Transcription
Kev is methodically turning what Vladimir Putin considers his crowning jewel into an absolute battlefield. The chain of command is lying to Vladimir Putin, and Russia cannot afford the casualties that it will take to get through there and punch through to take the rest of the next oblast. The next two months are absolutely critical for forcing Russia to the negotiating table. As Vladimir Zelensky meets Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Anchora, and the Kremlin officially declares its special military operation has become a real war. There are critical updates from the front line. I'm Philip Ingram, and this is Battle Plans Exposed.
The very fabric of this four-year-long conflict is changing. NATO, the ultimate red line, is undergoing a massive transformation. Following a very positive meeting for Ukraine, European leaders have committed 70 billion dollars of defense aid to Kev. On top of that, they're kickstarting $40 billion to an initiative called NATO's Drone Edge, investing heavily in unmanned systems, plus a massive $50 billion deep strike missile program. These huge projects may completely change the very dynamics of NATO, and alliance leaders have officially recognized Ukraine as a contributor to mutual security for the first time.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's long-range campaign is well underway. Oil infrastructure and military assets deep into Russia are now fair game. Kev's forces are destroying 34 Russian supply trucks every single day, strangling Vladimir Putin's war machine. According to Ukraine's drone chief, 14 Shadowfleet vessels were taken offline in just one night, and that's in the Sea of Azov. Even Putin has made rare acknowledgements that his country is suffering from fuel shortages because of Ukraine drone strikes, forcing him to order restrictions on gasoline for Crimea, and he has banned the export of diesel. But there are concerning reports from the United States of a possible attack by Russia on a key European nation. Before we analyze all of that, let's begin by looking at what's been happening on the front lines.
Let's begin with the astonishing attacks on Putin's wallet. The newly created Deep Strike Center of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces has just coordinated an unprecedented campaign in the Sea of Azov. At least 35 vessels have been struck over a frantic 4-day period. Robert Brovdy, commander of the Krak USF unit, said the identified tankers are part of Russia's shadow fleet and are under international sanctions. Ukraine used a lethal mix of conventional air drones and these Cabab naval drones. If you watch right here, despite the crew firing frantic defensive shots into the water, the Seab ignores the chaos and delivers a devastating blow right to the stern of the ship. Because Ukraine has been so effective at cutting fuel trucks from supplying occupied Crimea, Russia is increasingly relying on seaborn transportation of gasoline and petrol, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're talking on, to support the peninsula. The new deep strike center is responsible for executing large-scale autonomous and connected military drone strikes. So, expect to see more of these operations moving forward. From an intelligence perspective, this isn't just a hit. It's a massive autonomous campaign designed to choke Russia's economy where it hurts most. It's also designed to have a psychological impact on the people of Crimea and on the people of Moscow who see Crimea as theirs.
To the air war next. This is the moment a top-tier Russian Su-35 fighter jet was completely torn out of the sky over the Kursk region. Ukrainian sources state an American-made Patriot system pulled off a high-stakes air ambush close to the border, striking the aircraft down from an immense distance. The pilot did manage to eject, but look at what's left. Just a charred smoking heap of scrap metal on the ground. The Patriot is the ultimate long-range weapon in Ukraine's arsenal. Um, and at the NATO summit, Donald Trump announced that the US will grant Keev the licenses to manufacture them. If Ukraine can pull off ambushers like this just now, just imagine the sheer devastation they'll cause whenever they can manufacture huge numbers of Patriots themselves. That in itself is a real coup to get the licensing to do that. But also complimenting the Patriots, uh Ukraine has just got permission to use Meteor missiles supplied by Scandinavian countries um and Sweden in particular um over Russian airspace.
The front lines are changing. Next up, we have a classic example of why Russia's campaign is running into the ground. This footage shows an FPV drone operator skillfully infiltrating a Russian base. Packed with armored vehicles and ammunition, the pilot blows it up from the inside. Notice the low battery on the drone, indicating that this is at the very limit of its range. This missile strike is what Ukraine is excelling at um at the moment. It is textbook asymmetric warfare. You have a cheap, low-cost weapon delivering a devastating blow directly to critical logistics and supplies, shattering the enemy's ability to make any meaningful sustained attack. And now imagine this scenario across the thousand-mile front line day after day.
Now, here's the grim reality of being a Russian soldier in Ukraine. This video reportedly shows Russian soldiers having to share weapons. As the soldier filming points out, they have a total of two rifles and three body armor vests to split between six men. It shows the catastrophic failure in Putin's military logistics chain. Russia is burning through its manpower so recklessly that its commanders are forcing unequipped, unprotected men straight onto the front lines. And I have seen other videos where when soldiers have examined the ballistic plates in their um body armor to find them just made of wooden blocks. They're not finding proper body armor in there. And the other thing you notice about these soldiers is they're all hobbling. These are wounded individuals. These are not fit to be on the battlefield. That's the state Russian soldiers are in.
To the tech world now. And here we have an exciting new drone that could be making its way onto the battlefield soon. This is the Ukrainian 8x8 heavy lift ground drone built by the Vtag Group. This rugged unmanned vehicle can tear across rough fields at up to 42 km/h. Most importantly, it is a workhorse capable of hauling up to two tons of cargo. From a logistics standpoint, a machine like this changes the dynamics for forward supply lines. Instead of risking lives to move ammunition and heavy gear through contested zones, commanders can let autonomous tech do the heavy lifting. We've seen developments in sea drones. We've seen the huge developments in air drones. The next area are these land drones, and we're going to see them develop to similar, similar sorts of levels.
So, let's take a closer look at the front line of Ukraine and see what's been happening. Overall, it's been incredibly quiet, but we have witnessed intense flashpoints of action across a few key areas. Crucially, the data reveals that the overall rate of Russian advance has fallen significantly. Putin's ground forces are moving forward at a miserable crawl, averaging just about one square kilometer a day across the entire theater. That is a staggering drop compared to the rapid bounds they were making last year. Down in the south, Ukrainian forces have successfully pushed from Nova Pavlivka towards Vuhledar. Russian troops have tried desperately to occupy Nova Pavlivka since last winter, but they've been completely pushed out and are now launching frantic counterattacks to save face. Further north, the Kremlin made a heavy push for the village of Kupiansk, um, which is in this area. Their infantry even went as far as waving victory flags for the cameras, but the triumph was completely short-lived. Ukrainian unmanned systems stepped in immediately and finished off the entire infiltration attack with clinical precision. Meanwhile, over in Zaporizhzhia, um Ukraine has launched counterattacks from Stepnohirsk moving directly towards Kamianske. Tactical updates from this sector are understandably flaky at the minute, but we will keep you closely posted as the situation develops. Finally, a massive and deeply volatile gray zone has descended upon Kostiantynivka, and uh and this is where intense fighting means control is shifting by the hour. And the tactics that we're seeing along the front line here um are typical of what we've been reporting for weeks and weeks. The Russians advance. They wave their flags. They take their photographs. They say they've captured that territory. Ukrainian UAV operators come in and destroy them. And there's nothing left of the Russians there. The Russians send more people forward to do exactly the same thing, trying to continue the bluff that they're actually advancing so that they can report that back up their chain. It's not happening. The chain of command is being lied to. The chain of command is lying to Vladimir Putin. Ukrainians are holding effectively a stalemate on the front line.
Russia's main effort remains the remnants of the Donetsk oblast. Now, Kostiantynivka is where they're focusing on in a minute. That is the bottom of the fortress belt. I'll show you more of that in a second. But it's Russia's aim to try and push through and capture the rest of Donetsk. Vladimir Putin has supposedly given his troops until December to do it. This is about the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth different deadline he's put against his troops getting there. So, let's have a little look at um the fortress belt and what that means at the moment. So, the fortress belt: Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, and Lyman. We keep hearing reports where the Russians have said they've captured the city. Well, President Zelensky turned around to Vladimir Putin whenever Putin said, "We've captured the city," and said, "Let us hold our first peace talks in Kostiantynivka. I will see you there." That tells me that um if President Zelensky is confident about going there, that they haven't captured it. And the reality is the Russians have probably got about 350 troops inside the city. And as I've mentioned on a couple of occasions now, they're trying to advance building by building, block by block as they fight their way through the city. But again, a lot of these advances are they get to somewhere where they can fly a flag, they can take a photograph, they can get it on camera, and then the Ukrainian UAV operators come in and destroy them. The city is being brutalized, as an American commander described attacks on cities to me in a different operation um at some stage in the past. To get through the rest of the Donetsk oblast, not only do the Russians have to capture Kostiantynivka, and remember that's further on from Bakhmut. It took the Russians um over two years to capture Bakhmut. They then have to go through Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, and Lyman. The Ukrainians have spent a lot of time building their defenses in there. So if we take two years for there, and we took two years for Pokrovsk, we take two years for here, uh, and another couple of years for here and here, um that's a long time. And Russia cannot afford the casualties that it will take to get through there um and punch through to take the rest of the next oblast, whether they would then stop or try and go for Kev from this direction. I don't think the Russians could generate the combat power, but I don't think they can generate the combat power to take um this fortress belt, which is why Vladimir Putin is insisting that it is given to him um as part of any peace deal. And of course, you know, years to get to here. Um if, and it's a big if, the Russians ever get to that. Um and I think it's highly unlikely.
The Ukrainians are preparing what comes next, and they're building a number of huge defensive lines or have built a number of huge defensive lines behind the cities. So they're continuously preparing their way of slowing the Russians down. And you know, this is territory. Most of the towns and villages in this area have been completely destroyed. And therefore, what Ukraine is doing, realizing that it is facing a much stronger army, um a much bigger military that can afford to send its troops in through uh the meat grinder. Um what Ukraine is doing is holding on as much as they can, preserving their forces as much as they can, and that means giving a little bit of territory here and there every now and again. Um because they're trading space for time. Again, I've said this on a couple of occasions. If they were doing that and Russia was advancing and they weren't doing anything with that time, then Ukraine would be losing. But what is Ukraine doing with that time? It's carrying out its medium-range strikes into the rear. It's impacting Russia's logistics, um its ability to resupply the frontline troops, but it's then um going further. It's firing um its weapon systems deeper into Russia. It's attacking its ability to continue to fund the war, to continue to manufacture um weapons, to resupply the troops on the front line. It's uh beginning to attack the morale of the Russians um by um restricting their ability to move around, restricting their access to fuel. It is taking the message that this is now a war, not from um the Kremlin spokesman coming out with it, but they're sending that as a clear message from Keev to Moscow and to St. Petersburg that the war is coming home. Putin can't wait another two, three, or four years to take these cities or to go forward. The Russian people won't stand for it.
As Russia's advance grinds to a standstill in Ukraine, let's zoom out and look at uh where Putin may attack next in Europe. Putin is playing a highly dangerous game of chicken with the West. Washington has quietly passed a severe warning to Warsaw that Russia is planning an armed provocation right on Polish soil. The direct target of this operation: NATO's resolve. Now, I'm not referring to a classic full-scale invasion. Russia's conventional military is completely tied up in Ukraine and simply lacks the industrial capacity for total war with the alliance. Instead, Moscow is preparing for hybrid warfare, a series of calculated, deniable strikes designed to test whether NATO is a paper tiger or if we'll actually fight back. Let's get straight into what the intelligence is telling us. American intelligence shows Putin currently has two distinct options on the table. Option one is a strike on critical infrastructure. We could see deniable Russian drone or missile hits on Polish power stations. Alternatively, they might simulate air strikes near the border to trick Poland into turning on its air defense systems so Moscow can map out their networks. Option two is far trickier: a small ground incursion. This would involve a small group of Russian or Belarusian troops crossing the eastern flank on foot or in helicopters. If they get caught, Moscow's already the excuses lined up. They'll blame the sudden GPS failure or claim it was an emergency rescue mission for a broken chopper. Why take such a wild gamble? Because Putin bets that instead of shooting, the US will force Poland straight to the negotiating table. If Russia walks away with a diplomatic deal, it's a massive win for Moscow. Their ultimate goal is to shatter the alliance's unity and force the West to drop its vital support for Ukraine.
But NATO isn't sitting on its hands. Germany's air force chief has already warned that any armed provocation will see immediate direct NATO strikes on Russian assets, including the city of St. Petersburg, the Baltic Sea fleet, um, and the heavily armed nuclear enclave of Kaliningrad. And time is rapidly ticking away to stop this escalation. Czech President Petr Pavel, the former chief of NATO's Military Committee, has just warned that the next two months are absolutely critical for forcing Russia to the negotiating table. He reveals that allies have a very tight window to ramp up strategic pressure before Russia holds its parliamentary elections on September the 20th. Pavel's warning is clear: once those elections are wrapped up, the window shrinks. Putin will no longer have to worry about domestic voters and is highly likely to order general mobilization, throwing hundreds of thousands more men into the meat grinder and triggering a massive, dangerous escalation across all of Europe. The countdown has officially begun.
And Kaliningrad is interesting. We've got uh Kaliningrad um isolated completely by NATO countries. We've got the Baltics. We've got Poland, and there is a small gap um uh controlled by NATO um between there and Putin's puppet state of Belarus, the Suwalki Gap. Another area that Putin could put pressure on, if he could persuade um Belarus to do anything, would be to threaten um to cross into this area. And Kaliningrad was effectively given to Russia at the end of the Second World War um as a uh non-freezing port into the Baltic Sea because um its ports further north um and out into um the Arctic all freeze over during during the winter months. Um it is an anomaly that is now a thorn in the side for NATO, but it's also a thorn in the side for Putin.
Now, let's look at the peninsula turning into a complete nightmare for the Kremlin. Where am I talking about? Of course, we've talked about it beforehand: Crimea. Keev is methodically turning what Vladimir Putin considers his crowning jewel, the Russian elite beloved Riviera, into an absolute battlefield. The Ukrainian defense minister previously stated their clear intention to systematically isolate Crimea and turn it into an island. And it is connected from the north by a number of bridges across um some uh swamp uh and and flooding territory, and of course by the south by the Kerch Bridge. They are well on their way to doing this.
In a highly coordinated 40-day strategic operation authorized by President Zelensky, Ukraine's unmanned system forces just delivered a catastrophic blow to the peninsula's infrastructure. They're choking the supply lines right now. Brovdy revealed that relentless Ukrainian strikes along the R280 Novorossiysk um route, the critical overland military route running through Mariupol, um and down into Crimea um have caused Russian military cargo traffic to plummet by 71% in just two weeks. He expects Ukraine to have total fire control over that vital road within a month. Brovdy likened picking off exposed Russian trucks um on that tarmac to shooting partridges in a field, but they're dialing in their attacks to take Crimea offline. In early July, Ukrainian drone units targeted and hit 50 separate energy facilities across Crimea and the occupied southern territories. The biggest hit came on the 8th when drone forces successfully struck the PP2 transition station near Halyzivka. This facility is the main receiving point for the massive Crimean energy bridge, which funnels power directly from Russia across a 14-pole underwater cable system. The switch has been flipped. The strike took out five major electrical substations, three radar stations, and a training ground. At the same time, drone units hammered 53 distinct Russian military targets across the occupied lands. As the unmanned systems commander put it, a deep and total blackout for the occupiers is now completely inevitable.
The real-world chaos on the ground is sparking severe panic. The peninsula has descended into survival mode, plagued by constant water outages, rolling blackouts, oil slicks on the beaches, and endless lines at the petrol stations. Distressed and outraged Russian vacationers are flooding social media in tears, openly demanding to know why Moscow and Putin have completely abandoned them. But while regular citizens face total uncertainty, Putin's inner circle remains insulated in extreme luxury. An investigation by Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption foundation has exposed a sprawling, secretive palace built right on the Black Sea coast at Cape Aya in annexed Crimea. Originally a modest dacha, the property was seized after the 2014 annexation and funneled through a network of front companies tied directly to Putin's closest billionaire chums, mirroring the exact ownership schemes used for his multi-billion pound palaces in Gelendzhik um and Lake Valdai. Um, it is the ultimate insult to the Russian people. While underequipped soldiers are split sharing rifles on the front lines and civilian families are left freezing in the dark, the elite are completing luxury billionaire estates on the very same battlefield.
So what Ukraine is essentially doing is isolating Crimea from the north. The supply routes coming through um the rest of occupied uh Ukraine, this land bridge to Russia, are now being cut off. Ukraine is influencing any crossings uh around Kerch. The Kerch Bridge has got reduced capacity, but it hasn't been dropped yet, and I'll explain why in a second. But the ferries that bring heavy equipment across um and railway carriages across have all been sunk. We're seeing Ukraine now attacking tankers that were bringing fuel in to try and get fuel into Crimea, attacking them in the Sea of Azov. So why has a Kerch Bridge not dropped um uh anytime soon? Well, the Ukrainians are giving an out for the uh people that are living in Crimea. If Russia has to deal with tens of thousands of people trying to get out of Crimea um back into Russia and deal with the refugees they will become as they get in there, that will give Moscow another headache before inevitably Ukraine isolates Crimea completely. This is having a physical blow on Russia's ability to use Crimea as a launchpad for attacks up into Ukraine, but it's having a psychological blow on not just the Russian people, but those very people that are in Putin's inner circle and Vladimir Putin himself. As I've said in a previous episode, Vladimir Putin had his honeymoon in Crimea. His inner circle, his oligarchs all have luxury dachas and um apartments in this area, and they can't go and use them anymore. They can't fly off to the ships in the Mediterranean. There are massive yachts in the Caribbean or anywhere else. They're now isolated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And Ukrainian drones, as we heard President Zelensky say to Donald Trump, when Donald Trump said, "Why don't we both go to Moscow?" President Zelensky said, "It might be difficult. There are too many Ukrainian drones over Moscow."
So that's all for today's Battle Plans Exposed. Uh remember, please share it amongst your friends. Um thank you for everyone who's watching, and please put some comments in. If you want us to cover anything in particular, we look at the comments and and we will try and do that. Um but um share, like um and subscribe. Those are the things that I ask you to do and get your friends to do it as well. But most of all, thank you for watching. I'm Philip Ingram. Goodbye.