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⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Kaliningrad Will Start WW3
18:00 - All Signs Point to NATO vs. Russia War... Are We Ready?
36:19 - Putin's BLOODIEST Month
54:44 - Ukraine Built a Weapon Even the U.S. Army WANTS... And It's STOPPING Russia

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Transcript
00:00:01It's the exclave that is on everybody's mind.
00:00:04Russia's small but dangerous chunk of territory,
00:00:07buried in the midst of NATO nations, presents a threat beyond Russia's mainland borders.
00:00:13Kaliningrad is a powder keg, and now it's ready to explode.
00:00:17If World War III begins, Kaliningrad may be the epicenter.
00:00:22Russia has just made that very clear as it warns that it will go nuclear
00:00:26if NATO doesn't back down over Kaliningrad.
00:00:30On September 30th, Reuters reported that Russia has sent a document to NATO,
00:00:34which Reuters has seen and contains a very clear threat to NATO.
00:00:38Accusing NATO of taking a dangerous and reckless course regarding Kaliningrad,
00:00:44the document warns of high risks of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict.
00:00:49That's nothing out of the ordinary.
00:00:51However, the document goes on to claim that Russia is willing and able
00:00:54to go further than it ever has before to defend its exclave.
00:00:58We'll let the letter do the talking.
00:01:00Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal,
00:01:05including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory should NATO countries undertake any attempt
00:01:12aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad region from the rest of the country, Russia declared.
00:01:16We're about to dig deeper into this situation.
00:01:19Before we do, everything you see here is researched, verified and produced by real people.
00:01:25If you value that, subscribe, comment below and consider becoming a member for access to exclusive content.
00:01:32What we're seeing here is panic disguised as a threat,
00:01:35as Russia worries that Kaliningrad is now seen as a weak link in Putin's wannabe empire.
00:01:41However, it's a threat that needs to be taken seriously,
00:01:44especially as it isn't contained solely to a letter sent to NATO.
00:01:47Russia has also gone public with its nuclear rhetoric,
00:01:51with a telegram post aimed at the UK media outlet, the iPaper.
00:01:55Ahead of Reuters reveal of the letter sent to NATO,
00:01:58Russia's embassy to the UK took to telegram to complain about a recent development in the UK.
00:02:03Again, nuclear threats were used.
00:02:06Those advocating plans to blockade or strike Kaliningrad should have no illusions about the consequences.
00:02:12Any British or NATO military action against Russian territory
00:02:15would be met with a response using all means at Russia's disposal, including nuclear weapons, the embassy claim.
00:02:22It's clear that there is a bee in the Russian bonnet.
00:02:25But what could have possibly riled Russia up to the point where it's so concerned about Kaliningrad
00:02:29that it's flinging nuclear threats at anybody who will listen?
00:02:32Has NATO just completed an exercise that saw it enter Kaliningrad?
00:02:36Did a NATO member say that it's preparing to take over the exclave?
00:02:39No, none of that's happened.
00:02:41What has Russia so rattled is far more benign.
00:02:44A TV show.
00:02:45That's right, Russia is threatening to start World War 3 over a television show that was recently aired in the
00:02:50UK.
00:02:51Which is why the UK has gotten a special mention in the Russian threats.
00:02:55That show, which Putin's mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov claims has sparked the Russian messages
00:03:00to the so-called hotheads in Europe, was named The War Game.
00:03:04Aired on Sky TV, the show ran with the premise of a hypothetical strike against the UK by Russia
00:03:10and what the UK would do in response.
00:03:12The miniseries brought several former politicians into the mix, including former Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities,
00:03:20Michael Gove,
00:03:21and former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.
00:03:24Together, participants were tasked with managing a response to a simulated Russian attack on UK soil.
00:03:31Part of that response involved the blockading of Kaliningrad, which the show marked out as a weak point for Russia.
00:03:37That's where all of this Russian fury comes from.
00:03:40Well, that and a report by the iPaper on the show, which the Russian embassy to the UK even called
00:03:45out the outlet in its telegram post stating,
00:03:47We have noticed an article in the iPaper on Kaliningrad, which suggests, among other things, that NATO could blockade the
00:03:54region or de-recognize Russian sovereignty.
00:03:57So it's confirmed Putin and his cronies watch UK TV.
00:04:01Anything to save them from the drudgery of the state-sponsored slop they feed to the Russian masses, we suppose.
00:04:07The iPaper has responded to the Russian threats, calling them hypersensitive.
00:04:11The outlet also reports that state-sponsored Russian TV we just mentioned has dedicated several hours-long segments to the
00:04:19war game,
00:04:20using them to ridicule the idea that Russia posed a threat to the UK or the collective West.
00:04:25You know, right at the time when Russia was presenting nuclear threats to the UK and the West.
00:04:30Somebody make it make sense.
00:04:32Those very same programs, while attempting to re-emphasize the Russian threat,
00:04:36also made sure to deliver a message that the UK is vulnerable to Russia.
00:04:40Mentions of the hypersonic Oreshnik missile have been made,
00:04:44with one commentator reporting that it would take just 20 minutes for that missile to reach the UK if launched
00:04:50from Murmansk.
00:04:51As much as we may be layering this report with sarcasm,
00:04:54the fact remains that Russia issued yet another nuclear threat,
00:04:57and it's highlighted Kaliningrad as a potential flashpoint in an upcoming conflict with NATO.
00:05:03That has to be taken seriously, especially as the threats are being made both publicly and privately.
00:05:09So, what have the responses been so far?
00:05:12We've seen the iPaper's response, with the outlet writing in practical bewilderment about how its report on a television show
00:05:19could be enough to spark such outrage from Russian propagandists.
00:05:22However, the two real targets of the Russian threats, the UK and NATO, have delivered very different responses.
00:05:29The UK hasn't said much of anything.
00:05:31In a September 29th report on the threats thrown the UK's way by the Russian embassy,
00:05:36Newsweek said that the UK Foreign Office rarely makes statements on what it views as media speculation.
00:05:42That seems to be the case here, and that lack of response shows how the UK and Russia view the
00:05:46media differently.
00:05:48In the UK, the war game is just a TV show, one with a realistic premise, sure,
00:05:53but it's not a show that is intended to be a direct threat to Russia, made by the UK via
00:05:58the medium of television.
00:05:59But in Russia, where television is a state-sponsored propaganda tool, such a show would be viewed very differently.
00:06:06Where the UK sees entertainment, Russia sees a threat, which may go some way to explaining why Russia has reacted
00:06:12as vehemently as it has.
00:06:14Still, the response from the UK can be politely called muted.
00:06:18Less politely, it could be called non-existent, at least at the time of the making of this video.
00:06:23Still, we can't ignore that this is another blow to a relationship between the UK and Russia that is the
00:06:28worst it's been for decades.
00:06:30Russia has an axe to grind, with the UK anyway, as the UK has been one of the world's leading
00:06:35supporters of Ukraine.
00:06:37Around $21 billion in military aid has made its way into Ukraine from the UK,
00:06:41and the UK has shown an increasing willingness to call Russia out on its intimidation attempts, Newsweek reports.
00:06:47We've seen that in the UK's reporting on Russian submarines, warships and Shadow Fleet vessels that stray too close to
00:06:54its coast.
00:06:55The UK even seized a Russian Shadow Fleet tanker back in June and has declared a century-long partnership with
00:07:01Ukraine,
00:07:01highlighting just how much it stands in opposition to Russia.
00:07:04This isn't the first threat that Russia has lobbed at the UK either.
00:07:07In the wake of the UK choosing to share sensitive information about Storm Shadow missiles with Ukraine,
00:07:13Russia responded furiously.
00:07:15It threatened UK drone and arms factories with paramilitary action, Pravda reported in August.
00:07:21Tensions have been rising between the UK and Russia for some time now.
00:07:25So that we haven't seen a direct response to Russia's nuclear tantrum over a TV show depicting Kuliningrad as a
00:07:31weak point for Russia,
00:07:32you can bet that the UK government is paying attention.
00:07:35The threat has been logged and the UK is likely working behind the scenes with its NATO partners.
00:07:41Speaking of NATO, the collective defence organisation has been more forthright in its responses to Russia's nuclear threats over Kuliningrad.
00:07:49We're about to explain how, but first this is a reminder that you are watching the military show.
00:07:54There's a lot more where this comes from.
00:07:56So make sure you are subscribed and have notifications enabled if you're getting value from our channel.
00:08:02We mentioned the letter that Russia sent to NATO a moment ago.
00:08:05The letter now appears to have been published by the Russian embassy in Belgium,
00:08:09marking another instance of Russia going public with its Kuliningrad nuclear threats.
00:08:14Beyond the nuclear rhetoric, the letter contains the usual sorts of accusations against NATO that you would expect to come
00:08:20from Russia.
00:08:21NATO is constantly seeking to create new threats in the Baltic region, the letter claims.
00:08:27The alliance is also openly modelling specific scenarios for detaching the Kuliningrad region
00:08:32and developing plans for the military and political isolation of the northwestern ports.
00:08:37The second statement has an element of truth to it. The first, not so much.
00:08:42NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter delivered a direct response to Russia on September 30th.
00:08:47During an appearance at a security summit held in Brussels, Rutter declared,
00:08:51We had to reply and make clear to Russia that NATO is a defensive alliance
00:08:55and stop the war in Ukraine and stop the nuclear threats because it's not helpful.
00:09:00He went on to remind Russia that NATO is so much stronger than Russia is
00:09:04before delivering a final message that is decidedly British in tone.
00:09:18Rutter's statement is interesting because it's a strong rebuke to the Russian claims
00:09:22and it contains a direct, though implied, threat of its own.
00:09:26In saying that NATO is much stronger than Russia, Rutter is basically telling the Kremlin
00:09:30to sit down and shut up with its nuclear rhetoric.
00:09:33That approach seems to be reflected in other quarters of NATO, Politico reports.
00:09:37An unnamed NATO diplomat told the outlet that the reading on all of the Kuliningrad-based threats
00:09:42is that this is yet another Russian attempt to intimidate and cause the withdrawal of support for Ukraine.
00:09:47Or as the iPaper puts it, this is another example of Russia's willy-waving
00:09:52as it tried to project power by threatening a nuclear incident that would spark World War III.
00:09:57With all of the back and forth covered, let's zoom in on the scrap of territory
00:10:01that lies at the heart of everything, Kuliningrad.
00:10:04Though Russia using nuclear threats in a response to a TV show may seem ridiculous on the surface,
00:10:10the Kremlin's big problem is that the show revealed Kuliningrad to be the potential flashpoint
00:10:14in a conflict between Russia and NATO.
00:10:16To understand why, you need to know a little bit more about Kuliningrad.
00:10:20Once named Koenigsberg, the exclave was the capital of East Prussia until Soviet forces
00:10:26captured it in April 1945.
00:10:28Russia has managed to maintain control over the exclave,
00:10:31which is sandwiched between Poland and the Baltic states.
00:10:35Kuliningrad is supposed to offer Russia a presence in the Baltic region,
00:10:38and it spent most of its time under Russian rule as essentially a heavily militarized satellite state.
00:10:44Through Kuliningrad, Russia has a platform to launch missiles,
00:10:48deploy naval forces, and project power into Central and Northern Europe.
00:10:52All of this makes it sound as though Kuliningrad is extremely dangerous.
00:10:56And though we don't want to understate that danger,
00:10:58Russia's vitriolic response to the war game,
00:11:00and what it says about its increasing NATO activity near the exclave,
00:11:04isn't rooted in strength.
00:11:06Quite the opposite, in fact.
00:11:08Russia may be aware that Kuliningrad is precisely the weak point that the war game claimed it to be.
00:11:13Even before the latest nuclear threats,
00:11:15NATO members and affiliates have made it very clear
00:11:18that they now view Kuliningrad as a lever that can be used against Russia.
00:11:22We only need to look back to mid-September for a clear example.
00:11:26Speaking during a September 11th panel discussion,
00:11:28Poland's Foreign Minister, Radislav Sikorski,
00:11:31suggested that NATO should hold more exercises near Kuliningrad
00:11:34to force Russia into diverting troops away from Ukraine and into the exclave.
00:11:39I'm suggesting we should exercise so aggressively on our side
00:11:43as to make Russian President Vladimir Putin uncertain of what we will do
00:11:46and so that he needs to draw forces away from Ukraine, Sikorski said,
00:11:51as he noted that Russia has barely any troops inside Kuliningrad.
00:11:54That comment would have set alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin.
00:11:57But even before then, Kuliningrad has been treated not as a threat,
00:12:01but almost as an afterthought when discussing a conflict between Russia and NATO.
00:12:05The consensus in NATO appears to be that if a war started,
00:12:09Kuliningrad would be the first chunk of Russian territory to fall.
00:12:12In July 2025, the commander of the US forces in Europe, General Christopher Donohue,
00:12:18made it publicly known that NATO has a plan to quickly neutralize Kuliningrad in the event of a war.
00:12:24A few months later, those comments were echoed by the man who used to hold Donohue's position, Ben Hodges.
00:12:30He claimed that Kuliningrad would be eliminated in the first few hours of a war between Russia and NATO,
00:12:35again suggesting that a weakness is very visible in the Russian armor.
00:12:40Even Lithuania's foreign minister, Kerstutis Budris, has gotten in on the act,
00:12:44stating that NATO has the capability to easily neutralize Russian air defenses in the Kuliningrad region.
00:12:49All of these comments were made before the war game aired.
00:12:53Russia would have been paying attention.
00:12:55So we can start to see Russia's nuclear threats in a new light.
00:12:58They are more a response to literal years of NATO claiming that Kuliningrad could be destroyed quickly in the event
00:13:04of a war.
00:13:05And what worries Russia the most is that these aren't empty claims.
00:13:08The odds are that NATO is right and Russia knows it.
00:13:11Take Sikorsky's comments that Kuliningrad basically has no troops left.
00:13:16Though the Polish foreign minister didn't provide any numbers,
00:13:19his comments built on a similar claim he made in June 2025
00:13:21when Sikorsky declared that Russia had overstretched itself in Ukraine
00:13:25to the point where it had pulled soldiers out of Kuliningrad to fill gaps in its ground forces.
00:13:30The clear implication is that every soldier who leaves the exclave is a soldier who can't defend Kuliningrad from attack.
00:13:36The iPaper makes a similar claim, calling Russia's threats a paradox because it's trying to project strength
00:13:42at a time when Kuliningrad is at its weakest point in decades.
00:13:46The outlet says that NATO doesn't view Kuliningrad as a military threat,
00:13:50rather it views the exclave as a source of instability.
00:13:53A flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war perhaps,
00:13:56but not a direct threat to the NATO alliance despite its positioning.
00:14:00Engelsberg Ideas shares similar sentiments, calling Kuliningrad a bridge too far for Russia,
00:14:06as it argues that the exclave has become Russia's Baltic burden.
00:14:10And the Russian issue with Kuliningrad extends beyond its weakening military posture and into identity politics.
00:14:16During the Soviet era, Russia tried to simply erase centuries of history to turn Kuliningrad into a Russian outpost.
00:14:24It failed, as the collapse of the Soviet Union left an exclave with no real sense of identity, Russian or
00:14:30otherwise.
00:14:31Russia has treated Kuliningrad as little more than a military outpost for most of its time in control of the
00:14:36exclave,
00:14:37and that's another weakness for NATO to exploit.
00:14:39We take you back to an online referendum carried out in 2023.
00:14:43That referendum asked those living in several Russian regions, including Kuliningrad,
00:14:49whether they wanted independence from Russia.
00:14:51In Kuliningrad, 19.4% of the population amounting to 95,567 people took part.
00:14:59That's a remarkable turnout for an online vote that Russia would have deemed illegal.
00:15:0372.1% of those who voted said they wanted an independent Kuliningrad.
00:15:09Pile all of these problems on top of one another and you get a patch of Russian territory that is
00:15:14isolated from the Russian mainland,
00:15:16weakened militarily due to the demands of the Ukraine war, vulnerable to NATO's aerial power,
00:15:21and has a population that claims it would be happier to go it alone.
00:15:25None of this is good for Russia.
00:15:27And it's this weakness that makes Kuliningrad so dangerous.
00:15:30Russia knows that Kuliningrad can't defend itself and would be easily blockaded.
00:15:34That's why it's flinging around nuclear threats as a smokescreen to distract from the weakness.
00:15:39These threats, as is always the case with Russia, can't be dismissed out of hand.
00:15:44It won't have escaped NATO's or the UK's attention that Russia still maintains the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
00:15:50As the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation notes, Russia is estimated to have 5,977 nuclear warheads,
00:15:58almost 1,600 of which are actively deployed.
00:16:03Russia also has a full nuclear triad, which means it can launch nukes from land, sea, or air,
00:16:09and it has developed hypersonic missiles, such as the previously mentioned Oreshnik.
00:16:14In short, Russia is a clear nuclear threat.
00:16:17The question now is whether the rhetoric surrounding Kuliningrad is any different
00:16:21from the many other attempts at nuclear intimidation that Russia has made before.
00:16:26Russia's nuclear signaling has been almost constant since Putin launched his Ukraine invasion.
00:16:31Whenever something happens that Russia doesn't like, Kremlin cronies creep out of the shadows to say,
00:16:37Hey, remember that we have nuclear weapons and we're not afraid to use them.
00:16:41Russia has never used a nuclear weapon, and this nuclear posturing is nothing new.
00:16:45Still, Russia signals.
00:16:47Putin ordered Russia's nuclear forces to engage in a special regime of combat duty on February 27th.
00:16:54The Kremlin has made claims that it would use tactical nukes in Ukraine,
00:16:58and it has held exercises close to Ukraine's borders by way of Belarus to pump that threat.
00:17:02But nothing has happened.
00:17:04Will the latest threat related to Kuliningrad be any different?
00:17:07It appears unlikely, as Russia has said that it would use nukes if NATO threatened Kuliningrad.
00:17:12While that is a vague claim, we can assume this means the nuclear option is open
00:17:16if NATO attacks Kuliningrad.
00:17:18NATO isn't going to do that.
00:17:20At least, it won't attack Kuliningrad without Putin doing something that would cause an attack,
00:17:24such as launching an invasion of NATO territory.
00:17:27If World War III is to start, Kuliningrad would be an obvious flashpoint.
00:17:31But it likely won't be what kicks off the conflict.
00:17:34The vulnerable exclave is an obvious first target in a NATO response to a Russian attack,
00:17:39rather than the piece of territory that would be attacked to start the war.
00:17:42That's an important distinction.
00:17:45NATO and the UK need to be wary of Russia's nuclear threats, as they always are.
00:17:49But they will both see these threats as both a sign of weakness within Russia and Kuliningrad itself,
00:17:54and a threat.
00:17:55And it's all over a TV show.
00:17:57Paper-thin Putin rides again.
00:18:00Warning after warning is ringing out.
00:18:03The latest comes from the Danes, who say Russia is planning something in Europe.
00:18:08NATO will be tested once more, and this test may be bigger than anything that has come before.
00:18:14This is bad news.
00:18:16Russia is preparing to attack NATO.
00:18:18But though all signs seem to be pointing to all-out war, questions have to be asked.
00:18:23Is Putin really ready to escalate to that point?
00:18:26And if he is, is NATO ready to respond?
00:18:29On September 24th, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service, or DDIS, released a document in which it claimed that Russia is
00:18:36preparing to intensify its existing hybrid war against NATO.
00:18:41Members of NATO can expect more frequent sabotage attempts, along with intensified cyber attacks, the report claims.
00:18:48A combination of damage and casualties, all masked under the veil of plausible deniability, seems to be what Russia is
00:18:56aiming to achieve.
00:18:57And that's a major concern.
00:18:58It tells us that Putin and his cronies are increasingly willing to take risks against NATO,
00:19:03perhaps buoyed by a lack of real response to the hybrid warfare in which Russia is already engaged.
00:19:09We're seeing a shift in the Russian approach happen in real time here.
00:19:13But before we explain what that shift looks like, are you enjoying our reporting?
00:19:17Subscribe and share your thoughts below.
00:19:20And if you'd like to support the real people behind the channel, consider becoming a member for exclusive content.
00:19:26According to the DDIS, Russia's hybrid approach is in the process of morphing.
00:19:30Hybrid attacks conducted by Russia are nothing new.
00:19:34However, the past attacks, particularly those conducted during the early stages of the Ukraine invasion,
00:19:39were designed to create fear with the goal of weakening support for Ukraine.
00:19:43That hasn't worked.
00:19:45Though the US has stopped directly supporting Ukraine, that decision wasn't made out of fear.
00:19:50And in 2026, we've seen Europe do more than ever to expand its support,
00:19:55with the highlight being a $102 billion loan package backed by frozen Russian assets provided to Ukraine through 2026 and
00:20:03into 27.
00:20:04Faced with the failure of its intimidation tactics, Russia's focus has now shifted to causing as much disruption inside Europe
00:20:12as it possibly can.
00:20:13Sabotage attacks now target defense companies, seemingly in an attempt to remove the means of weapons production.
00:20:20Russia is also attacking rail infrastructure, especially if that infrastructure helps to get weapons into Ukraine.
00:20:28DDIS says that we can expect a lot more of this to come.
00:20:32Russia is escalating, and that may be a sign that it's gearing up for a war with NATO.
00:20:37A perfect example of Russia's altered approach comes from the attempted drone attacks at Leipzig airport in August.
00:20:43Germany has already linked those attacks to Russia, with Politico reporting that Germany now believes that Russian spies may have
00:20:51been involved.
00:20:51A Russian national with links to the country's military intelligence services may have worked alongside a Belarusian citizen to prepare
00:20:58the drone strikes.
00:20:59And though these strikes failed, as Germany was able to detect and stop the drones before they did any real
00:21:05damage,
00:21:06Leipzig shows us that Russia's approach is changing for one single reason.
00:21:10The drones carried explosives.
00:21:11That means these drones weren't intended to serve as a threat.
00:21:15Russia didn't just want Germany to know that it can get drones onto German territory.
00:21:20A strike was intended, likely against a Ukrainian cargo plane, on German soil.
00:21:25That is disruption made deadly.
00:21:27And for the DDIS, attacks like this one, and those it says are to come, are a sign that Russia
00:21:32is gearing up for something big.
00:21:34Danish intelligence isn't the only group within the NATO fold that is sounding the alarm.
00:21:38Its report is only the latest in a long line of warnings being delivered by officials and entities within NATO.
00:21:46But Russia is escalating to a level not seen before.
00:21:49Germany, which was the victim of the Leipzig drone incidents, has long indicated that Russia is preparing something big.
00:21:55Back in May, General Karsten Breuer, who is the Inspector General of the German military, delivered a stark warning.
00:22:01The threat is very real, and it's very close.
00:22:04As a soldier, I'm looking at the worst case scenario and saying that by 2029, we have to be ready.
00:22:10We have to be ready to deter Russia, so it never even thinks about it, Breuer said during a gathering
00:22:15of German Catholics.
00:22:17A couple of months later, the news broke that US intelligence had warned Poland that Russia was planning an attack
00:22:22of some description against them.
00:22:24That warning was delivered in early July.
00:22:27At the end of that very month, a Russian Kh-101 missile crossed the border into Poland and crashed 90
00:22:34kilometers deep into the country's territory.
00:22:36Thankfully, nobody was hurt.
00:22:38But this was an explosive reminder that warnings about what Russia is planning need to be taken seriously.
00:22:44And those warnings keep on coming.
00:22:47September 24th didn't just see the publication of the DDIS report.
00:22:51According to The Independent, the CIA believes that Russia is getting ready to attack a NATO nation, potentially France, Italy
00:22:57or Spain, with drones launched from sea platforms.
00:23:00Poland knows just how accurate these warnings from the US can be, so all three nations have to be on
00:23:06high alert.
00:23:07Speaking of Poland, its foreign minister, Radislav Sikorsky, warned on September 25th that Russia is planning a major operation as
00:23:14early as this year.
00:23:15Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, Sikorsky said,
00:23:18We are receiving information, we are not revealing the sources, but there are many of them, that Russia is preparing
00:23:23something big this year.
00:23:25What that operation might be isn't clear.
00:23:27However, there are suggestions of a Russian false flag operation, which Putin might then try to use to justify a
00:23:33larger campaign against NATO.
00:23:35Over and over, we see the warning being delivered.
00:23:38And they lead us to an obvious question.
00:23:40Is Russia really getting ready for a full-blown war?
00:23:43There are certainly suggestions that it is, and the escalating hybrid warfare we've touched on serves as the main evidence.
00:23:50The incidents in Poland and Germany are far from the only examples of Russia's hybrid attacks getting decidedly more dangerous
00:23:57and certainly more threatening toward NATO-aligned nations.
00:24:01Take what happened near the border between Ukraine and Poland in mid-September as an example.
00:24:07Russia launched a drone attack at Yahudin, which is a key train station that links Ukraine to Europe.
00:24:13A drone struck the engine of a train at that station, though that wasn't the real headline.
00:24:17This station had been used by several Western dignitaries, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, shortly before.
00:24:24In fact, Ukraine's railway authority, Ukrazaalitsnitsya, suggested that Russia may have been targeting the train carrying Johnson, and it was
00:24:32only foiled by a timetable change.
00:24:34The former UK Prime Minister's train had left the station earlier than expected because of the timetable change, due to
00:24:41constant threats of Russian strikes.
00:24:42Was this a threat from Russia, or a legitimate attempt to take out a major UK political figure?
00:24:48We don't know for sure, and from the Russian perspective, that's the entire point.
00:24:52Beyond this attack, which technically happened in Ukraine, though it threatened NATO-aligned figures,
00:24:58Russia has been testing European defences with drone incursions constantly.
00:25:02The period between August 2024 and February 2026 saw the International Institute for Strategic Studies map out 144 aerial incidents
00:25:11across 13 nations, clearly indicating a campaign.
00:25:15We've seen Russian drones launching from Russian Shadow Fleet vessels, many of which fly over military facilities and civilian airports.
00:25:22NATO has been forced to scramble fighter jets to deal with Russian drones many times over the last year or
00:25:28so.
00:25:28We're also seeing Russia expand its drone campaign.
00:25:32Incursions that were once limited to Eastern and Central Europe are now finding their way into countries located further away
00:25:38on the continent,
00:25:39as we saw with the drone incursions into Belgium in late 2025.
00:25:43By the way, Belgium's Defence Minister Theo Franken is another figure who has warned that Russian hybrid attacks against NATO
00:25:49nations are going to intensify.
00:25:51Russia, air attack, air attack, air attack. This is the biggest threat. So we need air defence, air defence, air
00:25:58defence, Franken declared during his appearance at the Euronews Defence and Space Summit in Brussels in late September.
00:26:05We need to have more stocks, more production, scale up production and a large industrial base.
00:26:11Everything has to go faster. There will be more hybrid threat actions in the next few months. It will be
00:26:16a dark winter for Europe, he added.
00:26:18Adding to the drones, we're seeing increasing evidence that Russia is sending assassins and saboteurs into NATO territory.
00:26:25Just eight days before the DDIS warning, the US revealed that it had charged five people over links to Russian
00:26:31plots,
00:26:32which included carrying out surveillance, recruiting operatives on American soil and planning assassinations.
00:26:37On the sabotage front, we mentioned Russia's attacks against defence companies earlier.
00:26:43On September 29th, Estonia blamed Russia for an August arson attack against Milrem Robotics, which is a defence company based
00:26:51in the Estonian capital of Tallinn.
00:26:53Russia denies any involvement, of course, but there are other examples.
00:26:56What happened in Leipzig, an explosion at an Italian munitions factory and an arson at a defence plant in Bulgaria
00:27:03are all being linked to Russian operatives.
00:27:05Again, it's that shift that we were talking about. It's not about fear anymore.
00:27:11Russia is actively trying to do damage in any way that it can, to the point where it's escalating to
00:27:15direct attacks that it's just barely able to deny,
00:27:19even as every scrap of evidence points toward the Kremlin.
00:27:22Now, we have reports of drones being launched from the Shadow Fleet ships, turning Russia's sanctions avoiding shady vessels into
00:27:29a real threat to NATO.
00:27:30Some might call this an escalation. Others, a natural progression of what Russia was already doing.
00:27:36Whatever way you slice it, Russia is getting more dangerous and NATO needs to pay attention.
00:27:42However, there are also suggestions that Russia may not be gearing up for the full-on war that some believe
00:27:47is coming.
00:27:47Before we dig deeper, you're watching The Military Show.
00:27:50If you haven't subscribed yet, now's the perfect time to hit the button.
00:27:54And if you want to know whenever we publish a new video, ring the notification bell to get the alerts.
00:28:01As worrying as the DDIS report is, it does come with a caveat that suggests Danish intelligence may not believe
00:28:07that a war with Russia is imminent.
00:28:09Note that we said not imminent rather than not possible.
00:28:13While the threat of hybrid escalation is rising, as is the possibility of Russia launching a limited attack, such as
00:28:20an isolated long-range strike against a NATO nation,
00:28:23Putin may stop short of a full-blown invasion.
00:28:26The report says such a possibility can't be ruled out, though the DDIS believes it to be highly unlikely.
00:28:31And if it were to come, Russia would need about six months to build up the forces it needs, with
00:28:35such a build-up being clear to NATO as it happened.
00:28:38Also, Russia is still bogged down in Ukraine and losing upward of 40,000 soldiers per month, which will play
00:28:44into Putin's thinking.
00:28:45The DDIS believes there is no prospect of Russia making a breakthrough in Ukraine over the next six months and
00:28:51likely longer.
00:28:52As long as that's the case, Russia will be hard-pressed to build up troops on NATO borders in preparation
00:28:57for an invasion.
00:28:59However, there can be no sighs of relief breathed within NATO.
00:29:02Just because an invasion may not be imminent, that doesn't mean that Russia isn't planning for the future.
00:29:08We see that in the hybrid attacks, which are designed to weaken NATO nations.
00:29:14Anything that weakens an enemy is a good thing for Russia if it intends to start a full war in
00:29:18the future.
00:29:19Speaking to Canada's CBC, Justin Bronk, who is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank,
00:29:26also says that Russia may not be ready to go yet, but it is preparing.
00:29:30That doesn't mean they've decided to do it, Bronk says of NATO's fears of a Russian invasion, adding,
00:29:36but it does mean it's probably under active planning and therefore the risk of it has risen significantly.
00:29:42For now, Russia is denying that anything untoward is going on.
00:29:45The Kremlin's response to all of the allegations of hybrid warfare is to first deny, then flip the script.
00:29:51Russia is trying to frame the West as a warmongering collective that is trying to hurt poor little Russia.
00:29:56It's all nonsense, of course. Putin has spent well over two decades trying to demonize NATO in Russia,
00:30:02and he's now using hybrid warfare to coax the sort of response that he could use to justify whatever he
00:30:07has planned next.
00:30:09Still, the denials are coming thick and fast.
00:30:11Putin decried all of the NATO warnings as provocations and an attempt at deliberate escalation during a press poll in
00:30:19the wake of the publication of the DDIS report.
00:30:22He also claimed that there were no grounds for Russia to attack a European country.
00:30:26So that's it then. Trust Putin, because we all know that when he says that Russia isn't planning an invasion,
00:30:32he really means it.
00:30:33After all, this is the same man who on February 15th, 2022 declared that, of course, Russia didn't want to
00:30:40see war in Europe,
00:30:41as Russia was building up troops on the border with Ukraine.
00:30:44Russia started blaming NATO for escalating these issues with Ukraine ahead of an invasion that would come just a few
00:30:51short days after Putin claimed he wanted no war.
00:30:54Oh wait, we were supposed to be explaining why Putin's word should be trusted, weren't we?
00:30:58That's impossible.
00:31:00The man lies so much that we're not even sure that he knows whether what comes out of his mouth
00:31:04is true or not anymore.
00:31:06What we are seeing here are some eerie parallels to the weeks leading up to the Ukraine invasion, however.
00:31:12The troop build-up may not be happening yet, though Russia is reviving or building military infrastructure in border regions,
00:31:18as we see near Finland and other Nordic nations.
00:31:20That infrastructure may soon allow Russia to place over 100,000 soldiers on NATO's borders.
00:31:26Putin is issuing denials of his supposed intentions, and he's claiming that NATO is escalating,
00:31:32just as he did ahead of launching his so-called special military operation.
00:31:36So, though the DDIS may not believe an invasion is imminent, we're seeing patterns of behaviour repeat.
00:31:42It may take a while to come, but these patterns suggest that Putin wants to start a war with NATO.
00:31:47Ahead of that happening, NATO needs to answer a key question.
00:31:51Is NATO ready for the fight?
00:31:53If you were to look solely at the numbers, then you would think that Russia doesn't stand a chance.
00:31:58In every single category, NATO, operating at full power, is larger and brings more military might to the table than
00:32:05Russia.
00:32:05NATO has over 3.6 million active military personnel compared to Russia's 1.32 million.
00:32:12It has about five times the number of military aircraft, a much larger naval fleet and more tanks now that
00:32:18Russia's fleet has been shattered in Ukraine,
00:32:20and about a million more armoured fighting vehicles.
00:32:23All of these tools of conventional warfare are important, of course.
00:32:26The problem is that what Russia has planned may not be conventional.
00:32:31The drone issue alone should give NATO some cause for concern, as Russia has many more drones than NATO, and
00:32:37it's very well versed in using them.
00:32:40Politico says Russia plans to build over 36,000 long-range drones in 2026,
00:32:45with the Moscow Times adding that Russia is aiming to manufacture 7.3 million FPV drones this year.
00:32:51NATO may have woken up to the importance of drones, but it isn't anywhere near that level of production yet.
00:32:57Ukraine is, and it could be brought into the NATO fold to help with drones, assuming a war against Russia
00:33:02starts while the conflict in Ukraine continues to rage.
00:33:05But even if we take drones out of the equation for a moment, whatever Russia is planning may not come
00:33:10as expected.
00:33:11We mentioned false flag operations earlier. Such an operation would be a true test of NATO boundaries,
00:33:18and Russia could launch an attack, presumably against itself in some way, and then try to blame NATO for it.
00:33:25Thus, the justification for whatever Putin wants to do next would be solidified, and a step closer to war would
00:33:30be taken.
00:33:31NATO is ready for something like that, claims Admiral Giuseppe Carvo Dragone, who is the chair of the NATO military
00:33:38committee.
00:33:40Dragone also warns Russia that its hybrid attacks aren't having the intended effect.
00:33:44I want to be clear, these attempts are not dividing us.
00:33:48They are sharpening our tools, making us much more united and determined, the Italian Admiral declared on September 19th.
00:33:55In a September 28th report, Lithuania's LRT also claims that European NATO is mulling over several contingency plans for dealing
00:34:03with whatever Russia has planned,
00:34:05from a limited strike to full invasion.
00:34:07We are not talking about a conventional war, we are talking about all kinds of provocations,
00:34:12all kinds of acts of sabotage, all kinds of tests, and definitely this is something that is already happening as
00:34:18we speak,
00:34:19declared Latvian President Edgars Rinkovic in a September 21st interview at the UN headquarters.
00:34:24These contingencies seem to be focused on what NATO would need to do logistically if Poland or one of the
00:34:31Baltic states were attacked,
00:34:32an unnamed European official told LRT.
00:34:35However, these discussions have yet to produce any official guidelines or lead to real preparations being put in place.
00:34:42That could end up being the problem.
00:34:43NATO seems to be relying on the deterrent effects of Article 5, which would presumably be triggered in the case
00:34:50of a Russian invasion,
00:34:51resulting in all of NATO coming to the defense of whichever single nation Putin chooses to invade.
00:34:57But if Russia goes down the unconventional route, perhaps with a deniable strike or a very limited invasion,
00:35:03it starts asking questions.
00:35:05For instance, what happens if Russia snatches a small piece of territory in a Baltic state?
00:35:10Not much, a few square kilometers perhaps.
00:35:12Would NATO bring its full force to defend such a small parcel of land?
00:35:17Putin would love to know the answer to that question,
00:35:20which is why he's escalating and changing the scope of Russia's hybrid strikes.
00:35:24Russia wants to know just how far it can push before NATO pushes back.
00:35:29That's where the danger lies.
00:35:31Perhaps the one thing that could spark a war between Russia and NATO won't be a deliberate or calculated action.
00:35:37It could be a mistake, a miscalculation that leads to escalation beyond what was intended.
00:35:43Imagine a Russian drone or missile strike which was intended to disrupt, leading to the deaths of people in a
00:35:50NATO nation.
00:35:50Or a NATO response to a Russian incursion causing the death of a Russian.
00:35:55The impact of one incident like this, even if it is a mistake,
00:35:59could kickstart a renewed cycle of escalation that is far more dangerous than what we see today.
00:36:04Maybe that's what Putin wants.
00:36:06For now we have more warnings being issued and the likelihood of escalated hybrid warfare in Europe in the coming
00:36:11months.
00:36:12It's debatable whether NATO is truly ready right now, but moves are being made to prepare for whatever might come.
00:36:19About 20 years ago, Green Day sang Wake Me Up When September Ends.
00:36:24Putin would rather have stayed in dreamland in September as waking up means that he is forced to endure a
00:36:30very real nightmare.
00:36:32Records have been broken. Again. Russian blood has been spilled by the barrel. Again.
00:36:38Bloody September 2026 is officially Russia's worst ever month of the war in Ukraine.
00:36:45And Putin now faces a manpower crisis that is only getting worse as we approach the end of 2026.
00:36:5346,230 record enemy losses in 2026 results of the defense forces combat operations in September.
00:37:01Ukraine's general staff declared in a triumphant October 1st telegram post.
00:37:06The number is a revelation and a record during no other month of the war in Ukraine has Russia lost
00:37:12so many soldiers to death or injury.
00:37:15And according to United24 media, within this record lies another.
00:37:19Ukraine has backed up its best ever month for Russian casualties by delivering its best single day total against Russia.
00:37:26That news comes from the UK's defense intelligence, which revealed that September 28th saw Russia record 2,090 casualties during
00:37:35the previous 24 hours.
00:37:37This is the highest of what is now four days when Russia's total daily losses have exceeded 2,000.
00:37:43And all of this tells us one very important thing.
00:37:47Ukraine is getting deadlier with each passing month. The numbers prove it.
00:37:52Ukraine's record-breaking September comes on the back of several other months when Russia's casualty rate has exceeded 40,000.
00:37:58And it's also part of an upward trend of Russian losses that we've seen throughout 2026.
00:38:03We're about to tell you more, but before we do, are you enjoying our reporting?
00:38:07Subscribe and share your thoughts below.
00:38:09And if you'd like to support the real people behind the channel, consider becoming a member for exclusive content.
00:38:15Russia started the year by losing 31,700 soldiers in January.
00:38:20Following that came the only significant decrease in troop casualties that Russia has enjoyed this year,
00:38:25as only 26,090 of its soldiers succumbed to death or injury during the second month of the year.
00:38:31We say only.
00:38:33That's still more than 10,000 more soldiers than Russia lost during its entire decade-long conflict with Afghanistan.
00:38:41All in a single month.
00:38:43Since February, Russia's monthly losses have snowballed into a record that should leave Putin red-faced.
00:38:48March saw Russia's losses hit 31,960, the Kyiv Post reports.
00:38:54That was followed by 32,980 in April, 33,760 in May, and 39,290 in June.
00:39:04Then Ukraine ramped up.
00:39:06July saw Russia lose 42,860.
00:39:09Then another decrease, with August's number landing at 42,020.
00:39:14So, well done Russia, we guess.
00:39:15You managed to drop your casualty rate by 840 in a month, yet still somehow landed well over 40,000.
00:39:22Then came September, and Ukraine made up for a slightly slower August, with a record-breaking month.
00:39:27A record-breaking day, and a record-breaking smile on Ukraine's face,
00:39:32as it watches Russia's army crumble against its defences.
00:39:35What we see here is a near-constant increase in Russian casualties,
00:39:39as Ukraine is now killing or wounding 45.8% more Russian soldiers than it was in January.
00:39:46A combination of Ukraine's brilliant defences and Russia's tactical ineptitude
00:39:50is responsible for the absolute shitshow that is the Russian offensive right now.
00:39:55But the Kremlin should have seen this coming.
00:39:57If not for the arrogance of Putin and his cronies,
00:40:00Russia might have been able to prepare for what Ukraine outright told the world it was going to do
00:40:04at the beginning of the year.
00:40:05Back in January, former Ukrainian Defence Minister Mikhailo Fedorov
00:40:09set his country a target of 50,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded per month.
00:40:14It seemed an ambitious, and some might say crazy, target at the time.
00:40:19Now it's very much in reach.
00:40:21A little over 3,700 added to the September total,
00:40:24and Ukraine will be right where Fedorov said he wanted them to be nine months ago.
00:40:302026 has been painful for Russia for so many reasons.
00:40:33Beyond the records, Russia has also surpassed the grim milestone of 1.5 million casualties in Ukraine
00:40:39during the last few weeks.
00:40:40Officially, the number stands at 1,540,700 as of October 4th, Ukraine's Ministry of Finance reports.
00:40:49That's over 100 times the number of soldiers that Russia lost in the Afghanistan conflict we mentioned.
00:40:55100 times more soldiers lost in less than half the time.
00:40:59That's a hell of an achievement, Putin.
00:41:02But what is even more remarkable is how very little Russia has been getting in return for its massive sacrifices
00:41:08in 2026.
00:41:09So far this year, Russia has managed to achieve no significant results against Ukraine,
00:41:15and at various points, has actively lost territory to Ukraine.
00:41:18We'll be digging into some of the September losses later in the video.
00:41:21But for now, Russia has failed to make any real gains during the big spring and summer offensive
00:41:27that was supposed to collapse Ukraine's defenses in Donetsk.
00:41:30Instead, all that Russia has for those months is 220,000 soldiers down,
00:41:35and practically nothing to show for it.
00:41:37Russia is also lying about how much Ukrainian territory it controls,
00:41:41to the tune of 5,000 square kilometers that the Kremlin claims it has that isn't actually in Russian hands.
00:41:47This is what the all-powerful Russian military has been reduced to.
00:41:51An army of cannon fodder, led by people who fake gains to hide how badly they're failing.
00:41:56No wonder that the Russians who aren't dying on the battlefield are trying to get out as quickly as they
00:42:00can.
00:42:01Just a couple of days before Ukraine's general staff revealed Russia's latest humiliation,
00:42:06the partisan group Ateche exposed a series of leaked files that show us just how bad the morale problem in
00:42:12the Russian military has become.
00:42:14Those leaked files, which date back to March 5, 2025,
00:42:18demonstrate major disciplinary problems within Russia's 127th Motor Rifle Division.
00:42:24Thousands of dead and missing, more than 9,000 wounded, mass involuntary disappearances and cases of suicide.
00:42:30Such numbers appear in the division's internal reporting, Ateche's cyber arm revealed after getting its hands on the leaked documents.
00:42:38And the worst of it is that this is a best-case scenario for Russia presented in internal documents
00:42:43that are supposed to present as rosy a picture as possible.
00:42:47The obtained results indicate significant discrepancies between the figures that appear in the internal documentation
00:42:52and the scale of losses that can be recovered from the totality of available data, Ateche continues.
00:42:58Specifically, the numbers that the 127th Motor Rifle Division recorded back in March, 2025,
00:43:04amounted to 1,762 dead, 9,018 wounded, and 1,863 who are simply missing in action,
00:43:14presumed dead, injured, or captured, United 24 media reports.
00:43:17And these are Russian numbers. The real figures are much higher. The questions have to be asked.
00:43:23If one Russian unit is reporting on death and morale issues at such a massive scale, dating back well over
00:43:29a year,
00:43:30just how bad must it be to serve in the Russian military right now?
00:43:33And how many of Russia's units have reported similar figures and we don't know about it yet?
00:43:38Those questions may remain unanswered unless more documents are leaked.
00:43:41However, what we see in all of this, from the record-breaking September, to the god-awful Russian 2026,
00:43:47to even Russian units being forced to admit the scale of their losses, is that Russia is getting desperate.
00:43:52How do we know?
00:43:53All of these losses are happening at a time when Russian military recruitment is falling off a cliff,
00:43:58forcing the Kremlin to rely on ever more desperate measures just to get soldiers into its army.
00:44:02From forced recruiting to pressuring conscripts and now the spectre of mobilisation looming,
00:44:08Russia is trying everything that it can think of to boost its flagging numbers.
00:44:12You're about to discover the true scale of Russia's manpower problem.
00:44:15But before you do, you're watching the military show.
00:44:18This is the kind of insight that you want to see.
00:44:21Make sure you are subscribed and have notifications enabled.
00:44:24We break it down like this every single week.
00:44:27In its report on Russia's mind-blowing September losses, London Loves Business makes a very interesting point.
00:44:33It notes that December 2025 was the first month of the war in Ukraine when Russian volunteer recruitment
00:44:38failed to exceed the personnel losses Russia is experiencing on the front.
00:44:42Ever since then, barring perhaps February, that has been the trend for Russia.
00:44:47We know this thanks to an August 14th report in The Guardian.
00:44:50The outlet reports on comments made by Yanis Kluger, who is a Russia expert at the German Institute for International
00:44:56and Security Affairs.
00:44:58According to Kluger, Russia is recruiting soldiers at a rate of roughly 1,000 per day.
00:45:02That would mean that Russia's best months will deliver 31,000 volunteer recruits into its military.
00:45:08That sounds like a lot, and it is.
00:45:10But think back to the monthly figures for 2026 that we shared earlier.
00:45:13February is the only month of 2026 so far that saw Russia's losses end up being lower than its monthly
00:45:20recruitment rate.
00:45:21Every single month since, along with January before, has seen Russia lose more soldiers than it can hire.
00:45:27September gives Russia a 15,000 soldier deficit on the back of two months where the deficit was around 10
00:45:33,000.
00:45:34This tells us two things.
00:45:36First, Russia's active military inside Ukraine is getting smaller and weaker by the month.
00:45:40Second, Russia is very clearly struggling to recruit at the level it needs to recruit to make up for its
00:45:46losses.
00:45:47Year by year and month by month, it's harder for the Russian army to find people, says Grigori Sverdlin,
00:45:53who is the director of Get Lost, which is a non-profit organization that helps Russian soldiers to desert from
00:45:58Putin's army.
00:46:00Sverdlin sums it up perfectly, as Russia's volunteer recruitment simply isn't at the level that it needs to be to
00:46:05sustain the types of losses we're now seeing.
00:46:07The result is that Russia is getting desperate.
00:46:10And we're seeing that in the tactics Russia is using to try to bribe, cajole and outright con people to
00:46:15serve in its military.
00:46:17Russia's tried and true tactic for much of the invasion of Ukraine has been to offer obscene amounts of money
00:46:22to anybody and everybody,
00:46:24in the hope that it will be enough to convince them to fight and likely die for Putin's cause.
00:46:28The Financial Times says that new soldiers not only receive massive salaries, but are also getting signing bonuses of up
00:46:35to $56,000.
00:46:37To understand how ludicrous that is, the average wage in Russia is about $1,380 per month, according to Trading
00:46:45Economics.
00:46:46That adds up to around $16,560 per year, so Russia is dangling signing bonuses that are over 3.3
00:46:54times higher than Russia's average annual wage in front of potential recruits.
00:46:58And that's paid on top of a salary that is also much higher than the Russian average.
00:47:01But the money isn't working as well as it used to work.
00:47:04They replenish the losses with people who sign new contracts and there haven't been enough people willing to sign up
00:47:09for quite some time,
00:47:10even for the huge sums offered in the contracts, Sverdlin declares.
00:47:14If cash can't do it, Russia has to try even more desperate measures, especially as the gap between recruitment and
00:47:20losses widens.
00:47:21Take reports out of Russia's Belgorod region as an example.
00:47:25There, officials are approaching what they deem to be suitable candidates for conversations about military service.
00:47:32Those candidates are almost inevitably men who are in debt, have recently been discharged from military training, or men who
00:47:39are serving suspended prison sentences.
00:47:41In other words, suitable candidates are vulnerable people who Russia can cajole into serving.
00:47:46In other regions, the tactics are much more forceful.
00:47:49The Financial Times reports on Pensa, where police are snatching people from the streets and raiding workplaces to find people
00:47:56they can force to sign contracts.
00:47:58The word volunteer must have a different definition in Russia.
00:48:02In Kabarovsk, police regularly hold conversations with suspects involved in criminal investigations.
00:48:08Police in the region happily say they held 2,500 of these conversations in 2025, resulting in 32 people signing
00:48:16up to fight.
00:48:17We imagine these conversations essentially amounted to offering to trade whatever sentence the criminal would have gotten for their crime
00:48:23for army service.
00:48:24This is the reality of Russian military recruitment in 2026, and it still isn't working.
00:48:30Neither is another of Russia's tactics, which is to get as many foreign people to fight for Putin's cause as
00:48:35it can.
00:48:36In a September 27th report, Daily Beirut revealed that German sources say that Russia is ramping up its foreign recruitment.
00:48:43Not by offering positions in its military, of course.
00:48:46Trickery is a twisted art form for Russia here, as it generally recruits foreign fighters using fake job offers to
00:48:52lure them into Russia.
00:48:53The Dominican Republic is one of Russia's latest targets, leading to authorities in that Caribbean nation issuing warnings to be
00:49:00on the lookout for fake Russian job posts.
00:49:02This is as disgusting as it is desperate of Russia.
00:49:05The tactic is clearly to deceive people into thinking they can start a new life in Russia, only to force
00:49:11them into Ukraine once Russia has its hands on them.
00:49:14Putin treats people as disposable commodities, which is exactly how Russia has gotten to the point where it's lost over
00:49:2046,000 soldiers in a single month.
00:49:23Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also highlighted Russia's fraudulent foreign recruitment, as well as Russia's receipt of soldiers from North
00:49:30Korea.
00:49:30Russia now has 8,000 North Korean soldiers serving in Ukraine, and another 10,000 are being trained for deployment.
00:49:38Russia is paying for all of this by various illicit means, and in return for this help, for the technical
00:49:43assistance by Russia on North Korean territory,
00:49:45there has been set up a production line for Shahid-type strike drones, Zelenskyy declared in his September 28th evening
00:49:52address to the Ukrainian people.
00:49:53And still none of it is working.
00:49:55Russia still has a massive volunteer recruitment deficit.
00:49:58So we're seeing more desperate measures coming into play, as Russia has announced a new wave of conscription that it
00:50:05hopes will serve as a pipeline to get soldiers into Ukraine.
00:50:08That's according to an October 1st report by Medusa, which says that Colonel General Yevgeny Budinsky,
00:50:13who is the head of the main organizational and mobilization directorate of the general staff of the armed forces in
00:50:19Russia,
00:50:19has revealed that 120,000 Russian citizens will be drafted into military service this fall.
00:50:25Now, this is conscription. Mandatory service and training, but not mandatory signing up to fight in Ukraine.
00:50:32At least that's according to Russia's general staff, which claims that these conscripts will not be sent to carry out
00:50:38special military operation tasks in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics,
00:50:42the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, or on Ukrainian territory. We don't believe a word of it.
00:50:47The reason is a June report in France 24, which reveals that conscripts are regularly pressured into signing contracts to
00:50:54go and fight in Ukraine.
00:50:56Conscription is now Russia's way of getting people to enter the Russian war machine, after which they'll face months of
00:51:02authorities shoving contracts in their faces.
00:51:04Many end up signing these volunteer contracts, but they never would have ended up in Ukraine were it not for
00:51:10Russia's conscription efforts.
00:51:12Still, we're going to say something that feels like it's becoming a refrain for this portion of the video. It
00:51:17isn't working.
00:51:17And that brings us nicely back to Russia's nightmare of a September.
00:51:21You see, it's not just the record breaking losses that will anger Putin and his cronies.
00:51:25Those losses have come during a month when Russia utterly failed to make any progress at all in Ukraine.
00:51:31Not that you would know that if you listened to Russia.
00:51:33In its October 2nd assessment of Russia's offensive, the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, points out that
00:51:40Russia claims to have captured 1,301 square kilometers of Ukraine in September.
00:51:45Immediately, that figure doesn't pass the sniff test for anybody who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention to
00:51:50the war in Ukraine.
00:51:52According to Putin, Russia has managed to claim about 2.5 times more of Ukraine's territory than it has in
00:51:57previous months.
00:51:58But it's all lies. As the ISW puts it, these claims are so far from reality as to resemble hallucinations.
00:52:06Russia's actual September results, the ISW says, are that it lost over 46,000 soldiers to gain, well, nothing.
00:52:14Worse than that, Russia actually lost territory, as Ukraine's Operation Vivaldi has liberated settlements and taken strategic ground in the
00:52:23Donetsk region.
00:52:23Putin is clearly lost in delusion.
00:52:26That may be why we haven't yet seen the one thing that Russia will inevitably have to do to make
00:52:31up for its combination of massive losses and complete lack of progress, mobilization.
00:52:36We haven't seen it yet, but it's coming.
00:52:38According to the International Centre for Defence and Security, France's President Emmanuel Macron has said there are several signs that
00:52:46Russia is preparing to mobilize about 300,000 soldiers to go and fight in Donetsk.
00:52:51It's clear what Russia intends to do, Macron says, with the only question being whether Putin will announce the mobilization
00:52:57or just do it and hope that nobody notices.
00:52:59If this is true, and Zelensky has also claimed that this is what the Kremlin is cooking up, then it
00:53:05shows us how desperate Russia has become.
00:53:07Its recruitment efforts are failing, and Russia is losing too many soldiers,
00:53:11the point where Putin is now being forced to consider a policy that he knows will be extremely unpopular.
00:53:16But what other option does Russia have?
00:53:18According to the Moscow Times, activists inside Russia are already preparing for the worst,
00:53:24especially now that the Kremlin has engineered Russia's State Duma elections to make it seem as though support for Putin
00:53:29and, by extension, his war is high.
00:53:32Putin, delusional as he is, has likely been emboldened by this result.
00:53:36And he may think that mobilization will go over well with the Russian public.
00:53:39Perhaps he has forgotten what happened during the partial mobilization of September 2022,
00:53:44which led to tens of thousands of Russians leaving the country.
00:53:47It's clear at this point that Putin is never going to stop in Ukraine.
00:53:50In fact, as senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute William Dixon puts it,
00:53:56Putin may be laying the groundwork for mobilization by targeting NATO nations.
00:54:01The potential is that the Baltic states could be part of these false flag operations
00:54:05that could provide the justification for military conscription in Russia, Dixon declares.
00:54:10So that's what Russia's people have to look forward to in the near future.
00:54:14They've already seen their president break promise after promise about his so-called special military operation.
00:54:19After September, 46,230 more Russian families are dealing with the heartbreak of dead or injured loved ones,
00:54:27all because of Putin's war. More is coming.
00:54:30And when it does, Putin's insanity will likely mean that September doesn't hold the title of the bloodiest month of
00:54:35the war for too long.
00:54:37After all, Russia seems to have no plan other than to throw meat into the grinder and hope that it
00:54:42all works out.
00:54:44Somewhere under the ground in eastern Ukraine, there's probably a room where the walls are made of monitors.
00:54:50It streams videos from drones, and the software draws colored frames around the things it sees.
00:54:56Green for Russian equipment, blue for Ukrainian forces, orange when the machine can't tell friend from foe.
00:55:02And then, one morning, New York Times reporters who were standing in that bunker said a frame turned red.
00:55:08It was a single Russian soldier, sprinting along a tree line, trying to cross open ground before something in the
00:55:14sky noticed him.
00:55:16Then, an officer typed his coordinates into a laptop, and a diamond-shaped marker appeared on a digital map.
00:55:22The same mark showed on the screens of every unit in the neighborhood.
00:55:25Within minutes, three attack drones were in the air, and closing in to take their shot.
00:55:30Ukraine calls this software Delta.
00:55:33In May 2026, the Secretary of the Army told the Senate Armed Services Committee that even the US military had
00:55:39not achieved this level of integration.
00:55:41According to him, the Ukrainians have built something that folds every drone, every sensor, and every shooting platform onto a
00:55:48single network.
00:55:49And that something is what the US Army's systems need.
00:55:52So, today, we'll look at where Delta came from, which is a much stranger story than you'd expect.
00:55:58We'll go under the hood and look at what the system is actually made of.
00:56:02And we'll also look at what it has and hasn't done on the battlefield.
00:56:05But before we can do that, make sure to subscribe to The Military Show to stay up to date with
00:56:11all the newest developments in the war in Ukraine and global geopolitics.
00:56:15And if you want to see even more content, you can become a member to get access to stuff we
00:56:20don't publish for everyone.
00:56:21With that, let's start at where Delta was born, an origin story that involves neither a defense ministry nor a
00:56:28large military contractor.
00:56:30In 2014, as Russian-backed separatist forces fought Ukrainian units in the Donbas, a group of Ukrainian volunteers formed an
00:56:38outfit called Ero-Rozvidka.
00:56:40When translated, it roughly means aerial reconnaissance.
00:56:44These people were engineers, IT people, hobbyist drone builders, and their original ambition was to use small reconnaissance drones to
00:56:51spot targets for artillery, effectively retiring the binoculars.
00:56:55They succeeded at the spotting part almost immediately, and then they ran straight into the actual problem, which is the
00:57:01one that's haunted armies since gunpowder.
00:57:03The drone could see the target, but getting that information to the guns took a chain of radio calls.
00:57:09By the time the coordinates had been relayed, confirmed, plotted, and fired on, the target had usually driven away.
00:57:15So the group started writing software to close the gap.
00:57:18It began as a shared digital map that units could pin enemy positions to.
00:57:22NATO put money behind the effort with the hope of nudging Ukraine toward the alliance's own habits of fast, cross
00:57:28-unit coordination.
00:57:30Sources disagree slightly on the exact birth year of the software itself, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
00:57:36or CSIS, dating the first digital map to 2016, while other accounts place it around 2015.
00:57:43But what's not disputed is the nature of the project.
00:57:47Volunteers built it from the bottom up because someone needed it.
00:57:50And then the Ukrainian army largely refused to use it, until February 2022.
00:57:56As Russian columns pushed toward Kyiv, the group was called in to help find the weak points in the advance.
00:58:02They worked from a headquarters inside a city, and they did something with Delta that they couldn't do with a
00:58:07paper map.
00:58:08They poured everything into it at once.
00:58:10Drone footage, reconnaissance reports, even civilian tips were collated, using the help of ordinary people watching Russian armor roll past
00:58:18their windows and reporting what they saw.
00:58:21Delta stitched that data into a live picture of where the Russian advance actually was.
00:58:26Within days, Ukrainian counter-assault teams were hitting the soft joints in those columns, and the columns started pulling back.
00:58:33That was the moment the argument ended.
00:58:35A system the army had spent years ignoring had just helped save the capital.
00:58:40From there, it spread through the force.
00:58:42And by the summer of 2023, the Defense Ministry had formally designated it the Unified Battlefield Management System for Ukraine's
00:58:50entire defense sector.
00:58:51Now, let's open it up, because Battlefield Management System is one of those phrases that means nothing until you look
00:58:58at the parts.
00:58:58The first thing to understand is that Delta lives in the cloud, on servers hosted outside Ukraine.
00:59:04That was a deliberate decision, approved by the government in February 2023.
00:59:09The logic was that Russia couldn't destroy the system's cloud infrastructure with a strike if that infrastructure was hosted outside
00:59:16Ukraine.
00:59:16The trade-off is that the cloud software needs connectivity, which is not something the frontline reliably has.
00:59:22However, Starlink terminals have become the go-to solution, as the system has become more and more widespread across the
00:59:28frontline.
00:59:29The Delta system itself runs on ordinary hardware, like laptops, tablets and phones.
00:59:35Access is tiered, so a squad leader and a core commander see different slices of the same picture.
00:59:40The foundation of the whole thing is still that original digital map, now called Delta Monitor.
00:59:46It's a layered interactive map you can filter to show drones, anti-tank obstacles, trench lines or even electronic warfare
00:59:53emitters.
00:59:54But beyond this, there are two main map features that help explain why this is such a big part of
00:59:59the system.
01:00:00The first is provenance.
01:00:01Every object placed on the map carries a classification, an image and a record of who reported it.
01:00:07If you're looking at a marker and something about it doesn't add up, you can contact the person who put
01:00:12it there and ask.
01:00:13That sounds mundane, but it's the difference between an intelligence picture and a rumor mill.
01:00:18The second is memory.
01:00:19Delta doesn't delete data.
01:00:21Click on a red diamond marking a Russian howitzer and a panel opens on the right side of the screen
01:00:26telling you when that gun was first spotted,
01:00:28how many times it's been attacked since and which units did the attacking.
01:00:32This is arguably one of the system's most useful functions since it solves an old problem.
01:00:37A unit that rotates into a sector might not get the full history of that sector and would need to
01:00:42repeat the approach route that got the previous crew killed.
01:00:45This happened with American troops rotating through Afghanistan when they had to relearn the same lessons for two decades because
01:00:51that institutional record simply didn't exist in any retrievable form.
01:00:55Ukraine built this kind of institutional memory into the system to help reduce the problem.
01:01:01Around that map, Delta has grown a whole ecosystem of applications, each one developed because somebody at the front spotted
01:01:07a problem.
01:01:08Mission control came from the fact that once you have thousands of drones in the air, they start interfering with
01:01:14each other.
01:01:14Friendly jamming knocks down friendly aircraft.
01:01:17Two units unknowingly plan strikes on the same target and waste one.
01:01:22Frequencies collide.
01:01:23So the Delta team built what amounts to a scheduling matrix.
01:01:27Ukrainian officers have described it as looking rather like a spreadsheet,
01:01:30where crews booked their missions by time, location and type, reconnaissance, strike or artillery correction.
01:01:37By late 2024, the Ministry of Defence said around 106,000 drone missions a month were being planned through it.
01:01:45In early 2026, it was relaunched as a much more ambitious tool that logs the execution and outcome of every
01:01:52mission, not just the plan.
01:01:53Ukraine's figures put it at roughly 50,000 missions processed and more than 230,000 reports filed per week.
01:02:00That reporting layer produced an army that can calculate its own exchange rate.
01:02:05And because every mission is logged with what it cost and what it destroyed, the Defence Ministry has begun publishing
01:02:11a cost per kill figure.
01:02:12Its claim for June 2026 was that every dollar Ukraine spent striking Russian targets inflicted close to $5 of losses
01:02:20on Russia.
01:02:21Regardless of whether the actual claim is correct, given its source, the underlying capability is real and it's rare.
01:02:27Most militaries genuinely do not know, in near real time, whether a given tactic is worth the ammunition.
01:02:34Then there's UA Drone ID, which serves a similar identification function for drones to that performed by IFF Systems for
01:02:42Aircraft.
01:02:43It tells Ukrainian systems which of the objects in the sky belong to Ukraine.
01:02:47In a war where both sides fly tens of thousands of nearly identical commercial quadcopters, that's not a luxury.
01:02:54Delta Tube handles live video streaming, with the crews who own a feed, controlling who's allowed to watch it.
01:03:00VESA, folded into Delta in October 2024, is a video analysis layer that came from an even more unlikely place
01:03:08than the rest.
01:03:09It was built by the 411th Separate Battalion of the Territorial Defence Forces, a unit nicknamed the Hawks, and then
01:03:16improved and absorbed by the Defence Ministry's Innovation Centre.
01:03:19VESA lets analysts watch hundreds of drone feeds at once, talk to the crews, and drop markers straight onto the
01:03:25Delta map from the video.
01:03:27Ministry figures from late 2024 credited it with classifying more than 4,000 reconnaissance objects a day.
01:03:34By June of this year, the Ministry said more than 75,000 video streams were passing through Delta daily.
01:03:40And this brings us to Avengers, Delta's machine vision platform.
01:03:44Avengers scans thousands of simultaneous feeds from drones and fixed cameras, and flags equipment automatically.
01:03:51This includes vehicles that are camouflaged or parked under tree cover, and it's trained to distinguish real vehicles from the
01:03:57inflatable and wooden decoys both sides now scatter across the battlefield.
01:04:01Back in September 2024, the Ministry said Avengers was automatically detecting around 12,000 pieces of Russian equipment a week.
01:04:10Now, underneath all of it sits the unglamorous infrastructure, an encrypted messaging service that units have built their entire coordination
01:04:17routine around,
01:04:19with configurable alerts that ping you when something changes inside a zone you care about.
01:04:23A mobile device management platform, which is essentially a military app store, is what creates a sealed encrypted container on
01:04:31a soldier's personal phone, enforces authentication, and lets the system remotely wipe a device that's been captured or lost.
01:04:38Ukraine's defense ministry has also said it uses tens of thousands of physical security keys to protect access to Delta.
01:04:45The system also uses Evoro, a chatbot that lets ordinary civilians report Russian movements straight into the pipeline, instead of
01:04:53a traditional manual intake system.
01:04:55Then there's the part that should worry anyone who assumed this was a scrappy improvisation.
01:05:00Delta talks to Western systems.
01:05:02By 2023, it was reportedly compatible with 15 situational awareness and command systems from 10 countries, three of them in
01:05:10NATO.
01:05:10It's exchanged data over Link 16, the tactical data protocol that F-16s and modern Western weapons use.
01:05:18In July 2024, it was integrated with Topaz, the Polish artillery fire control system that runs on the crab howitzers
01:05:26and rack mortars Ukraine operates.
01:05:28This means a Ukrainian drone feed can end at a Polish-designed gun.
01:05:32And in July 2024, Ukraine's defense ministry announced that Delta had passed an independent information security audit
01:05:40against NATO standards, covering 162 protection measures over roughly six weeks.
01:05:46Then defense minister Rustem Umarov said it was the first Ukrainian military system ever certified that way.
01:05:52Now, if you're finding this report as interesting as we do, take a second to subscribe.
01:05:58It helps us to keep making deep dives like this one.
01:06:00So what does all of this actually do to a battlefield?
01:06:04The headline effect is on the kill chain, or more practically, the interval between spotting something and hitting it.
01:06:10Previously, reporting an enemy position used to take at least 20 minutes to turn into the first artillery rounds landing.
01:06:17It now takes just three to five.
01:06:19If you compress that interval far enough, it stops being a speed improvement and becomes a geography problem.
01:06:25What Ukraine has built along the front is a zone several miles deep in which movement is close to suicidal.
01:06:32Because anything that moves is likely to be seen by something, and whatever sees it can hand it off to
01:06:36something else that kills it,
01:06:38faster than the thing that moved can get to cover.
01:06:41That's the mechanism behind the kill zone you keep hearing about.
01:06:44While drones are a major part of this system, it's powered and enabled by the thing that tells them where
01:06:49to go.
01:06:50Now, the Ukrainian government's own numbers for Delta's output are enormous.
01:06:54By June 2026, the ministry was reporting more than 200,000 confirmed drone hits in that month alone,
01:07:01with an average of over 6,600 a day, while also noting that the monthly figure had nearly doubled since
01:07:07January.
01:07:08It also credits Delta with verifying more than 260,000 Russian drones shot down in the first seven months of
01:07:14this year.
01:07:15Those are ministry figures.
01:07:17Here's the independent check, and it's part of this story that actually matters.
01:07:20Deep States, the Ukrainian open source group that maps the front line and has never been shy about reporting bad
01:07:27news,
01:07:27tracked Russian territorial capture running at 450 to 550 square kilometers a month at its 2025 peak.
01:07:35Their monthly numbers then fall off a cliff.
01:07:37445 square kilometers in December 2025, 160 in April 2026, and 27 in July 2026.
01:07:48The Institute for the Study of War assessed Russian forces as having advanced into just 37.85 square kilometers in
01:07:55July.
01:07:55It also found that Russia had taken or infiltrated only about 28% as much ground in the first half
01:08:01of 2026 as it did in the first half of 2025.
01:08:06Radio Sovo Borda, using deep state data, reported that estimated Russian casualties per square kilometer captured had risen roughly three
01:08:13and a half fold.
01:08:14Which brings us to Estonia, where NATO found out what this feels like from the receiving end.
01:08:20In May 2025, the alliance ran an exercise called Hedgehog, which put more than 16,000 troops from 12 NATO
01:08:27countries through a simulated Russian incursion.
01:08:30Challenger 2 tanks, Apache gunships, HIMARS, a serious force.
01:08:35Embedded with the opposing side were about 10 Ukrainian drone specialists.
01:08:39Some of them rotated straight out of the war, and they brought Delta with them.
01:08:43It was the first time the system had been run on NATO soil.
01:08:46In roughly half a day, that 10-person Ukrainian team simulated the destruction of 17 armored vehicles and carried out
01:08:53around 30 further strikes on other targets.
01:08:56Two NATO battalions were rated combat ineffective, and the commander summary of that day was not printable.
01:09:01Retired General David Petraeus has argued that the fix for this situation isn't as simple as more drones.
01:09:07Delta itself is an intersection of new concepts, doctrine, training, force structure, and procurement.
01:09:13Which is a polite way of saying that the alliance discovered it had been rehearsing a war that no longer
01:09:18exists.
01:09:19Which brings us to the US.
01:09:21Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had already been to Kyiv in November 2025, specifically to look at how Ukraine uses drones.
01:09:29When he testified in May, he praised Delta's architecture, described the American picture as fragmented systems that struggle to talk
01:09:37to each other.
01:09:38And when a senator asked why the army was only now embracing Ukrainian-style integration in the fifth year of
01:09:43the war, he told the committee the delay was his own fault and nobody else's.
01:09:47That's not standard congressional hearing behaviour.
01:09:50The army's answer is a program called Next Generation Command and Control.
01:09:55In July 2025, it awarded a team led by Anduril a $99.6 million agreement running 11 months to build
01:10:03a prototype architecture for the 4th Infantry Division with Palantir, Microsoft, and four smaller software firms on the team.
01:10:10Alongside that sits Operation Jailbreak, a six-week sprint at Fort Carson aimed squarely at forcing legacy systems to share
01:10:17data with each other, with generative AI layered on afterward.
01:10:21Something Driscoll pointed out the Ukrainians have been doing for the entire war.
01:10:25And there's a companion industry hackathon announced in May with Anduril, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and others built around the
01:10:33same modular open architecture principle that lets Delta swallow whatever its engineers build next.
01:10:39And behind all of it is money on a scale that makes the Ukrainian effort look like what it is.
01:10:44The Pentagon's fiscal 2027 request, unveiled in April, asked for roughly $54 billion for the newly consolidated Defence Autonomous Warfare
01:10:54Group, a line item that had been sitting somewhere around $225 million the year before.
01:11:00So why is the army still behind?
01:11:02One CSIS analysis published in June makes two structural arguments that are worth taking seriously.
01:11:09The first is direction of travel.
01:11:11The American way is top-down.
01:11:13Start with a grand integrating concept, spend years pushing it toward the user.
01:11:18Delta went the other way.
01:11:19It started as one useful tool for one squad's problem and then grew outward, as the war demanded, adding deconfliction,
01:11:26then friend or foe, then video, then AI analysis.
01:11:29Every American service is meanwhile building its own version of the same integrating concept, which recreates the exact fragmentation the
01:11:37concept was supposed to eliminate.
01:11:39The second is which way you're pointing.
01:11:41American orchestration software spends most of its energy making legacy systems talk to each other.
01:11:47Delta integrated modern sensors first, including drones, commercial satellites, acoustic arrays, electronic warfare feeds, and civilian chatbot reports.
01:11:57After that, it reached back to bolt on legacy platforms like Link-16 and Topaz.
01:12:02Building clean around current generation sensors, and adding the old stuff later, is dramatically easier than retrofitting a legacy backbone.
01:12:10CSIS's conclusion is that unmanned systems carry something like 80% of strike missions on both sides in the war
01:12:17in Ukraine.
01:12:18It's practically how the war is fought.
01:12:20Now, before this turns into a commercial, let's talk about what's wrong with Delta.
01:12:25Because it's not magic, and it has a substantial threat surface.
01:12:28It's been a priority target for Russian intelligence since it mattered.
01:12:32In December 2022, Ukraine's computer emergency response team disclosed a phishing campaign, tracked as UAC-0142, that used a compromised
01:12:43Ministry of Defense email account to send Delta users fake warnings that they needed to update their security certificates.
01:12:49The attachment installed two pieces of data-stealing malware.
01:12:53Ukrainian officials said the incident was caught in its preparation stage.
01:12:56Two years later, in December 2024, CERT UA warned about a Russia-linked group hunting credentials for Delta, Kropiva, and
01:13:05Taneta, alongside Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
01:13:08When the military increasingly depends on a shared platform, that platform becomes a high-value target.
01:13:14The cloud architecture that makes Delta immune to missiles also makes it dependent on connectivity,
01:13:19which in turn makes a great deal of Ukraine's command structure dependent on a satellite constellation owned by a private
01:13:25American company.
01:13:27Ukrainian practitioners are clear-eyed about the trade-off.
01:13:30Liuba Shapović of the technology NGO Dignitas Ukraine has noted that Palantir's tools are excellent for visualization,
01:13:38but tend to live in command centers with strong internet, while Delta and the older Kropiva system can work offline,
01:13:44which is precisely why Kropiva is still in service and still popular with artillery units,
01:13:49and why Delta and Kropiva remain, in CSIS's assessment, not fully integrated.
01:13:55The single unified picture is a direction of travel, not a Finnish fact.
01:13:59And there's a deeper question nobody has answered yet.
01:14:02A system that remembers everything, sees everything, and coordinates everything is also a system that concentrates everything.
01:14:09Ukraine has hardened it, but the concentration is problematic.
01:14:12Russia, meanwhile, is not standing still, and this is the part that most Western coverage skips.
01:14:18Russian military theorists have specifically named Delta as a Ukrainian advantage.
01:14:22Moscow's response has followed a strikingly similar path.
01:14:26Rather than persist with its own 20-year-old top-down integration program, which CSIS assesses it has effectively shelved,
01:14:33Russia has leaned into pragmatic tools built from frontline demand.
01:14:36There's Svod, a tactical situational awareness complex, and the Glaz-Groza software pair,
01:14:43which came up through civilian and volunteer developers and is now embedded in Russian drone units.
01:14:48Glaz handles the reconnaissance interface.
01:14:51Groza runs on Windows laptops and Android tablets and provides the digital map,
01:14:56automated artillery correction, and the channels that push coordinates to guns, mortars, and tanks.
01:15:01It carries ballistic libraries for Russian systems and ammunition, and Russian reporting claims a gunner can be on target in
01:15:08two to four minutes.
01:15:09More recently, it's added drone mission planning and route deconfliction.
01:15:13The same problems mission control was built to solve arrived at independently from the same pressure.
01:15:18Both sides converged on the same answer and both got there by listening to the people holding the controller rather
01:15:25than the people holding the requirements document.
01:15:27Which leaves the last question.
01:15:29Where does this go?
01:15:30Ukraine bets that the next advantage is more layered machine intelligence, such as detection models trained on millions of hours
01:15:37of drone video.
01:15:38In March 2026, Kyiv opened a platform giving allied governments and defense companies access to real combat data for training
01:15:46autonomous systems,
01:15:47which are billed as a world first, while walling that data off from the sensitive databases behind Delta itself.
01:15:53It showcases just how important data is to modern warfare.
01:15:57But there's another, more sinister consequence.
01:16:00The Delta system still requires humans to operate, oversee it, and stay somewhere in the loop.
01:16:05But if autonomous systems can make decisions faster than humans, the humans become the bottleneck.
01:16:10The resolution for this is currently unknown, and it's something that Ukraine and its allies are likely to grapple with
01:16:16as we speak.
01:16:17At one point, it's important to remember what the system is and what or who it's working for.
01:16:23As of now, Delta works for Ukraine and is operated by Ukrainians.
01:16:27But that might change soon if other countries start adopting a similar system and integrate AI and machine learning even
01:16:34deeper.
01:16:34Delta.
01:16:35Thanks for watching.
01:16:36Now, leave a comment below on what you think is the next stage of Delta.
01:16:40And make sure to subscribe to stay in the loop on everything that happens in global politics and warfare.
01:16:45And, if you want to support the military show, consider becoming a member to get access to exclusive videos we
01:16:52publish only there.
01:16:53...
01:16:53...
01:16:53...

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