:35:38I approved a 40-day influence operation for the service against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end

00:35:43the war,

00:35:44declared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 25th.

00:35:48That campaign had a clear purpose.

00:35:51Putin would be influenced to end the war, Zelensky said.

00:35:54And that influence would come in the form of drones, launched in their hundreds,

00:35:58that targeted key sites in Russia, the occupied territories, and the front lines.

00:36:02The goal was clear.

00:36:03Russia needed to feel the pain of the war it started.

00:36:06To be made to suffer so much by Ukraine's 40 days of firepower, that Putin would have no choice but

00:36:12to come to the negotiating table.

00:36:14The 40-day campaign is now over.

00:36:17And though it hasn't achieved its main goal, and Ukraine has something to say about that,

00:36:21it has delivered on the most important of Zelensky's promises.

00:36:24Thousands of Russian targets have been destroyed.

00:36:27The numbers are in, and they make for the worst bedtime story that Putin has ever been told.

00:36:31During its campaign, Ukraine managed to conduct over 100 strikes on strategic targets inside Russia and the occupied territories.

00:36:39The variety was impressive. Oil refineries, as they have so often been, were hit.

00:36:43Only this time, they were hit harder than ever before.

00:36:46Ukraine's drones paid visits to air bases, air defences, warships, tankers, logistical centers, and military industrial plants.

00:36:54Kinetic sanctions flew far and wide.

00:36:56Records were broken, and Shadow Fleet tankers were sent to the bottom of the seas that surround Crimea.

00:37:01And on the front lines and the near rear, the numbers got even worse for Russia.

00:37:06Ukraine's drones destroyed over 21,000 targets across the front,

00:37:10and they killed almost 5,000 Russian soldiers in 40 days.

00:37:15That's a kill rate of 125 per day, with many more ending up with injuries.

00:37:20Equipment was destroyed just as readily as soldiers.

00:37:22We'll save some of that for the highlights of the campaign that we'll reveal in a moment.

00:37:26But United24 Media offers plenty to start with.

00:37:30124 artillery systems were destroyed in Ukraine's 40 day blitz.

00:37:34Russia lost 63 armoured vehicles, 24 tanks, and 22 multiple launch rocket systems.

00:37:4014 of Russia's aircraft and choppers went down to Ukraine's drone fire,

00:37:44as did 40 of the air defence systems that were supposed to prevent all of this from happening.

00:37:49And when it came to Russia's drones, Ukraine fought fire with fire more effectively than Putin ever imagined it could.

00:37:55By the end of the campaign, over 11,000 of Russia's drones and ground robots had been reduced to ashes,

00:38:01along with 712 of the crews tasked with controlling those drones.

00:38:06It must have felt like a non-stop onslaught for Russia, like chopping away at the heads of a Hydra.

00:38:12When one went down, two more took their place.

00:38:14But we mentioned a little something about highlights,

00:38:17so let's take a look at some of the standout moments from the 40 day campaign that was filled with

00:38:21pain for Russia.

00:38:22We head to Omsk first.

00:38:24This settlement, which is nestled away in Siberia, was supposed to be a long way outside of the reach of

00:38:29Ukraine's drones.

00:38:31More than 2,500 kilometres away from Ukraine, the city was safe.

00:38:35The perfect place to host one of Russia's largest oil refineries.

00:38:39Of course, you can guess what happened.

00:38:41Ukraine hit Omsk with drones.

00:38:43The refinery in the city, which was so long out of reach, got hit hard.

00:38:48Photographs from the scene showcased the fire and smoke rising out of this key facility.

00:38:52Ukraine's drones broke all previous distance records,

00:38:55flying so deep into Russia that they ended up close to the border with Kazakhstan.

00:39:00Ukraine didn't target this refinery solely for the message that it would send

00:39:03about no mission-critical facilities in Russia being safe anymore.

00:39:06The Omsk refinery is huge, one of the largest in Russia in fact,

00:39:10as it has an annual refining capacity of 21 million metric tons of crude oil.

00:39:15It also happens to specialize in making the fuels, lubricants and petrochemicals

00:39:20that are the lifeblood of the Russian military in Ukraine.

00:39:23This strike wasn't just symbolic, it was strategic.

00:39:26Before the 40-day campaign, Omsk was one of only two of Russia's ten largest oil refineries

00:39:31that hadn't been visited by Ukraine's drones. Not anymore.

00:39:35And speaking of Russia's largest oil refineries, that brings us to our second highlight.

00:39:40Every one of Russia's eleven largest oil refineries has now been hit by a Ukrainian drone.

00:39:46Ukraine looked at the two out of the ten largest that were left,

00:39:49hit them both, and then added a bonus shot for good measure.

00:39:53United24 media broke the news on July 7th,

00:39:55noting that the Omsk strike was the last on the list that Ukraine needed.

00:39:59Others have been hit both throughout 2026 and during the 40-day campaign.

00:40:04Kirishi oil refinery, which processes up to 21 million tons of oil every year,

00:40:08has been struck constantly.

00:40:09The Kostovo refinery, which processes 17 million tons per year

00:40:14and produces 4.8 million tons of gasoline, was hit hard on July 2nd,

00:40:18losing half of its production capacity in the process.

00:40:21The 17.1 million tons that are processed at the Ryazan refinery

00:40:25aren't going anywhere after a May strike suspended production.

00:40:28Throughout the spring and summer, Ukraine has targeted both the Yaroslavl and Volgograd refineries,

00:40:34both of which have processing capacities in the 15 million tons per year region.

00:40:38Moscow's oil refinery, which is supposed to be another that is safer than most

00:40:42due to its proximity to Russia's capital city and all of the air defences that surround it,

00:40:46was hit twice in June, taking 12 million tons of refining offline.

00:40:50And rounding out the list are the Bashnev Novoel, Sizran, Perm and Novoky-Byshevsk refineries,

00:40:57which combine to process 37.8 million tons of crude oil annually.

00:41:02Russian oil is burning at rates we've never seen before.

00:41:05And though Ukraine's refinery strikes are nothing new at this point,

00:41:08the 40-day campaign put the exclamation point on the established fact

00:41:12that none of Russia's most important facilities are safe anymore.

00:41:15You want more highlights? We've got them.

00:41:17The 40-day campaign took a massive toll on Russia's air force,

00:41:21as Ukraine tore through over a dozen aircraft.

00:41:24Among the casualties were a pair of Su-35 fighter jets,

00:41:27which, outside of the Su-57 that barely sees action in Ukraine,

00:41:31are probably the best fighters that Russia can field.

00:41:34Ukraine destroyed a Tu-95MS in yet another strike against Russia's strategic bomber fleet.

00:41:40Several older Soviet-era platforms that Russia uses for its glide bomber missile assaults

00:41:45also went down to Ukrainian drones, including Su-24s, Su-30s and Su-30-SMs.

00:41:52Ukraine also managed to take out a pair of L-39 trainer aircraft,

00:41:56which will make it harder for Russia to prepare its pilots for what Putin needs them to do.

00:42:00With aircraft strikes come attacks on airfields.

00:42:04Belbek, Kanskaya, Saki, Vardiska, Engels and Bagarova all received visits from Ukraine's drones.

00:42:12For many, these weren't first-time visits, showing just how stretched Russia's air defences have become.

00:42:17That's a nice little segue into our next highlight.

00:42:20Russian air defence systems had a very bad time of it during the 40-day campaign.

00:42:24Ukraine racked up a kill count of one air defence system or radar per day,

00:42:29in a blitz that has opened the door for yet more aerial assaults to come.

00:42:32Among them were a 92N6E multi-function radar that is often used by Russia's S-400 systems as well as

00:42:40a Nebo-U radar.

00:42:42Russia lost several Pantsir-S2 and Tor-M2 air defence systems to Ukraine's drones,

00:42:47along with a Pol-21 electronic warfare station that is supposed to be able to send Ukraine's drones off course.

00:42:54There's a delicious sense of irony to all of this.

00:42:56The very weapons that Russia is relying upon to handle Ukraine's drones are falling to them,

00:43:01showcasing how many of these systems simply aren't fit for purpose because they struggle to track drones flying at low

00:43:07altitudes.

00:43:08The 40-day campaign only added to air defence woes that Russia has been struggling with for a while now.

00:43:14As the range of Ukraine's drones has expanded,

00:43:17Russia has found itself increasingly trying to stretch its air defences across larger swathes of its territory.

00:43:23Russia's air defences are like an elastic band stretched around a Russian general's bulging waist.

00:43:29Eventually the band goes pop and we're starting to see the pops happening all over.

00:43:33There are huge gaps in Russia's air defences now.

00:43:36Russia simply doesn't have enough systems to defend every single target that Ukraine might want to destroy.

00:43:41Russia is in panic mode.

00:43:43As even the heavily fortified air defence ring around Moscow is being penetrated,

00:43:48the Kremlin is trying to shift air defences around to protect priority targets,

00:43:53but that's just creating more vulnerabilities both on the front and in the rear for Ukraine to exploit.

00:43:58And now 40 more systems and radars are gone.

00:44:01Putin knows what that means.

00:44:03More of Ukraine's drones are going to find success.

00:44:05We have one more highlight for you before we move on.

00:44:08Russia's Shadow Fleet in the waters around Crimea isn't doing well.

00:44:12Throughout July, Ukraine unleashed strike after strike against Shadow Fleet ships in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

00:44:19For the most part, Ukraine seemed to target vessels that were supplying Crimea with fuel and supplies

00:44:23as part of its wider strategy to isolate the peninsula and force Putin to relinquish his hold over the territory

00:44:29that Russia stole in 2014.

00:44:31That campaign hasn't stopped.

00:44:33By July 29th, Euromiden Press was reporting that Ukraine had struck 201 of Russia's ships in just three weeks.

00:44:40An update came from the Defence of Ukraine X account on August 6th.

00:44:44The number rose to 236 boats and ships destroyed in July alone,

00:44:48with the majority of the attacks being carried out at ranges above 50 kilometers.

00:44:53Ukraine now claims that it has fire control over the waters that surround Crimea.

00:44:58It's hard to argue.

00:44:59Russia seems unable to do anything to stop these strikes against its Crimean shipping.

00:45:04What we have here is a huge amount of Russian equipment sent to the scrap heap,

00:45:08along with soldiers sent to their graves.

00:45:10But what did Ukraine really achieve with its 40-day campaign?

00:45:14We'll dig into that answer right after this reminder that you are watching the military show.

00:45:18If you haven't subscribed yet, now's the perfect time to hit the button and enable notifications

00:45:23so you don't miss what we have in store.

00:45:27Here's what Ukraine did during 40 days.

00:45:30It brought the war back to Russia perhaps more than it ever has before.

00:45:34This wasn't a series of random strikes carried out when the opportunities arose.

00:45:39Ukraine planned all of this.

00:45:41It knew precisely what it was going to hit, where and when.

00:45:45Every drone it launched went into the skies with a purpose that had been predefined before the campaign began.

00:45:50Ukraine wasn't reactive, it was proactive in a campaign designed to exert the maximum possible pressure on Putin.

00:45:57That aspect of the campaign was extremely effective.

00:46:00At the midpoint of the campaign, The Economist published an article covering Ukraine's strikes against Russia's wild berries facilities.

00:46:07Which is another highlight that we didn't cover.

00:46:09You'll find out why at the end of the video.

00:46:11But Ukraine's drone campaign has done at least $2 billion worth of damage to a company that is basically Russia's

00:46:17Amazon.

00:46:18Piling pressure on the vendors and buyers who use the platform alike.

00:46:22Every strike that Ukraine carried out during its 40-day hellstorm served the same purpose.

00:46:28Refineries were hit to stop Russians from having easy access to fuel.

00:46:31The same goes for Crimea occupiers and the Shadow Fleet strikes.

00:46:35Even the attacks against Russia's military hardware serve as reminders that a war that Putin promised would never extend beyond

00:46:42Ukraine's borders has now come to Russia.

00:46:45And it can hit almost any part of Russia.

00:46:48The Omsk strike proved that.

00:46:50Russia's leadership is feeling the impact.

00:46:53Public discontent is rising, The Economist reports.

00:46:56According to VCIOM, a pollster close to the Kremlin, satisfaction with government policies has fallen from 45% in January

00:47:03to 21% in June.

00:47:05The number of people who think Russia is heading in the wrong direction has doubled from 17% to 35

00:47:10% in the past year, says Lavada, an independent pollster.

00:47:14Of course, damaging Russia's military was and remains a priority.

00:47:18But these 40 days of attacks were also about the psychological damage that Ukraine did to the Russian people.

00:47:24100 plus strikes on Russian soil in 40 days are nothing to be sniffed at.

00:47:29If anything, it's a bright red flag hoisted into the air for every Russian to see.

00:47:34They know that their great protector Putin has failed them.

00:47:37For Ukraine, this is a case of turnabout is fair play.

00:47:41Psychological warfare is a strategy that Russia has employed from the moment that it's invaded.

00:47:46For Russia, that means carrying out constant attacks against Ukrainian cities, often killing or injuring civilians in the process.

00:47:53Through the winter, it also meant non-stop attacks against Ukraine's energy grid.

00:47:58Ukraine hasn't gone off the deep end to join Putin and his lackeys.

00:48:01It doesn't conduct direct strikes against civilians.

00:48:03But it has decided that a strategy of psychological warfare is fair game, given everything that Russia has done and

00:48:09continues to do.

00:48:11Ukraine's goal is to make life uncomfortable for the average Russian, and in the case of the occupiers in Crimea,

00:48:16to make life flat out untenable.

00:48:18There is no better example of this than the fuel shortages that have racked Russia throughout the 40-day campaign.

00:48:25Ukraine hasn't hit refineries and shadow fleet ships just because it can.

00:48:28It wants Russian gasoline and diesel burning anywhere but inside Russian vehicles.

00:48:33And if it can't burn, that fuel needs to become a hot commodity that prices Russian consumers out of buying

00:48:38it.

00:48:38Throughout July, Ukraine has mostly achieved its goal.

00:48:42In some Russian regions, particularly in Crimea, the price of gasoline has doubled.

00:48:47Queues, some stretching for multiple kilometers, have become a common sight outside Russia's gas stations, as drivers end up searching

00:48:53for any pumps that still have fuel.

00:48:55Ukraine's refinery attacks have slashed about a third from Russia's standard refining output, leaving it at levels that were last

00:49:02seen in 2002, United24 media reports.

00:49:05The facilities that Ukraine has struck during its 40-day campaign account for 45% of Russia's total refining capacity,

00:49:12and this single aspect of the pressure campaign is believed to have cost Russia about $13.5 billion throughout 2026.

00:49:19It's all about driving discontent.

00:49:22Well, not driving.

00:49:23There are far fewer Russians who have been able to do much of that due to what Ukraine has spent

00:49:27the last 40 days doing.

00:49:28The one saving grace for Russia is that Gazprom Neft, which is one of the country's largest fuel sellers, has

00:49:34reportedly lifted purchase limits across 13 Russian regions, where it was forced to ration fuel.

00:49:39How long that will last is anybody's guess, especially if Ukraine decides to escalate its refinery strikes.

00:49:45But again, it's all about the pressure.

00:49:47The Economist highlighted that with the poll numbers that it shared, and the Kiev Post did the same thing in

00:49:51a July 4 article, where it proclaimed that a record number of Russians now want Putin to bring an end

00:49:56to his special military operation.

00:49:58The outlet says that a survey conducted by Ukraine-based pollster, the Institute for Conflictology and Analysis of Russia, found

00:50:05that only 9% of Russians want to continue the war until their country achieves a complete victory.

00:50:1181% of those quizzed said they would much rather see an immediate end to the fighting, especially in light

00:50:17of just how much it's costing them and their country.

00:50:20This turning of the tide of public opinion in Russia is nothing short of a success for Ukraine's 40-day

00:50:25campaign.

00:50:25But we also can't ignore the elephant in the room.

00:50:28The goal was to force Putin to come to the table by the end of the 40 days of sustained

00:50:32pressure, and that hasn't happened.

00:50:34It's unlikely that many, perhaps including Zelensky himself, truly believed that the psychopath hiding in bunkers deep underground would declare

00:50:42peace.

00:50:42However, Ukraine inflicted tangible damage across Russia, and it continued to pile the pressure on Putin at a time when

00:50:49approval for his invasion has slumped to new lows within his own country.

00:50:53That's a win for Ukraine.

00:50:55As for what happens next, it's more of the same.

00:50:57Putin didn't come to the table after 40 days, so Ukraine is going to unleash a new campaign.

00:51:02We will continue. Don't get hung up on all these arguments. 40, 50, 100 or 15 days.

00:51:08What matters is the result. It's not so much about how we enter this process.

00:51:12What's far more important is what we come out with.

00:51:15To emerge from it with the desired result, we must be strong.

00:51:18Those are the words of the head of the presidential office, Kirill Budanov, upon the conclusion of the 40-day

00:51:23campaign.

00:51:24This is a warning.

00:51:26If Putin, his cronies and the Russian people thought that the nightmare they've just endured was all over

00:51:30just because the 40-day deadline was hit, they have another thing coming.

00:51:34Lots of things in the sky and ready to strike.

00:51:37And if there were any doubts that Budanov was telling the truth,

00:51:40then Ukraine's drone operators have already dispelled them.

00:51:43They've let their weapons do the talking.

00:51:45On August 6th, Ukraine carried out two more refinery strikes,

00:51:49this time at the Bashnev Novoel and Slavnev Yanos refineries.

00:51:52The message has been sent loud and clear.

00:51:56Russia may have survived the 40-day blitz, but the pressure won't let up.

00:51:59Ukraine will force Putin to the table, even if it means every refinery in Russia has to burn.

00:52:06Putin started 2026 thinking that he had it all figured out.

00:52:10He'd had his cronies lying through their teeth about territorial gains to give him some leverage in peace talks.

00:52:15The Donbass was going to fall in a matter of months, they would claim.

00:52:19And supporting that, Russia had taken territory in Ukraine's south,

00:52:22allowing it to create a buffer zone to prevent troops and supplies from reaching the Donbass defenders.

00:52:27Oh, what a difference a year makes.

00:52:29Russia doesn't hold the south, Ukraine does.

00:52:32Over the last seven months, Ukraine has pulled off an offensive that nobody can believe.

00:52:37And that offensive has achieved something massive.

00:52:40745 square kilometers of territory retaken.

00:52:44That's according to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who says that Ukraine has retaken the staggering 745 square kilometers of territory

00:52:52in 2026,

00:52:53massively damaging Putin's plans for the year in the process.

00:52:56This was supposed to be the year when every promise that Putin made would finally come true.

00:53:02Russian mouthpieces told the world that Ukraine was on its last legs, that the collapse was coming.

00:53:08And there was a collapse coming all right, only it was Russia that got cut off at the knees, leaving

00:53:12its 2026 plans in tatters.

00:53:15The scale of Ukraine's offensive is impressive.

00:53:18Zelensky's August 12 announcement revealed that the bulk of Ukraine's counterattack took place across a wide area on the southern

00:53:25front line,

00:53:26extending into the region where Dnipropotrovsk, Zaporizhia and Donetsk converge into one.

00:53:32All told, Zelensky claims Ukraine used its counteroffensive to retake 26 settlements,

00:53:37all of which have been fortified to protect against future Russian assaults.

00:53:41This is a humiliation for Putin.

00:53:44Not only did Ukraine strip away a buffer zone that Russia wanted to create, and we'll explain why that's important

00:53:49later,

00:53:50but it also pushed Russian forces back from areas they thought were safe.

00:53:54Taken, no chance of Ukraine doing anything.

00:53:56The supposed power of the Russian military has once again been called into question,

00:54:01and the soldiers Putin tasked with holding Ukraine's south have failed spectacularly

00:54:05due to a brilliant counteroffensive in the Oleksandrivka direction.

00:54:09This was all according to Ukraine's plan.

00:54:12As Zelensky put it, this offensive operation of ours was carried out with precision, exactly as planned.

00:54:18And it gets worse for Russia.

00:54:20The casualties it suffered as a result of Ukraine's counteroffensive were enormous.

00:54:25Thanks to the active operations of our troops, significant losses were inflicted on the occupation contingent.

00:54:30Russian losses amounted to at least 9,550 personnel killed and more than 6,600 wounded, Zelensky revealed.

00:54:39That's a total of 16,150 Russian soldiers taken out of the fight in just one portion of the front

00:54:45line,

00:54:45a portion they were supposed to be defending to enable a deeper offensive against Donetsk.

00:54:50The new voice of Ukraine covers some of the settlements that Ukraine liberated.

00:54:54Among them are Yalta, Zelensky High, Tovsta, Novohatska and Hrushivska.

00:55:00All have been under heavy Russian fire since 2025 and have been evacuated.

00:55:05Russian infiltrators had also successfully mined the terrain around these settlements, making them harder to de-Russify.

00:55:11None of it stopped Ukraine's troops.

00:55:14Complications to logistics caused by these fortifications were overcome and Ukraine found ways to deal with the reconnaissance and FPV

00:55:20drones that Russia has in the skies.

00:55:23What we've seen here is the largest offensive that Ukraine has launched in the past two years.

00:55:27And in Zaporizhia and much of southern Ukraine, that counteroffensive has sent Russia's forces right back to square one.

00:55:34They had this territory. All they had to do was hold it. They failed.

00:55:38And now, work that took Russia close to a year to complete has to start all over again.

00:55:43Versus Ukrainian defenders that are better prepared the second time around.

00:55:48Putin is furious, and he should be.

00:55:50After all, this wasn't about his soldiers capitulating to the might of a larger Ukrainian force.

00:55:55That Putin could at least understand, though he wouldn't be happy about it.

00:55:59Instead, Ukraine pulled off its counteroffensive with a smart strategy.

00:56:03One that Putin and his army could never have imagined.

00:56:05That will leave Putin fuming because he has been outsmarted yet again.

00:56:09And it all started with a key Russian mistake.

00:56:12We've talked about Russia holding all of these settlements that it had lost

00:56:15and the 745 square kilometers of territory that Ukraine has successfully de-Russified.

00:56:20That's technically true, but it goes deeper than that.

00:56:23Russia didn't hold this territory by virtue of sending a massive force into Ukraine's southern region

00:56:28that could fortify and be used as a springboard for a deeper offensive.

00:56:32Instead, Russia tried to obfuscate.

00:56:35To pretend that it had more control than it really did.

00:56:38Rather than large mechanized assaults, Russia sent in tiny groups of infiltrators.

00:56:42Sometimes as small as two or three soldiers per unit.

00:56:45And their job was to sneak behind the lines, set up positions and, most importantly for Putin,

00:56:50take flags with them so they could be photographed and videoed holding Ukrainian territory.

00:56:55The flag planting operation was supposed to be a showcase of Russian strength that would give Putin leverage.

00:57:01Instead, it became the root of Russia's southern failure.

00:57:04The idea was to fool everybody, including Ukraine,

00:57:08into thinking that Russia held far stronger claims over the territory it had taken than it really did.

00:57:12Don't get us wrong, Russian forces were in place.

00:57:14They were fortified and they would prove challenging to move.

00:57:18What we had seen wasn't the mass takeover that Russia tried to claim it was,

00:57:22and Ukraine knew it from the start.

00:57:24Back in February, and right around the point when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive,

00:57:28the spokesperson for Ukraine's southern defense forces said that Ukraine knew precisely what Russia was trying to do.

00:57:34According to our intelligence, Russian units operating on the Hulia-Pola and Oleksandrovska axis,

00:57:40particularly reconnaissance units within the operational zone of Russia's 29th Army,

00:57:44have been assigned the task of installing flags of the Russian Federation between February 14th and 24th,

00:57:51ahead of the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, said Vladislav Voloshin,

00:57:56revealing that Russia's southern operations served Putin's propaganda purposes as much as it did the Russian military's strategic needs.

00:58:03This has become a common strategy for Russia as its flag-planting operations are happening all over the front,

00:58:09United 24 media reports, and often they end the same way.

00:58:13Russian infiltrators get behind the lines, plant the flag, and then get killed.

00:58:18That, in a nutshell, is what's been happening in Ukraine's south over the past six months or so.

00:58:22But it's a little more complicated than that.

00:58:25This isn't the case of Russian forces planting a flag, taking a picture, and then running away.

00:58:29Once the flag has been planted, the Russian infiltrators bed in and wait for support to come.

00:58:35Ukraine noticed this too.

00:58:37And there lay the opportunity to humiliate Putin and take back swathes of territory.

00:58:42However, Ukraine didn't launch the sort of massive offensive that Russia might have expected.

00:58:47The tale of the liberation of 745 square kilometers is all about small attacks, conducted day by day,

00:58:53all of which were designed to slowly erode Russian control,

00:58:56while presenting as little risk to Ukraine's ground forces as possible.

00:59:00That's the genius of Ukraine's strategy, and it's the last thing that Russia expected.

00:59:05Rather than trying to take everything at once, the Kyiv Post reports,

00:59:09Ukraine would identify a weakness in the Russian lines,

00:59:12and it would concentrate troops and firepower on that weakness.

00:59:15The Russian occupiers would be taken by surprise,

00:59:18as Ukraine's search-and-destroy squads used drones to find and attack them,

00:59:22following up with forces on the ground moving in.

00:59:24The Russians would die or get pushed out.

00:59:27Then Ukraine would reset, identify the next weakness, and go again.

00:59:31It's like laying down the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to create a much bigger hole.

00:59:35And Ukraine executed its strategy flawlessly.

00:59:39We know that not just because Zelensky told us so.

00:59:42The maps break it all down,

00:59:43and they show that Russian forces have been on the retreat in Oleksandrovka and elsewhere.

00:59:48But before we dig a little deeper, this is a reminder that you are watching the military show.

00:59:52We burrow behind the headlines to give you the full picture.

00:59:55If you are getting insight from our channel, consider subscribing and enabling notifications so you don't miss any of our

01:00:01videos.

01:00:03The brilliance of Ukraine's strategy has a second layer.

01:00:06Russia's flag planting could also have been seen as a way to bait Ukraine into launching the sort of offensive

01:00:11that would have cost it more soldiers and equipment.

01:00:14But Ukraine didn't take the bait.

01:00:16It let Russia get on with its flag games.

01:00:19And instead, very quietly, went about its business of de-Russifying the territory that Russia claimed to hold.

01:00:24Yes, there were occasional announcements.

01:00:27Toward the end of February, Ukraine reported the liberation of 400 square kilometers, for instance.

01:00:32But these reports always came after the fact.

01:00:35Russia never knew what Ukraine was going to target next or when.

01:00:38Ukraine, which meant that it never had the chance to prepare its infiltrators for what was coming.

01:00:42We see how well Ukraine did from a map released by Deep State.

01:00:46The open source intelligence provider tracks advances and withdrawals across the entire front.

01:00:51On August 12th, it published a map that proves everything that Zelensky claims.

01:00:55You see that light blue patch.

01:00:57That's all territory that Ukraine's forces have liberated from Russian control in 2026.

01:01:02Deep State highlights 19 different settlements within that single blue patch, including several of those we mentioned earlier, such as

01:01:09Yalta and Hrushivska.

01:01:11Others include Vorona, Tanova and Rybna.

01:01:14All villages that Russia claimed to hold but have fallen to Ukraine's strategy of exploiting weaknesses in the Russian lines

01:01:20bit by bit.

01:01:21There's another element to all of this.

01:01:23Russia is burying its head in the sand.

01:01:25To scratch that, Russia is not only ignoring Ukraine's achievement, but it's pretending that the de-Russification never happened at

01:01:31all.

01:01:32Again, we can see that in the maps.

01:01:34Russian military blogger Rybar shares what Russia claims is happening.

01:01:37The red on his map is what Russia claims to hold, and you'll see that Oleksandrovka is highlighted as being

01:01:43almost completely controlled by Russian forces.

01:01:45Now come back to the Deep State.

01:01:47The blue patch we told you about is what Ukraine controls.

01:01:50Kilometers away from that patch, to the west, lies Oleksandrovka.

01:01:5423 kilometers away to be exact.

01:01:57Completely untouched, perhaps outside of the occasional infiltration unit that managed to get beyond the front.

01:02:01This is the distortion of reality that Russia creates to make it seem like it's doing better in Ukraine than

01:02:07it really is.

01:02:08One map shows complete control.

01:02:10The other shows a Ukrainian line kilometers away from a settlement that Russia says it holds.

01:02:14There's a battlefield disconnect here.

01:02:17The Russian narrative has collided with reality, and the reality is that Oleksandrovka hasn't been taken.

01:02:24Russia has lost 745 square kilometers of Ukraine in 2026, and the final offensive that was supposed to shut Ukraine

01:02:32down and cause the collapse of the Donbass is on its knees.

01:02:36This disconnect runs all the way to the Kremlin, and we've seen it in action several times this year.

01:02:42Take Putin's publicized and nationally televised meeting that he held with the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian

01:02:48Armed Forces,

01:02:49Valery Gerasimov, on July 3, as an example.

01:02:53Gerasimov laid the BS on thick in that meeting.

01:02:55In front of millions of Russian viewers, the General told Putin that Russia had captured 133 Ukrainian settlements since January

01:03:031st,

01:03:04amounting to about 3,000 square kilometers of Ukraine occupied, with 636 square kilometers of that territory being captured in

01:03:11June alone.

01:03:12Rapid advances were occurring in Oleksandrovka and Huliopola, Gerasimov told Putin,

01:03:17and the claim that Oleksandrovka had fallen came later that day, but it was all lies.

01:03:22As the Kyiv Post points out, the nearest Russian troops, likely infiltrators, were 15 kilometers away from Oleksandrovka at the

01:03:29time,

01:03:29and again, the deep state map we shared earlier proves it.

01:03:33Russia claims to be advancing in every sector, and it makes these claims even as active Ukrainian offensives are pushing

01:03:39its forces back.

01:03:41In a June 30th piece, RE Russia made this very point, even before Gerasimov's inaccurate claims.

01:03:47Putin's assessments of the battlefield reality in Ukraine were diverging more sharply from reality than ever before, the outlet said.

01:03:55Putin had been reduced to exaggerating Russia's advances, knowingly or otherwise.

01:03:59In Konstantinivka, the outlet points out, Putin claimed that Russia controlled 96% of the settlement.

01:04:05Again, he was wrong. Konstantinivka still stands, and it will take a long time of fighting for Russia to gain

01:04:12anywhere near the level of control that Putin claims.

01:04:15Reality has escaped Russia's leader.

01:04:17He's off with the fairies, as he either lies to try to maintain leverage or he allows himself to be

01:04:22purposefully misled by generals who tell him what he wants to hear,

01:04:25because we've lost 745 square kilometers and are nowhere near Oleksandrivka is a surefire way to lose your rank and

01:04:33roll.

01:04:34Ukraine's offensive during 2026 has delivered a sharp dose of reality, even if Putin wants to ignore it.

01:04:40Here's how sharp that dose is.

01:04:42In an August 1st report on Russia's offensive, the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW,

01:04:47compared Russia's territorial gains in the period between February and July of 2026 to what it had achieved the year

01:04:53prior.

01:04:54The numbers show just how badly 2026 has been going for Russia, and how effective Ukraine's offensive strategy has become.

01:05:02In February 2025, Russia claimed 354.09 square kilometers of Ukraine.

01:05:08That was down to 122.73 square kilometers in 2026.

01:05:13For March, the numbers were 203.74 to 23.04 square kilometers.

01:05:20The summer has been even worse for Russia.

01:05:22It captured 30.02 square kilometers in June and 37.85 square kilometers in July versus 481.87 and 455

01:05:32.74, respectively, in those months back in 2025.

01:05:36You may have noticed that we left out April and May.

01:05:39That's because there's something special about those months.

01:05:41Russia actively lost territory in both.

01:05:44It ended up in the red by 116.01 square kilometers in April and 281.1 in May, suggesting these

01:05:52were the two months when Ukraine's counteroffensive really started to pick up steam.

01:05:56For context, Russia has managed to snatch over 700 square kilometers of Ukraine's territory during those two months combined back

01:06:04in 2025.

01:06:04This is reality for Russia.

01:06:07The year that was supposed to mark the collapse of Ukraine has instead showcased just how weak Russia's advance has

01:06:13become and how well Ukraine's offensive strategy is working.

01:06:17Speaking of weakening, Russia isn't failing to make progress because it's sending fewer soldiers to batter themselves against Ukraine's defenses.

01:06:24This isn't a case of pulling back to replenish in preparation for a stronger assault later in the year.

01:06:29The casualty numbers show us that.

01:06:32On August 3rd, Zelenskyy revealed that Russia has sustained 225,500 losses during the first seven months of 2026.

01:06:39We can do a little math to show us what that really means for the period the ISW discusses in

01:06:44its assessment.

01:06:45First, we remove the January casualties, 31,680 of them per Al Jazeera, which gives us 193,820 casualties between

01:06:55February and July.

01:06:57Next, we tot up the Russian gains for that period.

01:07:00Per the ISW, those gains, well, they're not actually gains.

01:07:03During this six-month period, Russia has actually lost 183.47 square kilometers.

01:07:09Well, that was unexpected, but it shows us just how impactful Ukraine's offensive has been.

01:07:14Okay, let's try a different approach.

01:07:16Well, be kind to Russia and include infiltrations as gains, even though sneaking a soldier or two into a settlement

01:07:22is a long way from claiming that settlement.

01:07:24With infiltrations included, again, per the ISW's figures, Russia has claimed 379.85 square kilometers.

01:07:33So, in this very best case scenario for Russia, it has still lost 510.25 soldiers for every square kilometer

01:07:42that it's taken in Ukraine between February and July.

01:07:45This isn't domination. It's a disaster.

01:07:48A reality that Putin doesn't want to accept, even in the best case scenario.

01:07:52And in the worst case, Russia has sacrificed over 193,000 soldiers to actively lose territory.

01:08:00Nobody would have believed that this could be possible with all of the Russian bluster that kicked off the year.

01:08:05But it is happening. And here's what it's meant for Russia.

01:08:08The whole reason why Russia wanted to hold territory in Ukraine's south, especially in that convergence of Dnipro-Betrovsk, Zaporizhia

01:08:15and Donetsk, was to create a buffer zone to support the Donetsk offensive.

01:08:19The idea was simple. Create a buffer that would prevent Ukraine from sending troops and supplies into Donetsk, along with

01:08:26forcing Ukraine to sacrifice soldiers in the south that it would rather have fighting in the Donetsk fortress belt.

01:08:32Fine in theory. But when your execution relies on infiltration, and it comes up against Ukraine's brilliant bit-by-bit

01:08:39strategy, it all falls apart.

01:08:41The buffer has collapsed, and the knock-on effects are being felt in Donetsk.

01:08:46Russia was supposed to be most of the way toward crippling the fortress belt by now.

01:08:50That was according to Putin, who had set a September deadline for taking the Oblast and finally securing the Donbass.

01:08:58Russia has about two weeks to pull out a miracle and make that happen, as it's still nowhere near taking

01:09:04Konstantinivka, never mind the rest of the fortress belt.

01:09:07By the way, the Donetsk deadline is December now. That isn't going to happen now. So what is going to

01:09:12happen?

01:09:13Well, Putin has an Oleksandrivka-shaped problem on his hands now, as Russia has to try to reclaim the 745

01:09:20square kilometers of territory that it has lost to Ukraine in 2026.

01:09:25Except Russia can't reclaim that territory on the ground. Ukraine is fortified, and Putin's forces are focused mostly on Donetsk,

01:09:32with its assaults in the south being limited.

01:09:34So what we're going to be seeing, likely for the rest of 2026, is Russia trying to use aerial assaults

01:09:39to weaken Ukraine in the south, perhaps in preparation for an attempt to push back later on.

01:09:44In fact, this approach has already started. Back on July 2nd, Pravda reported that Russia had dropped seven aerial bombs

01:09:51on Oleksandrivka, destroying 50 homes and killing one person.

01:09:55That's a strange way to treat a settlement that you were claiming to have captured a day later, Russia. This

01:10:01is desperation.

01:10:02Russia is being forced to rely on its aerial strategy because it's no longer close enough to Oleksandrivka to strike

01:10:08it reliably with artillery or to launch ground-based assaults.

01:10:11And that's all because of Ukraine.

01:10:14Liberating 745 square kilometers of its territory hurt Putin the propagandist, but it outright crippled Putin the failed strategist.

01:10:22Now, all Russia can do is attack from the air, and there may just be a nation that has something

01:10:26to say about it.

01:10:28Poland is on the verge of stepping in.

01:10:31What's the best way to deal with Russia in 2026? Don't let Russia hit you first.

01:10:37Get pre-emptive and take out the Russian threat before it ever has a chance to do anything to you.

01:10:42In a world where deterrents seem to be less effective than they've been since the beginning of the 21st century,

01:10:48striking first is better than being struck.

01:10:51At least that's Germany's new approach.

01:10:53In a landmark legal ruling, Germany has granted its spy force the power to attack Russia before Russia attacks Germany.

01:11:01Pre-emptive strikes are about to be launched, but those strikes won't involve missiles and bombs.

01:11:06They'll involve new powers granted to Germany's intelligence services.

01:11:10The best drone is the one that never rises and can threaten Germany, declared the chairman of the German Bundestag's

01:11:16parliamentary control committee, Mark Henrichmann, ahead of a crucial vote that would determine whether Germany's cabinet would grant a new

01:11:23raft of powers to its intelligence agencies.

01:11:25Hours later, the votes were in. The new law had been passed by the cabinet.

01:11:30Just as Henrichmann declared it should, Germany had taken a massive step closer to giving itself the power to strike

01:11:37against Russia pre-emptively, rather than to always wait and respond to the hybrid warfare strategies that Putin has employed

01:11:43against Berlin ever since the Ukraine invasion began.

01:11:47Reuters was among the first outlets to report the news.

01:11:50In an August 12 piece, the outlet revealed that Germany's cabinet had passed a bill granting the country's intelligence services

01:11:56the power to hack communications to disrupt operations planned by foreign adversaries.

01:12:02The controversial move gives both the BND and BFE, which are Germany's primary intelligence agencies, far broader access to digital

01:12:09communications, along with the ability to collect more data than they ever could before and to carry out what Reuters

01:12:15described as active operations to thwart attacks.

01:12:18This suggests that Germany won't just be collecting data so it can point at it and say, look what Russia

01:12:24plans to do.

01:12:25Because let's face it, this is all about Russia.

01:12:27What this new law appears to mean is that Germany's intelligence agencies can actively conduct hacking and counter-sabotage operations

01:12:34to stop those plans from materializing into anything concrete.

01:12:38This is a revolution and a historic change in Germany's approach to how it uses its intelligence agencies, declared the

01:12:45country's interior minister Alexander Dobrindt in the wake of the vote.

01:12:49It's high time we positioned ourselves to be competitive and on an equal footing with our partner services around the

01:12:55world.

01:12:56This requires operational capabilities and active powers to tackle modern state terrorism and extremist groups more effectively, Dombrindt added.

01:13:03However, there is a caveat to all of this before we continue.

01:13:07As the Guardian points out in its report on Germany's latest decision, it's the German government that has given its

01:13:13approval to the new draft law.

01:13:14That law still has to pass through a full parliamentary vote before it becomes official German policy.

01:13:20That may end up being a stumbling block, as support for this move isn't absolute in Germany.

01:13:26But before we explore why, it's also not as though this draft law has come out of nowhere.

01:13:30Germany has been trying to beef up its intelligence services for a long time now.

01:13:35Money was the first solution that Chancellor Friedrich Merz landed on.

01:13:39The BND budget for 2026 has already been increased to $1.73 billion,

01:13:44and Merz has been making moves to relax the restrictions placed on the BND in relation to using AI and

01:13:50facial recognition technology.

01:13:52One by one, guardrails are being lowered.

01:13:55The draft law itself has also been in the works for a while.

01:13:59On February 17th, Politico reported on the moves that Germany was making to strengthen its intelligence services,

01:14:04amid internal claims that those services must attain some level of autonomy

01:14:08so that Germany doesn't solely rely on the US and its European colleagues for information.

01:14:13As Henrichmann pointed out at the time,

01:14:15we want to continue working closely with the Americans.

01:14:18But if a US president, whoever that may be, decides in the future to go it alone without European partners,

01:14:23then we must be able to stand on our own two feet.

01:14:26So this new law isn't just about approving pre-emptive measures.

01:14:30It's about Germany making the moves it needs to make to ensure its entire intelligence community doesn't collapse

01:14:35if the US decides to withdraw its intelligence sharing.

01:14:39We have the basics on the new law.

01:14:41But these are the new powers defined as we understand them so far.

01:14:45Germany's intelligence services will have the power to implement a range of measures

01:14:49once they have discovered a plot in the process unfurling Politico reports.

01:14:53Those measures can vary depending on the scale of the plot.

01:14:56Exposing the culprits and who is backing them is one approach the services can take.

01:15:01That may be the choice when the plot is unlikely to do any damage,

01:15:04and Germany can instead use it to score some geopolitical points against whoever might be behind the plan.

01:15:10Other options may include destroying the property of people identified to be part of the plot,

01:15:15sabotaging explosives that have been created ahead of an attack,

01:15:18or even feeding the people involved with false intelligence after an attempted attack,

01:15:22leading to confusion in the intelligence services of Germany's adversaries.

01:15:26A key guard rail in place for all of this is that any response that Germany decides upon

01:15:31must be linked directly to the original incident that it uncovers,

01:15:35and may not endanger physical safety or life, Politico adds.

01:15:39Reuters provides a few more details, adding that the new draft law calls for a new set of rules

01:15:44that would allow Germany's intelligence services to install state-operated software

01:15:49that tracks online searches and enables telecommunications surveillance.

01:15:53Several types of entities, including telecoms companies, transport operators,

01:15:58financial intermediaries and digital platforms,

01:16:00could also be ordered to hand over information on command under the new law.

01:16:04All of this will be in service of what Germany wants its intelligence services to be capable of doing,

01:16:10strike first, strike hard and ruin the plans of any foreign adversary.

01:16:15However, you may be hearing all of this and perhaps feel like this new law is a little bit of

01:16:19an overreach.

01:16:20Expanding the powers of intelligence services is one thing,

01:16:22but giving them what seems to be carte blanche access to online search and telecoms records

01:16:27is a potential invasion of privacy that could be seen by some as a step too far.

01:16:32You wouldn't be alone if that's your opinion.

01:16:35We mentioned that Germany's new draft law still has to make it through a full parliamentary vote

01:16:40and that it could be a hurdle.

01:16:41The reason why is that support for this particular law isn't unanimous.

01:16:45DW points out that Germany's Society for Civil Rights

01:16:48considers several aspects of the draft law to be unconstitutional,

01:16:52especially when it comes to the far-reaching surveillance powers

01:16:55that Germany's intelligence services are going to receive.

01:16:58In particular, giving those services access to public and private video surveillance in real time is a problem,

01:17:04claims the Society's expert Kai Dittmann.

01:17:08There are no sufficient and clearly defined limits for such far-reaching intrusions,

01:17:12which above all affect countless innocent people, Dittmann says of the law,

01:17:16adding that granting Germany's security services the ability to carry out cyber operations

01:17:20and active campaigns against identified threats blurs the constitutional boundaries between intelligence services,

01:17:28the police and the military.

01:17:29These sentiments are echoed by Clara Bünger, who is the domestic policy expert for the Left Party,

01:17:35which is part of the opposition to Merz's coalition.

01:17:37Because the intelligence agencies will no longer be required to inform those affected in many cases,

01:17:43effective legal protection is no longer guaranteed," she declares.

01:17:46There are also concerns about what untethering Germany's intelligence community using this law could mean internationally.

01:17:53Politico points out that Germany's spies have typically been restricted

01:17:56when it comes to more aggressive information-gathering operations

01:17:59due to restraints applied to Germany by the international community in the wake of World War II.

01:18:04Those restraints existed to prevent a repeat of the abuses that the Nazis' massive spy network was guilty of.

01:18:11For some in Germany and outside the nation, this new law would be a dangerous step away from the restrictions

01:18:16that have kept Germany's spies in check for 60-plus years.

01:18:19The counter-argument to this claim is that it's not the 1940s.

01:18:24Germany is a very different nation from what it was under the Nazis,

01:18:27and it could be argued that Europe now faces a similar threat to the Nazi scourge,

01:18:31only it comes from Putin and his imperialistic version of Russia.

01:18:35That's the argument that Henrichmann made ahead of the vote, telling Germany's WeltTV,

01:18:40we really have to enable our services to paralyse and turn off the attack grown in Russia,

01:18:44or the factory that manufactures it, before it's directed against the German airport,

01:18:49or against the safety of life and limb of people in Germany.

01:18:52Still, there are barriers to overcome.

01:18:53Will the draft law make it past those barriers?

01:18:57It seems very likely to do so.

01:19:00Merz's coalition party, which includes the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union,

01:19:04and Social Democrat parties, holds the majority in Germany's parliament.

01:19:09When that parliament returns from its recess in early September,

01:19:12that trio of parties is expected to force through the bill with their collective vote,

01:19:16regardless of the opposition.

01:19:19DW goes as far as to claim that this follow-up vote is considered a mere formality.

01:19:24If that's the case, then we can say with some certainty that Germany's spies

01:19:27are soon going to bring a slew of new powers to the table.

01:19:31However, the question remains, why was this necessary in the first place?

01:19:35We're going to tell you precisely why.

01:19:37But before we do, this is the military show, and there is a lot more where this comes from.

01:19:41If you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, please take a second to hit the button

01:19:44and enable notifications to ensure you never miss a video.

01:19:49So, we've been calling the new powers that Germany is granting its spies pre-emptive.

01:19:54That's true in the sense of what those powers allow the spies to do when dealing with plans in progress.

01:19:58However, we could also argue that Germany's new law is far from pre-emptive,

01:20:02in the context of its wider conflict with Russia,

01:20:05and that nation's seemingly endless stream of hybrid attacks.

01:20:08We head to Leipzig Airport.

01:20:10Late in the night of August 4th, a quadcopter drone was discovered loitering at that airport,

01:20:16and it had been seen floating between planes.

01:20:18The discovery forced a runway into lockdown as Germany sent in a bomb disposal robot to handle the drone.

01:20:24Then, another twist in the tale revealed itself.

01:20:27The Russian drone wasn't floating between any old planes.

01:20:30They were Ukrainian Antonov cargo planes.

01:20:33The implication was obvious.

01:20:35A Russian drone had been found, and it seemed to be lying in wait to potentially destroy a Ukrainian plane

01:20:40on the tarmac.

01:20:41At the very least, it had been placed by the runway to serve as a threat to Germany.

01:20:46This time, the drone did nothing.

01:20:48Next time, well, we've just proven that we can get drones into your airport.

01:20:52Interior Minister Dobrindt warned of a new level of danger in the wake of the incident,

01:20:57though he stopped short of saying that it was Russia behind it, instead claiming that the event may involve foreign

01:21:03powers.

01:21:04Everybody knew what he meant by that, and on August 10th,

01:21:07US intelligence confirmed that it believes that Russia was behind the drone incident in Leipzig.

01:21:12German outlet Bilt also claimed that authorities investigating the incident found traces of DNA at the scene

01:21:18that matched a sample taken from a firebomb that had been posted via DHL to the same airport back in

01:21:23July 2024.

01:21:25This doesn't appear to have been confirmed independently yet,

01:21:28but the fact that this attempted firebombing even took place at all,

01:21:31on top of the drone incident more recently,

01:21:33offers a major hint as to why Germany is giving its spy services new powers.

01:21:37Russia's hybrid warfare against Germany is escalating.

01:21:41Dobrindt has said as much, exclaiming,

01:21:56He isn't wrong.

01:21:58While the two incidents at Leipzig airport may be among the most prominent,

01:22:01Germany has been dealing with all too many hybrid warfare incidents.

01:22:04The number and scale of those incidents have uncoincidentally escalated since Russia invaded Ukraine,

01:22:10and Germany threw its support behind the nation that Putin wants to oppress.

01:22:14That's according to a 2025 report by the country's domestic intelligence agency.

01:22:19Of course, said agency has a certain bias, as it would have been campaigning for new powers at the time.

01:22:24However, the claim isn't without merit.

01:22:26The numbers seem to back it up.

01:22:28In a February 2026 report,

01:22:30the International Center for Counterterrorism examined a large number of incidents of hybrid warfare conducted against European states.

01:22:36It's said that in 2025 alone, Germany recorded 320 attempts at sabotage,

01:22:42though it wasn't always able to determine who was behind these sabotage efforts,

01:22:47likely because its intelligence agencies were stopped before they could dig deep enough.

01:22:51Still, 320 in a year is very close to the daily threat that Dobrindt talks about,

01:22:55and that number only covers sabotage.

01:22:58There are cyber attacks, drone incursions, and other forms of hybrid warfare

01:23:02that would easily make the daily attacks claim credible.

01:23:04In fact, if we throw cyber attacks into the mix, then daily is a massive underestimate.

01:23:10Hourly will be more accurate, and every few minutes will be more accurate still.

01:23:13In a May 12 report, Euronews revealed that Germany registered 334,000 cases of cybercrime in 2025,

01:23:21two-thirds of which were either confirmed to have come from abroad or were perpetrated from unknown locations.

01:23:27Dobrindt noted that many of these attacks had come from Russia,

01:23:30as he once again called for the new law that Germany is now on the verge of passing.

01:23:34In total, Euronews says these cyber attacks are believed to have caused about $230 billion worth of economic damage in

01:23:412025 alone.

01:23:43These statistics reveal the true scale of the hybrid threat that Germany now faces.

01:23:47And that threat is such that Reuters reported in July that the country's interior ministry had upgraded Germany's security stance

01:23:54from

01:23:54abstract threat level to high threat level.

01:23:58In practice, this upgrade means that Germany must reckon with the risk of attack at all times,

01:24:03and that plans for these attacks are now clearly discernible, claims Dobrindt.

01:24:07Here we see Germany's true justification for its new law.

01:24:11For decades, its intelligence services have been hamstrung, forcing them to rely on outside sources for most of their information.

01:24:18Clearly, that approach isn't working as well as Germany needs it to work.

01:24:22If it were, then the country wouldn't be recording over 300 acts of sabotage and hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks

01:24:28in a single year,

01:24:28and it certainly wouldn't have happily absorbed $230 billion in economic damage due to the latter.

01:24:34Germany wants not only to stop all of this from happening, but to actively punish the perpetrators,

01:24:39thus sending a message that Germany isn't to be messed with anymore.

01:24:42But it all goes deeper than that.

01:24:44When Germany looks at the increasing number of hybrid warfare instances that it's recording,

01:24:49it isn't just seeing Russia attempting to intimidate and cajole.

01:24:52Germany sees escalation.

01:24:54And that escalation is taking Russia, Germany, and perhaps even all of Europe

01:24:58down the path to a much wider war than the one that currently rages in Ukraine.

01:25:02Germany was saying much at the beginning of 2026.

01:25:06A leaked report covered by United24 media in January, which had been prepared by Germany's defense ministry,

01:25:12noted that Berlin expects to become one of the first major targets of Russian hybrid warfare,

01:25:16due to its role as the main NATO logistical hub in Europe.

01:25:20Furthermore, this escalating hybrid warfare might also serve as preparation for a future military confrontation.

01:25:26With the document stating that Germany would likely face armed drones, long-range missile strikes,

01:25:31and even attacks by special forces in the wake of a Russian offensive on NATO's eastern flank.

01:25:36To sum it all up, Germany is increasingly convinced that war is coming.

01:25:41And that war is going to be started by Putin, just like the one in Ukraine.

01:25:45Fast forward to June, and warnings were still coming from Germany's military command.

01:25:49The country's army chief, Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, has already claimed that

01:25:54all 32 of NATO's members agree that Russia may have the capability to launch a large assault against

01:25:59NATO territory by the end of the decade.

01:26:01That gives Germany and its allies a 2029 deadline to get ready for such an assault.

01:26:06And hampering Russia in the early stages through increased powers for intelligence services will help.

01:26:11A couple months later, another of Germany's leading military officers, General Karsten Breuer,

01:26:16told the Wall Street Journal that Russia has been systematically using drones to probe European air defences

01:26:22and test for NATO responses.

01:26:24The Grey Zone campaign is being intensified, Breuer declared.

01:26:28And what happened at Leipzig airport was the perfect example.

01:26:31Russia is using its tests to refine its tactics for a future conflict, the German General adds.

01:26:37Berlin's top military minds couldn't make it more obvious if they were shouting it from the rooftops.

01:26:42They believe that war is coming, and Russia's hybrid tactics are just the start.

01:26:47Germany must be ready to fight back when the time comes,

01:26:50and tackling what is happening on its territory right now is a key step.

01:26:53Again, it all comes back to what we said at the top of the video.

01:26:56Reacting is no longer enough.

01:26:58Neither is relying on the NATO deterrent.

01:27:00For Germany, a pre-emptive approach is needed to show Russia that it can't simply escalate and expect no response.

01:27:06Assuming Germany's parliament passes the law, it will come into force at some point in 2027.

01:27:11Then we'll see how Putin responds.

01:27:13Will he back down, or will he escalate further?

01:27:16That's the big question, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Russia's poking of the NATO bear has become so incessant

01:27:22that the bear is awake and ready to bite.

01:27:25It's not just Germany making major changes.

01:27:27Poland is gearing up to take a massive step that will shake the Kremlin to its very core.

01:27:32What is that step?

01:27:33You can find out if you watch our video.

01:27:35But before we head away, we hope you enjoyed this analysis of Germany's new spy laws.

01:27:39If you did, why not subscribe to The Military Show?

01:27:42We publish videos like this every single day.

01:27:44And thank you for watching.

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