EXPOSED: Russian soldiers only live for 20 minutes on the frontline | Battle Plans

US POLITICAL & MILITARY NEWS
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106 Video Views·Jul 30, 2026
Vladimir Putin’s spring and summer offensives in Ukraine have turned into an utter disaster.
Russia still has over 5,000km² of Donetsk left to capture, yet managed just 97km² despite suffering a record 39,000 casualties in a single month.
At this rate of advance, taking the rest of the region will take Putin 14 years.
Russian forces are losing soldiers faster than they can recruit, with raw recruits facing an average frontline lifespan of just 20 minutes.
Former military intelligence planner Philip Ingram breaks down the tactical chaos unfolding across the Eastern Front.
AI Generated·May contain errors
Ukraine is inflicting these 39,000 casualties.
The average lifespan for a Russian soldier has been measured as 20 minutes.
This has given Vladimir Putin a real dilemma.
He's running out of manpower.
This is a fantastic tactic by the Ukrainians.
Ukraine is turning up the pain for Russia's middle class.
It is destroying Russia's ability to launch attacks against Ukraine.
As Russians are urged to drive calmly to save fuel
and President Zelensky shuffles his military commanders,
there are major updates from the front line.
I'm Philip Ingram and this is Battle Plans Exposed.
We're well over halfway through the year and it's fair to say Vladimir Putin's spring
and summer offensives are complete and utter disasters.
Russia still has over 5,000 square kilometers of Donetsk left to capture,
yet it has taken just 97 square kilometers.
Putin set a new deadline of December the 31st for its capture.
Now that's the 15th time he has moved the goalpost.
At this rate of advance, it's estimated it will take Russian forces
14 years to capture it completely.
Moscow lost at least 30,000 troops every month between January and May
and while June hit a record high of 39,000 casualties.
That's 39,000 dead and wounded.
Tactically, Ukraine is launching stunning counterattacks in key sectors.
Operationally, Kyiv has wrapped up a 40-day campaign that tore up Russia's rear-line logistics.
Away from the battlefield, Ukraine has struck in a series of assassinations,
sending a clear message to the Kremlin, we know where you are.
Severe fuel shortages are biting ordinary Russians, forcing some onto bicycles.
Petrol quality is dropping and civil unrest is growing.
Politically, Vladimir Putin is trying to downplay these economic problems
despite the fuel crisis and broader decline.
A massive question looms.
Will Russia be forced to mobilize?
Before we analyze all of this, let's look at what's been happening on the front lines.
Now, in our first clip, Russia's equivalent of Amazon has gone up in smoke,
delivering over $1 billion of damage in a prime attack.
This one is really going to hurt.
What's it called?
Well, it's Wildberries in Russia.
These warehouses help handle 52% of online retail in the country.
Thousands of independent sellers store their entire inventory inside these hubs.
Overnight, their stock and livelihood has gone.
But it's not only clothes, phone chargers and books that they sell.
Wildberries has a more sinister stock available.
Military gear such as body armor and drone components are listed on the platform.
Pro-war bloggers say volunteers rely on the site to buy kit that is then sent to the front line.
Targeting these ginormous warehouses is an intriguing shift in Ukraine's deep strike strategy.
As Zelensky put it, we are quite justly bringing the war back home to Russia.
Now, there's a smile on my face when I talk about this being the Amazon, the big hubs.
But actually, what it is doing is a number of different things.
It's making the average Russian much more aware of the war coming home to affect them.
They can't get their Wildberries Prime, their equivalent of Amazon Prime.
I don't know whether that exists, deliveries on time.
But it's small businesses that use just-in-time supply.
They're using the equivalent of drop shipping.
The stocks that they buy are held in these warehouses, but they're not insured.
So whenever the warehouses go up, the small businesses are taking the cost.
The number of videos that are appearing on social media saying that businesses have gone under
because they can't afford anything anymore is shocking.
And then we've got the military effect.
This is a supply chain getting components from overseas,
and China in particular, into the Russian military manufacturing capability,
whether they be small industries that are building FPV drones or the components for that,
or whether it be groups that are buying stuff to get that body armour, those bits of uniform,
those helmets, the other things that are needed for the front lines.
It's all affecting that.
And it seems that Ukraine is now on a systematic campaign of destroying these warehouses.
Not one has been hit.
Two have been destroyed.
A third has been hit.
And I suspect that the number of others that exist across Russia
are going to meet a similar fate in the coming days and weeks.
We can tell from the flames in this, and you can tell from the area that they cover,
that these are very similar when it comes to the effect that there is on the ground
to Ukraine hitting Russian oil refineries.
The fire seems to be as intense as it rips through these huge warehouses
because of the number of plastic components, flammable components,
and everything else that seemed to be stored in there.
We've seen similar fires as the oil refineries get hit, the oil storage tanks get hit,
and the oil spills out, spreading fire over a huge area.
This is significant.
In our second clip, here we have a genius aerial tactic to strike deep behind Russian lines.
Ukraine is taking to the skies using high-altitude tethered balloons
to launch strike drones midair, known as aerostats.
These giant balloons lift a Hornet strike drone up to eight kilometres into the air.
The balloon carries the drone 26 miles away from its launch site
before releasing it to start its engine.
Obviously, the tether is released like meteorological balloons that these really are,
do once they get to the right level.
If these were launched using ground catapult launchers,
they would burn massive amounts of battery power during take-off and climb.
By skipping that initial launch phase, the drone used 5% of its battery during transit.
That leaves almost its entire energy reserve packed and ready for the main strike.
Ukrainian operators estimate this tactic could double
the Hornet's range from 90 miles to nearly 190 miles.
Also, aerostats are difficult to detect for Russian air defences.
It's a simple adaptation that gives Kiev a cheap deep strike weapon
to target Russian staging posts across the country.
It shows how Ukraine is continuously adapting low-cost technology
to strike deep into Russian-held territory.
Russian state media is already sounding the alarm of these high-altitude balloon tactics.
Interestingly, thanks to prevailing winds that blow from the west to the east,
so from Ukraine towards Russia,
Russia is unable just to copy this tactic in a straightforward way.
Now, this shows the ingenuity that Ukrainians are applying.
And it's that level of ingenuity that they're applying to everything across the frontline
and seem to be bringing in more and more new ways of delivering weapons further into Russia.
Russia's concerned.
They don't know how to deal with this.
They don't know how to react to it.
And they're being caught, effectively, with their pants down.
Now, on the frontline, battlefield robotics are becoming essential for rescue missions.
Ukrainian forces are deploying uncrewed ground vehicles
to pull civilians out of high-risk strike zones.
In this operation, a robotic platform was sent to evacuate two elderly civilians
trapped near the frontline.
That's without risking more human lives.
In true Russian style, their forces targeted the rescue vehicle,
hitting it with two FPV kamikaze drones during the run.
You can see the moment the drones strike the vehicle along the track.
Despite the explosions, both civilians survived unharmed inside the trailer.
The platform took the hits, kept the civilians safe,
and a second robotic vehicle finished the extraction.
Using ground robotics for evacuation cuts the risk to rescue teams
whilst keeping frontline logistics moving.
But there's something else to notice about this.
These extraction vehicles quite clearly had a Red Cross on them.
We can see from the Ukrainian drone that was monitoring the extraction
that that Red Cross can be easily seen.
The Russian FPV drones will have seen that.
And to attack a vehicle that is being used for humanitarian reasons
on the battlefront by any weapon system is a war crime, quite simply.
This is yet another war crime that has been well documented
that can be added to the ever-growing list
of what Russia has done against Ukraine in this conflict.
So in our next clip, speaking of logistics,
this footage is from a RAM-2X strike drone
targeting Russian military supplies on the Zaporizhia front.
Look at this target tracking software in action
as it's locking onto a moving Russian supply truck.
Ukrainian operators are systematically hunting down convoys
along key transport routes.
The RAM-2X carries a high explosive warhead
specifically designed to destroy heavy military transport vehicles
and fuel tankers.
You can see the precision strike here
as the drone slams directly into a supply vehicle
parked near a staging area,
targeting fuel and ammunition trucks before they reach the frontline,
leaves entire frontline units stranded.
This relentless pressure on southern logistics networks
is a crucial element of Kiev's strategy.
And that crucial element of Kiev's strategy
is starving Russia's ability to push combat supplies,
fuel, oil, water, food,
but most importantly, ammunition forward to the frontline.
So not only have they got troops going forward,
without armoured support or anything else,
but they haven't got the bullets
because Ukraine is destroying them before they get there.
And the other thing that we should notice
about what's going on in this video
is if you look at the resolution that there is from the pictures,
you can see the vehicles that are being hit very clearly.
You can see the individuals that are running away.
You can see the individuals that don't make it away.
They can be counted.
And this is what the Ukrainians are doing.
Every attack, the video is analysed.
The numbers of vehicles that are getting destroyed,
the types of vehicles that are getting destroyed are being counted.
The number of personnel that get killed, they don't move again.
The number of personnel that get away
and the number of personnel that have to hobble away
or get carried away are being counted.
This is why Ukraine's understanding of the casualties
that it's inflicting on Russia is very good indeed.
And finally, in a massive embarrassment for Moscow,
Russia's newest stealth fighter jet has crashed near the capital.
The fifth generation Su-57
went down near the village of Lutsenio in the Moscow region.
Russian reports confirm the pilot ejected
before the aircraft hit the ground
and you can just see that in this video.
The crash delivers a heavy blow to the Kremlin's air force
which relies on the Su-57 as its flagship combat jet.
Each Su-57 costs up to 38 million pounds.
That's 50 million dollars if we're working in US currency.
That's to build and with the full operational package
valued at over 75 million pounds or 100 million dollars,
it is a very valuable asset to lose.
Moscow holds only a tiny fleet of these top-tier stealth jets
in active service.
Losing a top-tier stealth jet so close to Moscow
raises serious questions about maintenance
and the technical failures inside Putin's military aviation sector.
And whilst we call it a fifth generation aircraft,
it has got all of that in its technical specifications
and the way it looks.
But actually, from a personal perspective,
I would probably expect there to be a lot of third generation
or fourth generation or maybe earlier equipment
and technology inside this jet
because the Russians seem to go for something that looks good
talks good but isn't necessarily as good as they make it out to be.
To start with, let's take a closer look at what's been going on
around the fortress belt located in Donetsk.
That's this region of Ukraine.
Kostolevka in the south at the tip of the fortress belt
remains a hotly contested grey zone.
A lot of debate as to who has captured it
or who hasn't captured it.
What is clear is no matter what the Russians say
because they say they've got it, they don't.
Ukraine still controls large proportions of the city.
This is one of the most vital defensive battles
along the entire eastern front.
What is the fortress belt?
Well, the fortress belt are effectively these four cities
Kostolevka, Krematorsk, Slovyansk and Liman.
And it's building on a defensive line
that Ukraine started with Bakhmut and Pokrovsk beforehand.
And the Russians are focused on them.
Ukraine has turned these into fantastically defended
built-up areas.
A large proportion of the populations in them
as the Russians start to attack have been evacuated.
There are some civilians that decide to stay.
But what Ukraine is doing is forcing Russia
to fight street by street, building by building
as they try to capture these built-up areas.
Why the Russians are fixated on built-up areas,
I do not know because it's in their doctrine
when they come across effectively a porcupine defence
like that to try and bypass it, to ignore it.
The Russians seem to become fixed on it.
And what are the Ukrainians doing with this
as the Russians attack?
They're inflicting huge numbers of casualties.
Russian troops are pushing hard from the south and the east
to try and cut off supply lines to the eastern garrisons.
But Ukrainian engineers have built thick defensive networks
including anti-tank ditches, minefields and concrete bunkers.
We've seen small Russian infantry groups
trying to plant flags inside Kostelnivka
for quick propaganda wins.
And I've talked about this for several weeks now.
But we're hearing reports of an incredible counter-attack
underway just north of Kostelnivka near Lyman.
We reported previously of Ukraine's counter-attack
to take Yampil, but something bigger is brewing.
Russian forces have made a spearhead
and seized the village of Shandrai-Holovy.
And that's up around here.
This was with the goal of cutting off supply lines
from there into Lyman.
However, this has left them vulnerable to a counter-attack.
Ukraine could be executing what every commander fears
and that's encirclement.
Ukraine is attacking behind where the Russians
have said that they've captured
and trying to cut off the Russians in this salient.
So as the Russians have said that they have captured here,
the Ukrainians are attacking in from the north
and it is reported by the Ukrainians,
this has not been confirmed,
that they've captured a village of Zelena Dolenya
which is in this sort of area here.
Now, if they have done, that would be creating panic
amongst the Russian commanders here
because it's in danger of them being encircled and cut off.
Once they get cut off,
then as we've seen with the Ukrainians beforehand,
they starve them out.
They then capture or kill the entire number
of Russian troops that are forward.
We don't know how many have gone forward here.
Reporting at the moment is confused across the frontline,
but this exemplifies what's happening.
It also exemplifies the fact that Ukraine
seems to have the initiative at this tactical level
and has the initiative in where Russia's main effort is
because Russia's main effort
is trying to capture this fortress belt.
They keep saying they've captured Kostya Nevka.
As I said earlier, they haven't.
Russians have said that they've captured Lyman.
The Ukrainians have pushed them out.
The Russians are now saying that they're threatening Lyman
from the north here.
They haven't.
And the Ukrainians are now saying
they're threatening the Russian advances here.
They could well be doing that.
The frontline is confused, but Ukraine has the initiative.
As ever, there's a fog of war
and the details remain somewhat fragmented.
Russian mill bloggers are raising the alarm.
The reports show Ukrainian uncrewed ground drones
sweeping through the sector to clear Russian positions.
Does Ukraine have enough reserves
to see this counter strike through?
Time will tell, but we'll monitor the situation closely
and bring you any updates that we get.
So why does Putin want the Donetsk Oblast so much?
Well, these cities, these four cities
are the last real defensive lines
that there are between this part of Donetsk
and the Donetsk boundary.
And the Donetsk boundary is the last area
where there's any defence between there and Kiev.
Vladimir Putin would accept
and try and convince the Russian people
that he has won the conflict if he captures this
because it is part of this disputed Donbass region
up to the border there.
And the Donbass region is the region
where there was primarily Russian speaking people.
And Putin has changed his rationale for the war
to being one where he wanted to destroy Ukraine primarily
to one where he wants to protect the areas
that he sees as Russian.
And of course, Vladimir Putin has brought this region
under the Russian constitution.
He held an illegal referenda 18 months, two years ago
where he said that the people of the disputed Donbass
voted to be part of Russia
and then changed the Russian constitution to bring it in.
So as far as Putin is concerned,
from a legal perspective, he sees this as Russian
and therefore he has to capture it.
He's not succeeding militarily.
And this is why every time
there are peace negotiations going on,
his criteria in those peace negotiations
are that Ukraine must give up this whole area.
If Ukraine give up that whole area,
there's nothing to stop the Russians
at some stage in the future heading towards Kiev.
Ukraine has put so much effort into these areas
and protecting them.
And the people of these cities
recognise themselves as Ukrainian.
Zelensky has turned around and said
he will never give these territories up.
And speaking to the average Ukrainian,
they say that under no circumstances
should Ukraine give up any territory to the Russians.
So this is the primary area where Ukraine
is inflicting these 39,000 casualties
in the last month onto the Russians.
In the last two or three months,
the number of Russian dead and wounded
has exceeded the number of individuals
that Russia has managed to recruit
and bring into the Russian forces.
The average lifespan for a Russian soldier
being pushed forward to the front line
has been measured as 20 minutes.
Yes, you heard that right, 20 minutes,
not 20 hours or 20 days, 20 minutes.
This has given Vladimir Putin a real dilemma.
He's running out of manpower.
He has not brought a general mobilisation in across Russia.
And that is something that he's almost
certainly considering at the moment.
However, he's not going to do that
before the Russian elections coming up in this autumn.
If he wins the elections,
and I think if is a certainty for Vladimir Putin,
and he gets the numbers that he wants,
and I think that's a certainty,
then there's a real potential that Vladimir Putin
will bring in a more general mobilisation across Russia.
What are the indicators for that at the moment?
They're tiny little indicators at the moment,
but subtle changes in the language coming out of Moscow.
The Russian Kremlin spokesperson, Peskov,
turned around and called the special military operation a war.
He's now described it as an existential war,
not just against Ukraine,
but against NATO and against the EU.
Vladimir Putin has turned around
and openly discussed the pain that has been caused
against the Russian people by the deep strikes
that Ukraine is successfully executing
inside Russian territory.
These subtle changes in language would suggest
that Putin may be preparing the Russian population
for a more general mobilisation.
Only time will tell, but we'll be watching it for you.
Wars are decided not just on the battlefield.
Strikes thousands of kilometres from the front line
can determine the victor.
Let's look at the operational level of this war now.
So forget holding the line.
The Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU,
unleashed a kinetic storm deep behind enemy lines.
Signed off directly by Vladimir Zelensky,
this 40-day strategic blitz slammed energy facilities,
airbase hangars and Shadow Fleet oil tankers
across Russia and into the Sea of Azov
and into the Black Sea.
The objective was simple,
collapse the front line from the rear.
By systematically strangling the Kremlin's economy
and knocking out irreplaceable strategic assets,
Kyiv is cutting off frontline combat power
and accelerating Putin's decline.
Here's how this 40-day campaign unfolded on the ground.
First of all, satellite and drone footage
showing smoke rising over massive Omsk
oil processing complex in Siberia.
Look at the distance of this strike.
Ukrainian drones flew for more than 12 hours
to reach Omsk in Siberia.
Siberia is the other side of the Ural Mountains.
At 1,800 miles from the border,
this 1,500-mile flight path
is equivalent to three trips
across the length of Great Britain.
The attack halted operations
at Russia's largest fuel producer,
deepening domestic shortages and forcing export bans.
It proves to Moscow that industrial sites,
once protected by sheer distance,
must sit directly in Kyiv's crosshairs.
The Ural Mountains, that sort of distance,
was during the Cold War with Russia
or with the Soviet Union.
By NATO, it was seen as the limit of our exploitation,
the furthest our aircraft and missiles
and everything else could get to.
Ukrainians are showing they can go well beyond that now.
Zelensky confirmed the shift,
stating Ukraine has completely eliminated
the concept of a safe Russian strategic rear.
And that strategic rear, as I said during the Cold War,
was built up on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains.
That is where Russia had its depots
for all of its spare military equipment.
That's where Russia stored its long-range missiles
and ammunition before bringing it forward
to what would have been a Cold War frontline.
That's where Russia has a lot of its defence industrial base.
That's where Russia has a lot of its oil refining
and other capabilities to be able to supply things forward.
It's now lost that protection of those Ural Mountains.
Ukraine is showing that everywhere is touchable
and nowhere is untouchable.
Again, if we go back in history
and we look at how Russia has defended itself,
let's go to the Second World War.
Russia drew the German forces through Ukraine,
right up to the outskirts of Moscow,
bringing them forward fast
so that their logistic lines were being stretched too far.
Remember, logistics.
What is Ukraine doing?
Ukraine is attacking Russia's logistics
but attacking it from within Russia to stop it
being able to reinforce logistically
into its occupied territories inside Ukraine,
stopping logistics from keeping Russia moving normally
and affecting everything.
Ukraine is taking the tactics that the old Soviet Union used
of slash and burn
and applying that slash and burn into Russian territory.
This is something they have never seen before.
So, the second strike, repeated drone strikes
slammed into the Moscow oil refinery at Kapotunya,
less than 10 miles from the Kremlin.
Ukrainian drone hits the complex in multiple waves,
knocking out major production lines.
A UFO was spotted as the lid was blown off an oil tank.
Video captured a Russian surface-to-air missile
meant to take out an overhead Ukrainian drone
miss and fly directly into one of the refinery storage tanks,
causing a powerful blast that launched the circular roof
into the sky in a mushroom cloud
before it crashed to the ground,
giving that impression of a UFO taking off.
It was quite a spectacular sight to see.
The damage directly worsened
Russia's mounting domestic fuel crisis,
bringing flames to the capital skyline
and it shatters Putin's claims that the war remains far away.
The third example is hundreds of miles inside Russia.
Ukrainian drones penetrated deep air defences
to strike the Engels airbase.
Satellite imagery reveals the scorched wreckage
of a destroyed TU-95MS heavy bomber.
These strategic bombers represents
Russia's airborne nuclear triad
and are entirely irreplaceable.
Losing a nuclear-capable aircraft
directly on its home runway
is a massive tactical humiliation for Moscow.
Ukrainian naval drones targeted
the sanctioned Shadow Fleet tanker Blue near Yalta,
hitting Putin's illegal oil exports.
By knocking out over 40% of Russia's oil refining capacity,
Kiev has proven its long-range strike capability
can reach deep behind enemy lines.
And it's this balance of hitting military targets,
the airfields,
hitting targets that are supporting
military operations,
the oil refineries,
but also supporting civilian oil and gas supply
is significant.
It is bringing the fight home.
It is destroying Russia's ability
to launch attacks against Ukraine.
It is destroying Russia's ability
to reinforce or resupply its troops
that are attacking into Ukraine.
This is a slow tactic at the operational level
to help what is going on at a tactical level
and will help reinforce Ukraine's green shoots
of success of Ukraine
beginning to wrestle the initiative at that level.
Another airbase was targeted,
this time forces from the 15th Artillery Reconnaissance Brigade
targeted Kalino airfield in the Kursk region.
Overhead footage shows a strike drone
diving directly beside a parked MiG-29 fighter jet.
Moscow deploys these 20 million pound jets
specifically to hunt down
Ukrainian long-range attack drones.
Ukrainian assets also knocked out
the Pantsir-S1 air defence system guarding the airfield.
It didn't see them coming.
And this is blinding local air defence coverage
and it leaves high-value targets across the region
wide open to follow-up strikes.
On the naval front,
watch this footage from a Ukrainian Mamay naval drone
operating in the Black Sea.
Russian helicopters throw heavy machine gun fire
and aerial bombs at the drone on its approach.
The pilot weaves through the defensive barrage
and ram straight into a Sumacs-class tanker.
This vessel belonged to Putin's illegal shadow fleet
moving crude oil past Western sanctions to fund the war.
Damaging the ship directly chokes off
a critical financial pipeline feeding the Kremlin war chest.
Next, to pull off these deep strikes,
you have to blind the enemy first.
Look at this precision strike
taking out strategic radar installations in occupied Crimea.
Once those radar eyes are darkened,
Ukrainian forces smashed the Begravno airbase
and blew up a massive ammunition depots nearby.
Without air defence coverage,
Russian repair hubs and supply lines in the south
were left totally defenceless.
This initial operation of destroying air defences
is called SIAD, suppression of enemy air defences.
Blind the enemy,
stop them being able to attack your air assets
and you then bring the strike assets in
and carry out the effect that you want to on the ground.
But these air defence assets are hugely valuable
and take many years to build
if Russia's got the capacity to rebuild them
because it can't get the key components
because of the sanctions that it faces.
This is a fantastic tactic by the Ukrainians
to completely degrade Russia's air defences over a wide area.
In this next clip,
Ukrainian assets hit four critical military transport ferries
including the Iasek and the Maria
and incinerated the fuel terminal at the port of Kravats.
By neutralising these transport ferries
and knocking out the radar network across Crimea,
Ukraine has effectively converted the Black Sea
into a logistics death trap.
Russian forces on the front line
are now facing acute supply shortages.
And lastly, we have the warehouses
that Russian consumers rely on for their goods.
By targeting these large logistic nodes,
Ukraine is turning up the pain for Russia's middle class
who have so far been unaffected by the war.
So what we're seeing here
is a fundamental shift in strategy.
Ukraine is using high-tech precision tools
and relentless asymmetric tactics
to hit Russia where it hurts most,
its war chest and its supply lines.
When you take out nuclear bombers on their own runways
and you burn tankers financing the invasion,
you render the Kremlin's fortified rear
completely useless.
And this is the perfect example
of how Ukraine has the initiative
and is developing that initiative
at the operational level.
That operational level,
stopping Russia's ability to continue to reinforce
what Russian troops are trying to achieve
at a tactical level.
It's impacting Russia tactically
and Ukraine is now having more successes in the front line.
This is where measuring
what is happening in the front line
is not the way to measure
who is winning or losing a war.
At the moment, Ukraine has got the initiative
just tactically at the front line.
It has definitely got the initiative operationally
and strategically,
I think we're in a bit of a stalemate
because we're not hearing much
out of the Russians wanting peace,
out of the Americans trying to force peace
and President Zelensky keeps offering to sit down
in anywhere but Moscow
because apparently,
Moscow is a little bit too dangerous.
It's got too many Ukrainian drones over it.
On July the 21st,
Oleksandr Stirsky stepped down
as Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces.
Taking the helm is the 43-year-old
Major General Mykhailo Drapaty.
He's moved up from Commander of Joint Forces.
His legendary frontline status goes back to 2014
during the early battles in Mariupol.
Leading a column of 72nd Mechanized Brigade armor
to rescue trapped police officers,
Drapaty shouted,
go to his driver.
The driver floored the accelerator
and launched their 18-ton BMP fighting vehicle
clean over a meter high barricade
built by pro-Russian separatists.
Footage of that flying BMP
became an instant symbol
of Ukrainian courage and resistance.
Over a decade later,
the married father of two
takes full command of the military.
Drapaty is widely supported by frontline soldiers,
veterans and government officials
and the public.
He's known for speaking openly
and taking personal responsibility
in tough situations
rather than chasing political standing.
In 2022, Drapaty led the forces
that halted Russia's advance on Krivyi Rih
before liberating the West Bank of Kherson.
Last year,
he stopped Moscow's cross-border offensive
in Kharkiv,
trapping Russian forces
in two small buffer zones.
And Drapaty is also the primary architect
of Ukraine's drone line doctrine.
His strategy creates a continuous
15-kilometer kill zone behind the frontline
using uncrewed systems.
With up to 90% of frontline defense
relying on the drones,
his mission is clear,
defeat Russia's autumn campaign
using rapid battlefield innovation.
Now, the talk of Drapaty's predecessor
Stirsky being sacked
and his predecessor Zheluzhny being sacked,
this war has been going on
for almost as long as the First World War.
I have been in operations
where I have seen commanders
burnt out after nine months
to go for a number of years
where you're effectively fighting 24-7.
You don't get a break.
As a commander,
you don't have time for a break.
They're probably surviving
two, three, maximum four hours sleep a night.
This will break anyone.
And actually, if we see what Zheluzhny achieved,
he stopped Russia from capturing Kiev.
He pushed Russia back
from large territories across Ukraine.
He had then achieved
what he needed to achieve.
It was right and proper
that General Stirsky came in
and has been the architect
of the transition of many
of the Ukrainian forces
from a static defense force
to a maneuverist approach
and incorporated those changes
with the technical changes
that are coming in
with the drone warfare
and all the rest of it.
But it's right and proper
that before he gets overly tired,
he steps back.
And we then bring in
a new, younger general
who has got the ability
to take the foundations
that have been provided
by his two predecessors
and take those foundations
and build on those
for further successes in the conflict.
And therefore, I do not see,
and I think it is wrong
to describe Stirsky and Zheluzhny
as being sacked.
They have achieved
what they needed to achieve
and it's time for them to hand over
and hand the mantle to the next person
so that he's got the energy,
the time, the vision
and the understanding,
as well as the support from elsewhere
to take things forward.
So that's all for today's
Battle Plans Exposed.
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And if you've got any comments,
please put them in the comments below.
But I'm Philip Ingram.
Until next time,
thank you and goodbye.
