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.
00:00:25the structure of the Ministry of Defense is being improved
00:00:28in connection with
00:00:31the needs and experience of the special
00:00:34military operation. Personnel rotation of personnel.
00:00:38Putin announced the unification of the rear services
00:00:41of the Ministry of Defense. He seeks to improve the
00:00:44leadership of the war, but at the same time not to promote any
00:00:47general who would look like his competitor. And about
00:00:51the change of the head of the UAV troops. The previous chief
00:00:54was selling plumbing. In parallel, in Russia
00:00:57assassination attempts continue on the heads of factories
00:01:00related to the production
00:01:02of drones,
00:01:07says Radio Liberty, shows the TV channel Present Time,
00:01:11on air is the program Face to the Event, hello, and today we will talk about
00:01:14reshuffles in the Russian army, personally announced by Vladimir
00:01:17Putin, for this in the public part of the meeting with the military, Putin
00:01:21spent as much as 7 minutes, judging by the video recording of the Kremlin's
00:01:24press service, there are some interesting moments in these very reshuffles, in
00:01:28particular the appearance.
00:01:40Large-scale reshuffles in the Ministry of Defense, the Russian president vaguely
00:01:44explained by the needs and experience of the special military operation,
00:01:47as the Kremlin calls the war with Ukraine. The last major reorganization, or rather
00:01:51a purge, was in this sector 2 years ago, when after the change of the Minister
00:01:55of Defense, the entire management team and many
00:01:58colleagues of the ex-head of the department, Shoigu, were arrested. The current
00:02:01reshuffles are not so radical and are rather connected with the not so
00:02:05rapid advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine. Official
00:02:08Russian media interpret the reshuffles as the deployment of combat
00:02:12generals to repair the rear. Colonel-General Valery
00:02:15Salatchuk, from the position of commander of the troops of the Central Military District,
00:02:19became Deputy Minister of Defense to organize logistical
00:02:22support for the troops. Deputy Minister Colonel-General Alexander
00:02:26Sanchik, previously responsible for material and technical support of the troops,
00:02:30now organizes orders for weapons, equipment, and
00:02:33technical support. Komsomolskaya Pravda describes it this way: everything
00:02:36related to weapons is now in one hand, all rear
00:02:40services are also in one fist. Another Deputy Minister
00:02:43of Defense, Alexey Krivoruchko, has been redirected to the development
00:02:47of promising weapons, military and special equipment.
00:02:50The story with especially promising equipment - drones. Received its
00:02:54continuation with the appointment of Colonel-General Denis Lyamin
00:02:57as head of the control of troops. Unmanned systems,
00:03:01Denis Igorevich, a new branch of the military is only
00:03:04being formed, catching up with more dynamic Ukraine
00:03:08in this area, where the path from the first presidential decrees to the real creation
00:03:11of a branch of the military took the entire year 2024, similar
00:03:14troops in Russia, the Minister of Defense presented as an idea in December
00:03:182024, and their creation was planned to be completed in the third
00:03:22quarter of 2025. I want to express hope that
00:03:25you, and so
00:03:29believes them.
00:03:47In place of those moved up the career ladder, Colonel-General Andrey
00:03:51Ivanaev has been appointed the new commander of the Central Military District,
00:03:54he previously commanded the troops of the Eastern District, in
00:03:57his place acting Colonel-General Pyotr
00:04:01Bolgarev, who was his chief of staff, has been appointed. Reshuffles in the military
00:04:04leadership, pro-government and pro-war Telegram channels comment with
00:04:08optimism. The failure of procurement and supply of drones to the front, which led to
00:04:12the actual cessation of the further advance of troops, predetermined
00:04:15the last personnel decisions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The famous
00:04:19phrase of Marshal Zhukov "The rear" is half the victory, which became the main
00:04:23motive for the new personnel decisions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
00:04:26Putin's logic is extremely clear: who else but combat
00:04:30commanders knows better what the soldiers need right now.
00:04:34The details of what the soldiers need right now remained
00:04:37behind the scenes. Meetings with the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
00:04:41The key difference of the current reshuffles, from those very de facto purges in the
00:04:44Ministry of Defense, two years ago, which our correspondent mentioned, according
00:04:48to analysts of the American Institute for the Study of War, is that
00:04:52these are precisely reshuffles among active commanders, and
00:04:55not the promotion of new ones, but who could change something, somehow inject
00:04:59fresh blood. so to speak, metaphorically, but the united
00:05:02rear service is interesting against the background, note the Institute for the Study of War,
00:05:06of ongoing successful air attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We have
00:05:09discussed many times in our broadcasts, our experts said that it is simply
00:05:13impossible to completely cover the whole of Russia with air defense systems, even if we take into account
00:05:17purely important for the military-industrial complex and for the Russian army
00:05:19production, organizations, factories, and so on, partly because of this,
00:05:23the Russian authorities are ready to give defense to those
00:05:26corporations who can afford it, while the mental task in
00:05:30the Kremlin, most likely, is not to overdo it with the appointment
00:05:34of self-confident bosses too high, too long,
00:05:37well, so that it does not turn into political competition for Putin,
00:05:41so says the analyst.
00:06:12It's clear, in general, he has, he must have complaints
00:06:16against them, but he must solve two tasks that
00:06:19are easily read: he seeks to improve, as it were,
00:06:22the leadership of the war, but at the same time not to nominate any
00:06:26general who would look like his competitor, that is, this
00:06:29is the most important task that he always set for
00:06:32himself, and even for some unpopular,
00:06:35for example, action, like the withdrawal of troops from Kherson, he appointed
00:06:39Surovikin, as we remember, immediately after that he removed him.
00:07:13First of all, this is the transfer of the commander of the East grouping to
00:07:17the Center grouping. The East was considered the most
00:07:20successful in terms of
00:07:23development, in terms of attacks, a grouping among all groupings
00:07:26of the Russian army, that is, they
00:07:28in
00:07:31the period from the twenty-third year captured the most Ukrainian
00:07:35territory in reality. So, therefore, against the background
00:07:39of the actual failure, one can directly say for the last... month
00:07:42of a complete halt to the Russian offensive in the main central
00:07:46section of the front, well, accordingly, as it were,
00:07:50the head of this central grouping is moved, and instead
00:07:53the commander of a successful grouping is appointed,
00:07:56whether it will help or not, is an open question, I would
00:08:00say probably not, because the problem of the center grouping
00:08:03is not that there
00:08:07the command is not decisive enough, but that
00:08:10they reached Slavyansk.
00:08:21At the same time, the Ukrainians managed to significantly
00:08:25reduce logistics during late
00:08:28July, early July, late June, early
00:08:31July, and the grouping was left without additional, so
00:08:35to speak, without additional supplies, but
00:08:38as it were, Putin knows best who he wants to see there as .
00:09:43stable, including, as you rightly said, due to the
00:09:46active use of drones, so I don't see
00:09:50Russia significantly advancing after any
00:09:54reappointments. Another question is that, in fact,
00:09:57the problem of Russia
00:10:00with increasing the number
00:10:03of drones used
00:10:05is very noticeable,
00:10:09that is, it is clear that the production and
00:10:13use of them in Ukraine is growing at a much higher rate than in
00:10:17Russia, it seems Belous after his appointment
00:10:21set the goal of at least achieving
00:10:25parity, or even surpassing Ukraine in terms of
00:10:28drones, and the first year of his, as it were, after his appointment,
00:10:31the situation changed in this regard, the last
00:10:34six months clearly experienced stagnation,
00:10:38and Russia again began to significantly lose
00:10:41the drone race, production, that is,
00:10:45the main problem is the scale of production of these
00:10:48drones, and there insiders, so to speak, Russian
00:10:52military, began to talk about the fact that...
00:10:55again the same situation with corruption schemes, with
00:10:58the supply of poor-quality drones to the troops, and so on and
00:11:02so forth, they blamed for this the former
00:11:06acting head of the unmanned troops, nicknamed
00:11:09Yuri Toilet, because he was involved in
00:11:12plumbing before he started doing it, by the way, we will get back to him
00:11:16and want to tell his story in more detail a little later, and yes, the reason
00:11:20for the dissatisfaction of the so-called z-bloggers with his candidacy and
00:11:23his position in these very...
00:12:55There are many fire groups, they apparently shoot down some
00:12:58of the drones, so as a result, the supply
00:13:02really recovered in the last, well, about a month, less
00:13:06than a month, in the last 3 weeks the supply of the rear, in general,
00:13:09resumed, despite some losses,
00:13:13but they are apparently not significant enough to stop all
00:13:16this movement, so here
00:13:20the situation depends on the actions of two sides, how consistent Ukraine will
00:13:23be, how much it will have
00:13:26enough of these medium-range
00:13:30drones to block highways,
00:13:33how much the Russian
00:13:35leadership will develop
00:13:38and, most importantly, be able to massively produce
00:13:42some anti-drone measures.
00:13:45Apparently, judging by the appointment
00:13:48of the commander of the unmanned systems forces,
00:13:51he will be a more experienced
00:13:55military leader than before. To what extent his managerial competencies will be enough to
00:13:58expand this bottleneck
00:14:01in the connection between drone manufacturers and
00:14:04drone consumers in the army, I don't know, only time
00:14:08will tell. And what do you think, by the way, about Putin's reluctance to promote one or another commander too
00:14:11much? Our interviewee Sergey Shelin sees exactly this kind of strategy, so to speak, in
00:14:15the Kremlin? Well, to be honest, I
00:14:18don't believe that a general capable of
00:14:22being a political competitor to Putin
00:14:25can emerge in Russia, in principle, the entire Soviet,
00:14:28late Soviet, post-Soviet
00:14:31political machine was aimed
00:14:35at preventing such generals from appearing,
00:14:38so here in
00:14:41these changes I see more of a desire
00:14:45to strengthen precisely the military potential
00:14:48to find, as it were, normal, promoted
00:14:52directly from the fields, experienced
00:14:55commanders, that is, this is rather a response to the appointment
00:14:58of Daropatov as commander-in-chief,
00:15:01rather than, as it were, to internal Russian political
00:15:04intrigues, well, separately, I have already spoiled it, today I want to talk about a specific unit of the Russian
00:15:08army with specific former and current military commanders with interesting
00:15:11call signs, or rather nicknames, even the call sign was a little different, here time
00:15:15and again Vladimir Putin or his military commanders make promises, sometimes
00:15:19specific deadlines, about the creation of such UAV troops, but from the Russian.
00:15:22from the speech of the Russian president before the generals it became clear: the new branch
00:15:26of troops, quote, is only being formed, although people
00:15:29are already actively being recruited there, well, at least such attempts are being made.
00:15:33The appointed head of drones, Lieutenant-General Denis Lyamin, formally
00:15:36replaced that very Yura
00:15:40Toilet, businessman Yuri Vaganov, whose appointment was never
00:15:43officially announced, but the community actively knew about all this,
00:15:47commented, and now even rejoices about it, how it
00:15:50happened, where such a nickname came from, we will tell everything in our
00:15:53story: Vladimir Putin's reshuffles in the army
00:15:57also affected the unmanned systems troops, from the speeches of the Russian
00:16:00president before the generals on August 5, it became clear: the new
00:16:04branch of troops, quote, is only being formed. The appointed head of
00:16:08drones, Lieutenant-General Denis Lyamin, formally replaced
00:16:11businessman Yuri Vaganov, whose appointment was
00:16:15never officially announced. Before the war, Yuri
00:16:18Vaganov, a businessman from Elektrostal, had no connection
00:16:21with the army and was selling plumbing, which is why in the so-called
00:16:25z-blogs he earned the nickname Toilet.
00:16:28The question is that he is a complete crook who, before the start
00:16:32of the SVO, traded plumbing, where did this
00:16:34nickname come from,
00:16:37after which he suddenly became, with the help of certain
00:16:40people, a monopolist in the supply, for example, of FPV to the Russian armed
00:16:44forces of the Russian Federation during the SVO. Vaganov's removal from office
00:16:47was met positively by the z-community. Vaganov
00:16:50the "Toilet" has been removed from office. 500
00:16:53billion. Plus the general technological lag
00:16:56behind the enemy by a year, plus the lives of soldiers. If the rear services
00:17:00need a deputy for toilets, then the ministry knows one
00:17:04genius whose call sign starts with G. In this matter, I
00:17:08do not intend to dispute his competence. Under Vaganov, the Ministry of Defense
00:17:11launched a large-scale campaign to recruit drone operators into the new
00:17:15troops. In early 2026, advertisements
00:17:18met Russians on social networks and billboards. The troops
00:17:22invited drone operators, students, IT specialists,
00:17:25electronics and radio engineering specialists. In March
00:17:282026, the publication Important Stories, citing documents from
00:17:32the Ministry of Defense, reported plans by the department to recruit almost
00:17:3680,000 people into the drone troops by the end of the year, but the recruitment
00:17:39failed. After almost six months, in July, at a meeting of the board
00:17:43of the Ministry of Defense, it was reported that a much smaller number of
00:17:46specialists had been trained. Trained units are capable of independently performing
00:17:49tasks in separate operational tactical directions. In total, during
00:17:53the past period, about 800 specialists have been trained.
00:17:57According to the plan, among the 80 thousand people, there should have been,
00:18:00among others, students of civilian universities. In April, the publication Groza
00:18:04recorded at least 269 educational
00:18:07institutions where students were agitated to go and serve, allegedly in
00:18:11UAV troops. Students in various regions
00:18:14had their retake deadlines shortened, were threatened with academic problems, and
00:18:17manipulated with expulsion. The Russian
00:18:20campaign to recruit unmanned systems troops is already accompanied
00:18:23by several assassination attempts on public drone manufacturers. In late July, in
00:18:27Tula, they tried to shoot Andrey Cherizov, the head of
00:18:30the Russian Laboratory of Air Transport company. The company
00:18:34is engaged in the production of Okhotnik drones. Now doctors rate
00:18:38his condition as stable. The commander not only founded the company,
00:18:42but also personally designed the first strike drones, and then
00:18:45personally tested them on the front line. Thus, the small Tula
00:18:48company Okhotnik became one of the leading manufacturers of combat
00:18:52drones in Russia with a world name. On the evening of August
00:18:554, the general director of Ural-dron-zavod Vladimir Tkachuk survived
00:18:59an assassination attempt. Tkachuk's car was blown up by unknown persons
00:19:02near Yekaterinburg. His driver died, and he himself is in
00:19:05critical condition. Tkachuk
00:19:08is known for starting to produce Upyr drones, which are actively
00:19:11used by Russia on the front. His company's revenue for
00:19:142025 amounted to about 6 billion rubles.
00:19:18Meduza calls him the author of the Z-channel "War-Obsessed".
00:19:21Tkachuk launched it back in VK after the start of hostilities in
00:19:25southeastern Ukraine. We will
00:19:28continue the topic with military expert Nikolay Mitrokhin. Nikolay, well, in the
00:19:31community there are estimates of a year behind. How would you assess this lag in
00:19:35Russian drones?
00:20:08primarily, probably, due to the scale of production in Russia, they are
00:20:11smaller, but in terms of technical characteristics, they are similar, that is,
00:20:15today, for example, I watched how Russian drones on
00:20:18fiber optics in a video hunt
00:20:21people on the streets of Sumy, for example, well, to Sumy
00:20:24is still in a straight line to the front line, well, about 17
00:20:27km, given that the operators do not
00:20:31sit directly on the front line, this
00:20:34means that somewhere drones.
00:20:38with a fiber optic cable for 25-30 km,
00:20:42now, as it were, they are terrorizing
00:20:46a large regional center, where normal life is still going on, in general, or.
00:21:20priority in drones like lightning,
00:21:22these are, let's say, medium-range drones, mainly
00:21:26with various technical
00:21:29adaptations for different tasks, so
00:21:32it is clear that first
00:21:35of all the z-community talks about
00:21:39FPV drones and their shortage at
00:21:42the front, indeed, there are something like 10
00:21:46Ukrainian drones for one Russian drone,
00:21:49and... most likely Russia will try
00:21:52to solve the problem of massive
00:21:56increase in mass production of this type of drones, honestly,
00:21:59it's strange to me why Russia can't do this,
00:22:03perhaps the problems are in the supply of equipment, that is,
00:22:06sanctions are working and
00:22:10Russia simply does not have enough equipment
00:22:12for such production, maybe the problem is in corruption,
00:22:16also quite possible. This
00:22:20banquet, as it were, of the head
00:22:22of the Aerospace Forces showed that in general the generals are feasting, and
00:22:26if the generals are feasting, it means that money is not going to the right place, well, thank
00:22:30God, we will say, you mentioned these videos of attacks on civilians,
00:22:34I want to expand the context a little, there was information that, firstly,
00:22:38the Russian army calls it a safari on people, and
00:22:41well, and another such very bloody, very bloody episode of this war
00:22:44in itself, saying a lot in this context, but if
00:22:48we return to what is actually happening around
00:22:52UAV troops, what does the failure to recruit into these
00:22:55troops generally say, and maybe, according to your information, there are some data on
00:22:58the staff shortage in these very troops, it is clear that there was a campaign by human rights activists
00:23:02warning that a contract with the Ministry of Defense absolutely does not guarantee
00:23:05entry into these very troops, how effective do you think this was
00:23:09as such an anti-measure, so to speak, for recruitment into the Russian
00:23:13army? It is quite difficult to assess how
00:23:16such campaigns work at the mass level, well, in
00:23:20the village in the city of Revda Sverdlovsk region, how much they read, so
00:23:23to speak, emigrant human rights websites, I think not
00:23:27much, but a much greater effect
00:23:31was had by real cases disseminated
00:23:34including in the patriotic Russian press,
00:23:37when indeed experienced drone operators
00:23:41were transferred to assault troops, and they died there in the first
00:23:45attack, this case of "Uzik" which became simply
00:23:48a meme already, and the fact that such "uziks" did not bear
00:23:52any punishment, this is most likely what
00:23:55affects many much more strongly than any arguments
00:23:59of human rights activists, so
00:24:02therefore, since Russian society
00:24:05does not really believe the state
00:24:09and generals, therefore such a campaign, frankly speaking,
00:24:12overestimated in terms of the number of people,
00:24:15and, of course, did not succeed, so we need to pay attention
00:24:19to something else: we need to pay attention to really operating Russian
00:24:22drone units, in particular, "Rubicon" which
00:24:26has not been mentioned here today, that is, under the brand
00:24:29of specifically selected units, which are successful, effective
00:24:33and indeed guarantee their employees,
00:24:36recruited, well, relatively speaking, by the standards of this profession,
00:24:40safety,
00:24:42and you can recruit, I think,
00:24:45much more people, as it were, than we would like.
00:24:48Here, therefore,
00:24:51we will see what happens, but the appointment, conditionally speaking,
00:24:55of a tank general to recruit
00:24:59civilians for such an intelligent, relatively military
00:25:02specialty, is not, I think, the best choice,
00:25:05but we'll see how it goes. And separately,
00:25:09I want to emphasize what we mentioned in our story, two consecutive
00:25:12assassination attempts on civilians,
00:25:16but related. bosses,
00:25:52well, in principle, assassination attempts on the heads of the Russian
00:25:55military-industrial complex have been happening, well, at least since
00:25:582003, since the beginning, that is, directors of various
00:26:01scientific... ethnic centers have been killed several times during this period, and
00:26:05even more have survived assassination attempts in various forms, so this
00:26:09is nothing new, another question is that there was a certain
00:26:13period, let's say, from last
00:26:16September, rather until this
00:26:19spring, when the number of such assassination attempts
00:26:23decreased, possibly as a result of
00:26:26this, this was the result of the fact that
00:26:29after the killing of some major general...
00:27:32knows what he's doing, and the heads
00:27:36of such projects know their risks, well,
00:27:39if I understood correctly, you are talking about these two cases, in fact, about such
00:27:43outsourcing for the Ministry of Defense, where small private companies are engaged in
00:27:46all this, as you called them, DIY masters, who decided to make money from
00:27:50the war, and well, accordingly, there is less likelihood that the Russian authorities will even
00:27:53think about protecting them, since they, as if, should measure the risks, but
00:27:57it is not at all a fact that they understand what is being discussed in this situation, and
00:28:01therefore. Here the question is greed, because this
00:28:04last citizen, with such
00:28:07turnovers, could have provided himself with professional security at his own
00:28:10expense, if he did not do this, he is either a very stupid
00:28:14person, or very greedy, or both
00:28:16together,
00:28:19well, and accordingly, I also mentioned today, I will ask you very briefly, we are
00:28:22gradually running out of airtime, I mentioned that air defense is partially outsourced to
00:28:26private companies, and there was a specific law about it, that you can
00:28:29buy equipment, will it continue?
00:29:03Thank you, military expert Nikolay Mitrokhin was with us today, see you tomorrow, dear
00:29:07viewers, goodbye,
00:29:26an amazing story of Alexander Gabyshev, known as Sasha
00:29:29the shaman, who is walking from Yakutia to Moscow. To reject
00:29:33power, what does that mean, it means lightning and the wrath
00:29:37of God,
00:29:39one, two,
00:29:41three,
00:29:44I am not such a simple person, I am a heavenly person, a heavenly warrior,
00:29:48from now on, Putin is not your decree, live
00:29:51freely, this is the law, leave,
00:29:54please, what kind of cordoning off, and why is there a cordoning off
00:29:57here,
00:30:00come on, come on, come on!
00:30:04In Ukraine we always talked about unique places
00:30:07and unique people, but that was
00:30:10before, since February
00:30:142022 everything changed,
00:30:17war, we are showing a new
00:30:20history of Ukraine,
00:30:23about incredible strength of spirit, about struggle, despite
00:30:26everything,
00:30:31watch. A joint project of Radio Liberty and the Present Time TV channel,
00:30:35what is really happening in Ukraine.
00:30:52Ukraine is scaling up middle strikes, the Ukrainian army
00:30:56is actively hitting the operational rear of the Russian army, under attack.