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00:00:50The improvement of the Ministry of Defense's
00:00:53structure continues in connection with
00:00:57the needs and experience of the special
00:01:01operation. Personnel rotation of personnel. Putin
00:01:04announced the unification of the rear services
00:01:06of the Ministry of Defense. He seeks to improve, as it were,
00:01:09the management of the war, but at the same time not to put forward any
00:01:13general who would look like his competitor. And about
00:01:16the change of the head of the UAV forces. The previous head
00:01:19was engaged in selling plumbing. In parallel, in Russia,
00:01:23assassination attempts continue on the heads of factories that are
00:01:26related to the production of drones.
00:01:39reshuffles in the Russian army. Vladimir
00:01:43Putin personally announced them. This took Putin as much as 7 minutes
00:01:47in the public part of the meeting with the military, judging by
00:01:50the video recording of the Kremlin press service. There are some curious moments in these reshuffles, in particular
00:01:54the appearance of a unified rear service of the Ministry of Defense.
00:01:57My colleague Andrei Shilov will tell more.
00:02:05large-scale reshuffles in the Ministry of Defense, the Russian president vaguely
00:02:09explained the needs and experience of the special military operation,
00:02:13as the Kremlin calls the war with Ukraine. The last major reorganization, or rather
00:02:16purge, was in this sector 2 years ago, when after the change of the Minister
00:02:20of Defense, the entire management team and many
00:02:23colleagues of the ex-head of the department Shoigu were arrested. The current
00:02:27reshuffles are not so radical and are more likely associated with the very slow
00:02:30advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine, official
00:02:34Russian media interpret the reshuffles as the direction of combat
00:02:37generals to mend the rear. Colonel General Valery
00:02:41Saladchuk moved from the post of commander of the troops of the Central Military District
00:02:44to Deputy Minister of Defense to organize the logistical
00:02:48support of the troops. As Deputy Minister Colonel General Alexander
00:02:51Sanchik, who was previously responsible for the material and technical support
00:02:55of the troops, is now in charge of organizing orders for weapons, equipment and
00:02:58technical support. Komsomolskaya Pravda describes it this way: everything that
00:03:02concerns weapons is now in one hand, all rear
00:03:06services are also in one fist. Another Deputy Minister
00:03:09of Defense, Alexey Krivoruchko, was reassigned to develop
00:03:12promising weapons and military and special equipment.
00:03:16The story with especially promising equipment, drones, got its
00:03:19continuation with the appointment of Colonel General Denis Lyamin
00:03:22as the head of the department of unmanned
00:03:26systems. The new type of troops is only
00:03:30being formed, catching up with more dynamic Ukraine in this area,
00:03:33where the path from the first presidential decrees to the actual creation
00:03:36of a type of troops took the entire year 2024. Similar
00:03:40troops in Russia were presented by the Minister of Defense as an idea in December
00:03:432024, and their creation was planned to be completed in the third
00:03:47quarter of 2025. I want to express my hope that
00:03:50you, and so
00:03:54believes the minister, the chief of the general
00:03:57staff, you, being one of the most qualified
00:04:01specialists, as I already said, will bring to
00:04:04completion the formation of this new
00:04:08type of troops of unmanned systems and lead it in the near
00:04:12future. In place of those promoted up the career ladder, Colonel General Andrei
00:04:15Ivanaev was appointed as the new commander of the Central Military District troops.
00:04:19He previously commanded the Eastern Military District troops, and
00:04:23Colonel General Pyotr Bolgarev, who was his chief of staff,
00:04:26was appointed as acting commander in his place. The reshuffles in the military
00:04:30top brass are commented on with optimism by pro-government and pro-war
00:04:33Telegram channels. The disruption of procurement and supply of drones to the front,
00:04:37which led to the actual halt of the further advance of troops,
00:04:40predetermined the last personnel decisions of the supreme
00:04:43commander-in-chief. Marshal Zhukov's famous phrase "The rear is
00:04:46half the victory" became the main motive for the new personnel decisions
00:04:50of the supreme commander-in-chief. Putin's logic is extremely
00:04:53clear. Who, if not combat commanders, knows best
00:04:57what the soldiers need right now. Our correspondent
00:05:12mentioned that, according to analysts at the American Institute
00:05:16for the Study of War, the fact that these are precisely reshuffles among
00:05:19existing commanders, and not the promotion of new ones, who
00:05:23could change something, inject fresh blood, so to speak, metaphorically, but
00:05:27the unified rear service is interesting against the backdrop, the Institute
00:05:30for the Study of War notes, of ongoing successful air
00:05:33attacks on the AFU. We have discussed many times on our airwaves, our
00:05:37experts said that it is simply impossible to cover all of Russia with air defense systems,
00:05:40even if one considers: strictly important for the military-industrial complex and for
00:05:44the Russian army production, organizations, factories and so on,
00:05:48including, therefore, the Russian authorities are ready to hand over defense to those
00:05:52corporations who can afford it, while the task in the Kremlin's
00:05:56mind, most likely, is not to overdo it with the appointment
00:05:59of confident chiefs too high, too
00:06:02long, so that it does not turn into political competition
00:06:06for Putin, so believes analyst Sergey Shelin, we spoke with him before the start
00:06:10of our broadcast, we... it's unlikely
00:06:13that we can say whether he is gripped by panic or just
00:06:16his usual fear, Putin actually lives in
00:06:19fear, so we can call it
00:06:22constant panic, we can not, but he is always afraid for his
00:06:26position as ruler of Russia, why
00:06:30he is changing generals now, well, he is probably
00:06:33dissatisfied with the results of their
00:06:35work,
00:06:37that's understandable, in general, he has, he should have complaints
00:06:41against them, but... he must solve two tasks that are
00:06:44easily calculated: he seeks to improve, as it were,
00:06:48the leadership of the war, but at the same time not to nominate any
00:06:51general who would look like his competitor, that is
00:06:55the most important task that he has always set for
00:06:58himself, and even for any unpopular,
00:07:01for example, action, like the withdrawal of troops from Kherson, he put
00:07:04Surovikin, as we remember, immediately after that he removed him, because
00:07:08Surovikin looked not so much like a pale figure.
00:07:42towards the Center group. East was considered the most
00:07:46successful in terms of
00:07:49development, in terms of attacks, among all groups
00:07:52of the Russian army. That is, they during
00:07:56the period from 2023 captured the most
00:07:59Ukrainian territory in reality.
00:08:02So, against the backdrop of a factual
00:08:04failure, one can directly say, for the last month, a complete
00:08:08halt to the Russian offensive on the most important
00:08:11central sector of the front, well, accordingly, the
00:08:14head of this central
00:08:17group is moved, and in his place the commander of the successful
00:08:20group is appointed. Will it help or not, that's an open
00:08:23question, I would say probably not, because
00:08:27the problem of the Center group is not
00:08:30that
00:08:33the command is not decisive enough, but that they reached
00:08:36the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk fortified area, which has been prepared since
00:08:402014. And there are totally
00:08:44mined fields, while the Ukrainians
00:08:48managed to significantly reduce logistics
00:08:52during late July, early
00:08:55July, late June, early July, and the group
00:08:58was left without additional, so to speak, without additional
00:09:01supplies. So, but Putin knows
00:09:05best whom he wants to see there as commander.
00:09:09Well, what can be opposed to what is happening at the front
00:09:12right now? I mean, the very fact that the war has transformed,
00:09:15in essence, into a drone race, whoever has more of them and whoever is more
00:09:19active, essentially controls the situation in the
00:09:22widest grey zone along the line of combat contact,
00:09:25as it is called, if I'm not mistaken, up to 50 km, this whole
00:09:29story turns out, can this really change the situation in the Kramatorsk
00:09:33direction? Well, probably not, although,
00:09:36as they say, there are always some things that the
00:09:39current command doesn't see.
00:09:50it is possible to do something there, especially if the new
00:09:54commander receives additional resources for his task,
00:09:57which were not given to the previous one, because they did not believe in the previous one, that
00:10:01happens. But in
00:10:03general, of course, the situation at the front line is stable,
00:10:07it will be stable, including, as you rightly said, due to
00:10:11the active use of drones.
00:10:14Therefore, I do not see Russia making significant
00:10:18progress after some reassignments. Another
00:10:21question is that the problem
00:10:24of Russia with
00:10:27increasing the number of drones
00:10:30used is very
00:10:33noticeable. So it is clear
00:10:36that the production and use
00:10:39of drones in Ukraine is growing at a much higher rate than in Russia.
00:10:43It seems that Belous, after his appointment, set
00:10:47a goal to at least achieve parity, or even
00:10:50surpass Ukraine in terms of drones, and in the first year
00:10:53of his appointment, the situation changed in this
00:10:57regard, but for the last six months, there has
00:11:00been a complete stagnation.
00:11:02Russia has again started
00:11:05to significantly lose the drone race,
00:11:09production, that is the main problem is the scale
00:11:13of production of these drones, and there, insiders, let's say,
00:11:17Russian military personnel started talking about the fact
00:11:19that - again the same situation with
00:11:22corruption schemes, with the supply... of substandard
00:11:25drones to the troops and so on and so forth, they blamed
00:11:29the former acting head
00:11:33of the unmanned forces, nicknamed Yura
00:11:36"Toilet," because he was engaged in plumbing before he started
00:11:40engaging in this, by the way, we will come back to him, we want to talk a little later,
00:11:43a little more in detail about his history and the reasons for the dissatisfaction of the so-called
00:11:46bloggers, his candidacy and his position in
00:11:49these very troops, which, according to Putin, are being recreated for the umpteenth time, still
00:11:53in the process, but... if we go back to this clearly absent parity
00:11:57among drones on both sides, Ukraine's obvious advantage, we clearly
00:12:01see these consequences, this includes clear signs of a fuel crisis, and losses at the Walberis
00:12:05company, which, with some
00:12:08how much does this factor of drone attacks on
00:12:12the rear affect decisions in the Kremlin, if we judge these recent decisions on
00:12:16reassignments, and is it possible in this situation to assume that this
00:12:19clear demonstration of recognizing the problem, in one form or another, in what
00:12:22Putin usually allows himself?
00:12:26I wouldn't say that, since
00:12:29changes in commanders regularly occur in the Russian
00:12:32army, you might have noticed, so to speak, most
00:12:35of the current commanders of directions, their age is
00:12:38on average 50 years old, or
00:12:41younger, yes, so to speak,
00:12:43so there is enough fresh blood there,
00:12:47the question is indeed in the systemic
00:12:50consequences of technological development in war, here
00:12:53on the one hand. the consequences of the Ukrainian blockade
00:12:57of the Russian rear are felt, another question is
00:13:00that this blockade is not very consistent,
00:13:03so on the one hand the Russian military leadership
00:13:07seeks to minimize it, in particular large
00:13:10forces were directed to
00:13:14accompany truck convoys in the
00:13:17occupied territories, that is, there are many
00:13:21of these mobile fire groups, they apparently shoot down some drones.
00:13:25As a result, supplies have actually resumed over the last,
00:13:29well, about a month, less than a month, in the last 3 weeks
00:13:33supplies to the rear have generally resumed,
00:13:37despite some losses, but they are apparently not significant
00:13:40enough to stop all this movement. So
00:13:43here the situation depends on the actions of two
00:13:47sides, how consistent Ukraine will be, how many drones
00:13:50of such medium
00:13:53range it will have to block
00:13:57routes, how Russia, the Russian leadership
00:14:00will develop and, most importantly, be able
00:14:04to mass produce some
00:14:06anti-drone measures. So, apparently,
00:14:10judging by the appointment of the commander of the unmanned
00:14:13systems forces, this will be,
00:14:17as it were, a more experienced leader than before, including
00:14:20a military one. How far his managerial competencies will be enough
00:14:23to expand the bottleneck between drone
00:14:27manufacturers and army drone consumers, I
00:14:30don't know, only time will tell. What do you think, by the way, about Putin's
00:14:33unwillingness to promote one or another chief too strongly? Our interlocutor
00:14:37Sergey Shelin sees precisely such a strategy, as it were, in
00:14:41the Kremlin? Well, frankly speaking,
00:14:44I don't believe that a general capable
00:14:47of being a political competitor to
00:14:50Putin can appear in Russia. In
00:14:53principle, the entire...
00:15:10In these changes, I see more of a desire to strengthen military potential,
00:15:14to find, as it were, normal, advanced
00:15:17experienced commanders directly from the fields.
00:15:21That is, this is rather a response to the appointment of Daropatov.
00:16:47had no relation to the army and was engaged in selling plumbing, which is why in the so-called
00:16:50"z-blogs" he acquired the nickname "Toilet."
00:16:54The question is that he is a complete swindler, who before the start
00:16:57of the story traded plumbing, from which this nickname
00:17:00appeared,
00:17:02after which he suddenly became, with the help of certain
00:17:06people, a monopolist in supplying to... dismissed
00:17:17from his post 500 billion plus
00:17:20general technological lag from the enemy by a year plus
00:17:23the lives of soldiers. If the rear services need a deputy for
00:17:26toilets, then the ministry knows one genius,
00:17:30with the call sign G starting. In this matter,
00:17:33I do not intend to dispute his competencies. Under Vaganov, the
00:17:36Ministry of Defense. launched a large-scale campaign to recruit
00:17:39drone operators into the new forces. In early
00:17:422026, advertisements met Russians on
00:17:45social networks and billboards. Drone operators, students,
00:17:49IT specialists, electronics and
00:17:52radio engineering specialists were invited to the forces. In March
00:17:562026, the publication "Important Stories," citing Ministry of Defense documents,
00:17:59reported on the department's plans to recruit almost 80,000 people into the drone forces
00:18:03by the end of the year. The recruitment failed, and after almost six months, in
00:18:07June, at a meeting of the Ministry of Defense Collegium, it was reported about the training
00:18:10of a much smaller number of specialists. The trained
00:18:13unit is capable of independently performing tasks in separate operational
00:18:16tactical directions. In total, during the past period, about
00:18:208,000 specialists have been trained. According to the plan, among the 80
00:18:24thousand people, students of civilian universities were also supposed to be
00:18:28included. In April, the publication Groza recorded at least
00:18:31269 educational institutions where students
00:18:34were agitated to go serve allegedly in UAV forces.
00:18:37Students in various regions had their retake deadlines shortened,
00:18:41were threatened with academic problems, and were manipulated
00:18:43into expulsion. The Russian campaign to recruit for the unmanned
00:18:47systems forces is accompanied by several assassination attempts on public
00:18:51drone manufacturers. In late July, in Tula, they tried to shoot Andrey
00:18:55Cherizov, the head of the company "Russian Laboratory
00:18:58of Air Transport." The company is engaged in the production of Ovod
00:19:01drones. Currently, doctors assess his condition as stable.
00:19:05The commander not only founded the company,
00:19:07but also personally designed the first Ovod attack drones, and then personally
00:19:11tested them on the front line, so the small Tula company Ovod
00:19:15turned into one of the leading manufacturers of combat drones in Russia
00:19:18with a global reputation. In the evening of August 4, an assassination
00:19:22attempt was made on the CEO of Ural-Drone-Factory Vladimir
00:19:24Tkachuk. Tkachuk's car was blown up by unknown assailants
00:19:28near Yekaterinburg. His driver died, and he himself is in critical
00:19:31condition. Vladimir Tkachuk is known for starting to produce
00:19:35Upyr drones. They are actively used
00:19:37by Russia at the front, his company's revenue for 2025
00:19:41amounted to about 6 billion rubles. Meduza calls him
00:19:45the author of the z-channel "War-Obsessed," which Tkachuk launched
00:19:48on VK after the start of hostilities in southeastern
00:19:51Ukraine. We will continue the topic with military expert Nikolai
00:19:55Mitrokhin. Nikolai, well, the community voices estimates of a year of lag, and
00:19:59how would you assess this lag in drones for Russia from
00:20:02Ukraine, how far is this from the truth or vice versa, very
00:20:05close? I... would say that one should
00:20:09evaluate by different groups of drones,
00:20:12for example, Ukraine does not have jet drones or,
00:20:15well, does not have industrial production, Russia
00:20:19started producing "Tehran 5," and for Ukraine this is
00:20:22a significant problem. As for FPV
00:20:26drones, I would say this, that
00:20:30- it depends primarily, probably, on the scale
00:20:33of production, in Russia they are smaller. But in terms of technical
00:20:36characteristics, they are similar, that is, today, for example, I
00:20:40observed how Russian drones on optical fiber on
00:20:43a video hunted people in the streets of Sumy,
00:20:46for example, so... Well, about 17 km, also considering that
00:20:54operators don't sit right on the front line,
00:20:57this means that somewhere drones with
00:21:01a line, with an optical fiber cable
00:21:04for 25-30 km, are already, as it were,
00:21:08terrorizing a large regional center
00:21:11in which normal life is still going on, or at least
00:21:15trying to, so in
00:21:18this regard,
00:21:21but in terms of production volume, Russia
00:21:24is insufficient, in terms of technical characteristics it is quite
00:21:27sufficient, in terms of advanced technologies, there is
00:21:30a competition, that is, there are systems
00:21:33that are advanced in Ukraine, for example,
00:21:37as for heavy, heavy drones, frontline ones, which
00:21:40perform tasks like Baba Yaga, Russia
00:21:44has a priority in drones like Molniya,
00:21:48these are, let's say, medium-range drones, mainly
00:21:51with various technical
00:21:54adaptations for different tasks, so
00:21:57it is clear that primarily the
00:22:01Z-community talks about
00:22:04FPV drones and their shortcomings on
00:22:08the front, indeed, there are something like
00:22:1110 Ukrainian drones for every Russian drone,
00:22:15and most likely Russia will try
00:22:17to solve the problem.
00:23:20recruitment into these very troops, and perhaps according to your information, there are
00:23:23data on personnel shortages in these very troops, it is clear that there was a campaign
00:23:26by human rights defenders warning that contact with the Ministry of Defense does not guarantee
00:23:30at all entry into this very type of troops, how effective do you think this
00:23:34turned out to be as such an anti-measure, so to speak, for recruitment into
00:23:38the Russian army? It's quite difficult to assess
00:23:42how such companies work on a mass scale, well, in the
00:23:45village in the city of Revda in Sverdlovsk region, as they say.
00:23:49what will happen, but the appointment,
00:25:20figuratively speaking,
00:25:22of a tank general to recruit, to recruit
00:25:26civilians, for such a relatively intelligent military
00:25:29specialty, this is not, it seems to me, the best choice,
00:25:32but we'll see how it goes. And I also
00:25:36want to emphasize what we mentioned in our story, two successive
00:25:40assassination attempts on
00:25:43civilians who are clearly involved in Russia's military-industrial complex,
00:25:47clearly products that were either intended to be used
00:25:51or have already been used at the front, correct me if necessary, but it seems that
00:25:54assassination attempts on those involved in the army and military-industrial complex have become more widespread,
00:25:58in the sense that if before it only concerned Russian generals, which, by the way, actually
00:26:01forced them to take at least some additional security measures, now
00:26:05it also concerns civilian leaders, how much does
00:26:09this pose such a task for the Russian army, for
00:26:12the Russian authorities, I would even say, to strengthen security for such
00:26:15leaders? Well, in principle,
00:26:18assassination attempts on the leaders of the Russian military-industrial complex
00:26:22have been happening, well, at least since 2003, from the very beginning, that is,
00:26:26several directors of various scientific and technical centers
00:26:29have been killed during this time, and even more assassination attempts
00:26:33in various forms, so this is nothing new, another question
00:26:36is that there was a certain period,
00:26:40let's say, from last September, rather
00:26:43to this spring, when
00:26:46the number of such assassination attempts decreased,
00:26:50possibly as a result of the fact that after the murder of
00:26:53major generals, lieutenant generals and all that, Russia carried out
00:26:57very intense bombings.
00:27:01очень интенсивные бомбёжки.
00:27:10the assassination attempts sharply increased, another question is that these
00:27:14self-made masters, yes,
00:27:17leaders of relatively small
00:27:20projects, are still a relatively easy target for
00:27:24assassination attempts, but in the
00:27:27drone production industry, other enterprises dominate,
00:27:30in particular. since they, it seems, should weigh
00:28:20the risks, but it's not at all certain that they
00:28:23understand what is being talked about in this situation and therefore here
00:28:27the question, here the question is about greed, because this
00:28:30last citizen, as it were,
00:28:32with such turnovers could have provided professional security for his
00:28:36money, if he didn't do that, he is either a very stupid
00:28:39person, or very greedy, or both together,
00:28:42well, and accordingly, I mentioned
00:28:44today, I will ask you very briefly, our airtime is gradually running out,
00:28:48I mentioned that air defense is partially outsourced to private
00:28:52companies and there was a specific law on this that you can
00:28:54purchase equipment, will this tactic continue
00:28:58or will Russia still have to expand the air defense zone at least to companies,
00:29:02which...
00:30:24Please, put all lists
00:30:28of extremists, neo-Nazis, I wrote it in my passport.
00:30:33Khulo, and this is my official and principled
00:30:36position, well, it's a shame, damn it, well, there's someone, but not
00:30:39me, well...