Ep 14 – Russia Is Learning Faster Than You Think: The Most Sophisticated Assault of the War

Build & Promoted using StoryFunnelsIn early August 2026, Ukraine got a new commander-in-chief. General Oleksandr Syrskyi was relieved, and Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi — forty-three years old — took over an army in the fifth year of a full-scale war. It followed the public fight over the firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that we covered in episodes 10 and 11.Sam Cook sits down in Kyiv with Rob Lee, one of the most widely read analysts of this war, and Dima Putiata, who served four years in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and left as a sergeant in the Unmanned Systems Forces. The question: have we reached a turning point?The answer is more careful than the headlines. Russia is advancing slower than a year ago — but it still holds the initiative.Timestamps0:00 - What this episode is and why it matters7:18 - Have we reached a turning point? Why Russia is advancing slower10:19 - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk: the hardest direction12:51 - Why both sides fight so hard for the Donetsk cities14:21 - What people get wrong about "turning point"16:01 - Shahed-4, Shahed-5, the pulse-jet engine, and Banderol19:39 - Ukraine's gap in pulse-jet deep-strike drones20:39 - The counteroffensive that never came, and the airborne counterattacks nobody reported22:53 - "Tanks are not dead" - combined arms maneuver24:18 - What you never see on Twitter or Telegram, and why the best units stay quiet27:00 - The biggest lie starts at division level, and Russia's 300 vehicles29:04 - Artillery is not dead either: weather, counter-battery radar, acoustic sensors33:29 - Preparing the battlefield for armor35:01 - The casualty debate: drones vs artillery37:32 - Ukrainian artillery brigades that fly their own drones40:16 - North Koreans in Kursk: from company assaults to squads42:13 - Reestablishing maneuver: the First World War parallel and the Azov Corps assault44:01 - Lancet, Zala, Orion, and Russia's mesh network48:42 - Arena-M: twenty FPVs to stop one tank, mine rollers and sixteen mines51:49 - Rubicon's 150-page doctrine - and Ukraine's silence53:12 - Eighty percent of armor losses come from UAVs54:26 - The most sophisticated Russian assault of the war56:39 - Political demands, the lying problem, and the post-war Russian military1:00:02 - Russia's daily target list, and why their micro-tactical execution still fails1:04:44 - Starlink: the game changer of this war1:06:22 - Middle strike: heavy and light1:08:39 - Lancet-Zala, interceptors, and Ukraine's middle strike campaign today1:12:34 - RuzSat: Russia builds its own Starlink, and echelons of electronic warfare1:18:07 - "Starlink is a bit of a crutch", and Kursk: crossing the border and losing it1:21:15 - Crimea, Operation Spiderweb, and what adversaries learn1:25:24 - Ground-launched ballistic missiles, KN-23 and KN-241:27:50 - Zelenskyy's ask to Trump and Musk1:29:50 - The PAC-3 shortage, and why missile defense stays hard1:33:03 - Deep strike: refineries, Wildberries, Flamingo - and is it working?1:37:08 - The economic war: the Black Sea, the port of Odesa, and attrition1:40:54 - The firing of Fedorov, a new commander-in-chief, and Bilecki's three reasons1:44:05 - Syrskyi built a system that worked for him1:46:32 - Unity of command and the Unmanned Systems Forces1:49:11 - What is Ukraine's actual strategy, and the manpower problem1:53:04 - What Drapatyi will change first1:57:29 - Why mobilization got harder: Bakhmut, and orders with no purpose2:00:45 - AWOL, desertion, and criminal liability for withdrawing2:05:38 - How AWOL should actually be punished2:07:17 - France 1940: leadership, training, then technology2:10:50 - Better than a year ago, but not a turning point yetProduced by the Borderlands Foundation.Support our work: https://theborderlandsfoundation.orgAll episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraineMilitaryHistoryGuests:Rob Lee: https://x.com/RALee85Dima Putiata: https://x.com/kriegsforscherD