Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:22the improvement of the structure of the
00:00:25Ministry of Defense continues in connection
00:00:28with the needs and experience of special military operations.
00:00:32Personnel rotation of personnel. Putin announced
00:00:35the unification of the rear services of the Ministry of Defense. He
00:00:39seeks to improve, so to speak, the leadership of the war, but at the same time not
00:00:43to put forward any general who would look like
00:00:46his competitor. And about the change of the head of the UAV
00:00:49troops. The previous head was engaged in selling
00:00:52plumbing. At the same time, in Russia, attempts on the lives of
00:00:55heads of factories involved in the production of
00:00:58drones continue.
00:01:04Radio Svoboda speaks, Current Time TV channel shows.
00:01:07The program "Face to the Event" is on air. Hello. And today we will talk about
00:01:11reshuffles in the Russian army. Vladimir
00:01:14Putin personally announced them. In the public part of the meeting with the military, Putin
00:01:18spent as many as 7 minutes on this, judging by the video recording of the
00:01:21Kremlin press service. There are some interesting moments in these reshuffles, in
00:01:25particular, the appearance of a unified rear service
00:01:27of the Ministry of Defense. My colleague Andrey will tell
00:01:30more,
00:01:36large-scale reshuffles in the Ministry of Defense, the Russian president
00:01:40vaguely explained by the needs and experience of
00:01:43a special military operation, as the Kremlin calls the war with Ukraine. The previous major
00:01:46reorganization, or rather a purge, was in this sector 2 years ago, when
00:01:50after the change of the Minister of Defense, the entire management team
00:01:54and many colleagues of the former head of the department Shoigu were arrested, the current
00:01:58reshuffles are not so radical. rather, they are connected with the not so
00:02:01fast advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine. Official
00:02:05Russian media interpret the reshuffles as sending
00:02:08combat generals to repair the rear. Colonel General Valery
00:02:12Saladchuk moved from the post of commander of the troops of the Central Military District
00:02:16to the deputy minister of defense to organize logistical support
00:02:19for the troops. The Deputy Minister Colonel General Alexander
00:02:23Sanchik, who was previously responsible for material and technical support
00:02:26of the troops, is now in charge of organizing orders, weapons, equipment and
00:02:29technical support. Komsomolskaya Pravda describes it like this: everything that
00:02:33concerns weapons, is now in one hand,
00:02:36all rear services are also in one fist. Another
00:02:40Deputy Minister of Defense, Alexey Krivoruchko, has been redirected to the development of
00:02:43promising weapons and military special equipment.
00:02:47The story with especially promising equipment - drones received its
00:02:51continuation with the appointment of Colonel General Denis Lyamin
00:02:54as the head of the department of unmanned systems troops.
00:02:57Denis Igorevich, the new branch of troops is just
00:03:01being formed, catching up with Ukraine, which is more dynamic in this area,
00:03:04where the path from the first presidential decrees to the real
00:03:07creation of a branch of troops took the entire year 2024. Similar
00:03:11troops in Russia were presented by the Minister of Defense as an idea in
00:03:14December 2024, and their creation was planned to be completed in
00:03:18the third quarter of 2025. I want to express hope that
00:03:21you, and the Minister,
00:03:25the Chief of the General Staff believe so too,
00:03:29you... being one of the most qualified specialists,
00:03:32as I already said, will bring to
00:03:35completion the formation of this new
00:03:39branch of troops, unmanned systems, and lead it in the near
00:03:43future. In place of those promoted, Colonel General Andrey
00:03:47Ivanaev has been appointed the new commander of the troops of the Central Military
00:03:50District. He previously commanded the troops of the Eastern District.
00:03:54Colonel General Pyotr Bolgarev, who was his
00:03:57chief, has been appointed acting commander in his place. The reshuffles in
00:04:01the military top brass are commented on by pro-government and pro-military Telegram channels with
00:04:05optimism. The disruption of purchases and deliveries of drones to the front, which led to
00:04:09the de facto halt of further advance of troops, predetermined
00:04:12the latest personnel decisions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Marshal
00:04:16Zhukov's famous phrase "The rear is half the victory" became the main
00:04:19motive for the new personnel decisions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
00:04:23Putin's logic is extremely clear. Who else but combat
00:04:26commanders know best what the soldiers need right
00:04:30now. The details of what the soldiers need right now
00:04:33remained behind the scenes of the meeting with the Supreme
00:04:35Commander-in-Chief.
00:04:38The key difference between the current reshuffles, from those very de facto purges in
00:04:41the Ministry of Defense two years ago, which our correspondent mentioned, according
00:04:45to analysts at the American Institute for the Study of War, is that
00:04:48these are precisely reshuffles among active commanders,
00:04:52and not promotions of new ones. Well, who could change something, somehow inject
00:04:56fresh blood, so to speak, metaphorically. But the unified
00:04:59rear service is interesting, as noted by the Institute for the Study
00:05:02of War, against the backdrop of ongoing successful air attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We
00:05:06have discussed many times in our broadcasts, our experts said that
00:05:09it is simply impossible to cover the entire Russia with air defense systems. Even if
00:05:13we take into account strictly important for the military-industrial complex and for the Russian army
00:05:16production, organizations, factories and so on, including therefore
00:05:20the Russian authorities are ready to give defense to those corporations who
00:05:24can afford it, while the task in the Kremlin, most
00:05:28likely, is not to over-organize with the appointment of self-confident
00:05:31bosses too high, too long, well, so that it
00:05:35does not escalate into political competition for Putin, so believes
00:05:38analyst Sergey Shelin, we talked to him before the start of our
00:05:41broadcast. We can hardly
00:05:44say whether he is gripped by panic or just his usual
00:05:48fear. Putin, in fact, lives in
00:05:50fear. So we can call it
00:05:54constant panic, we can not call it, but he is always afraid for his
00:05:58position as the ruler of Russia. Why
00:06:01is he changing generals now? Well, he is probably
00:06:04dissatisfied with the results of their work.
00:06:08Uh, this is understandable, in general, he has, he must have
00:06:12claims against them, but he must solve two tasks that
00:06:15are easily read: he seeks to improve, so to speak,
00:06:19the leadership of the war, but at the same time not to put forward any
00:06:22general who would look like his competitor, that is
00:06:26the most important task that he always set for
00:06:29himself, and even for some unpopular,
00:06:32for example, action, like the withdrawal of troops from Kherson, he put
00:06:36Surovikin, as we remember, immediately after that he removed him, because
00:06:39Surovikin looked not enough... such a
00:06:43pale figure, so I think that now it's approximately the same
00:06:46thing, Putin is trying to pick some simultaneously faceless, but
00:06:50at the same time, somehow better coping with the work
00:06:53generals. And with us live is military expert Nikolai
00:06:56Mitrokhin. Nikolai, hello,
00:06:59hello, I want to know first your impression, what in practice
00:07:03can change in the Russian army with these reshuffles, what would you
00:07:06pay attention to here first
00:07:10of all, it's the movement of the commander of the group.
00:07:42on the central section of the front, well, accordingly,
00:07:45as if the chief of this central
00:07:48group is being moved instead of him to start the commander of a successful
00:07:51group, will it help or not,
00:07:55so to speak, is an open question, I would say probably not, because
00:07:58the problem of the center group is not that
00:08:02there the command is not decisive enough,
00:08:06it's that they reached the Slavyansk-
00:08:09Kramatorsk fortified area, which was being prepared.
00:08:19At the same time, as it were, the Ukrainians managed to significantly
00:08:21reduce logistics during the end of
00:08:25July, early July, end of June, early
00:08:28July, and the group was left without additional, so to
00:08:31speak, without additional supplies, here,
00:08:34well, as it were, Putin knows better who he wants to see there as
00:08:38commander, well, what can be opposed?
00:09:12somewhere the current commander, conditionally speaking, who solves some of his
00:09:16tasks, releases some opportunities, because
00:09:19theoretically, as it were, it is possible to
00:09:22do something there, especially if the new commander
00:09:25receives additional resources for his
00:09:29task, which were not given to the previous one, because they did not
00:09:32believe in the previous one, that happens, but in general, of course,
00:09:36the situation on the front line will be stable,
00:09:38stable, including, as you rightly said, due to
00:10:12what Russia has, and
00:10:16Belousov, after his appointment, set the goal of at least
00:10:19achieving parity, and even surpassing Ukraine in terms of
00:10:23drones, and the first year after his appointment,
00:10:27the situation changed in this regard, but the last
00:10:30six months clearly showed
00:10:33stagnation, Russia again
00:10:36began to lose badly the drone race,
00:10:40production, that is, the main problem is the scale
00:10:44of production of these drones, and
00:10:47insiders, so to speak, Russian military, started talking about the
00:10:50fact that the same situation with
00:10:53corruption has occurred again.
00:11:18his candidacy and his position in these very troops, which, according to
00:11:22Putin, are being created again for the nth time. Still in the process, but
00:11:26if we go back to this clearly absent parity among
00:11:29drones on both sides, the advantage of Ukraine is obvious, we clearly see these
00:11:32consequences, these are clear signs of a fuel crisis, these are losses for Walberies,
00:11:36which, with a certain amount of audacity, could be called a quasi-state corporation,
00:11:39without five minutes to go, well, to what extent does this factor of drone attacks on
00:11:43the rear affect decisions in the Kremlin, if we judge these latest decisions on
00:11:47reappointments, and is it possible in this situation to assume that this
00:11:50clear demonstration of recognizing the problem, well, in one form or another, in which
00:11:54Putin, as a rule, can afford it?
00:11:57I wouldn't say that, because
00:12:01changes of commanders in the Russian army happen
00:12:03regularly, as you may have noticed, so to speak, most of the current
00:12:07commanders of directions are on average
00:12:1110 years younger or less, right, so to speak,
00:12:15so there's enough fresh blood there,
00:12:18the question is really about the systemic
00:12:21consequences of technological development in war, and here.
00:12:25on the one hand, undoubtedly, the consequences of the Ukrainian blockade
00:12:28of the Russian rear are felt, the other
00:12:31question is that this blockade is not very consistent,
00:12:35so that is, on the one hand, the Russian military leadership
00:12:38strives to minimize it, in particular, large forces
00:12:42were directed to
00:12:45escort convoys of trucks in
00:12:48the occupied territories, that is, there are many
00:12:52of these mobile fire groups, they apparently
00:12:55shoot down some drones, as a result of which
00:12:58supplies actually recovered in the last, well, about
00:13:02a month, less than a month, in the last 3 weeks supplies to the rear generally
00:13:06resumed, despite some losses,
00:13:10but they are apparently not so significant as to stop all
00:13:13this movement, so here
00:13:16the situation depends on the actions of both sides, how consistent Ukraine will
00:13:19be, how many drones it will
00:13:22have, such medium-range ones
00:13:26for blocking roads, how
00:13:29Russia's leadership
00:13:31will develop and, most importantly, will be able to mass-
00:13:35produce some
00:13:37anti-drone measures, well, apparently,
00:13:41judging by the appointment of the commander of the
00:13:44unmanned systems forces, this will be
00:13:48a more experienced leader than before, including
00:13:51a military one, to what extent his management competencies will be enough to...
00:13:55to expand this bottleneck
00:13:58in the connection of drone manufacturers with
00:14:01army drone consumers, I don't know, only time
00:14:04will tell, and what do you think, by the way, about Putin's unwillingness to promote this or that chief too much,
00:14:08our interlocutor Sergey Shelin sees precisely such a strategy, so to speak, in
00:14:11the Kremlin? Well,
00:14:15honestly, I don't believe that a general
00:14:19capable of being politically competitive with
00:14:22Putin can appear in Russia, in
00:14:25principle, the entire Soviet, late Soviet,
00:14:28post-Soviet political machine
00:14:32was aimed at preventing such generals from appearing,
00:14:34so here in
00:14:38these changes I see more
00:14:41a desire to strengthen precisely the military potential,
00:14:45to find, as it were, normal, directly promoted
00:14:49from the field experienced
00:14:52commanders, that is, this is rather a response to...
00:15:37occupier Yuri Vaganov, whose appointment was never officially
00:15:41announced, but the Z-community actively knew about all this, commented,
00:15:45and now even rejoices about it, how it happened,
00:15:48where such a nickname came from, we will tell everything in our story:
00:15:51Vladimir Putin's reshuffles in the army affected unmanned
00:15:55systems troops. From the speech of the Russian president to the generals on August
00:15:595, it became clear that the new branch of troops, quote, is just
00:16:03being formed. Lieutenant General Denis Lyamin, appointed to manage
00:16:07drones, formally replaced businessman Yuri Vaganov,
00:16:10whose appointment was never officially
00:16:13announced. Before the war, Yuri Vaganov, a businessman from
00:16:16Elektrostal, had no connection to the army and was engaged in selling
00:16:20plumbing, which is why in the so-called Z-blogs he earned
00:16:23the nickname "Toilet." The problem is that he is a complete
00:16:26scammer who, before the start of the SVO, sold plumbing, which is where
00:16:30this nickname came from,
00:16:33after which he suddenly became, with the help of certain individuals. removed
00:16:48from office. 500 billion plus
00:16:51general technological lag from the enemy by a year, plus
00:16:54the lives of soldiers. If the rear services need a deputy for
00:16:57toilets, then the ministry knows one genius,
00:17:01whose call sign starts with G, in this matter I do not
00:17:04intend to dispute his competence. The Ministry of Defense launched
00:17:07a large-scale campaign to recruit
00:17:10drone operators for the new troops. In early
00:17:132026, advertisements greeted Russians on
00:17:17social networks and billboards. The troops invited drone operators,
00:17:20students, IT specialists, electronics and
00:17:23radio engineering specialists. In March 2026, the publication
00:17:27Important Stories, citing Ministry of Defense documents, reported on the department's plans
00:17:31to recruit almost 80,000 people for drone troops by
00:17:34the end of the year. The recruitment failed. Almost six months
00:17:38later, in July, at a meeting of the Ministry of Defense board, they reported on the training
00:17:41of a much smaller number of specialists. The trained
00:17:44unit is capable of independently performing tasks in individual operational
00:17:48and tactical directions. In total, during the past period, about
00:17:52800 specialists were trained. According to the plan, among the 80
00:17:55thousand people were supposed to be, among others, students of civilian
00:17:59universities. In April, the publication Groza recorded at least
00:18:02269 educational institutions in which students
00:18:05were urged to join the UAV troops. Students
00:18:09in various regions had their retake deadlines shortened, were threatened with
00:18:13academic problems, and were manipulated with expulsion. The Russian
00:18:17campaign to recruit for unmanned systems troops has been accompanied by
00:18:20several assassination attempts on public drone makers. In late July, in
00:18:24Tula, they tried to shoot Andrey Cherizov, head of
00:18:27the company Russian Laboratory of Air Transport. The company
00:18:31is engaged in the production of Okhotnik drones. Doctors currently assess his
00:18:34condition as stable. The commander not only founded the company,
00:18:38but also personally designed the first Okhotnik strike drones, then
00:18:42personally tested them on the front line, so the small Tula company
00:18:45Okhotnik became one of the leading manufacturers of combat
00:18:49drones in Russia with a worldwide reputation. On the evening of August 4,
00:18:52Vladimir Tkachuk, CEO of Ural-Drone-Zavod, survived an assassination
00:18:56attempt. Tkachuk's car was blown up by unknown persons not far
00:18:59from Yekaterinburg, his driver died, he himself is in critical
00:19:03condition. Vladimir Tkachuk is known for starting to produce
00:19:06Upyr drones. They are actively used by Russia on the front,
00:19:10his company's revenue for 2025 amounted to
00:19:13about 6 billion rubles. Meduza calls him the author of
00:19:16the Z-channel "War Obsessed." Tkachuk launched it on VK
00:19:20after the start of hostilities in southeastern
00:19:23Ukraine. We will continue the topic with military expert Nikolai
00:19:26Mitrokhin. Nikolai, well, in the community, estimates of a year of lag are heard,
00:19:30how would you assess this lag in drones between Russia and
00:19:34Ukraine, how far is this from the truth or vice versa, very close?
00:19:38I would say that it is necessary to evaluate by different
00:19:41groups of drones, for example, Ukraine
00:19:45does not have jet drones or , well, there is no industrial
00:19:49production. Russia began producing them, and for
00:19:53Ukraine it is a significant problem. As for
00:19:56FPV drones, I would say this,
00:19:59that it depends
00:20:02primarily, probably, on the scale of production in Russia. They are
00:20:06smaller, but in terms of technical characteristics they are similar, that is,
00:20:09today, for example, I watched Russian drones on
00:20:13fiber optics on a video, hunting
00:20:16people on the streets of Sumy, for example,
00:20:19well, to Sumy, after all, in a straight line to the front line, about 17
00:20:23km, taking into account the fact that operators do not
00:20:26sit directly on the front line, this means
00:20:29that somewhere drones with
00:20:32a fishing line, with a fiber optic cable for 25-30
00:20:35km -
00:20:37are now already terrorizing
00:20:41a large regional center, in which normal life is still going on,
00:20:44in general, or trying to go on, so
00:20:48in this regard, well, in terms of
00:20:51production volume, Russia
00:20:54is insufficient, in terms of technical characteristics, it is quite
00:20:57sufficient, in terms of advanced technologies, there is a
00:21:00competition, that is, there
00:21:03are systems that are advanced in Ukraine, for example,
00:21:07well, as for heavy, heavy drones,
00:21:11frontline ones, which perform tasks like
00:21:13"baba", Russia has
00:21:16a priority in drones like "Molniya", these are...
00:21:20let's say, medium-range drones, mainly
00:21:24with various technical adaptations for different
00:21:27tasks, so it is
00:21:30clear that first of all
00:21:33the Z-community talks about FPV drones
00:21:37and their shortcomings on the front,
00:21:41indeed, there are 10 Ukrainian drones for every
00:21:44Russian one, and most likely
00:21:48Russia will try to solve the problem of
00:21:51mass increase in mass production
00:21:54of such types of drones, to be honest, it's strange to me that
00:21:57Russia cannot do this,
00:22:00well, perhaps there are problems with
00:22:03equipment supplies, that is, sanctions are working,
00:22:09and Russia simply does not have enough equipment for such production, maybe
00:22:13the problem is corruption, this is also quite possible,
00:22:17this banquet of the
00:22:20head of the space forces showed that in
00:22:23general, the generals are feasting, and if the generals are feasting, then the money is not going where
00:22:27it should, well, thank goodness, let's say, you mentioned these
00:22:31videos of attacks on civilians, I want to expand the context a bit, there was information that, firstly, in the Russian army this is called
00:22:34human safari, and well,
00:22:37and another such very bloody, very bloody episode of this
00:22:41war itself, very telling in this context, but if we return
00:22:45to what to these realities with what is happening around
00:22:48UAV troops. What does the failure to recruit for these
00:22:52troops generally say, and maybe according to your information there are some data on
00:22:55personnel shortages in these very troops, it is clear that there was a campaign by human rights activists
00:22:58warning that contact with the Ministry of Defense does not guarantee
00:23:02getting into this branch of troops at all, how effective do you think this turned out to be as
00:23:06such an anti-measure, so to speak, for recruitment into the Russian
00:23:09army? It is quite difficult to assess how
00:23:13such campaigns work at the mass level, well, in
00:23:16the village in the city of Revda of the Sverdlovsk region, how much? Do they read, so
00:23:20to speak, emigrant human rights websites, I don't think
00:23:24very much, but a much greater effect
00:23:27was had by real cases, spread
00:23:31including in the patriotic Russian press, when
00:23:34really experienced drone operators
00:23:38were transferred to assault troops, and they died in the first
00:23:41attack, this is the case of "Puzik", which has already become
00:23:45a meme, and the fact that such "Puziks" did not bear
00:23:49any...
00:24:27that is, under the guise of specific units that are successful,
00:24:31effective, and guarantee indeed to their
00:24:34recruited employees, well,
00:24:37relative safety by the standards of this profession,
00:24:39you can recruit, I think, much
00:24:42more people than we would like
00:24:45here, so let's see what happens,
00:24:50but the appointment, conditionally speaking, of a tank general
00:24:54to recruit civilians for such a
00:24:57relatively intellectual military specialty, this is not, I think,
00:25:00the best choice, but we'll see how
00:25:04it goes, well, and separately I want to emphasize what we mentioned in our
00:25:07story, two consecutive assassination attempts
00:25:11on civilians, but clearly involved
00:25:14in the military-industrial complex of Russia, clearly the products
00:25:18were either intended for use or were already used at the front. Correct me if
00:25:22necessary, but there is a feeling that assassination attempts on those involved in the army
00:25:25and military-industrial complex have become wider in the sense that if before it only concerned Russian
00:25:29generals, which, by the way, forced them to take at least some additional
00:25:33security measures, now it also concerns
00:25:36civilian chiefs, to what extent
00:25:40does this pose such a task at all for the Russian army, for
00:25:43the Russian authorities, I would even say, to strengthen the protection for such
00:25:46chiefs,
00:26:02even more, so to speak, have survived assassination attempts in various forms, so this is
00:26:06nothing new, the other question is that there was a certain
00:26:09period, so to speak, from
00:26:13last September, rather until this
00:26:16spring, when the number of such assassination attempts
00:26:19decreased, possibly as a result,
00:26:22this became a result of the fact that after the assassinations of large
00:26:26generals, lieutenant generals and everything else, Russia conducted
00:26:30very... intense bombardments of Kyiv, so to speak, perhaps this also
00:26:34had an effect, or maybe the spirit of Anchorage, I don't know, but in any case, now
00:26:37indeed, the campaign of assassination attempts has sharply
00:26:41intensified. The other question is that these
00:26:44so-called DIY masters,
00:26:47leaders of relatively small
00:26:49projects, are still a relatively easy target for
00:26:53assassination attempts, but in
00:26:56the drone manufacturing industry,
00:27:00other enterprises dominate, in
00:27:02particular Alabuga, Kronshtadt, a very large
00:27:06complex, Kalashnikov produces its
00:27:09drones, and there, apparently, the leaders are better
00:27:13protected and it is harder to reach them,
00:27:16than these relatively small projects, because
00:27:20the same "Upiri" are used by the Dnipro group,
00:27:23I didn't see them being used in other areas,
00:27:27but in any case, Ukraine knows what it's doing and
00:27:31... less
00:27:48likely that the Russian authorities will even think about protecting them, because they are supposed
00:27:52to measure risks, but it's not at all clear that they understand what
00:27:55this situation is about, and therefore, here the question is,
00:27:59the question is about greed, because this is the last
00:28:03citizen, with such turnovers, he could have provided himself with professional security with his
00:28:07money, if he didn't do that, he is either a very stupid
00:28:11person, or very greedy, or both
00:28:13together,
00:28:15well, and accordingly, I also mentioned today, I will ask very briefly, our
00:28:19broadcast time is gradually running out, I mentioned that partially air defense is given to
00:28:22private companies, and there was a specific law about it, that one can
00:28:26buy equipment, will this tactic continue
00:28:29further, or will Russia still have to expand the air defense zone, although... to companies
00:28:33that are extremely important for the country,
00:28:36Russia's air defense zone at the national
00:28:39level is not expanding, it is shrinking, that is,
00:28:43Moscow's defense is strengthening, all Pantsir
00:28:46installations are being brought there, there are fewer and fewer
00:28:49missiles, the percentage of Ukrainian drones breaking through
00:29:23The amazing story of Alexander Gabyshev, known as
00:29:26Sashaman, who is going from Yakutia to Moscow to
00:29:29overthrow the government, what does that mean? It means lightning and the wrath
00:29:33of God.
00:29:36One, two,
00:29:38three,
00:29:41I, I am not such a simple person, I am a heavenly person, a heavenly
00:29:44warrior, from now on Putin is not your decree, live
00:29:48freely, this is the law, please come out, what kind
00:29:52of cordon, and why, on what grounds is there
00:29:54a cordon here?
00:30:02We talked about unique places, unique people, but
00:30:06that was before,
00:30:10from February 2022, the war changed
00:30:13everything, we show the new
00:30:17history of Ukraine, about
00:30:20the incredible strength of spirit, about the struggle, no matter
00:30:23what.
00:30:28Watch the joint project of Radio Svoboda and the TV channel Nastoyaschee.
00:30:32time, what is really happening in Ukraine.
00:30:49Ukraine scales middle strikes, the Ukrainian army
00:30:52actively hits the operational rear of the Russian army, under attack
00:30:56air defense systems, deployment points.