The Chaser Report - Ukraine On Putin's Parade

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Charles and Dom give a drone's eye view of the latest on the Russia/Ukraine war. Is Putin on the nose? Should Australia invest in Ukraine drone tech to fight Vanuatu? And did US military tactics actually win for once? Listen and learn.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, and as we survey the global landscapes we so often do on this podcast, there's so many world leaders ask us to do. And I know your phone has been running hot with just various world leaders, celebrities, dignitaries, just saying, Charles, Charles, tell me what's happening in the world. Charles makes sense of this form.

Explain it in a way that I can understand. Yes, exactly. So today we are going to just take a bit of a survey, a bit of a blue sky, step back, look at the 360 on the whole of the global environment. And look, I'll tell you what, Dom, there's some good news. It's all pumping. You seem really optimistic at the moment.

Okay, very good. Well, in particular, you want to take a look at one of the world's most depressing subjects, at least what has been, Ukraine, where the war just seems to go on forever and Vladimir Putin is continually grinding Ukraine into the, well, is there even dirt there anymore or is it blown all the dirt up? Well, there's certainly not very many sunflower plants growing quite yet. That's sad. But there will be.

There will be. Okay. So, Dom, I have a theory. Very good. That's the thing that this conflict has lacked so far. Is it Charles' theory to sort things out. So I think that we might be witnessing, and I know this has been said year in, year out for years and years and years, but I think we might finally be witnessing the closing days of Vladimir Putin's presidency. Really?

Yes. And I know that's a big call, but, you know, like if you take half, if you just look, at the news, you know, you can see that there's something going on in Russia that's changed just in the last, say, six, eight, 12 months, right? And I just want to run through some of the key things that have happened in the last few weeks, because I think it's quite interesting, right? So the first thing to know is that it was just actually only a month or two ago that Ukraine, the war in Ukraine actually surpassed the first world war in terms of length, right? Yep. So it's not. That's not.

It's the longest war to happen in Europe for, I mean, I think since, let's, let me just think about it, since I think the Crimean War of 1861, no, of 1854. How long did that go for? No, that was shorter, wasn't it? It's really, you have to go back. The data that gets this podcast, so many fans, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway, point is, it's a very long war.

It's, you know, a war that's longer than, you know, wars tend to go on in Europe for centuries and centuries. Anyway, I mean, even, do you reckon it's longer than the 100 years war? Crimean War was only 1853 to 19, October 1953 to February 1856. It's, it needs the Crimean War for breakfast. It felt longer. It felt longer because, well, there was no social media back then. That's true.

That's true. It wasn't as enjoyable. There were no memes. So is it as long as the 100 years war? Well, Charles, I know that the 100 years war wasn't 100 years. That much I recall. I think it was a little bit less. Yeah.

So we're on the way. Pretty long. Yeah. Let's just say it was, it is longer than the hundreds-year war. Anyway, and one of the things that happened last week, which I thought was really interesting, was, you know, what's his name, Lukashenko, who's the leader of Belarus, right? Or is it called Belarus. What's it called?

Belarus is the modern name. Pelo Russia's the old phrase, yeah. Right, okay. He declared that, oh, suddenly Russia wouldn't be allowed to launch their missile. from Belarusian land anymore. Really? So, and apparently what had happened is a few days before, one of the Ukrainian diplomats had gone up to Lukashenko and sat down with him

and presented a whole lot of satellite images and said, okay, here are all the places that you value as a military, as your military values. Here are all the things. We've mapped it out. And these are the ones that we're going to bomb. if you don't back off, right? And we're just giving you this notice because we're being good neighbors.

We don't want to fight you. Our fight is with Putin. But, you know, you are Putin's mate. So just back off, right? Wow. A few days later, Lukashenko, who long, I mean, the only reason is the world's most corrupt, you know, he keeps on killing democracy people. Like, he's a terrible human being, right?

But he just makes the call. The wind is blowing. in the thing, because I think the Ukraine would have, I think, quite rightly gone. Do you think Russia's going to come and save you? Do you think Russia's got the power to come and save you? No. Okay, at the same time, all these trucks are moving all their arms from Crimea back to Moscow, right? Okay.

Really? So there's all these convoys of trucks that are sort of escaping Moscow. And I don't know whether you saw last week, but there was all these, there's been way, and waves of drone attacks, right, into Moscow. And so what they're doing is they're actually moving some of the sort of missile launches and early attack warning systems from Crimea back to Moscow to defend the capital right, which is pretty significant stuff. Are you telling me that Putin's abandoning his beloved Crimea?

Well, this is the thing. This is the whole point of the war. It's like, it's almost like you invade a country on the stated aims of one thing and then everything fucks up, and then you change your stated aims to be something that you already had before the conflict. Now, I know that that would never happen in modern military. No, it wouldn't happen in the Middle East, for instance. Yeah, it wouldn't happen in the Middle East. But, you know, anyway, point is I saw this amazing video which actually puts all this stuff into a wider context and gives a real

explanation of what has been going on for the last sort of eight or 12 months, right, in Ukraine, and why all these things are now happening? right now. Right. So, I don't know whether you remember, but it would have been about six or eight months ago, maybe even a year ago, Zelensky sacked his general, like the actual guy who was running, he's sort of second in charge, the guy who was running the military strategy and everything like that.

He was sent as a key ally of Zelensky, but there was this huge news report that basically went, this general is completely corrupt, he's doing all these back. candid deals and getting kickbacks and stuff like that, becoming immensely rich. And Zelensky, even though he was an ally of this guy, actually ended up having to go, okay, too much media pressure. It's basically, I'm taking too much flack for this. I'm going to have to get rid of my friend. I mean, Charles, can I note for just a moment that if that's the kind of thinking that Lukashenko

would not have allowed in Belarus, right? That's how he's been the leader of Belarus since 1994. Yes. Although Sacking Generals is a very potent move as well, to be fair. Mind you. I think it's interesting because it came not from, you know, wanting to purge. It came from essentially what was essentially, I mean, I know Ukraine sort of suspended democracy, but from one of the strengths of a democracy is you have a free media who can actually criticize and are allowed to criticize, and then when they do criticize, your leader actually has to be accountable to that criticism, right? So in a very democratic way, Zelensky's secondist general has resulted in, you know, is a result of democracy.

I'm reasonably convinced by your point that the general sounds like they needed to go. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not calling him Putin S at this point. So, but at the time, everyone thought, well, this is a fucking disaster, right? Like, who's going to run their military strategy now? Because this guy is a fucking genius at military strategy, right? Like, does Ukraine have deep enough benches to be able to replace this guy with somebody good, right? Now, I don't know what happened there, but what their strategy has been since then, and it got explained really well by this American military strategist I saw, is they've been running what is

an American style strategy right, but they've adapted it to Ukrainian usage. So apparently, in every war that the US ever fights, in the first 24 or 48 hours, the first thing they do when they're bombing a little country is they take out all the air defense systems, right? So all the sort of radar and stuff that allows people to track all the missiles that are coming in to try and kill them, all the anti-aircraft launch, you know, capabilities and things like that. And they do that in the first 24 or 48 hours. And then basically, America ends up with this amazing air supremacy within a few days. And then they can just do what they like and win all the wars, right?

as, you know, as you've seen in the Middle East, you know, Iran, Iraq, it always works perfectly. Anyway, so the Ukrainians looked at this strategy and went, well, we have no, we do not have the capability to do any of that. But what maybe we should do is we don't need to do it in 24 or 48 hours. Maybe if we spend the next year taking out all these, these anti-aircraft and air defense systems that Russia has, then maybe that's going to be good enough. Right. So for the past year, what's been happening is they've just been slowly eroding. So apparently there were like 23 key sites that they needed to take out for a total of like 35, 38 sort of different sort of units and things like that, right? And just slowly over time, they've been bombing them methodically

and getting rid of each one. To be the way. Okay. And what that has meant is that, and the whole thing about these systems because they're like high-tech LIDAR and radar and all this sort of high-tech tech stuff, right? You cannot easily replace this. This is not something that if you're Russia and you're under a whole lot of sanctions, you can't easily access Western markets

for technology and stuff like that. You can't just immediately go, okay, well, we'll just buy another anti-aircraft radar system, whatever. You just end up having less and less and less over time, right? So now it's got to the point where, just in the past few weeks, you know, These attacks on Moscow, they started out maybe a month ago as just like one drone went and hit one building and it was a sort of, it was almost like a firework, it just sort of exploded one room and that was it, right?

Yeah. Nowadays, and the Ukrainians have just realized they got more and more confident because they're just not being intercepted properly to the point where in the last week they've been flying convoys of drones that look a bit like flocks of birds. Oh. Right. And they load them up with 200 kilograms each of arms, right? And then they just fly them in really slowly because they're drones, right? They're not missiles. They're just sort of buzzing along at, you know, I don't know, 50 kilometers an hour or something like that.

And they eventually reach Moscow. And because there's no air defense systems, apparently the air defense systems that they've got just constantly mistakes these, dismisses these flocks as flocks of birds. Like they look exactly like a flock of geese or something like that apparently. And they just fly in and they can just bomb Moscow, right? And so they've been doing that. They've ended up, the Ukrainians have also ended up with supremacy over the sort of land bridge that goes from Russia into Crimea, right? And apparently the trains keep on going back and forth with tourists on them.

But if anyone ever tries to load up some missiles or, you know, heavy equipment onto a train, They know that it'll definitely get bombed. So they've stopped putting anything other than tourists on the trains. And instead, they're doing trucks. But the truck drivers are now going, fuck this. Like, I've got a 50% chance that there's just burnt out husks of trucks, apparently, all along those roads. And so there's a real sense that Ukraine, using bizarrely, an adaption of US military methods, may actually end up. I mean, it's the first time I can remember in living history that a US military strategy would actually have worked if it does come off.

Well, I mean, look at how air supremacy in Iran and taking out all the defensive measures just basically meant to put Iran to its knees and made the whole thing. Well, it is fascinating. And I guess, obviously, Putin is a dictator, but there's some level of domestic pressure that he presumably can't resist. And if Moscow is actually under threat, which it seems to be, they've just been, they've just been basically some bombings in Moscow. Then you'd imagine that, yeah, he's under more pressure than ever before. The Chaser report, news a few days after it happens. Charles does, can I just zoom even further out than you'll zoom out briefly, though? And just note just quietly that Ukraine's phenomenal success in asynchronous war and at using these drones in this way,

And I mean, no one would have had this year. Ukraine starts winning the war and takes it to Moscow. No one really had that on their bingo card, right? No, no one. The only that you can just use ordinary drones for this sort of thing, in other contexts, utterly chilling. Yes, yes. This is a precedent is really very concerning. Well, I don't want to say too much, but I just reckon New Zealand should be worried.

Like, if you think about it, you know, if Australia could. can develop drone capabilities. Because, you know, Australia's been good to Ukraine. Like, you know, they're saying that Ukraine is now essentially the most effective army in the world after the US Army. And it's essentially the second army of NATO. Really? I'm just saying, you know, I think we should be, you know, looking at a map and going,

well, what do we want next? Or Charles, you know, maybe. Do you think it's any coincidence that Jacinda Adirne has decided to place herself in Australia rather than New Zealand, she can sense which way the wind's blowing. I'm sure Kiwi listeners will find this analogy very tasteful. Charles, I'm just thinking, if these drones, if they can deliver so, particularly if they're disguised as a flock of birds, my goodness, so successfully, is it possible that we'll actually be able to use them for delivering like treats and stuff?

Because, I mean, that's much more important than any war. I mean, we could have. I just look, Dom, there's no funding for that. Like, that, like, come on. The world just doesn't have the, like, that is a lovely idea, Dom, and I applaud you. But the world doesn't have resources to develop drones for humanitarian purposes. I mean, that's just, I was just imagining some sort of, drones, an army of drones coming in and dropping off, like, you know, those, you know, all those.

Medicine. Yeah, just the meals that, do you remember America had massive stock. piles of meals that then didn't get delivered because of... Yes, USA'd. USA, they cut all that stuff with Doge. I was thinking maybe these cheap drones could deliver... No, okay. No, no, there's no money.

I mean, it's a great idea, but just there's no resources for that sort of stuff. So, sorry. Okay, okay. Maybe delivering... On the other hand, I really think military drones, fucking amazing. Let's just... Let's go. Let's go.

I mean, imagine, if we had those drones, We wouldn't be giving 500 million to Benoitu. We'd just be saying, oh, nice island you've got there. Pity if some drones would start to attack it. You know what I mean? Oh, Charles. Just one little glimpse. This is how it begins.

One little glimpse of the ability here. It all goes south. This is how your eyes are lighting up much like Putin's when he looked at. You know, he calls it Novo Rosia, New Russia. Yeah, well, that's his party. And he started lining himself with his party, which I think, you know, that says everything. Charles, I think you need to stand down. I don't know.

I think I can now, I sort of started to empathise with what he was thinking. God me. All right. So there you go. New financial year, new war monger. Yeah. Wankanomics, the warmonger edition coming soon to. Oh my God, how to take over a country using awful corporate language.

All right, Charles. Well, look, that is fascinating. And I'm just looking at the extent. to which. Actually, I'll just one more thought for you, just looking at the most recent news on Moscow's defense system. The Russian Ministry of Defense, Andre Boulosov, has come out and rebutted all this idea that Ukraine's drone is going to win the day because by the end of the year, he says Russia will have an AI-powered defense system that will stop all the drones. So I think you'd pencil in a Ukrainian victory by Christmas.

Yeah, it's right. Exactly. Oh, God. That's great. We're part of the Iconiclass Network and yeah, we're on a sort of go slow at the moment, aren't we? We're just a little bit busy. So three a week is the aim. Yeah, that's so. I'll catch you soon in the fee. Okay, see ya. Bye.