The Duran Podcast - Ukraine faces weapons shortages as Russia expands operations w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

Ukraine faces weapons shortages as Russia expands operations w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

All right, Alexander, we are here with Stanislav. Stanislav, how are you doing? Where can people follow your work? Springs in the air, so it's much better. Sleep on the other hand. X. Stanis Krapivnik, put the whole name. On YouTube at Mr. Slavic man, with a K, not a C,

on X, Stasaday Abratna, is my Russian account or page. And Stas was there as the English language one. Oh, and substack Zemeiqarinich. All right. Those links are in the description box down below. I will also add them as a pin comment. Stanislav, Alexander. Let's talk about what is happening in Ukraine.

And perhaps how it's connected to everything that is happening in the war in Iran. Russia's hidden hand, Alexander. You're everywhere. everywhere. We're collaborating. Absolutely. Absolutely. We would absolutely

definitely come to that. But it is important to remember that there is another war going on. And even as the Russians apparently have complete control of the war in the Middle East and their hidden hand is everywhere there, they actually have another war

closer at home to fight, and they are continuing to fight. fight it. Now actually, there's been quite a lot going on, including on the front lines, which have not been attracting, has not been attracting a greater deal of attention. There's no one better to discuss that with than with Stanislav. And I'm going to go straight in. I'm hearing actually a lot going on about the front lines. We've had Ukrainian missile attacks on Briansk with British supplied and by the way American guided missiles just a second.

But before I, we turn to that, can you bring us, give us some quick idea of what is happening on the front lines? And I'd like to focus specifically on one place which is Konstantinovka. And I'll tell you why, because I read a very interesting article the other day, about two days ago in a Russian newspaper, which you probably know called Redofka, who they have some connections, I'm sure they do, with the Russian military. And the way they were describing the situation in Konstantinovka,

I got the sense that there is either already a cauldron involving the Ukrainian troops there or one that is forming fast. and that this is another one of those crises in the war that basically creeps up almost unnoticed. This is what happened with the cauldron in Pakarovsk and Mernograd. We only found out about it when Putin told us, Putin and the military told us about it. Tell us what's going on. Well, to begin with, it's Rasputitsa, which means the coming of.

That's when the snow melts. However, I think this, I mean, we had really a lot of snow this year, but I think the resputeus actually is going to be relatively short. If it's judging from what I'm seeing near Moscow, we had record snow, but it's melting with incredible speed, which is good, because the ground absorbs only so much water and the rest just runs off. If it's slowly melted, you're going to have the quag market last weeks upon week. because it's someone that's going underground into the aquifers, and it's still absorbing, absorbing, and the mud stays. But if it's a fast melt, you know, the ground, it's a sponge, but it's a limited capacity sponge,

and the rest just flows off and flows off in streams and such. I think that's exactly what's happening. So while everything is relatively slow because of this, I don't think it's going to stay that way for very long. Plus, it's been very warm. I mean, yesterday, even this far north, it was plus 13, plus 14. It's mid-April, late April temperatures. And this is the first half of March.

So it looks like it's going to probably, if it stays like that, especially in the south, it will dry out relatively quickly. So we'll see. Okay, so Konstantinovka, I don't think there's a cauldron yet. There's two things have happened. First of all, Konstantifka is cut in half by, there's a river that cuts in half. a skull, I think, if I remember correctly the name of the river. The bridges have been blown about two weeks ago. So effectively, it's two different battlegrounds now,

because there's no communication back and forth. You have to go pretty far up river toward a kamators to get around because the river, by the way, again, everything's melting. So the meltwater is raising the river level. It's fast and it's cold. You're not going to swim across it. You're not really going to get supplies. They cannot flex the units that they have back and forth up and down the front anymore because logistical they just can't do it.

Russian forces have invested about 30% of Konstantinovka. On the south, they're trying to get further around. There's a lot of fortifications. So they're pushing their way up. From Konstantinovka, it looks more like a front end of head-on engagement. And the north side, they're kind of cutting further around. but it's still more or less head-on engagement. But that's that area of that culture.

But what's happening really toward the cauldron is what's happening up in Krasniliman. Russian forces haven't really tried to force their way to the city. They got a bit in there. They got a bit in and they got pushed out. They got a bit in there and got pushed out. So they stopped on the edge of the city in the east and the south. In the north, they're coming around.

And Krasniliman, to the back of Krasnilman, the Ascal falls into the Cerebranca so you get this natural barrier from two sides in a triangle with one main bridge leading up to it. So from the north the Russians are just heading down around the

back end of Krasniliman down the river face. And in the south they're doing the same thing except they're heading toward the bridge. They already have the main supply line under fire from drones and they're looking, they're pushing through to cut off the actual bridge, which would mean the city, while the city is not being invested, it's surrounded and it's cut off, and it's not going to last very long. So, you know, there's only so flawed you can fight if you don't have food and bullets.

It makes life very, very difficult. So they're doing the smart thing, which they're been criticized for by the Western Press. How dare they not do a head-on and assault on these cities? How dare they surround the cities from the sides? They have to do, you know, Russians are supposed to run in body waves, scream Iran, just die horrendously in huge piles. That's the Western concept. But the point there is that's the gatekeeper to Slivansk. Once that area, once that bridge is taken, once the Russian forces are across the river, they are taking Slavinsk from the north.

So now you really have that big culture and starting to form because the northern side is not being cut off. Once they're in that area, they can start taking under, at least under air and under drone control of the routes going into Slavitzk, supply routes. And then you're looking at possibly a very, very large cauldron forming. We'll see. I mean, it's hard to say exactly how long something's going to stay up before it surrenders. But the right things are going, I can say within the month, I believe, that Grasnelmere is going to be surrounded, cut off. There may be routes if you want to swim the river,

but that's not exactly a very good option. So basically they will be surrounded and they'll be cut off. How long they'll stay in V.C. each city, I don't know, but if they're smart, they'll surrender. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe we'll get something like in Azov style, just a mass surrender. That'd be good. So that's that big cauldron. But what's interesting is there's two other very active fronts.

I mean, there's movement, again, slow movement toward Dobropole in Danesk. There's other movements past Pakrovsk, the counteroffensive at Pakrovsk, died out a long time ago and the Russian force. But again, that movement there is slow, particularly because of the melt. No, mud, that's going to be at least another two weeks, maybe three weeks. We're looking at that. the ground becomes firm enough for heavy equipment to move. Now, the vaunted Munichin counter-offensive that was launched by Zelensky, of course, PR move,

east of Dobropolia, Zapor-Ska Oblast, that seems to have been stopped. There's a local counter-of-sults. Russian forces are piling up on either side of that, forming a semi-coldron. the Ukrainian seem to run out of steam. And they do that because they just throw away people. They lose a lot of equipment. They lose a lot of people to make a breakthrough. But when you do that, whatever ground you take,

now you don't have the forces to stand there and keep that ground because you've used up all your forces, available forces on taking that ground. But you've got to remember the enemy's going to counterattack. That's the usual concept. Especially when the enemy outnumbers you, outguns you, and is dug in later further on. You get to there and you're out of steam and then what.

And part of the forces that are being piled up are the forces that were used to stop the Ukrainian eastern Zaporosia counter-offensive that was going north of Gullai-Polyte. Not only was that counter-offensive stopped very quickly, it was fully destroyed and rolled back. And Russian forces are now advancing and continue to advance. They're advancing to the west of Dobro Polia surrounding a very large pocket of front.

fortifications and to the south in the direction of Arioha. In other areas, I think there's not that much movement. Other areas, Aparoja, but most of it is, I think, due, again, to the mud. So it's just hard. I mean, if you've never been in that kind of mud, I mean, it is literally black soil. When they say black soil, it is literally like your shirt, black about that color. I mean, you can spit in it, something will grow, but maybe when you try to walk in it, Not only take your boots off, it'll probably take the skin off your feet.

I mean, it is a quagmire, like nothing. Vehicles don't get stuck in it. They sink in it. They sink to the belly in it. And then when it finally dries out, you get to dig and get it back out. Or when it freezes in the fall, you get to, you know, the Germans in November, when they started their offensive toward Moscow because there was an early freeze. The first thing they did was they dig holes underneath the tanks and then light bonfires

to melt the ground so it could put the tanks back out because the ground just solidifies like cement when it freezes that mud it's incredible it's some incredible stuff so there's there's that but what we're also seeing is a lot of movement in two different directions kind of the entire border area is being taken under control and the different the different incursion areas are being consolidated in one long front and the eastern front's moving toward the city brianca and the big water reserve east of harikov but it's still they still got a ways to go in that area but it's about 20 kilometers 25 kilometers but what's more important in this case for karkov is russian forces about 12-13

kilometers outside of assuming assuming is not a big city it's about 250,000 people at its height but it's a key logistics point a lot of roads that come through it and worse for you for had to go once sumi goes and there's three three areas of advancement coming on to sumi two from the north and one from the east once sumi goes that means the western flank logistical flank for heidecub is done it's closed off so heidecub is now stuck only to the south and to the south it has to get everything has to get across the city Brianta that runs in that area. So you're again, you're limited. You have a water obstacle that can be severed and will be severed and that Haarikov will be isolated. So I think to take Haarikov more effectively in this modern form of warfare, you're going

to have to take Sumi first. And that seems to be the direction the Russian forces are advancing. And they're advancing every day. It's a drier area up there. It's more forested. Now, I've been on the kind of a river and mud up to my knee. So I know it's still muddy areas, especially close to water areas. But there's a lot more forest and more sandier soil up there because of the forest. So it's not as bad. In that northern areas, there's lots of big forested areas, naturally forested areas, not man-made forest. So I think the drying of the ground is going to be much quicker, if not already.

And there's advancement. There's advancement every single day. They're not giant leaps, but there's steady leaps forward, toward Sumi. And Sumi is another one of those cities you really can't defend. It's just the way it's built. It's relatively flat. And again, it's open. So there's not as many dependable arts. And it's not that big, really. I mean, $250,000 in a modern city with high-rise apartment buildings. It's not that big of an area. Will we have a Russian offensive in the spring? And what condition is Ukrainian to repel

said. Zelensky at the moment seems to be getting more and more angry, frightened, fanicky. He's complaining about equipment shortages. He seems to be out of air defense missiles. He's probably going to have problems with all sorts of other weapon systems. He's obviously losing his mind over the fact that everything's going to the Middle East. He's trying to connect the two wars. he says that the Russians are running the war, that Iran is fighting, and that for that reason, the more important thing is to concentrate on his forces on Ukraine. First of all, I mean, is this an equipment crisis developing in Ukraine? And are the Russians going to launch a spring offensive?

And what is Ukraine's condition in response to that? Yes. They are, they do have an equipment crisis. Absolutely, they have an equipment crisis. They have a fuel crisis. But, you know, Ukraine, you've got to wonder how much foresight these people actually have. They don't. Look, the Drushba pipeline, which is counterproductive for Russia, considering Hungary and

Slovakia, were providing 20% of the diesel that Ukraine used. And that diesel is, of course, coming out the refineries, luke oil refineries that were producing off of Russian oil. So Hungary and Slovakia, while being against the war, also feeding the war, if we're going to be honest about it. It's 20% of the diesel, and any modern army lives and dies by diesel. That's a mechanized force, and diesel is the main fuel type. So when the Ukrainians A attacked three NATO nations, when they blew up, portions of the refineries

in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Interestingly enough, NATO didn't do anything about it near the EU. So why be in these clubs if they don't defend their own members? Well, that's a different issue. They were sabotaging their own fuel source.

Now, I mean, they've gone further. They're cutting off the Dhrsba pipeline, which, you know, they've attacked pumping stations on the Russian side for the Drewsville Pipeline and multiple times, which, by the way, also earns them money when we're at it. Not only as to provide them diesel, they actually do get money for transit.

This is a very odd conflict in this issue. They're still making money off of the transit of oil across their territory, which they're not exactly rich and they don't have exactly very many sources of income, but that's one of them. That's been active for the last four years. So they're cut off their own. In Russian, it's called, Outmorozit no, to reshizli to deput,

freeze off your nose to spite your grandmother. You know, it's a relatively silly move. And now they're, you know, he's threatening to kill Orban's family, which is, I think, is a wake-up call to the Europeans in general, who they're dealing with in Ukraine, the Frankenstein they create in Ukraine. Now, the counter-offensive, my God, I hope so. So I mean, I haven't been invited to many Stavka meetings, unfortunately, but speaking to lots of, to more than a few generals and colonels.

And I know in my own training, I would do a major assault about right now. The Ukrainian line will not hold. Casualties will be up, of course. On the Russian side, if they do that, there's 300,000 troops. You can launch a tank army into a full frontal assault. That line will buckle and buckle fast. True, casualties will be high the first couple days. but once the collapse of the line starts, you can have a major breakthrough easily enough.

Ukraine is down. I mean, there's no place they can put in 60, 70, 80,000 troops on a sector that's, say, you know, 10, 15 kilometers wide, 20 kilometers wide, and try to stop in depth. Most of there, except for Kramatorsk, Slavinsky, and Kansitivka, that's your main lines of defense. Everything else are ad hoc compared to those lines. And the further east you go, the more ad hoc they become are nonexistent. So any place like that that you can just punch through with a heavy tank force, you would do massive amounts of damage.

Combined arms force, personally, Russia can easily carpet bomb the entire front in any sector like that. The strategic bombers can easily be used to carpet bomb a section on the front that's say 20 kilometers, 30 kilometers wide, just wipe everything out that walks, moves, breathes in that area, and then punch through your armored columns. They could do that. But again, and believe you me, the generals are itching to do that. And they very, very, very much want to do that.

They want to have a big arrow movement on a map. For those that I understand, the big arrows are on the big battle maps. You have the big arrow. A whole core division punching through that usually is a big era, as opposed to, you know, a company or battalion would be a small era. So they'd love to have a big era movement like that and just rip through the front. And the front is weakened. I mean, you know, when Ukraine says it has a million men under arms, it doesn't.

Because what happens is in that million men, they count everybody. They count the press gangs running around the cities. They count the police forces. They count the firefighters. They count the emergency medical services. Anybody in any kind of uniform, they count as if military. Actual combat soldiers, maybe 300, 400,000 on a thousand kilometer front. There's no one area that can concentrate enough force.

I mean, there's obviously better zones of advancement than other zones of advancement, better areas where you can concentrate a large amount of troops for undercover. For example, when the trees grow green, some of these forested areas in the Khadik of Tsumi direction, or into toward Chernigov in those areas in the direction like Kiev you could

concentrate quite a bit of troops in those areas in Brayansk for example or in Kurskoblast and then do a punch through you could you could do that and then that would be

a very big emergency on the front what do you do where do you get the troops to stop a breakthrough whether it is what is there equipment situation. I mean, I read, I think it was yesterday, in the American media actually, that the United

States has expended in the Middle East one and a half times more Patriot missile interceptors than it has supplied to Ukraine since they started supplying Patriot missiles to Ukraine in the spring of 2023. Basically, there is no now, there is no availability of Patriot Air Defense missile interceptors for Ukraine. That is ended. There are stories that there are now shortages within the US of air-to-air missiles as well. And the point about air-to-air missiles is that Ukraine uses those, the F-16s, use those in order to shoot down drones. So we are now having all of these problems that the West may not be in a position to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons on anything like the scale they have up to now. And the Europeans are starting to complain about this.

And they're starting to complain that they're placing orders for weapons systems and will have already placed orders from weapon systems with the United States. And those orders cannot be filled. Now those weapons were ultimately intended for Ukraine. What does Ukraine do if these shortages exist and is Russia in a position to take advantage of that? And how would it do so? Well, to understand all of this, you have to understand the very popular form of contracting that the US military uses with its suppliers. It's cost plus.

So in other words, we decide that your profit margin is 10%. So it's the cost of the equipment and labor plus 10%. So if you're, the item you're selling is $100, you get paid $110. So it behooves you to make that item as expensive as possible. It doesn't behoove you to make any savings. How do you do that by manually assembling every one of those missiles? There are no automated plants, not for the Patriots, not for the Thads, not for the Tomahawks. And because of that, there's a very limited capacity to surge, and they've searched.

They've got up to about 700 Patriots a month, I'm sorry, a year. So you're looking at about 30 to 40, maybe 45 patriots are assembled every month. So 20 targets, if 20, 25 targets, if you're figuring two Patriots per missile. And I've seen videos coming out of Israel where they actually shot at one ballistic missile, relatively slowly moving ballistic missiles, relatively slowly moving ballistic missile. 11 Patriots, $66 million, go, boof, foo, and the ballistic missile just keeps flying and hit some target south of Tel Aviv. You know, if they even worked as well as they're supposed to work and don't hit, about every six to eighth Patriot decides just to go fly wherever it wants to fly and go hit something else. There's that little problem Raytheon doesn't want to

talk about too, but I've had that problem from day one. You know, I was speaking with Larry Johnson yesterday is a friend of mine. And he sat down and he calculated how many PAC three Patriots have been produced. It's a little over 4,000. That's since 19, I'm sorry, 19, 2016. Now, 4,000, that's 2,000 targets. Overall, now you've got to figure how many of those went to Ukraine, how many of those have been used up by the Saudis and others. And yes, the U.S. is out of missiles, right? Literally, it's out of missiles. Thad is even worse. The U.S. came into this conflict with Iran, had 192 thads on location in Israel, and about another 70 thads in other locations, like the ones, by the way, they're evacuating out of South Korea. There's a good video, South Korean video. They're showing these,

that everything's being evacuated on the ship, the ship to the, to Israel. They're scrambling to get everything out of everywhere. So any Patriot missiles that were located in Poland, waiting to be shipped off to Ukraine, bye-bye, they're gone. Israel has priority. And in fact, even a week ago, there were pictures coming out of the remains of Patriot missiles of some of the covers, and the dates are 2000. So you're looking now at PAC 2, the older missiles, the less accurate missiles. Pack 1, I don't know to talk about. Those missiles are a piece of crap that never could hit anything. And Raytheon just flat out lied about the statistics when Gulf Storm Desert Storm started.

I had friends who watched four or five Patriot missiles used to take out one Scud, which is an R-11, which is a primitive 1950s ballistic missile that doesn't have a... Its targeting system is a gyroscope. And when the fuel runs out is when it drops and hits something. I mean, it's as primitive of ballistic missiles you can get. And it was taken for a four-PAC-1, PAC-1 first-generation Patriot Missiles. to take that out. I mean, it is steady, direct flight with no acceleration, zero maneuvers, and it's not fast. So if they're down, PAC-2 is better, of course. But if they're down to PAC-2s, this is a very bad sign for US forces. They're flat out, out of missiles. And you know what I've

heard through my sources, the big bases in the Gulf, they're literally out of missiles. They don't know what to do. They don't have bunkers, by the way. You know, they never built bunkers? because they were so committed that our anti-missile systems will defend. So everything's rushing down there. So yeah, for Ukraine, this is a catastrophe. There are no missiles. That's it. Whatever you've got, they probably won't take them out on the field

that they've already delivered, but whatever you got is all you've got. That's it. You can count some on irises, maybe Stinger missiles, but against a Garan 3, even the Stingers are having a lot of problems. because Grand 3 goes fast. It has a jet engine attached to it, a turbine engine. So it goes much, much faster. And that becomes a very big problem because you can't catch it anymore. It's not those old Shaheeds or even Grand 2s. So now what do you do? And Ukraine is open in the air. So that makes everything a very big, fat target. It makes it very complicated. And on top of that, what makes things even worse is the Grand 2s are now pilotable by remote control. You don't just send them out to a target, and they fly out to the target and blow the target up.

Somebody can actually take direct radio control over them from, say, Moscow or St. Petersburg or Fannensk, and guide them in to a specific target, like, say, a bunker that happens to be in the way of your troops, or a

Haimars launcher system that just launched them attack them, hasn't had a chance to get away, and it catches a Heimars. Oh, like happened a couple days ago. And two Merck's, probably Americans, just got killed with that high mars. That's the reality. Now you've got Garans hunting Haimars, which changes a lot of the logic of the battlefield. What is the situation with Ukraine's ground forces?

I mean, you talked about manpower shortages, which the Ukrainians themselves talk about an awful lot, by the way. But what about their equipment situation? Their artillery. I've heard that their artillery is in Portia too, and that in the drone war, they're starting to be swamped in the FPV with FPV drones as well. And if things really are as bad for the Ukrainians,

do they have a strategy? Is there a strategy they can use in this sort of situation? Is perhaps their only strategy to try to cling on to Slaviansk and Krammatos for as long as possible? possible and hope to wait the Russians out that way. I mean, just these speculative questions, these questions. It seems holding on. I mean, they're doing counteroffensives. Obviously, it was right before the Munchin conference or did the counteroffensive in Zaporosia. And that's more, I think, PR-based, because Zelensky was hoping to walk away with new bennies and goodies out of

Munkin and instead walked away empty-handed. Because literally, a lot of these countries, they don't have anything left. Germany has already told them several times, we don't have anything left. We really can't produce what we need to produce, especially when gas prices skyrocket up 70%, and it's no end in sight. And oil prices are skyrocketing, and Merritt's, you know, under Merritt's, they closed the last atomic power plant. Now what do you do? You don't have the energy. I mean, in fact, you know, it got so ridiculous a year ago, the Union of German industrialists proposed, let's remove sanctions off of Russia for steel so we can get steel and gas and produce artillery shells to go kill Russians. I know, I know. This is the ludicrousness of this. But they actually made that proposal to the government,

whether they did it ingest or serious. I don't know. Germans and humor aren't two things that mix very well. Probably they were serious. But that's a situation. So even the artillery, The other problem with the artillery producing artillery shells for the Ukrainians in Europe is gun cotton. Gun cotton is made out of high-end cotton, which is, by the way, used for high-end clothing. Normally you grow the cotton crop on pre-orders for the next year. You just don't grow massive amounts of it just and then try to sell it. It's already been bought a year and ahead, and it has by the clothing industry. Well, the Chinese have cut the Europeans off of the high-end country.

cotton that you need for gun cotton. While Russia doesn't particularly grow cotton, Russia used to buy cotton for gun cotton from Central Asia. You know, it's the don't throw me in a briar patch scenario, or as the church teaches God sends you enemies to get you to do the things you should have done anyways. The U.S. back in 2016 got the Central Europe Asians to stop selling Russia cotton for gun cotton. Well, Russia being the smart apes that we are, our scientists worked out how to make it out of linen. And Russia grows an incredible amount of linen crops. So now gun cotton has been replaced by linen, gun linen. And it's cheaper, by the way.

And Russia can manufacture as much as it wants. So it's not affected by it. But Europe is. Europe never had to develop these technology. You just kept the old gun cotton. And now they're cut off. The U.S. doesn't have this problem because the U.S. grows a lot of cotton too, and grows high-hand cotton. But the Europeans do.

And the Europeans are feeding, first and foremost, right now feeding the Ukrainians. So you can make the shell, but there's no explosive to go into that shelf. You don't have enough gun cotton. You're not going to put powder in there. So there's a lot of problems up and down that supply chain. And, yeah, Zelensky's feeling it. He's feeling very much. And it seems that, you know, the word was getting out in the first month and a half.

they had over 100,000, they had over 100,000 desertions. Now, that's questionable, because the question is, how many of those are actual desertions or how many of those are actually just lying, rotting corpses in the battlefield? Because if you say they deserted, they don't have to pay them. Oh, they took away their weapons, they ran away. We don't have to pay them death bennies to the death benefits to the families. And when you say there's four, 500,000 desertions, which, by the way, came on, of Ukraine, you've got to wonder how many of those are actual desertions, how many of those are

unclaimed bodies that they just drop and forget about? That's something the Ukrainians have also done. So there's a lot of questions on this. But even if they're admitting to 100,000, it means 100,000 losses that they'll basically admit to in the first month and a half without any major closing incidents. Well, okay, there were, of course. There's Miragrad that was closed out, but there were supposed to be only about 5,000 there at that point, I trapped in Minnagrad, maybe less. But still, you know, Mirnagrad, I'm sorry, Mirnagrad. But still, that's what about the other 95 or 150?

It varies. The numbers vary. Russia, I mean, Russia has almost 100,000 corpses that Ukraine has refusing to take back in storage. I mean, those morgue and freezers are all packed everywhere with remains. They take them back at a thousand at a time. This is to be perpetual. So there's a lot of questions.

And what was coming out was right now about 90% of the replacements are press gangs, press gang people. Those that weren't able to pay off. You know, the reason that those press gangs allow themselves to be filmed like that, because it's advertisement. You don't want this to happen. Do you come to us? Give us $10,000. And you get a white piece of paper and says, you're not, you're not, you. you're not fit for military duty or, you know, you've been reserved for something else.

Now, if they take you, if they capture you and they take you to the station, it becomes 15,000. Because now you've got to pay off the guys that are processing you. If you get to the medical facilities, it becomes 20,000 because you've got to pay off those guys, too. It's a payoff scheme up and down. There was an estimate that those press gangs pulled out something like $5 billion out of Ukraine over the last three and a half years. They're very, very rich people, obvious case. But the majority of the people go to their front are now a press gang. They're usually either the poor or people like alcoholics and druggies that weren't able to run away,

if passed out, someone woke up in a recruitment center. Hello? You know, here's your rifle. And yeah, there was even an interview initially interview of one of these guys. He actually got a notice. He went himself. He was 40-something. They said instantly, they didn't do any medical.

checks on them so they instantly they separated them into two groups they had the 30 and unders and they had the 30 over and anybody sick that was sickly that was older he said the 30 and unders they had these specialty brigades that came in there they took them because they're going to train them because those guys are quality material they said they were put in what was called the suicide squad and they had brigades coming in they were looking for the one or raw you know you get one body meat charge out of you. That's what we're going to get. And those people are being used up left and right. And they're used to replenish a lot of these assault brigades. Stanis up. One very last question. Is this going to be the last year of the war? Is this going

to be the last big year of fighting in the war? A lot of people are saying this, that the situation is becoming lopsided, that the Ukrainians are becoming exhausted. What is your sense here, especially if the situation was just allowed to conclude in a military way? If the situation is allowed to conclude in a military way without any interdiction from any other European powers, Americans are never going to fight in Ukraine. Let's begin with that. They'll sell weapons to Europe. They're never going to fight in there. If it's allowed to conclude on its own, yes, I think this year will be finally the end of this, at least a degree.

Once there's a big collapse, when there's any big collapse in any sector in front, you'll see big movements. That's one. Two, whether that closes out a war of a guerrilla-type partisan war in Western Ukraine, probably not. I mean, look, let's be honest, we were fighting the Benderites. And we, I mean, the Soviet Union and Poland and Hungary at that point, we're fighting Banderites to the early 1950s, these little bands of Banderites. Yeah, they were raiding into Hungary, they were raiding into Poland. I mean, they just became big bands of bandits.

And the Forrest brothers up in the pre-Baltics up to the beginning of the 1950s were doing the same thing. A lot of former Nazi German SS plus the local Lithuanian SS. And mostly they were killing their own people because that's who they were raiding for food and for support, material support. So, you know, total peace, I don't think they'll love a, well, I won't say ever. I don't think there'll be total peace in that area for a very long time. Now, what happens to Europe, I think a lot of these guys, once the front collapses, they're all going to take their weapons and they're going to head west and start infiltrating the rest of Europe. Europe is not going to have any kind of peace either.

And that's if Europe doesn't get involved directly in the war, say the Poles or the Romanians go in or the French go in and try to intervene directly against the Russian army. If they don't do that, Europe's not going to have a peaceful time. Because a lot of those Ukrainians are going straight into the diaspora. They're going straight into the mafia. I mean, we're already seeing the mafia action at a Zelensky level when he's threatening the families of the leadership of certain countries. But that sends a signal to every single leader of every single country in Europe.

That could be you. You don't give us what we want. You know, we will go after your kids. I think Zelensky signed his own death warrant on that one because nobody's going to tolerate that for very long. Getting rid of him and the people around him was a lot easier than tolerating this kind of behavior. But there are 100,000 guys, and a lot of those veterans have already ran away to Europe. They have a skill set. They have a skill set that's in demand by the mafias, by the jihadists, by neo-Nazi organizations.

So I think Europe's going to have a very fun time for the next 10, 15, 20 years. Yeah. Stanislav, that has been fantastic. Thank you very much again for a very, very revealing assessment of the situation in Ukraine at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Stanislav. Real quick. Where can people follow you?

You can find me on ex-Sinis Krippevnik. Again, couldn't get the whole name in there. You can find me on YouTube at Mr. Slavic Man with a K. You can find me on a substack at Nazmei Garenich. And you can find me on ex-Stastoda and Abratna is the Russian channel. And Stas was there as the English language channel. All right. Those links are in the description box down below.

All right. Take care, Stanislav. Cheers. Thank you.