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November 8, 2025 • 52 mins
597,018 views Streamed live on Nov 3, 2025 #budanov #tcc #army of ukraine
#arestovych #shelest #trump #zelensky #putin #war
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➤ 00:00 Alexander Shelest: Broadcast format. Poll: If a decision is made to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine, which country is preferable?
➤ 05:45 Why should Russia agree to peacekeepers?
➤ 07:50 A laborious report from the President on the situation at the front and enemy numbers. What could be the reality?
➤ 13:40 How and why to build a human-centered army?
➤ 17:30 Clearing the city of the enemy, Ukrainian style. Budanovshchina.
➤ 24:36 The election strategies of a certain person or team. The style of governing Ukraine.
➤ 27:53 Information warfare. The behavioral pattern of the Presidential Office.
➤ 33:00 Why isn't Pokrovsk being surrendered?
➤ 36:47 A recipe for defeat – 4 erroneous strategies. The main problem is a broken feedback loop.
➤ 41:10 Do security forces control the Presidential Office?
➤ 45:25 Pokrovsk can no longer be saved.




Olexiy Arestovych (Kiev): Advisor to the Office of Ukraine President : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksiy_Arestovych
Official channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjWy2g76QZf7QLEwx4cB46g

Alexander Shelest - Ukranian journalist.
Youtube: @a.shelest  
Telegram: https://t.me/shelestlive

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, dear friends, guests and subscribers to my channel, also
subscribers to Alexis channel. This is live stream. We are
doing it on both channels side, not from PRIVATEIA station.
This is a recorded stream and translated in English. It
took us usually a couple of days to get to
this point. All right, back to the stream, discussing today

(00:22):
the flow of war. We want to appeal to our
viewers to be patient and strong because it appears that
the escalation threshold is right here. We can see it.
And I'll be discussing rather basic understandable topics today of

(00:43):
what's happening on the front, what's happening in the Ukrainian politics.
And if you have any questions, you are welcome to
leave them in a chat. You can scan the care
code next to the bottom of the screen, the one
on the left from the Shellist Club. You can leave

(01:03):
that question there. The one on the right links to
Alexi's School of Thought, school of communication. And we start
with the usual question of the stream. Today's question sounds
like this, If the decision about peacekeepers to Ukraine is made,

(01:26):
which country is most preferable options Belarus, Yes, they are
an ally of Russia. But it definitely means that nobody
is going to should India, Brazil, any other non Western country.
Third option is a mix of Western and non Western
for example Turkey as a native member but also not

(01:47):
entirely native country, or just mixed several countries. And the
last option is just Western countries and that will be
a guarantee of safety. Today, bilar Ussia said that if
Ukraine and Russia would agree on peacekeepers, they're not against it. So, Alexei,
do you think we are getting to the option of

(02:08):
peacekeepers on the front? Alexandre, you know, I'm skeptical. I
think this war has quite some time to go, at
least over a year. Personally, I would love it to
finish yesterday, but despite of me continuing to push in
that direction, we're still not there. And as for peacekeepers,

(02:30):
we want peacekeepers from the countries whom we want to
repair relations with, and since we have broken I think
irreparably our relations with the global South, we should probably
focus on Indian, Chinese, maybe Brazilian, Turkish as well. Could
work these other countries that can also affect more safety

(02:55):
than just Ukraine, because Black Sea, for example, Turkey presence
in this situation because participating in a peacekeeping function between
Russia and Ukraine, that's for sure, will last at least
dozens of years. And this is a good intervention in

(03:16):
a good sense of this word into the destiny of Ukraine.
And our diplomacy with China and India are really pathetic
at the moment, So it would bring additional factor to
our politics, to additional purpose to repair these relations. So
that's where I would pay attention to if I was

(03:39):
in the office. Bring China, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Turkey
and of course Arab countries. I would ask some of them.
As for observers, you can bring orcse from Europe, you
can bring American observers, Russian observers. That doesn't matter because

(04:03):
observers in front of international peacekeeping force likely will not
be causing any ruckus. And also again regarding peacekeepers, it's
not all peacekeepers that are bad. Usually it's one or
two that are bad apples and not peacekeepers. The observers,
then you can always work with them, you can buy them,

(04:25):
you can change them, you can replace them. After the peacekeepers,
we may get understanding. After understanding, we may get agreement,
and after agreement we may get economic revival. This is
what we absolutely need. And some countries may be indifferent
to Ukrainian problem because of the distance, like Malaysia Indonesia.

(04:46):
But if you have peacekeepers and the borders there and
the conflict, then you definitely are under raidar and this
conflict is on your radar and your attention is there,
and you have a good chance of building good relations.
So this would be an option for Ukraine to be
present in the politics of many countries. They will be

(05:07):
obvious allies and friends and partners in this case. And
behind the peacekeepers, of course, there is economy and Ukraine
has a good chance of taking space at their mental
map of citizens and politicians in those countries, I'll say

(05:28):
you indicated a long time, like ten years. This is
a long story. Why do you think Russia needs to
agree to peacekeepers in this case? I understand why Ukraine
would want it because that's some security guarantees. But for Russia,
they're usually against these things. Well, if we are exploring

(05:52):
the peacekeeping scenario, that implies that Russia has already agreed.
So that's why we are exploring this rabbit hole. We're
putting a question wider why Russia does need to agree
to peacekeeping force if the war stops arbitrarily, let's say
along the front line today in twenty seven, in twenty

(06:13):
thirty two, sometime it means that neither of the sides
prevailed ultimately in this war, because the frontline means that
the presence of frontline means there are a lot of
well armed men on both sides with the long build
to each other. In this case, since nineteen forty five,
the world figured out how to use peacekeeping forces, and

(06:38):
that force either serves as a barrier or observes make
sure that there is no escalation. So in this case
we imply that Russia failed to occupy Ukraine, and that's
so far what they declare for districts and for regions
and crimea. So alongside this border, having peacekeeping force is

(07:00):
a good scenario. But even if it'll be just a
limited group of observers for thousands of front kilometers, you
cannot get by with small mission. You need several dozen people.
That's a huge frontline, and I would say we need

(07:22):
to make sure that observers are present from all those
global countries. Okay, So unfortunately, so far peacekeeping is not
on the table, and right before our stream, tonights against
Ki came to the cameras and added more to Ukraine

(07:44):
appeal to its citizens to be stronger. Apparently there's only
sixty Russians left in Kupinsk to kick them out and
take it back. And as for Pakrovsk, he's saying that
they're only two to three hundred of Russians in there
that need to be kicked out, and Ukraine is apparently
capable to do that, according to Zelenski, So I want

(08:05):
to ask you a question before we dive deeper into
the front line. How is that that sixty people, sixty
men take half of Kupensk or two to three hundred
out of one hundred and seventy thousand. I heard that
in Zelensky meeting with Smoleak on Friday, he did mention

(08:27):
that Russia has one hundred and seventy thousand in this direction,
but in the township itself, in Pakrovsk, it's only two
to three hundred whom it's rather difficult to kick out,
and situation is horrible and you need to drop everything,
you have to kick them out. What is that war?

(08:47):
When one person can control like a city district Alexandra,
I'll have to give you a fifteen minute long answer.
If you're ready for that, I'll have to go over
all nuance already. Let's go first. I'm against war. I'm
not a proponent of war. This is my logical stance

(09:08):
on this. But since we're fighting, let's fight properly. The
strategy or part of the strategy related to our ground action.
I'm not taking the overall military supplies, alliances, the higher
level strategy and partnerships, long range missiles. Just what's happening
on the ground. We've been making mistakes since the front stabilized,

(09:33):
and then somebody's far from smart head, and I think
it's a prerogative of President's office exclusively they birth the
thought of holding a territory. This is a fundamental mistake
which caused us a lot, will cost us a lot,
and most likely will lead us to some kind of defeat.
Not that Russians will take Kievan Viev, but overall balance,

(09:56):
when talied up, will be not in our favor. So
it might lead let's call it not a full defeat,
but not a success right and very bloody result for us.
We can observe that in Pagrosska coupings. Now why because
our fax Russian Federation have advantage in troops and means

(10:17):
on the ground both humans and armaments. Quantity vice, they
exceed us quality vice. They also exceed us in a
lot of districts, in a lot of nomenclature and the
moment we give a task to hold the front line
to our troops, Russians on the tactical, operative and strategic

(10:43):
levels always know what we will be doing, and surprise
is a key factor in modern warfare that can give
some success when both sides are generally of the same level.
There are wars that are fought by armies of different generations.
Two thousand and three, when American Army invaded Iraq, the

(11:08):
army of five plus level is fighting the army at
a three level, and that's why this is a bleeds
creak with complete destruction of Iraqi armed forces. When two
armies fight with a difference in one generation of army evolution,
everything becomes more difficult. And if you take armies of

(11:30):
the same generation, same technical level. Take Iran Iraq war
for example, ten years of the bloodiest operations over twenty
huge scale campaigns, twelve year old storming minefields, using gases
and the front basically was static. So Ukrainian Armed Forces

(11:51):
and Russian Armed Forces are the armies of the same generation.
There is no fundamental gap between them, and that's why
there has no brilliant success on both sides. And we
have the factor of the bloodiest bloodbath that continues for
several years already, and the only factory you can use
on this case is surprise. Instead, we are given orders

(12:13):
to stand on the front line and we are ordered
to hold it. Russians always know from the commander of
the group, battalion commander, detachment commander, they always know strategically
what Ukrainians are doing. So we are putting our troops
in a maximally uncomfortable position, concoct a more difficult one
from sergeant to the commander of the army. So we

(12:35):
look like a stake that they roll on the plate
and just picking which side to take a bite from.
So one thing is that we're holding this line, and
we also have a political order to try to take
back the regions that were lost and positions that were lost,

(12:58):
and that's how we lost most of volunteers who came
in twenty two in these dumb counterattacks attempts to retake
small pieces of land previously taken by Russians, and Sudiski
was given hundreds of thousands more mobilized and they wasted
them in the same fashion on the front. What should

(13:21):
we do instead? We should have changed three to four
things in the army first training system. Even if somebody
was conscribed by force, preparation, proper training can bring his
motivation up. Professionalism can bring his motivation up. And then
there are some stories that they're talking when people were bussified,

(13:43):
as they call them, drafted by force, they essentially acknowledged that, Okay,
I'm in the army now, I will not surrender. I'll
do my best, and there are stories of success. So
that's what we need to do. Un mass. We also
need to have a change of attitude to ldiers in
the army today. They are rightless subhumans who do not

(14:04):
have any right to do anything. They just have to
follow orders. We need to change that. The infantry fighter,
the lowest level warfighter, has to be on top, not
at the bottom. He has to have the logic, the
principles them morale. The freedom third is stop, but as stop,

(14:26):
order sees to resist on the stationary front lines and
make sure that your main order is destruction of enemies
life force, and allow our commanders to leave the district,
leave their positions and be much more mobile and use
the German tactic developed by Germany which allowed freedom to

(14:52):
commanders to unit commanders while fulfilling a bigger order. So basically,
you need to hold that brigade level of defense that
has let's say three points. These are two points on
the front fifteen kilometers deep, and you can maneuver in
this area anyway you like instead of holding the front line.

(15:15):
Because the war from the Ukrainian side turned into most
maximum predictable, dumb bloodbath, Russians always know that we will
be holding certain trenches or certain positions, and if we

(15:36):
lose it, we will throw forces to take it back.
If we had technical advantage, especially in UAVs at the beginning,
when we had this advantage, if we did not have that,
we would have lost it. Problem is that Russians are
already copying and scaling and in some aspects of UAVs
they already have qualitative advantage over us, and we're still

(15:59):
doing the same. So during this time, Russian armed forces,
Russian Army have reviewed their tactic, their strategy at least
three times. They have changed even the big strategy twice.
They continuously learn, creatively learn from all the operations that

(16:22):
happen on the front. And you can see that the
commanders of all levels systemically try to understand, read, and
predict and learn from levels. And you can see that
happening on the front. If previously they were just giving
more artillery to support Wagner troops so those could penetrate,

(16:46):
today they actually combine the work of several different types
of detachments. They start to isolate townships like Pakrovsk. They
isolate logistics today related a big city, right, Pacrossk is
a relatively big city, and they use UAVs to close

(17:08):
our attempts to provide any support to that area of defense.
How do we respond to that, this is a very
sad story. We can say that, okay, on the same schema,
we lose the flanks, Russians push on the flanks, and
then we hold defense in the cities. Yes, we can
say that and indicate that Russians have more forces to

(17:30):
do that. But even for that, there are ways to
call that. I just don't want to voice it out
and allowed let's not give hints to Russians here. Well,
Alex say, we do have some answers, like intelligent special forces, right,
the way we use them is losing some of the

(17:50):
black Hawks in recent operations. And you also have to
put additional discount on what we report what Russians report.
Some of the v show that they're destroying some units
in the darkness with drones. It's hard to tell whether
right it is the soldier they declare they destroyed. You

(18:12):
cannot see even whose soldier it is. But okay, if
we trust them, we do have detachments who are whom
it takes dozens of years to train. Their weight is
sequel to their weight in gold, right, and we do
what we throw them to solve the bottlenecks. They're basically

(18:35):
saying that Russian the version troops are creating a bottleneck
to supply Pacrosk. Somebody needs to go there and destroy
those couple hundred Russian troops that invaded that logistics corridor.
So it implies that our special forces in pistol distance
fights clean these Russian intruders up. And as a legend,

(18:58):
that sounds okay, right, But Russians that invaded this area
are not by themselves. They have seventy thousand group supporting them.
That if we deploy let's say a couple hundred specialists,
what will they do at the final stage of the

(19:20):
city collapse. Given that this bottleneck can be resolved with
long range drones on both sides, the ones can be
controlled from distance, and Russians use drones rather successfully. They

(19:40):
basically used both soldiers and drones to destroy us. When
we try to resupply the township, two hundred Russian troops
shooting with rifles at the armored vehicles bring resupplies to
the township. They will not do much damage, definitely can

(20:02):
But what I think is happening now is Budanovshina. That's
a term describing the strategy and behavior like what happened
in Snake Island. There was only reason to hold it
is to hold a naval sector and keep Russians further
away from our waters. But if you remember, we lost

(20:25):
several legendary figures there. I lost a pilot there who
was the person who actually succeeded in removing his detachment
from Crimea and Rursians occupied that. So there are some
names that were lost there. But the story is that
when everything on things go bad, somebody brave comes up

(20:46):
and says, you know what will go solve it? And
then the guys go on black hawks or vehicles or somewhere,
and as utabutsa road, nobody reports about losses. Nobody reports
about successes as well, though, and there are other heroic
elements of us getting to the nuclear stations and trying

(21:07):
to solve other big issues. And even if we abandon
all that and say that this is just more time propaganda,
now imagine British The head of British six, let's say,
lands with his troops with the best of his somewhere
near Fallujah and leads his people to some operation that

(21:29):
brings to memory an old story that I was told
back when I was studying. I don't know how true
it is, but it takes place in the Kirk's Battle
of the Second World War, when Germans are already breaking
through and the commander of division, some heroic colonel, let's say, Ivanov,
takes command of his troops and leads them directly into

(21:52):
attack himself. And it succeeds, and they take back the
positions to previously by Germans. But the next day they
get an older from Supreme Command, Colonel Ivanov for abandoning
the command outpost of division to be demoted to the infantrymen,
and infantryman Ivanov to be rewarded with the order of

(22:14):
a battle red banner. This is how normal army should work.
With the normal army, Budanov would have woken up as
an infantryman, but he would have gotten the hero of
Ukraine for this heroism. And imagine that none of our
special forces died. Imagine that it's Moscow propaganda, and our

(22:40):
special forces indeed liberated the corridor, destroyed all Russian invaders
and out of one hundred and seventy thousand Russians there
is only one thousand left. The moral is still that
the head of a strategic organ, the head of the
military intelligence of Ukraine, of Ministry of Defense, is commanding

(23:01):
a small deployment operation that shows how bad things are
in our defense forces, how bad it is with understanding
of bigger military picture and order in the office in
the Central Command, and that everything demoted itself down to
the level of pr not to the strategy. And of

(23:26):
course bud Enough if he's positioning himself as the future
leader who wants to politically fight was illusiony U therest
and needs all these successes. It just highlights that he
perhaps is not in the right place, because otherwise it's
a catastrophe. Even if the facto just by this action

(23:49):
without even going into details, how many losses did they incur,
how successful they were, the fact that the head of
military intel is commanding a small operation on the front,
this is a huge issue, alex say, do you think
that perhaps just dump Budanav in this fashion and in

(24:12):
a week or two they will lose Pakrovsk and they'll
point fingers and say Budanov has lost. No, no, no, Alexander.
In this case, Budanav is going to be presented as savior.
It will be generals who lost this township, or he
presented himself as a savior. Whoever made this decision. But
this has all relation to personal pr to some per

(24:33):
technology and it's pervasive nature in the Ukrainian leadership. It
has nothing to do with military strategy, all right. But
the fact is that sixty men are terrorizing the whole township. No,
they're not sixty men. It's our media telling us there
are sixty men. But I believe there's a lot more

(24:55):
people on the Russian side that are already infiltrating the township,
and as some of the officers already report in the
social they're saying, I'm not even going to comment how
bad things are, And Marianna Bezugla is also indicating that
there are significant issues with the type of orders given

(25:16):
in the city and the real situation on the ground.
But I understand this is probably part of a bigger
campaign that hey, listen, we're still successful, we can still
fight Russians. Give us more missiles, give us more munitions,
to indicate it to our partners to send us more armaments.
And I think our partners would respect us more if

(25:38):
we were actually telling the truth, because Ukraine does have
real successes. Yeah, they're small, they're private, but we can
highlight them and they're real instead of these weird operations.
And when President is telling these smaller stories about coupons
and pakrovs can supporting these weird operations around them that

(26:00):
are breaking all the military laws, that's not the right strategy.
I think we had successful operations we can report about,
and unfortunately, currently we do have a whole layer of

(26:20):
military leaders who grew from colonels to generals really fast
during this war, and who are ready to fulfill political
orders by Zegonsky government regardless of their military applicability, and
Budanov is indeed following Zegonski's orders in this regard. In
my view, this is developing catastrophe and it will end

(26:43):
badly for us. Not that we'll lose Zaparogia tomorrow, but
this style of leadership and these fundamental errors, they mean
a lot political leadership, conducting these tactical and strategic operations
in such fashion on the front that leads us to catastrophe.

(27:03):
There'll be parts of the front that will collapse and
Russians will get through breakthrough eventually. So in some case,
remember we talked a year ago about how will it
look like it is collapsing? In some sense, you can
already say this front is already collapsing, because these are
the operations we see they're undertaking to try to save it,

(27:26):
and they can't even describe it properly. There is also
an information war that's happening, and Zynsky government is completely
failing in the information warfare with Russia. They're delegating this
war to TikTok bloggers and some journalists, but actually information

(27:46):
warfare is the top layer of cognitive warfare trumps everything else.
Today they're not doing it at all, especially since since
I left office, I have not seen anybody picking up
the better. They do not understand how to present this operation.

(28:07):
All they needed to say is that military intel specialists
deployed their top their best to just hold the corridor,
to let our wounded get out and to get more
supplies in. So they should have put an accent on
humanitarian side of this operation, and Budanov himself who was

(28:30):
supposedly there in Cama and with a branch of his
butt to save his face. So this should be presented
that this was a humentarian operation to rescue wounded, to
allow supplies and the relatives of the soldiers currently in

(28:52):
the township already reading the news that we have now
as everybody in the township is forgotten. Operation was a failure.
Thing is getting out, the bottleneck is holding it. And
basically say goodbye to your relatives who are holding the township.
They're not getting out. And this was a small vignette.
The Zlansky government could have put this operation that humanitarian

(29:14):
aspect of allowing the wounded out and providing some support
to the troops to enable them to withdraw if needed,
and et cetera. They're failing to acknowledge that, to present
it this way, but they never can. They never knew
how to Alexydnikleevitch in the same logic Ariyoshnik that was

(29:34):
supposedly destroyed in Kapustan Dar, half of the Russian panzers
that we destroyed, blackout in Zukovsk or next to Zukovsk,
or near Dukovsk airfield in Russia. And I saw these
messages pro Zelensky media were sending hundreds of drones, some

(29:55):
missiles and watch there is blackout in Russia present and said,
he delivered. This is how that pr campaign looks like
in the Ukrainian media sphere. Look, Alexander, it is indeed
a stable pattern in our society in Ukraine, the failure
in the front, growing degree of information, of heated information

(30:17):
social media that the media pro presidential media cannot cover,
cannot prevent from being linked. They then come out and
declare something heroic happened. Elsewhere. There is usually some missile story,
some long range missile, some long range attack that supposedly

(30:40):
draws attention from the failure to it. About a thousand
of our troops are locked in Pokrovsky. Some of them
refuse to leave. Their air troopers, marines, qualified motivated soldiers
who refuse to leave the township without an order, and
they're honestly holding it in five for it Wait, alex say,

(31:03):
maybe that's a situation that Zanskalfice creates, so that they
would leave without an order, not an Alexander. They will not.
If they are proper soldiers, they will not leave without
an order. They'll be holding it for as long as
they have the capacity to and AMMO so what Speaking

(31:27):
of information fight, Sirsky comes out and says, how successful
we are to the media. But have you paid attention
to their faces. It's not even the funeral faces. You
could look at the officers standing around him. They understand
that they're taking part in a crazy, mad operation, completely
unoptainum or fake. And the commanders of the direction understand

(31:52):
that this is going to be a big graveyard and
that will lead to just more deaths and losses of
our troops. They can't even make a proper picture. These
information fighters of Xernsky's office. That's why I diagnosed them,
especially with that story, remember with the missile and Nyepar.
When I resigned, I was trying to look at it

(32:18):
from a side. I understood that the task that they
are trying to solve is above their level of competence.
So what do you think if I were still in
the office, how would all that be? Looking now with
the saint Pakrovsk and the others right, it would be

(32:38):
definitely different. But on the ground it doesn't cancel the results.
On the ground, the commander and soldiers still have to
face the same Russian forces. I cannot even imagine. How
would you whitewash the basification that is now ravaging Ukraine.
I would find ways, Alexander, if I needed to, or

(33:00):
at least partially release the pressure. Let's look at why Pakrovsk,
why we did not give up a Dyevka, Why we're
not giving up Pakrovsk, Why we're holding these people there?
It's pure for pr effect. What is that pr oh
that we're holding till the last man under overwhelming enemy?

(33:24):
It takes Russians forever to take every yard of our
territory and the pinnacle of the information strategy is two messages. First,
Russians are losing millions and hundreds of thousands by getting
one square kilometer and it'll take them forever. And second,
their economy is going to collapse soon. Just another month

(33:45):
and their economy will surely collapse. So this is two
pillars of Ukrainian strategy. And that's why they're holding for
every piece of land and retracting and moving soldiers so
slowly that they can prop this pillar that Russians are
very slow, and they're basically creating a feeling with the opponent,

(34:06):
with the international partners, with the internal society in Ukraine
that this strategy works, that whatever they're doing actually works
and slows Russians down. But the strategy is a failure strategy.
Even with the failed strategy, though you could still hold
a good face with a good information politics around it,

(34:29):
the good information specialists, but they're not. They're failing even
in that. So you think Zananski should have allowed the
journalists into Pokrovsk. Frankly, there is nowhere to send them.
According to the clips and messages from the front from
that area, the duration, the life expectancy of a professional

(34:52):
military who knows to look in the sky. Who knows
how to hide himself is very limited. Oh no, well,
let's say if we think you're out a ceasefire, and
then sure in this case, Alexander, if you want to
take over Putin's initiative. Remember in May there was a
moment when put To announce the ceasefire, and I made
a post that it would be a perfect for hour

(35:14):
office to take initiative over. And when you're being offered
a three day ceasefire, you can offer a month ceasefire.
So yeah, they apparently read my message. Three hours later
in President's office posted exactly that suggestion. But yeah, if
you already agreed with put In that there'll be a
three day to withdraw troops, to withdraw wounded, bring journalists

(35:37):
to report properly from the front and show the world
what actually is happening in Pakrovsk, And same thing could
have been done in the Parostia in Kurski district. But
they can't and they don't because they're solving a very
important dilemma between defense of Ukraine and their political future,
and they're always picking their political future. This is the

(36:00):
faulty setting. This is where all their strategies lead to
and they're not ready to sacrifice anything. We're not talking
about any victory here, but lowering the volume and successes
that Ukraine could have had otherwise. But just trying to
figure out ways to show that Russia paid too much

(36:20):
of a price for capturing of Ukraine, and they basically
taking their own strategy on their own banner. But I
want to say four messages here. First, faulty strategy implemented
in a faulty fashion, and it's also faulty supported by
faulty media. And this is always reactive. This is also

(36:44):
the fourth faulty issue. It never goes, it never takes
initiative of Russians, it always follows. And the problem is
that the main problem is that our feedback is broken.
The Office of President monopolized all the communications and are

(37:04):
managing them, and generals and heads of all different departments
are just complying so vigorously that real numbers fail to
reach the top, real data fails to reach Lenski's office,
And we don't have any figure who would slam a

(37:25):
fist on the table and say how long are we
going to make these dumb decisions? And we're still even
not fully aware about the loss of territories and exact
human life loss. A good example is operative command of
our troops, and it starts with planning of operations. It
was always bad and it was horrible at the beginning

(37:46):
of this war. Russians, however, unlike us, had a certain level,
an operative level, operative tactical level of command that we
did not three years of this war. Even if you
put a monkey in the position of the core command
of the group of detachments, even the monkey will learn

(38:08):
how to conduct operations. And when we created the course
much later, not correctly, and basically we are disallowed our
course to have the experience that they missed initially. And
it takes us a year and a half additional probably

(38:29):
till our course will figure out how to fight. Meantime,
Russians already have this advantage. And this shows you how
well the feedback can change things, how well can it work.
I would remind that back in twenty two Men's Illusion,
they were trying to reach the office of the President
and explain how important it is to create the command
for cores and divisions, and when were they created in

(38:52):
real life? When Kateevich started to scream about that, they
had to react to him because he was one of
the political figures they paid attention to, just like Azov
and the others. And that's when they started talking about it,
when some of the military returned from the front and
highlighted the same problem. Just pay attention the opinion of

(39:15):
their actual military leader and the military advisor was not
paid attention to. Whatever we advised was unimportant. Not until
there was a political crisis and a risk to their
political future they made this decision. Russia has already changed
their strategy twice, no three times during these four years.
With these failures on the operative tactical level, with the

(39:40):
systemic growth of Russian quantity and quality, the events on
the front in the next few months will be speeding
up towards catastrophe for US, starting with the failure of
two townships Pakrovsk and Kupinsk and ending with more Russians
breakthrough near Slavanskramatoorsk and Zaparochia District and Yeper will then

(40:07):
soon pop on the maps. That's why what I want
to say, this is the diagnosis. The words are hanging
in the air. We have almost not touched this topic,
but there was no reason to talk about that when
the front is stationary, and okay, you can talk about
another Russian tank that looked like a furry tank or

(40:29):
a hedgehog, and we succeeded in figuring out how to
destroy it. But when we observe events like Pakarovsks failure,
and when military speakers are talking about that, it is
a good opportunity to deliver that twenty minute message. And
I'm glad we had a chance to go and talk

(40:50):
about that today into this rabbit hole, because this is
how this chess game is played by Zensky's office. This
is all what I wanted to answer to your first question.
So commanders should not be afraid to talk about their
losses on the front. The main goal is to preserve
your troops. Saving troops is the main goal because if

(41:12):
you save them, you will figure out how to restore
the situation. But if you lost everybody, that's another situation.
And I'm quoting presidential statement here, and he is also
saying as another marker that fifty percent of aerial bombs
are Russian. The Russians drop on the front are being
dropped on Pakrovsk now or the intensity of the front

(41:34):
fighting to fifty percent, it's Pokrovsk fighting the front is
stabilized everywhere else, So it feels like somebody is really unqualified.
Who's working with him, most likely some civilian who is
trying to prop him to these statements, who is not

(41:56):
really understanding the scale of comparison comparatives that he's presenting. Listen,
on my third day of being an advisor to Zelenski,
I told him that you do not understand military and
enforcement agencies, they will always be deceiving you to a degree.

(42:17):
Right now, they're afraid of you, afraid of Zelenski, and
they're coming to his office ass backwards with their pants down.
On the other hand, they also understand and that's what
they're doing. That is only to preserve their positions. Meantime,
they also know that Zizansky doesn't understand a crap about

(42:38):
military activities, so they know they can deceive him all
they like, or tell him present things however they want
to present. That's why I advise Zanski early on to
have a special committee of let's say, nine very seasoned
generals and experts who would be able to check on
all the statements and decisions made by the Central Command

(43:00):
and not just follow blindly whatever advices are being given
to him by his top brass or you know, push
the top brass because they cannot object to the president.
And this is what the first grade cadet learns. How
do you present truth to your leadership not to get punished?
And generals would not be generals if they didn't know

(43:20):
how to present things. So they know what works and
how it works, and how to present to Zelenski that
he would swallow it, and he would not see some
papers or wouldn't pay much attention to them, and would
pay more attention to other reports. And then he would
run to some pr agent who would draft his speech,
check on what's up, what else to add about? Additionhnik

(43:42):
success and then suddenly everything somehow works and it doesn't.
So Zynski's also being deceived by that system that he created.
He of course developed his understanding of military matters, but
it never passed the level when he can make decisions
on his own, he can make his own estimations of

(44:02):
what's happening. He's still being influenced by certain people, and
such facts like my dr commanding certain forces and some
other people commanding storm troops show that Zelensky do not
understand and has lack of knowledge of what is doable

(44:24):
what is not doable, starting from the type of operations,
ending with who needs to be placed where, and with
the media statements that he posts. Nobody even tells him
that when president comes out and talks about the characteristics
of missiles the volumes, he's setting himself up. And Zelensky
started with that statement. He allowed himself to be pulled

(44:45):
to different press conferences and to state a lot of
things about certain guilty parties, about certain technical things. Nothing
seems to have taught him. He is making statements that
he should not be making. What if the technical data
that he presents doesn't meet the reality? That means he lied.

(45:06):
He lied to whom, to the international society, society to Okay,
So Pakarovsk, this is the map for right now what
is available. This is mostly objective, I believe just looking
at that, what are your main conclusions? So Pakrovsk cannot
be saved. There's probably a way to d block, deplicate

(45:29):
the Mirnergrad the northeastern part of Pakrovsk. And they're throwing
some forces that apparently are succeeding. And even Russian side
is commenting that Nirovna near Shakhava which used to be
called Rosa Luxembourg. Apparently Ukrainian forces succeeded in counterattacking, so

(45:52):
there is some success in counterattacking, and the task is
to not allow Russians to create another culdrun here and
encircle the troops in the township. All right, so let's
clarify that these are counter offensive actions. This is not
offensive operation. There's a private small actions. You cannot hold

(46:17):
that area without big breakthroughs, which you don't have right now.
All the reserves we had that could have changed things.
They're being used in the Brapolia. When special forces of
military intelligence are being thrown to clean the corridor. That
means that we are out of reserves, and throwing us

(46:40):
off from Serbianska to the Brapolia shows what usually happens
after that. After that, Russian troops are already nearly mane
and as Deep State also indicates, they're not too far
from this. For a year and a half, Sibyansky forestry
was holding and then suddenly it jumped. Whereas as of now,

(47:02):
let's say, as far as I know, they are fighting
in the Propodia. At least according to the messages, we
can see, but this is not the main thing. The
area that we're losing every week and the amount of
soldiers were losing every week. Even the best detachment cannot

(47:24):
resolve it without somehow us having one hundred thousand well
trained reserve that will be used successfully because our military
commanders will grind this hundred thousand also and rather usefulness
in a rather useless way. So situation is dual sided.
You need to separate it in your head. On one hand,

(47:47):
there is no complete collapse of the front. It's not
just collapsing. There's a big hole and Russian ten columns
are passing through. And people who want to play optimism
today they're saying, oh, stop screaming about the collapse. You've
been screaming about that since October of twenty three, that
it will be like this, that Istovich was talking about
that and for years, and nothing is happening. Pokrovsk is

(48:09):
a small township, no big deal. On the other hand,
whatever will be already is the sum of signs and
these decisions they're making, and the logic of these decisions
already indicates the perspectives rather sharply that we are at
the depletion of our reserves that we wasted first on
Kursk and assuming operation that was mad and unnecessary, and

(48:31):
then we wasted a lot of troops on Dobrapolia. And
it all can be summed up with us not giving
a centimeter to Russians to slow them down, and population
locally already has to vacate the areas close to forty

(48:53):
kilometers to the front. Right now, we should be creating
additional fortifications, changing positions for our troops to withdraw to
hold later better and we would be in a good
position generally if we would be logically preparing these fallback positions,
providing engineering so our troops would be falling back to

(49:15):
fortified good positions, especially for use the nature barriers like rivers, forests, hills.
We could have spent time and resource for achieving our
bigger goals of Russia wasting too many resources in this world.
Unfortunately we're failing even with that. During the storm of

(49:39):
the townships of Papasna and Bachmut, Russians are losing every
ten for our soldiers, and very few armies can withstand
such degree of losses. But in every operation there comes
a moment when their losses become one to three. This
is the moment when you to withdraw our troops from

(50:02):
Bachmot and the ad like, and we always keep missing
these moments. Eventually the losses become one for one, one
for two, which is completely the situation that we should
be avoiding, and we're losing what now, thirteenth fifteenth township.
In the flow of this war, we keep losing this

(50:23):
moment when we need to withdraw other troops because it
makes sense to hold the township as the fortified area
that helps our troops to hold the territory helps to
grind the enemy forces down. But then there comes a
time where we need to move our troops away because
the main goal that we are achieving, we should be achieving,
is grinding enemy forces down when we are failing to

(50:44):
grind them effectively. Now, the losses in Pakrovsk gets hard
to say what exactly they are, but definitely not one
to seven and Russians have one hundred and seventy thousand
performing this operation. Basically two British armies or an equivalent
of the whole French army fighting near Pakrovsk. That's why

(51:09):
we should have left this township a long time ago.
But we keep making everything affort, and then we're paying
with the lives of Ukrainian soldiers for that, who could
have brought more success and results to our country and
perhaps even stay alive at the end of this warm.
Instead we're wasting them. And Sasha, when I'm talking about

(51:32):
deaths or our soldiers, I am trying to be calm here.
I don't want to peddle moral sentimental mothers, relatives and
all that. This is not my genre. But if you
just mathematically count people and their lives, they're being wrongfully
used as a resource in the framework of the strategy

(51:55):
that is deployed by the President of Ukraine and his office.
This is the core problem. The central thought is that
they are failing to provide for the strategy. The strategy
is faulty and the way they provide for this strategy
is also faulty, and this is the core of the story.

(52:18):
End of this segment.
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