Only winning strategy is attrition rate that enemy cannot sustain – Butusov
Why did Yurii Butusov, editor-in-chief of Censor.NET and the journalist who was the loudest whistleblower of problems in the army and a critic of the military-political leadership, decide to join the military now? Also, about the Defense Forces’ transition to corps-level formations, those responsible for the constant drone shortages, the absent and inadequate fortifications on the critical offensive directions, and the two scenarios left for us as a country: the current pessimistic one and another, more challenging, that demands political will.
Greetings, friends, I’m Olena Trybushna, this is the YEPytannia (There is a Question - ed.note) channel. This person needs no introduction — Yurii Butusov, journalist and editor-in-chief of Censor.NET, who was mobilized to the 13th National Guard Brigade "Khartiia" a month ago. He is currently undergoing Basic Combined Arms Training (BCAT). I spent an hour of his free time this morning for this conversation.
Yurii, welcome. I’ll start with the expected question: Why did you decide to mobilize right now?
Right now, I don't see any other way to change the situation at the front. Since the beginning of the war, I’ve written extensively about the changes needed at the strategic and operational levels, and I’ve been able to influence dozens of issues. Changes in combat training and organization of many military units. But at this point, I see that no changes will come from the top. That’s simply not possible anymore, for many reasons I’ve already written about. Over the past three years, I’ve repeatedly emphasized the need to create operational formations — divisions, corps. At least the corps have finally been established. That’s a major shift, a serious reform, and I support it. That’s why I believe that in the critical situation we’re facing now, it’s no longer possible to keep talking about change without being part of it. Because — and I want to stress this, there will be no sound decisions coming from the top. Any real change in the country’s defense is only possible from the bottom up. And if you truly take responsibility, you must become part of that change yourself. All the planning, preparations, discussions, and opportunities, they’ve all been used up. I’ve had meetings with the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Digital Transformation, and held numerous consultations with top-level officials — generals, commanders. Unfortunately, I see a dead end where coordination is needed, where large-scale strategic decisions, resource and personnel management are required. Sadly, I don’t believe this will happen the way I think it should. That’s why I made the decision to personally join one of the units where, in my view, the commanders are competent and capable of implementing decisions and changes at the mid-tier level — operational and tactical. Systemic changes.
I believe that in the current situation in the country, strengthening, forming, and deploying corps, along with their successful combat operations, is the only organizational solution that will work on the front line and improve the effectiveness of force deployment.
It seems that until recently, some people, including those in power, were postponing important decisions, thinking: let’s wait and see how all these attempts by Trump to end the war play out, and then we’ll act accordingly. And the key question here is how the government has responded to the realization that no changes are coming, no peace is on the horizon, Trump cannot influence anything, and the Russians have no intention of ending this war. It’s likely that many have reconsidered their decisions after recognizing there’s nothing left to wait for. The main question is whether this realization has finally reached those who make the decisions. Do you have a sense that something has shifted in this regard in May?
No, I don’t have that sense. From the very beginning of Trump’s statements, I made a number of broadcasts and posts where I said I saw no grounds for peace, no levers Trump could use to change anything. So I had no expectations at all. What I see, unfortunately, is that the people making decisions here remain locked in an informational and political bubble and they won’t step out of it under any circumstances. Trump has changed, the illusions are gone, but the changes haven’t come, and they won’t. Not in America. And we won’t see any changes here either. That’s why this became such a key factor for me.
I realized that I now have significant wartime experience influencing various decisions, the operations of different headquarters, even the creation of new command structures and management bodies. And I see how the lack of a clear strategy prevents us from capitalizing on the tactical and operational advantages we do manage to create on the front line. And I understand that there will be no changes. So it’s important to approach this calmly, accept this issue, and move forward, because there are changes that you have to create yourself.
So essentially, you did what people often say: "If you’re so smart, go and do it yourself." You chose to take that path?
Not quite. The thing is, I’ve been at the front this whole time and have done a lot — it just hasn’t been public. If I had written online about the things I was doing out there, it would’ve caused political scandals. So I was never disconnected from the war, and in fact, the influence was quite substantial. I’ll only be able to talk about it openly during the war. But that influence was at the mid-tier level, and at times involved decisions at the higher level. Still, I’ve come to understand that none of it really works. The pace of such influence is too slow. When I try to advocate for someone or write about something, change takes an extremely long time. It took three years just to get the corps structure established after it had already become necessary. At this pace, it’s impossible to keep up with the decisions happening on the front. The drone revolution and other developments in defense organization are moving fast. I have direct contacts with many commanders and can continue influencing things through posts, videos, and pushing for changes like I’ve done before. But now I realize that’s a very slow path. We need to move faster, and that’s why I have to become part of these changes myself. Yes, I won’t be able to influence decisions like I used to—on the defense of certain cities, on shifting situations in some sectors, or impacting specific areas. But I will be responsible for the quality of work on a more focused, narrower front. Yes, there will be problems in certain areas of the front, unfortunately, because now I won’t be able to assist some commanders, highlight certain situations, or support some changes. But I will be able to act more systematically, even if on a narrower front. For now, I’m on the infantry platoon front, I hope this opportunity will come soon. We’ll see what happens next.
The way the Russian offensive is unfolding now, what they call the Russian summer offensive campaign, are there any signs that Russian resources are running low one way or another, that this might be their last push, and that we need to hold out against it?
I see no signs that Russian resources are running out. Their resources are definitely shrinking, no doubt about that. For the enemy, this offensive and the war itself are a terrible burden, just as they are for us. They’re also experiencing resource depletion and are forced to conscript people by their own harsh methods. They can’t launch a full-scale mobilization, it would be devastating for them as well. But the enemy still has manpower reserves; people remain their primary resource, and also their main shortage. They are reorganizing their military industry and continuing production, and they won’t run out this year. To eliminate or stop the enemy, it’s not enough to simply inflict losses, you have to dictate the pace of those losses. Mighty Russia can, over time, keep forcing a certain number of homeless people, outcasts, the uneducated, the poor into the army using various methods: the police, the FSB, coercion. They can sustain that for a while. What they can’t sustain is the pace of losses. If their losses exceed their mobilization capacity for a month, or for two or three months, if that pace remains consistently higher than what they can replenish, then they will lose the ability to advance along the entire front. And our task is not to look for some magic key to a specific settlement somewhere — our strategic path to victory is to dictate the enemy’s attrition rate. If that had been done, if we had a real strategy, one focused on achieving the necessary pace of enemy losses, the Russian offensive would have been halted long ago.
I believe and I’ve said this many times, explained it in detail, that we do have the resources right now to stop the Russian offensive, to inflict unacceptable losses the enemy cannot withstand, and to change the course of the war. But we have to be realistic. Problems with command and organization exist not only in Russia.
Where are these resources of ours? Can we actually stop this? From what I understand, one of the reasons they're advancing is that we lack, on the one hand, manpower, and on the other, drones. So, where are these resources? How do we mobilize them?
In war, especially in a large-scale, mass-mobilization war, there has never been a single example in all of world history where a country had everything it needed. When mass mobilization is underway, as the situation now clearly demands, there are never enough resources. Needs, by their very nature, always far exceed available capabilities.
One of the key elements of any strategy, a fundamental one, is setting clear priorities and allocating resources accordingly to address those specific priority tasks, not to try solving everything at once. And if we look at how many resources we’re currently directing toward the war effort, and how much of that is actually going toward meeting priority needs, it becomes clear: we do have reserves. It’s enough to point out that our defense budget alone exceeds 1.5 trillion hryvnias. That is, these are substantial resources which, given constant, flexible re-prioritization and planned, not manual mode, can resolve a great number of issues and inflict serious losses on the enemy. The same goes for manpower. If you just grab people off the streets, send them to poorly supplied recruitment centers, and then to training facilities where nobody takes responsibility for them—if you fail to provide them with proper training, supplies, and, most importantly, competent commanders who genuinely care about them and treat them as important from the very moment they step into the TCR and SS (Territorial Centre of Recruitment and Social Support), if you don’t ensure their effective deployment to the front, then many of these people, after being rounded up with such difficulty, will simply turn around and leave.
The point is, even with the resources we currently have, if we stop pouring them into the front like water through a sieve, and instead change the way we use them, how we deploy them, and our approach to people — we could become significantly stronger. What seems insufficient here in the rear could actually become enough if used properly. Just look at the reported mobilization figures: according to the official plans, TCR and SS representatives claim we’re enlisting 20,000 to 30,000 people per month.
Does this match reality? Is it true?
It does, and I have no reason to doubt it—I believe it reflects the real situation. The next question is: how many of those people actually make it to the front? Here we see a statistical gap between those logged in the plan as "mobilised" and those physically handed over to a company commander at the front. Add up the numbers and they differ by multiples. If mobilisation were measured by the headcount actually transferred to combat units and already executing missions on the front line, the figures would look radically different from the official mobilisation reports. In short, we need to measure results.
Did others buy their way out? Or what’s?
Look, people report to an assembly point. What happens first? They are under stress, sizing up the situation, how they are treated, how they feel. Then they are sent to a training centre, where they judge how they are received, trained, supplied; after that, they arrive at a military unit. At every one of these stages a share of personnel is filtered out. They keep dropping out right up to the last moment, even after reaching the unit itself. The ways vary: one man turns in medical certificates proving he is ill and unfit; some bring military exemptions because they have them. Yet another simply goes AWOL, which in our system is not a criminal offence, so it happens on a massive scale and no one is alarmed by it. At every stage, each official reports certain numbers, but no one reports the problems. There are no figures for the problems; no one reconciles the balance sheet. If we asked how many of those 30,000 actually reached the front, the statistics would be staggering—and we do not have them. Everything in this war is fragmented. That is the very strategic problem I’ve been talking about since the first question.
To win a war, strategic decisions must be made at the highest levels. Without them, everything becomes fragmented. The Territorial Recruitment Centers report one thing, the training centers another, and the receiving military units yet another. But the infantry company commander doesn’t report to anyone, he simply records the reality as it is. And that reality, the actual number of personnel who have arrived and been accounted for, differs from those initial figures by multiples. So, I don’t see a problem with a lack of resources, manpower, or money. I see a critical problem with the absence of necessary organizational management. Organisational management decisions need to change.
Who is responsible for this? At what level should these strategic decisions be made and then passed down?
Obviously, the state is responsible. What can I say? As a soldier, I can only carry out the orders and decisions that come to me. I have written extensively over the years about those who bear responsibility, under this president and the previous one, but unfortunately, not everyone wants to acknowledge the strategic issues involved. The big problem is that to analyze a problem, first you have to recognize it, and second, formulate the question clearly. A properly formulated question about a problem already contains the answer.
Let’s look at who’s asking the questions and raising these issues. Usually, it’s representatives of civil society. But when are these problems actually solved? When are these questions answered? Most often — never. I decided to serve because I’ve raised all these strategic questions many times. The political situation now is such that we can’t change the leadership during active combat. It will remain as it is. And all these shortcomings, failures, and strategic blunders, someone has to address them while theoretical discussions drag on. Changes are needed on the front lines, too. They’re necessary both at the tactical and operational levels if strategic changes aren’t happening. I’ve come to think that maybe this is the only possible path for our country, that change will have to come exclusively from the bottom up. Because even a brutal war like this hasn’t been able to push certain strategic decisions forward.
Do you think the bottom-up initiative can actually outweigh the lack of top-level action? I saw you recently shared a post by Ihor Lutsenko expressing the same idea—that we shouldn’t rely on the state or some elusive authority, but rather count on grassroots initiative, from the military, from business.
In reality, these systems are moving in different directions. People try to compensate for the state’s inefficiency with their own initiative, especially since for over three and a half years the government hasn’t found the strength to be effective. Does this compensate for the lack of it? I believe it can.
About the corps. Back in February—under pressure, as you’ve already mentioned—they started switching to this system. Several months have passed since then. Can we already say that this was the right path and that it is actually taking place in practice, at an institutional level rather than just in slogans? After all, we’ve seen this before: we created the Unmanned Systems Forces, put beautiful people like Sukharevskyi in charge, and then buried the whole thing—nothing came of it. We set up the Drone Line, appointed well-known media figures there, and now we’ll see what comes of that. Essentially, the corps transition also saw some well-known, effective, media-savvy commanders placed in certain corps headquarters. How is all of this unfolding? What can you say about it now? How effective is it turning out to be?
In any case, I’m convinced that the creation of corps is, by the very logic of the process, unquestionably a positive development. There simply can’t be downsides to it compared to the previous structure, where the highest-level formation we had was a brigade of just a few thousand troops. From a military science standpoint, that’s absolutely unacceptable. And the fact that this issue remained unaddressed for so long was a uniquely Ukrainian "anomaly." I wrote about this because there isn’t a single other country in the world where, during active warfare, the highest organizational structure was just a brigade. That hasn’t happened in any war over the past 200 years. Only here did such a structure exist, due to our political peculiarities and the low level of education among those making strategic decisions. But now, the corps will undoubtedly play their role. This is an important reform, and I’m glad it’s being implemented. Of course, it’s not happening quickly — but it’s progressing as much as possible under wartime conditions, with limitations. Most corps have already formally started operating: they’ve incorporated brigades and assumed their own sectors of responsibility. So, we’ll see what the results are naturally, they will depend on many factors. First and foremost, on the competence of the commanders appointed to lead them. Secondly, on how tasks are defined and whether those tasks are, in principle, realistic. Thirdly, on whether they’re properly manned and equipped. We’ll see how it all plays out. We understand this won’t be a panacea or a magic wand, it’s simply a correction of an obvious flaw in the system that had never been addressed. It’s the creation of a basic organizational structure, nothing more. It’s not a panacea.
Do you now see that for Zelenskyy and Syrskyi this isn’t just a political project — that it wasn’t done merely because people like you demanded and proved it was necessary, but that it’s genuinely aimed at systemic change within the military?
What’s been created now is indeed an organizational structure. The corps has been given authority, commanders have been appointed, and now the entire area of responsibility will be reorganized through them. So there’s no question about that. But how will it be supported? That’s not just about logistics or implementation. It doesn’t come down to simply creating the corps — it depends on how tasks are assigned to them, as I’ve already said. We’ll see. Personally, I’m confident that a corps commander is someone who will have broader situational awareness and greater responsibility over a larger sector than a brigade commander. They will have more flexibility to maneuver their forces and will be able to issue more effective orders to subordinates. So I do not doubt that a significant number of our commanders will make full and proper use of these powers.
We’re essentially talking about the Defense Forces shifting to larger formations, ones that should be built around the strongest brigades. Given that, do the names you’re seeing now, the ones appointed to lead these corps, seem like the right people? Are they capable of effectively commanding such large formations?
Some of them — definitely. I believe that our corps commander, as well as the commanders of several other corps, are people capable of handling this kind of mission and delivering results.
Let’s talk about your corps and "Khartiia" specifically. First of all, why did you choose to join Khartiia?
Khartiia is made up of people I know, many of them have been in the army for years and have career trajectories that I respect. In particular, the corps commander of Khartiia, Colonel Obolienskyi, was the first commander of the battalion within the National Guard’s first experimental brigade, the Rapid Reaction Brigade, the 4th Operational Brigade. He was the first to be tasked with building a battalion fully in accordance with NATO statutes and standards. That first infantry battalion in Hostomel operated from the outset not under Soviet-style statutes translated into Ukrainian, but under a fully NATO-compliant organizational structure tailored to decentralized command systems. From the very beginning, staff training and personnel preparation were conducted by instructors using NATO military doctrine and operational procedures. A separate, independent NCO (non-commissioned officer) tier was established from day one, autonomous from officer influence. Officers did not give orders directly to soldiers, but exclusively through the sergeants.
Even back in 2016–2017, Obolienskyi introduced many systemic changes, subtle and largely unnoticed at the time, that laid the groundwork for a new level of quality and combat readiness. Later, the 3018 Brigade, which had been trained in peacetime, proved itself brilliantly and continues to do so, in full-scale combat operations. It turned out that all of this works. That it’s possible to prepare personnel to NATO standards in practice, not just in words, even during peacetime and to do it effectively within the very same state budget, without massive sponsorships or huge payouts. All of this can be done within our system, using our resources. Obolienskyi demonstrated that. He proved himself as a leader of change — someone with the intellect to build combat capability from scratch. So I’m not at all surprised that he’s now been appointed corps commander. He’s someone who has gone through the full process of building a capable force from the ground up. And the team that’s with him, the people implementing these reforms, includes individuals who have been in the military for decades. I have full confidence in this commander.
And I’ve filmed multiple reports on Khartiia, I have many friends there, so a lot of factors came together. The main one is that I see a professional approach. A professional approach doesn’t mean messianism or some mythical heroes descending from above, it means regular, professional career officers. But officers with sharp intellects, who understand exactly where they’re going and where they’re leading their subordinates.
Ihor Obolienskyi, who now commands the Second Corps, is not only a career military officer — he also spent many years in business, holding executive positions. And Vsevolod Kozhemiako, the founder of Khartiia, is a well-known entrepreneur in the agricultural sector. Do you see this reflected in how processes are organized within the unit? Do these business approaches, so to speak, have an impact on how things are structured and managed in wartime?
Yes, absolutely. Obolienskyi spent about two and a half years in business, but aside from that, he has served in the army his entire career. For me, that’s a very important indicator — someone who rose from battalion commander to deputy brigade commander, and then was personally invited by businessmen to lead a significant enterprise. So this is an example of someone who served and led in the military, and whose experience turned out to be fully adequate and applicable as management expertise for organizing large teams to deliver results in business. That’s an important indicator as well. Yes, he spent two and a half years in business, and then when the war started, he returned to the front. This experience is definitely important. I actually see the management of large military units and large industrial enterprises as practically identical. In fact, I believe an officer in the military should undergo training as an organizer, leader, and manager so that when their military career ends, there’s a queue of businesses eager to hire them. A person should understand that here they give their full strength and energy to gain life experience and accumulate competencies. Then, when they retire, they don’t end up as a supermarket security guard but walk away with unique skills that are valuable everywhere. Business experience and military experience truly overlap horizontally. And higher education in many countries of the world, in America, in Israel, the military often receive a complete higher education in ordinary civilian universities at various technical or business faculties, because there is really no difference whether you make technical decisions, military technical decisions or civilian technical decisions. At the highest level, no such distinction exists. The principles of strategy in business and the principles of strategy in war, in army organization, especially in organizational, managerial, and administrative processes, are essentially identical. If you read the principles or standard operating procedures of the U.S. Army, you could apply them directly to a manufacturing enterprise and reproduce the entire system there. That’s why I believe the military must interface with business, and one day we’ll see that in Ukraine. This cooperation should go beyond volunteer aid; it should involve genuine cross-staffing. A capable manager or successful entrepreneur can become an effective commander, and vice versa. If they have experience managing large teams, proven results, and an understanding of production processes—how outcomes are achieved, how a team is built, how people are trained and developed—these are universal principles that repeat everywhere.
And again, I believe this can compensate for the lack of institutionalized state support and formal officer training. Right now, with the creation of these corps, one of the big problems, as I understand it, is the shortage of officers to organize this system. Over three and a half years, the state has not managed to train enough officers to meet the demand. Is it even possible, in principle, to achieve this during wartime?
In my view, we actually have an excess of officers. The problem is that Ukraine has a large, fragmented command system with an enormous number of varied administrative and management structures. There are too many layers, and all of them are understaffed. If we had clearly defined priorities, we could simply reduce the number of command levels and governing bodies, optimize the system, and then we would have more than enough leadership personnel. There are certain developmental challenges the state is facing, and these stem from the fact that, again, strategy requires resource concentration and concentrating resources requires setting clear priorities. If we want our resources to be used wisely, we must set priorities wisely. We can’t cover everything. We can’t create headquarters and command structures for every single situation or every sector of the front, then expect all of them to be fully staffed, properly equipped, and adequately armed. It’s simply impossible, no one can achieve that. War demands concentration of resources. There are always priority sectors and directions where you will consistently spend more. You can’t spread resources across everything. Funds will naturally tend to flow toward where the future is secured — toward the areas where the enemy can be eliminated most effectively. And there will always be tension between those units focused on destruction and those that are not.
The task of leadership and management is always to monitor these priorities and continuously direct resources toward where the pressure and risks are greatest. That’s standard practice. And frankly, we have too many officers. I want to emphasize that. We talk a lot about NATO standards, but we have a surplus of officer positions, for example, officers responsible for morale and psychological support. Starting as early as the deputy company commander, we have officers dedicated to morale and psychological support. I want to point out that NATO countries don’t have such officer positions. The functions of morale and psychological support are typically carried out by the senior non-commissioned officers, the chief sergeants of platoons, companies, and so on. Here, because we talk about NATO standards, we created and introduced the positions of chief sergeants, but at the same time retained the Soviet approach. And at the same time, we end up with additional officers for morale and psychological support who, as a rule, are mostly occupied with paperwork and reports within their area. That’s thousands of positions, just so you understand. Thousands. Every year, military universities keep churning out academies of new morale and psychological support officers. We have a huge number of officer positions. It’s officers who are being trained. We have officer-psychologists, morale and psychological support officers, an enormous number of officers overall. Officers are needed everywhere in our system. Here, being an officer is almost synonymous with being a professional soldier. If you want to be a professional military person, earn a salary, and have a social care, okay, you have to become an officer. Because others, like sergeants, don’t get that social package. That’s it. So when people ask if we have enough officers, the truth is we actually have more than enough if you count them. The real question is where the state assigns them, where they’re most needed, where to concentrate the best commanders and officers in the chain of command. Of course, if you look at the authorized structure, we’ll never have enough people—neither soldiers, nor officers, nor anyone else. That’s the reality of a Big War.
About drones. Just before you disappeared from public view in May, one of the last interviews on your channel was with Biletskyi. You talked about how his unit was operating effectively for three months without receiving a single FPV drone. That ties into what you’ve said before, that well-performing units should be getting resources, and yet they weren’t. Only after you raised the issue publicly did they finally receive the FPVs. So why hasn’t this drone problem been resolved in over three years? We’re still holding SCiC HQ (Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters) meetings where we say we need 2, 4, 5, or even 8 million drones — and yet there still aren’t enough. What’s the root of this problem?
Of course, in the strategy. I have been talking about this from the very beginning.
So it’s not a priority if approached that way?
It is a priority, but the leadership of the country has thousands of priorities on their plate. We need to figure out how to truly set and balance these priorities. I want to emphasize that in war, in life, and in state governance, there are no simple solutions. When people in power start believing there are simple solutions, it unfortunately turns out those solutions don’t work in real life. If resources are limited, then naturally we have to focus on their quality. The issue that arose with the Third Assault Brigade is a typical issue.
Weapons are always in short supply during war. The question is: who do you give them to when there aren’t enough? Do you supply sectors of the front with low combat effectiveness, or those with high combat effectiveness? One of the projects I managed to lobby for, ideas I formulated and brought to the top, was a ranking system of drone strike effectiveness by units. The main goal of this ranking is to establish at least a minimal, reliable accounting of enemy losses inflicted. It identifies the units that maintain the best records and most effectively organize strikes. In order to implement even basic resource planning, which is a key problem, there needs to be strategic-level analysis. If someone were analyzing the war strategy, including what we’ve discussed about the pace of losses, then this accounting tool should be tied directly to our required attrition rate.
UAVs and shells must go first and foremost to the units that employ them most effectively. For many reasons. The experience of those who excel must be scaled up; the best commanders must be replicated and sent to other formations to reinforce them; the headcount and structure of the top-performing brigades, corps, and divisions must be expanded, and resources channelled to them as well. We will still face a shortage of UAVs, but the UAVs that are delivered will be used to maximum effect. We may be short, yet the enemy will be shorter still.
There are no perfect solutions. We can’t give every drone we need to everyone we’d like. We can only provide them to those who best sustain the enemy’s attrition rate, that’s the sole strategy. Not to whoever first shows up, or whoever lobbied earliest for a drone contract that ends up sitting in warehouses; by the time those drones reach the front seven or eight months later, they won’t get anywhere and must be handed to a unit with its own technical workshop that can source spare parts. So the situation with the Third Assault Brigade isn’t me pointing a finger and saying, "Look, no one’s giving them anything." Many units receive nothing. But they must be supplied not because someone fancies them or because they have billboards all over the country, but because they have documented enemy losses. When, in their sector of the front, they use a given number of drones to effectively eliminate a given number of occupiers, it benefits the entire front. If resources were allocated on that basis, so that those who kill the enemy most effectively receive the most weapons, we would have a far better war-fighting strategy. Our resources would work harder for us. Those who kill more effectively must receive more weapons. That is the core principle for conducting combat operations and making optimal use of our limited resources.
It seems to me that implementing such a solution should not be difficult. But the other part of the problem you mentioned is that contracts are awarded not to the best, but to those who were the first to get to the Ministry of Defence, where some right and good person has secured a stake in drone manufacturers. This is also a big part of the problem. That's why there is a shortage of drones, because there are such approaches to ordering and manufacturing them.
I want to stress this isn’t just about personal connections. It’s about planning and strategy. Drones are high-tech weapons. When contracts are signed—for example, in December for 300,000 to 400,000 drones—the logistics of fulfilling those contracts, supplying components, and delivery timelines take many, many months. By the time the drones arrive, their control systems are already outdated and overwhelmed by electronic warfare systems across all frequency bands. You simply can’t use them.
So this is a planning issue. At the strategic level, there are hundreds, even thousands of tasks that must be addressed to achieve results on the battlefield—the kind that a soldier in the trench actually sees. This is one detail. If we want drones to be used more effectively, we need to change our planning approaches. These should be short-term contracts with clear planning and forecasting of future needs. The contracts must be developed in close collaboration with the end-users—the commanders of the best units who have strong engineering and technical support structures. And then, we might order fewer drones overall, but nearly all of them will reach the front on time and within the required timelines. This supply pace will support the enemy’s attrition rate. This is not a simple process; it’s not a matter of just pushing some people into the office and keeping others out. Scaling up production, especially of high-tech components that rely on imports, is an extremely complex task. This requires thoughtful planning, not just pointing fingers and saying, "You’ll do it, and here’s how much money you get." It must be calculated comprehensively, considering many factors, but the outcome will be worth it. This requires work. Then we won’t have situations where someone is denied resources simply because there’s nothing available. While not everyone will get everything, the best units will receive a planned, necessary allocation. We need to reach a point where every effective combat unit clearly knows the plan handed down from above. They must understand that this month they will receive a specific number of reconnaissance Mavics or Autels, a set number of strike drones of various types—heavy, short-range, and small-range. They need to know the exact figures for this month, the next month, and three months from now—and those figures must be met.
That’s planning. When a commander knows the minimum guaranteed resources they will receive, they can plan combat operations accordingly, organizing training, deploying forces and assets, and directing volunteer funding to the areas that truly need reinforcement, rather than starting from scratch. This is what a technological war looks like: a properly built logistics system that depends on strategic decisions from above. Unfortunately, it’s not something you can fix by just saying, "Give the Third Assault Brigade some drones." Fine, they’ll hand out drones. But which drones will actually make it to us? That’s the question. What exactly will they supply? Will those drones even be able to fly, or will we have to spend another two months tweaking them in a garage? That’s the core issue. It isn’t a linear story; it isn’t solved that easily. Some units get nothing, others get something; some receive an order, others don’t. "Let’s order good drones and give them to the good units" — it just doesn’t work in such a straight line.
Modern war is a clash of two systems. To prevail, your system has to be more agile and able to calculate and influence far more factors than the enemy’s. If you want to be flexible, faster, outpacing them in quality rather than quantity, you must account for a much broader range of variables that shape the outcome.
Should these matters you’ve just discussed, advance planning for technology, quantities, and unit supply—be the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence? Does this mean they’re failing to handle it right now?
In reality, it doesn’t matter who inside the state does this—it’s about allocating resources at the highest level. There is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s Staff, and anyone can be appointed there. It’s not the name or the position that matters; what’s crucial is a clearly defined function—someone who can perform that kind of synthesis and analysis and deliver results. For instance, I liked Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 2023 idea to delegate part of the drone-procurement authority to the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov. Fedorov was far removed from the war itself, yet he had both the time and the motivation to tackle complex problems. He spent virtually all his free time mastering the basics, analysing the situation, and determining which decisions were needed. He gathered hundreds of opinions and set his own priorities. In 2023, the drone-funding system was, in my view, flexible and fast, and it set the right priorities—at that time, I want to emphasize. Was it perfect? No. Were there problems and risks? Yes. But strategically, it was the right step. Later, the situation changed, Fedorov was sidelined, and the overall decision-making process shifted. I bring this up because you asked who should be responsible. It makes absolutely no difference—it could be anyone, as long as that person has the authority. Because this requires coordination—coordination between multiple ministries and agencies, the ability to take the blow, and the capacity to understand complex factors. There are hundreds of influences, not all of them corrupt. People naturally look out for their own interests and want to defend them. But there isn’t enough money or manpower for everyone. So how do you determine priorities? We still need a clear framework to determine who gets what first, who to prioritize, and where to place bets to achieve the maximum results. Ultimately, someone has to take responsibility. Who that will be—we don’t know. The key is that this must be an institutional decision—not just, "Look, this person is good and smart, so let’s give them everything." No. This must be an institutional decision. We identify the problem, assess the available resources, decide on the approach to resolve it, and set clear expected outcomes. Then, we build a team around this framework and define its functions. Strategic decisions made this way will work. I hope one day this will happen in Ukraine.
Do you think Fedorov was removed for political reasons? Was it a mistake?
I believe it was a mistake. Fedorov, on the other hand, was given significant authority, direct access to Zelenskyy, and constant reporting responsibilities. Naturally, this created tension among others in the president’s inner circle—one person delivering good news regularly and often seeing him isn’t always welcomed. Such things aren’t easily forgiven here. But the experience was successful, and I think it should have continued. If there’s someone else with as much free time, motivation, and dedication as Fedorov had, then sure—try someone new. But for now, there’s no adequate replacement.
Who is responsible in the country for the recurring problem that on every new hot front line where the Russians launch offensives, we face the same issue — fortifications either don’t exist or are inadequate? It was like this last year in Kharkiv and Donbas, this year in Sumy region, and now in Dnipropetrovsk region. Why does this problem persist, and who bears the responsibility?
I’ve written and spoken extensively on this topic—I have dozens of articles and documentaries reviewing these fortifications. If I thought this could be changed just through publications, I’d still be a journalist. But now I’m a serviceman, and as a soldier, it’s not my role to judge commanders or assign responsibility—that would be somewhat illogical. What a journalist can do, an infantry soldier cannot. I can only say that this is, once again, the result of the absence of strategy. Because construction and building are also processes of resource planning—who builds, in what quantities, how, according to which project, and within what timeframe. How many people and how many materials are involved, what the phases are. A million management questions. This ties into what we discussed about commanders needing to be managers. And I’m convinced a modern commander should be such a manager that manufacturing companies and businesses line up to recruit them once they retire or discharge from the army. And this situation is further worsened by the fact that we still don’t have a single centralized body responsible for overseeing this construction.
Our defense organization is managed by the military and the General Staff, while the construction of defensive structures falls under the responsibility of the military-civil administrations. Two separate branches. That’s exactly what I mean—there needs to be coordination. It doesn’t really matter who leads it, but there must be a central point of responsibility. Right now, there isn’t one. Military-civil administrations say, "The military gave us this project; we’re building what we were told." Meanwhile, the military says, "They’re building what’s convenient for them, not what we need."As a result, we’ve lost tens of billions of hryvnias on completely unnecessary structures that our troops didn’t and don’t use. It’s absurd.
By the way, do we have enough resources and people? Does Ukraine have the money? I want to tell you—we’ve spent, over the years of this war, at least 30 to 35 billion hryvnias on these defensive structures. That’s close to a billion dollars. They just tore up fields with excavators, with practically minimal efficiency. God willing, even one percent of those structures are used by the troops—I say this cautiously. God willing, one or two percent. Usually, these dugouts shelter personnel on the second or third lines, while the enemy hasn’t yet advanced. Fighting rarely takes place there. This just underscores again that strategy and planning have always been and will remain the top priority.
If there’s no concept of drones or fortifications, no mechanism for planning, organizing, managing, and analyzing that objectively and honestly assesses results and efforts, then no matter how many people you throw in or how much money you spend, it could all be wasted. And later they’ll say, "We don’t have enough money for this or that." Of course, there’s never enough money. If you calculate how much money someone needs right now, or if every family calculated what they need for complete happiness, the numbers would be dozens of times higher than what people actually receive in their paychecks. But that just doesn’t happen. The same goes for war in all states. We can dream that the West, Europe, or America should just hand us hundreds of billions of dollars so we can fight exactly the way we want and give everything to everyone. That doesn’t happen. No one fights that way. The West hasn’t, Europe hasn’t, and America never has. There are always resource constraints. Planning is always necessary. There are always shortages of personnel. But that doesn’t mean the people don’t exist. It doesn’t mean the money doesn’t exist. They do. The question is how to use all of this effectively. And that question remains open.
We’re talking now about the likelihood that this war will continue for many years. Russia is gradually wearing down, but it still has sources to draw from — North Korea, China supports it, and in the worst case, they could declare general mobilization despite the political risks. We know our own resources, capabilities, and limitations. So if we talk about how to endure them, what would you see as the main focal points for effort right now to help us hold out?
This is a very global issue right now. You could spend an entire hour just on that one question and use it as a starting point, then dive deep into every detail, walking through everything step by step.
No matter what, victory is possible if we want to win. And if we want to win, we need a strategy. We live in an information-fragmented state where the informational field controls everything. Rational decisions are impossible. Our entire management system is driven by waves of information and the emotions they generate. What do we need? We need to empower those who know how to fight—and start listening to them. I believe restructuring the front line into corps-level formations will allow corps commanders to divide the 1,200 kilometers among themselves and provide more relevant feedback to the country’s leadership. And the leadership must hear that feedback—and act accordingly. There are only 20 corps and 20 corps commanders—a small number. You can always gather them together as a group or meet with each individually and task them with preparing their own change plans for their sectors: what they need immediately, for tomorrow, for a week, for a month, for a year. That would create an effective, logical plan to improve command and control. We need technological concentration of resources; all technologies must be centralized. There must be a single command center providing strategic-level technological analysis. There must be a strategic center delivering analysis of organizational and managerial decisions related to the war. And there must be a centralized body responsible for mobilizing the entire country. In other words, the entire economy and society. If that is done, it doesn’t matter who handles it—whether it’s three different people or even the same person the president trusts. But that person must be fully focused on the task. It has to be someone motivated, who genuinely has the time, who accepts responsibility, who has the resources and authority, and, ideally, a clearly defined remit. If we establish that at the strategic level, change will begin. If we don’t, everything will continue as it is now—resting on the middle tier, on those same corps that somehow keep themselves afloat and build everything I’m talking about on their own. Technological centers within their brigades and corps, along with their own recruitment and mobilization centers tied to society and the economy, will support themselves with their own command and combat planning centers—operating according to how they see fit. And the war will continue on, carried by the best brigades and corps—those where people wear down less, where combat capability is restored more effectively. And naturally, over time, certain corps and brigades will distinguish themselves—those with high combat capability, capable of stopping any offensive. And there will be others which, unfortunately, cannot stop an offensive but can still hold the enemy back.
We have two scenarios. Either we stop them at a properly built, strategic line of defense, reinforce that line, and hold the enemy there—until they eventually realize they’ve run out of people and pushing forward makes no sense, because the losses will only grow, and Ukrainians will stop and destroy them. Or the second scenario: the enemy will keep crawling forward, tree line by tree line, until they run out of men. And they’ll keep crawling. Where will they stop? Wherever their manpower runs out. We don’t know where that is. So right now, we face a choice. Either we make a deliberate decision, build the line, and say: they will not pass here. We plan for it. Or we give the initiative to the enemy, as we are doing now—and they get to decide how far they can crawl, how far their cannon fodder can carry them. That’s the choice facing all of us today.
Which of the two do you think is more realistic now? The one that awaits us.
Right now, the second scenario is playing out. It's the only one currently available to us. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely bad. The truly bad scenario is one where Ukraine ceases to exist. What we have now is the scenario where the war crawls forward, inch by inch, as best it can.
The enemy pushes forward wherever it still has living men, while we pull back from positions where we have no one left to rotate in. That’s the issue. If we had built a strategic defensive line across every axis—a single continuous 1,200-kilometre front, something entirely feasible, for which we have the resources and the manpower, the enemy would already be halted. Their losses would have risen, and they would be asking themselves whether this meat-grinder is worth continuing. Because when there is a resilient strategic line that the current Russian army cannot breach, even a mobilisation that dumps a few hundred thousand more fresh cannon fodder into their ranks, troops without adequate weapons or ammunition, will change nothing.
This Russian mobilisation is only a problem for us as long as the current situation persists—when they literally run out of people and have to stop. Then they herd more people into the army by force and throw them again into empty positions—waiting for someone to make it there, but only one in a hundred actually does. That’s Russian military tactics. It works because we don’t have a stable defensive line. If we had a solid, layered, camouflaged defense—protected from drones above all—our infantry would be completely wiped out without ever reaching the enemy. The Russians simply wouldn’t have anyone left to throw forward.
In reality, the amount of cannon fodder in a drone-driven war doesn’t matter if you have a solid defensive line on the ground. We have sectors of the front where our capable brigades hold their ground without retreating—and sometimes even advance. If the enemy throws ten times more fresh cannon fodder at those sectors, their losses will simply multiply by ten. They won’t break through. And we can apply this approach across the entire front. This is the only path to our victory. This is the only winning strategy: an attrition rate the enemy cannot sustain because they simply cannot break through the layered fortified engineering positions with cannon fodder.
Our strategic objective is for Ukraine to build a strategic line of defence and man it with organised troops. With tasks set correctly, that will enable us, using the forces we already have, to win the war.
I hope that we will try to do this. Yurii, thank you for this conversation and for this hour. And thank you in general.
Thank you, Olena. All the best.
