All right, Alexander, let's talk about

what is happening in Ukraine, what is

going on in the front line. We This

ceasefire, the 3-day ceasefire,

obviously, that's all concluded now.

Uh the the last couple of days we had

very big Russian drone and missile

strikes into into Ukraine, and Ukraine

continues to launch

uh their drones into Russia, around 200

to 250 drones every other day or so

they're also launching

into into Russia. Uh one thing is clear,

Ukraine's air defenses are badly

depleted. You can tell by the the

interception rates of of the Russian

missiles and drones, which even Ukraine

now is acknowledging

Yes. that they're not able to to

intercept the drones and and the Russian

missiles.

And uh and then we have the continuing

narrative

of a stalemate. Yes.

Which it's not a stalemate. There's not

a stalemate going on. And by the way,

you may also want to want to bring in

the Financial Times article,

which claims that uh that in autumn

Putin is going to to take Donbas, that's

the plan. The Russian military can take

Donbas, and then they're going to issue

uh new terms to Ukraine. Something that

we've been saying Yeah. for a while now

for a while now, you brought it up,

that's that most likely

you would be looking at at Donbas, which

is the main battle. That would be the

battle that's that's going to get that's

going to be concluded, and once that's

concluded

uh Russia and Putin will will come out

with with new terms to to the West. So,

anyway, uh your thoughts on on Ukraine,

or where do you want to begin in all of

this?

>> Well, let's start with let's start with

the drones, because yes, Ukraine does

continue to make drone attacks on

Russia.

And these are in these are, you know,

problem for the Russians, and they've

been an embarrassment for Putin, and

this information that the head of

Russian the Russian Aerospace Forces, a

man called Azarov, has been sacked. The

word, by the way, is that this is about

the Tuapse affair. That

the thing that provoked his his sacking

was the Tuapse episode.

But,

to repeat a point that we have made many

times,

um these Ukrainian drone attacks,

damaging though they can be,

um able to kill civilians as they

sometimes do, um able sometimes to

inflict serious damage, like they do did

on Tuapse, are not going to ultimately

change the direction of the war or

affect the state of the Russian economy

or cause a political crisis in Russia or

do any of these things. Um you could

argue, in fact, I would argue that as an

as a use of resources,

they are a mistake. Ukraine and the CIA,

which is basically running this

operation,

are using expending resources on this

air offensive against Russia, which in

objective terms is achieving very

little.

Resources which might have been more

effectively spent

doing other things, such as, perhaps,

developing more drone defenses for the

Ukrainian military on the front lines.

Just saying.

The Russian attacks

on Ukraine,

the drone attacks and the missile

attacks, are on a far more

far bigger scale.

And they are far more powerful. And they

are far more organized. And they use now

many different types of very

sophisticated drones. Drones that um

some of them can be controlled by air

controllers back in Moscow, others which

are jet-powered, some of which carry

interceptors, some of which carry bombs.

I mean, um this is

an extraordinarily,

extremely sophisticated drone offensive

now, and it's ramping up. And it's

ramping up

significantly.

We have hundreds of drones every night.

And now also in daylight, the Ukrainian

defenses are indeed

very depleted.

Apparently, I mean, in across much of

Ukraine, they don't exist anymore.

And this Russian drone offensive does do

serious damage. The The one big question

about it, for me, is why it's happening

now.

Um I expected that the Russians would

conduct an enormous drone offensive and

missile offensive against Ukraine over

the winter.

Instead, they seem to have been building

up their drones, their drone uh

forces during the winter, and they're

carrying it out now. But it is on an

enormous scale, and its effect is

tremendous. And um it we we have

information about uh fuel shortages,

fuel shortages for the military on the

front lines. And all of this is

compounding

further problems with um more reports

now that the personnel crisis, the

um shortage of soldiers, is now worse

than it's ever been. And I was reading

an article in Responsible Statecraft,

We've said that the recruitment crisis

in Ukraine,

which is always which has been there now

for about you know well over a

Well, it's about 2 years. We've had

people going out into the streets,

seizing men in the streets, bundling

them into a vans and sending them to the

front lines. Well, that has apparently

now reached

the most um

ruthless and extreme levels that we've

seen up to now.

And

there there is now counter violence

against it and it's becoming more

extensive. There's been shooting

incidents against recruiters. There's

been incidents where um

boys have attacked recruiters with

knives, things of that kind. This is all

in from this article in Responsible

Statecraft. This is

apparently cranked up this year to an

even further level. So, uh we have these

major resource issues, the heavy drone

attacks, the lack of air defense. Russia

has air defenses. Ukraine apparently no

longer does, not to any degree. The

Russians have an operating air force, so

they're able to drop bombs.

The Ukrainian air force

it has

is unable to do that. We don't hear

about the F-16s very much anymore. We

don't hear much about the Mirage 2000s,

which weren't apparently very effective

anyway. So, we have

a situation where the situation in the

air, in the sky, is becoming critical.

And well, we come back to what you were

saying that you know this talk about the

um stalemate on the front lines.

There is no stalemate on the front lines

and um we had a brief ceasefire

over the Victory Day holidays.

It's ended. The Financial Times

published a piece a piece

in which it suggested that the Russians

had now broken the ceasefire which of

course wasn't true. The ceasefire ended.

But the Russians now are very much on

the attack. They they apparently are on

the brink of breaking through in

Zaporozhye

towards Orekhov which is the key town

before the city of Zaporozhye itself.

There's apparently now a

gradual collapse of Ukrainian defenses

in the town of Konstantinovka.

In Sloviansk things are getting worse

and worse.

It's clear that the Battle of Donbas is

coming to an end.

Despite you know all these denials and

all these pretenses that it isn't. And

of course we have the politics of it

which I think we'll come back to. But

this is the actual situation in Ukraine

today. The

that same responsible article

responsible statecraft article said that

throughout the war we have these brief

periods of euphoria in the West. Ukraine

is winning. The situation on the front

lines is stabilizing. We have a

stalemate. The Russians are stalled. We

are

we've been going through one like that

now.

But it's coming it's it's very soon

going to come to an end.

What do you think are going to be the

the terms

from Putin after Donbas? Do you think he

can Do you think Russia's going to take

uh

to complete the the Donbas operation by

autumn by the end of 2026, let's say.

Does that sound reasonable? I think it

sounds perfectly reasonable based on

what we're seeing on the front lines at

the moment. Um I think the thing to say

is this.

Um the the more cities fall,

the faster it and easier it becomes to

capture the remaining ones. So, if

Kostyantynivka Pokrovsk fell,

then after Pokrovsk, Kostyantynivka

fell. It took time to take Pokrovsk.

It's taking apparently rather less time

to take Kostyantynivka. But then once

you've taken Kostyantynivka,

the remaining places, Sloviansk,

Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, begin to look

isolated. The supply lines become

more difficult to these places. So, it

it starts to become like a row of

dominoes.

When one falls, it leads to the fall of

the other.

And the process gradually accelerates.

And that's likely, it seems to me, what

we're going to see. Also, the pattern of

Russian offensives is that they start in

the spring, in April, May.

They start gradually. They gradually

build up momentum.

Then, during the summer months, we get

a a rapid acceleration.

And then, in the late summer,

early autumn,

you start to see places fall. This was

the pattern in 2024. It was the pattern

in 2025.

I don't see why it shouldn't be the

pattern again this year. And what are

the places that are going to fall? Well,

they're going to fall is the key

remaining cities in Donbas. Because in

Donbas, there isn't any more anything

else. Now, autumn,

well, let's say the end of the year to

be more more conservative.

And the terms?

Right. Now, this is Now, this is this is

this is where we are going to become

We're going to enter into a Some say

Odessa, some say

Kherson, some say Odessa. I mean, what

Odessa. Some say some say Odessa, but

also in Kherson. I mean,

that financial that financial times

article

um spoke about Kiev and Odessa.

That Putin is going to actually demand

Kiev itself. That this is this is

even more important for him than Odessa.

Is taking Kiev.

I I don't myself think that is what

Putin is going to do.

I don't think that's what the Russians

are going to do.

I think they're going to certainly say,

"Look, um Ukraine must withdraw

from Zaporozhye and Kherson.

There must also be a withdrawal

um from other

areas

that are you know, Russian things of

that kind. So, you know, from

places maybe along the border and things

of that kind.

Obviously, they're going to insist that

Ukraine

finally commit not to join NATO.

I think they will also demand that

Ukraine commit not to join the EU. I

think these are the simple things. But,

I think that I think the big thing that

they're going to demand

is that they're going to want a complete

reconstruction of the political system

in Ukraine.

Um

You've mentioned federalization

in the past. I think they're going to

say it's the time has come to move

towards federalization.

They will demand that Zelensky himself

and the

elite around him step down.

They've already said

many times that they don't accept him as

the legitimate leader of Ukraine.

They're going to say that there should

be a new interim government created.

They're going to demand that some of the

people who [snorts]

make up that interim government should

be people from the opposition, people

like uh um uh Tsaruk, who's currently in

Russia.

Other people like people from the former

uh opposition parties who are also now

in exile in Russia.

And of course all of that is going to be

unacceptable to Zelensky. He's not going

to agree to it. And then

the offer

from the Russians

will not be exactly an offer. It will be

more an ultimatum, actually.

And then the war will continue.

And then we will see an operation

towards Odessa.

Whether we will see an operation towards

Kiev,

I am not so sure.

But you could argue

that the pieces are being put into place

to do it. So, all of these really

strange operations in Sumy

and Kharkiv region,

they do begin to look like they're

preparations for an advance on Kiev.

And there's been lots of rumors of some

kind of a build-up

um of logistics, transport links, and

that kind of thing in Belarus, perhaps

for an advance

towards Kiev from Belarus, as we saw in

2022.

Only this time it will not be 2,000 men

turning up and trying to capture an

airport with another 20,000 following

behind them. It's going to be an army of

hundreds of thousands of men,

battle-tested, battle-trained, far more

armored vehicles,

fleets of drones. It will be a

completely different operation from the

one we saw in 2022.

I think Kiev freaks them out more than

Odessa.

There's a massive reshuffle here.

Far more.

>> [clears throat]

>> If they lose Odessa, it's a crisis for

Ukraine.

But if they lose Kiev, it's not just a

crisis for Ukraine, it's a crisis for

them. Because without Kiev, it becomes

much more difficult for them to say that

they are the government of Ukraine

anymore.

Also, the other thing to say is if they

lose Kiev,

Ukraine realistically may never get it

back.

And it it's

also considered

by many people in Russia not just

a Russian city,

but the first Russian city, the state

where the the city where Russia as a

state and a nation began.

Uh so,

I'm not saying everybody in Russia

thinks that way, but a lot of people do.

And I suspect quite a lot of people in

Putin's entourage do. Just saying.

Uh just to wrap up the video, the

sources for the Financial Times article

were

European sources and I believe Ukraine a

Ukraine source, right?

Yes, but they did also say

>> about Just to clear Just to be clear,

they're the ones talking about Kiev and

Odessa. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely,

yes. No, not us. No. Absolutely.

And I think that, you know, that is

there in that Financial Times article.

Now, how well informed about the

thinking in Moscow these people really

are is a completely different question.

The Financial Times did say that they'd

spoken to two people who had knowledge

of Putin's views.

I don't believe the Financial Times has

access to people like that, just the

same. At least [snorts] not in Russia.

Right. Okay. We will end the video

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