The Duran Podcast - Ukraine's Fortress Belt Under Siege As Odessa Blockade Tightens w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Ukraine's Fortress Belt Under Siege As Odessa Blockade Tightens w/ Stanislav Krapivnik

All right, Alexander. We are here with Stanislav. Stanislav, how you doing? Where can people follow your work? Okay, so Zmeegerenich is the substack. X is at Stanis Krapivnik. Long names, we can't feed them. Feed them into those little text boxes.

On X, it's, oh, sorry, that was X. On YouTube, it's at Mr. Slavic Man. That's all one word, Slavic with a K. On Telegram, Stasadai Abratna is the Russian channel. Stas was there, is the English channel. I think that's everything. Yeah, I'll have those links in the description box down below, and people can plug into your work, Alexander Stanislav.

We have lots to discuss on Project Ukraine, so let's get into it. Indeed, we have. We've been through several months of orchestrated euphoria in the the West. Ukraine is winning. It sees back the initiative. The Russians are on the ropes. Their country is crippled by fuel shortages. The war has been brought home to the Russian people. A rather sinister expression, in my opinion, which we will turn to later in the program, because that sort of implies to me a particular attempt to attack the Russian people specifically. And there is a word for that, and we might want to talk about that.

But anyway, we had this period of euphoria. It is now sinking away. Ukraine acknowledged to be without air defense, Russia hammering cities, Russia blockading the Black Sea coast. And again, I think there is an unwillingness in the West to, talk about that because the implications of this are enormous and events on the front lines now accelerating fast. So tell us briefly, Stanislav, where we think we are. I mean, some of my more, shall we say, optimistic friends are telling me that this is coming to an end, that the Russians are close to a knockout blow. That might be a bit of an overstatement, or am I wrong?

It's an overstatement, only because you're dealing with a power in Ukraine in Kiev that doesn't really give a damn about casualties. It's there for to make this last as long as possible because they're making money off of it. And they're going to continue pushing this well past any sane point of survival for the Ukrainian people. So they don't really care. So yeah, this isn't a knockout blow. say. It would be once the last three fortress cities fall, and that's Dhrzhenka, Kramatorsk, and Slavinsk. And again, the Russian military is about five to seven kilometers east. They're taken out several of the last villages leading up. They're moving up and down in the pincher down the roads.

They're leading directly through these three cities. It's one same. artery, and they're coming up behind them, behind Dhrushinka. So the fields behind it are already covered with drones. They're under drone, aviation, and heavy artillery control, which means what that means is getting in and out becomes very difficult because there's constantly loitering munitions, there's drones, looking for anything that's moving, and it gets destroyed. So maybe onesies and two zies can still get in and out.

Brain and vehicles, as difficult as it is, but it's still possible through these fields. The thing is we're in almost the middle of August. By mid-September to late September, the rains come, and all those fields turn into quagmires. I mean, if you've never been in a black earth quagmire, you have no idea. It's basically almost quicksand. It becomes such a fine mud.

And there's no getting in and out over those fields. And that's it. Behind these three towns, or these three cities, rather, there is fields. There are about 40, 50 kilometers of fields and small villages before you start hitting any major settlements again. There's some field fortifications that they've built, well, built, dug. These are trenches and dugouts. They're not in any kind of really fortified line.

They're not anchored in any pre-prepared villages. And where they're at, you can either, A, go around them or they don't even have enough manpower to man them. and two, they're out in the open, maybe at tree lines, but they're not the lines of in-depth fortification we've been seeing because what we've seen before is, you know, it's an agglomeration north to south and east to west into depth of these large amount of towns and villages. They all just bleed into each other that the Ukrainians have been preparing for 12 years. Well, from 2014 to 22, eight years they were pouring active.

and they'll continue to prepare in the rear as the front was being pushed back. But what happened is every time one of these towns was taken, the Ukrainian forces were just able to pull back five, six kilometers, and they're in the next line. And then the next line. But there is no more next line. This is it. This is the end of the line, quite literally the end of the line.

It's open fields. And when the mud comes in, the only way you're going to get anything in and out is hard-packed roads. And that makes it very easy to track whatever's coming in. much easier than it is even now. So any of the Ukrainian soldiers that are in those three towns when the mud season comes, they're going to have one of two choices. The morgue or the POW camp.

There's going to be nothing else. Getting out is going to be impossible. It's going to be the morgue. So they've got a month, month and a half, depending on the rain comes before it's basically over. Now, having said that, true, I mean, it's going to be much easier movement. up to the Nepper, or up to eastern Nepe Petrovsk, which is on the eastern side of the

Neapur. But that doesn't mean there's a full knockout blow. I mean, there's still going to be fighting as Russia's moving toward Kharkov. I think Sumi is going to be taken before Kharkov, because Sumi will cut Kharkov off from supplies in the west. Harkov is obviously cut off from the east and the north, and that only leaves the south. And when the rain season comes, the rivers are flooded, and if you take out a couple of the bridges across the sierra Sier-Dan Danyets River, then pretty much a cut off Harkov from the south too. I think Sumi is going to be first in line. And then there's hopefully by the end of summer,

but maybe by the end of September, Arjouchev is going to be fully taken. And then it's going to be a movement towards Zaporosia. But there's still going to be about 20, 25 kilometers to take and then surround Zaporosia. So maybe Zaporosia by the end of the year, maybe faster. That's the thing about militaries. You never know.

One, the problem is this is a very long front. So part of the front collapses doesn't mean everybody collapses. It's not field armies, you know, 150 years ago, where part of the field army ran, but the whole army ran, but the whole army filled up one field area. These armies are thinly spread, but they're spread over a giant area. So by the time one part breaks,

it doesn't mean everybody else breaks, or they even know that part of it is broken. I mean, you're looking at 1,000 kilometer front. So we'll see. But they're going to be pushed out of that northern Donbos area. Yes, of course. This is their last holdout, and there's only so much they can do. They're basically running out of men.

I mean, that's how it is. There was a hack of the Ministry of Defense database about two months ago. Yeah, about two months ago. They got tables with names, addresses, everything of the KIA, MIA, And deserters. Well, most of deserters aren't deserters. They're just dead. They get listed as deserters. That way you don't have to pay him out for the families or anything. Yeah, your boy deserted. He didn't die. So we don't owe you anything. So the numbers were 2.4 million, if it's to be believed.

And you can count at least on another million and a half invalids in that case, if not more. So you're looking at right there between the, if you count that between the dead and the wounded, you're looking at 10% of the population of the pre-war population of Ukraine. Can I just ask a further question, which is about the drones? Because, of course, again, we still get this in the West, that there's this great drone wall, that it's compensating for the absence of infantry. By the way, I was reading today, I think it was in the way. the British media that an average Ukrainian trench built to be held by 15 men is now lucky

to find two holding it. So it goes directly to what you were saying. But they still say that the drones are enough to hold back the Russians. What is your understanding about this? The drones do damage. There's no denying that. And they do slow things down because Russia is conserving manpower. It's not just throwing away. If it wanted to, didn't care about casualties, yeah, you could just do body waves into that trench held by five, ten guys, you could throw thirty, forty guys, you could get them all with drones, but you take very large casualties. That's one. Two, of course, there's Russian drones that are taking, their big toll on the Ukrainians. There are now drones

that fly out to detect signals from drone operators, they can then call in artillery on those territories, those locations, rather. There's also the fact that very soon the fog is going to come back because the weather starts changing. Once the summer weather starts cooling down, and that'll be in early to mid-September, the fog starts coming back.

Trones don't fly in fog. Drones don't fly in the rain. The drones don't fly. a strong wind. And all of that's going to start kicking up in September. And that, by the way, fog and rain allows infantry to advance forward without having that drone. And then you start coming down to a point as you've got two, three guys covering an area that should be covered by 2030 guys. And you've got 10, 15 guys coming from the other direction, and your drones are at this point worthless. That makes it very hard to cover. Plus, a lot of these guys that are shoved out there

to cover these locations, they're the guys pulled off the streets. Surrendering is actually pretty hard in the middle of a battle. One, because people's blood is up, two, because the Ukrainians have no problem killing their own when they're trying to surrender. But staying and fighting for a lot of these guys is also not an option. They run. They have a big tendency of running. This isn't the same Ukrainian army or soldiers that were in 22 or 23.

Actually, the Ukrainian Army 22 was pretty much destroyed. It was rebuilt in the end of 22, beginning of 20. there's still a lot of veterans left. They were pumped back in. But they fought a lot harder. These guys, the tendency is they're either mercenaries who weren't supposed to be a front or promised they're going to be doing guard duty or shooting down drones or something like that. And now, oh, well, sorry, now you're in the assault unit, go die.

That tend to be Colombian or Venezuelans these days and Brazilians are the primary mercs. Or the guys pulled off the street and they have no. motivation. A lot of times they're starving. If you look at the photos and the videos of guys being taken POW these days, I mean, for the last year, a lot of them look like they just came out of a concentration camp. They're going to the POW camp to fatten back up. They haven't been fed for weeks sometimes. Maybe water dropped off minimal ammunition, stand and die. That's their order, stand and die. Well, they didn't want to be fighting in the first place, let alone standing and dying, obviously. So yes, they've got huge problems, very huge problems.

And it's telling. Can I just quickly round off on the front lines on what's going on on the front lines by asking two questions. Firstly, there's been some reports that the Russians control now a significant part of Oreckhoff. Have you heard anything about this? And secondly, has the change in the Ukrainian command from Sirski-Dedropati made any difference? I haven't seen any difference from what I've been seeing or from I've been hearing. But then again, operations are mostly planned by American generals and something wild but a British. So the Ukrainian generals tend to be the execution branch.

They're told what to do. And Sersky did exactly what he was told, General 200, which means General KIA in English. He absolutely, no extra thinking. I will do whatever I'm told. Zaluzzi, they tried to do the extra thinking. When there was obvious idiotic situations, he'd pull back, we'd do other. things that made sense. Siersky did exactly what he was told.

And of course, somebody needs to be the scapegoat. And guess who the goat got to be? So at this point, it definitely isn't going to be an American general or British general. So there's that. I haven't, I've heard rumors of it. I haven't seen. I know they were fighting at the edges of Adiochov. I need to call some people and begin the CEO with the situation around it.

I think it was cut off already for the last month. And that it wasn't physically cut off by a full encirclement, but it was tactically cut off because the main roads and areas coming in were already under drone aviation and artillery control. So effectively it was already cut off. Getting in and out was a very difficult concept on the N-08 road. It looks like a letter H. It's in Cyrillic, it's a letter N.

Okay. Can we now turn to the other wall, which is the war in the air? Now, I say the war in the air. I use that word carefully because I usually refer to it as the war in the sky. And I think I'm the only person who does, except today, amazingly, the entire British media has suddenly switched to courting it the war in the sky. But anyway, let's focus on that. Firstly, there are multiple aspects to this wall, one which is Odessa, the greater Odessa area, the Black Sea, the ports there all closed, massive attacks on the energy system. This is by the Russians against the Ukrainians. Can you tell us a little bit about the effect this is having on Ukraine and its economy and its

overall situation and on the supply of weapons to Ukraine, which I think it's now clear most of them, a lot of them were coming through the ports. Yeah. Ukraine, they sneak some amount of weapons in, well, they used to bring in weapons, not just to the airport, they used to bring them by rail, and they used to use human shields. They'd have a rail car with passenger rail car, a flatbed rail car, and a passenger rail car. So that if you even hit specifically the flatbed rail car, at least the last passenger

rail car behind it would go off rails, and there'll be casualties. So they were trying to, they were playing off the fact that Russia wouldn't target civilians. And they were pulling equipment in that way. The other way, they were pulling equipment, by the way, which is now out because Russia is also, by the way, targeting locomotives, specifically locomotives. And Russian partisans from the local Russian population, such as Ukraine, are also effectively burning these locomotives. So they're now running out of locomotives. So rail is basically off. Hitting rail itself is a temporary victory.

Because you can fill it back in. you can put new rails down. It may take a day, may take a half a day, may take two days, but the rail line is back up and running. Taking out locomotives is a much more permanent solution. The other way they used to bring in equipment, at least some equipment, is by cars and trucks. Now, BMP2 fits nicely in a container for a semi-truck,

and they've had plenty of videos that they post about how they do this. And it looks like just any other trucks, unless they're hitting every truck that's going through, That's a semi, and you're otherwise going to be hitting a lot of civilians. You don't know who's actually carrying that BMP. They also storm shadow missiles, apparently, are just the right length to fit in a Porsche Kia, Kian, Sian, whatever you want to call it. Yeah.

And they videotaped it as they put the C down and the missile from the dashboard all the way back to the hatchback fits right in. And they were bringing them in by cars that way. Again, unless you're hitting civilian cars, obviously they're sneaking them in. It's no different than moving that Ukraine was using ambulances to bring fighters to the front, instead of just evacuating the wounded. So that leaves what? Of course, that leaves the ports.

That's the only thing that's really left for big ticket items. You can't put a house or in like that, triple seven in a truck that's just a little too big. You can't bring any self-prepared artillery into that. So they brought them in by ship, obviously. Remember, we had the green corridor for the grain deal. Why did Russia cut that off? Russia was under pressure, but Russia was constantly doing these steps forward, you know, to look, to try to get everybody in negotiations.

That's gone. That's over. That's obviously now over. The West is screaming bloody murder. Let's have a timeout in the air or on the sea. seed a time because it'll be good for everyone. No, it's only going to be good for you. The guys that are losing are the ones that want to seize fire, not the guys that are winning. That's normally how things go. There are seven ports. Adessa is the main one. Usually, which means south,

is north of Edessa. And there's five other ports of south, three of them on the Danube. They've all been, basically, you had the 40 days of terror, which, by the way, hasn't ended. It's just gone down and scaled because they've run out of drones. So they've been, they, they got all these drones that they've been, they were saving for this 40 days of intense terror. And they opened this all up by targeting Azov Sea and the Eastern Black Sea. Well, of course, the Americans are doing this. Let's, let's be honest. As American spy plays, American satellites giving live data. And most of the Ukrainians might have done is actually pulled a drone up and push the button to launch it. But I mean, let's be honest.

about this. This is not a Ukrainian war. This is directly. As Marka Rubia said, we're intensifying to push them into negotiations. As Trump, yes, we're intensifying to bring peace. Well, no, it didn't work. They were just intensifying. And the first strikes were on civilian ships, which, by the way, a lot of those civilian ships weren't Russian. Azerbaijan, which is now continuing to give weapons to Ukraine, the Aliye of was just meeting with, I think it was Zelensky that was meeting. Was his foreign ministers meeting with the Ukrainian? One of the first strikes killed five of Brazilian sailors,

including the captain of one of the two ships. They've struck a Turkish ship carrying grain. There's a lot of anger in Turkey right now, but Erdogan being Erdogan, he talks a game, but he does everything that's good for his pocket and not for his country. That's the way Erdogan has always rolled. and he's now made a deal to give old attack a missile, sell them to Ukraine or give him to Ukraine, along with MLRS's and another equipment, American equipment that Turkey had.

So a lot of these ships got hit. And by the way, and the Americans are losing money because some of the hits came in on the Caspian Pipeline Authority. So Kazakhstan has lost about $4.5 billion. Chevron's lost somewhere around $5 billion. because that's basically cut shut off now. And they've damaged the actual infrastructure of the Caspian Pipeline Authority, too, that runs out of Nova Racist. So there's a large swath of Eredo's hit.

Well, Russia responded. Russia showed that it can escalate a hell a lot further than the West can. It's been holding back, and the West, unfortunately, in its own stupidity, has been taken that as weakness or incapability. Well, they've shut down. they've made Ukraine a landlocked country. They started hitting everything that's coming in and out of those ports, regardless of what flag they're putting up, and they've destroyed the ports.

They've hit Odessa before multiple times. The Russian Luther said Adessa multiple times, but it was more like warning shots. Or, you know, they hit one thing. It wasn't a systematic approach. It'd strike one, they'd strike another, and it was not a continuous strikes. Now we've gone into a systematic approach of de-industrializing Adessa. and all these other ports are basically destroyed. And there's ships that are being sunk,

or at least the controls damage, so they're just drifting in the... including Turkish ships while we're at. And the Turks who didn't say anything about Ukrainians are in a hard spot, too, on this two, because they're caught in between, but they're trying to play both sides. So that's Adessa right now.

That has closed down the ports, but that's not the worst part about just the weapons. Adessa, after all, is also how they got the great. rain out and the sunflower sheet out and the iron ore from Poltava out. And they're looking at $50 billion in losses to the economy. So you can't get it out by rail. They were wanting to get it out by rail to Consta, the fort that Zelensky tried to genocide two months ago, three months ago.

They were thinking about doing constance, so Russia started cutting the bridges in Odessa province. heading into Romania. So that's out of the question now, too. The only thing left is trucks. At best, you're going to get about 5% to 6% of that volume out by truck. Now, Europe, I don't know, the Europeans, of course, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, they weren't too thrilled about Ukrainian produce last time going across.

We remember what happened, roadblocks, beatings, trucks being set on fire, because a lot of that produce are supposedly going to France was being dumped on their local markets. but it looks like the EU is going to have about 40% less harvest because of lack of fertiliser. So they may be needing that harvest no matter what. But the majority of the harvest is going to rot in the field or in storage. Let's talk about what the Ukrainians have been doing because you talked about the 40 days. You talked about this, well, I have mentioned this, bringing the war home to the Russian people.

There's been a lot of excited commentary about this in the West, about the refinery attacks. I continue to read about how 30% of the refineries have been knocked out and that there continue to be fuel shortages. Financial Times has published an editorial, which continues to talk about continuing fuel shortages. but it goes beyond attacks on economic and even military targets. We've seen attacks on wild berries, the warehouses, and we've seen many people being killed, many people being killed across Russia, people being killed in breaches,

people being killed in all sorts of places as they go about their ordinary lives. as far as I'm concerned, I know a fair amount of wild berries. I'm somebody who knows a lot about logistics. I've always been interested in logistics. I used to work in this area. This is a purely civilian company doing purely civilian things. So what is this all about?

Okay. Does that say, did you hear me? Yes, yes. I heard everything. Okay, so first of all, let's begin with the heart. Hornets, Palantiers drones, which are, Palantir is a terrorist organization. Theo is a terrorist. And I'll, because these aren't just military targets. The Palantir drones are programmed when they're running about a 20% or less battery power. They start aiming at anything that moves. They call it

clearing logistics. I call it murdering civilians. And I've been down there with, these drones were thick. The last time I went down was about two months ago. And that was a big problem in Russia went mad max. Basically, they started turning everything into technicals, taking a lot of these hedgebacks. They take the hatchback door out. They turned into a technical for a machine gun mount, plus, you know, dedicated vehicles for that too.

And they were all over the place, escorting trucks, shooting down these drones. But these drones were targeting civilians. And civilians, unfortunately, civilian cars don't get gun car escorts. as they're riding up on the roads. We were warned which roads to absolutely stay off of that I'd normally would be taking. And we had to go further in. It was still relatively high risk.

At night, you're still having four to five drones by a drone detector flying around. You don't know if they're yours, if they're a palantier. It got to the point where two months ago, an 11 and 12-year-old boy were murdered by the American company, riding a bicycle, had a Hornet drone strike down. This is the level of what we're talking about. I mean, just absolute terrorism. So that area has basically been more or less secured. The highway between, or the interstate between Rostov,

Maripoli, that then runs further west, for Kerson, there's doubt that the reaction forces have showed up. and have been built up. They've taken out some of the, I think the last count was around 1,400 Palantir drones. Apparently, these drones are actually pretty easy to take out with a machine gun. And, you know, I was just, I just came back from Annapa. Spent almost three weeks there. Well, two weeks, two and a half weeks there, and then half a week,

a couple of days up in the northern Krasnodar area on the Azov Sea. And I'll tell you this. First of all, as far as fuel goes, two months ago, we went down there, fuel was difficult. It wasn't a catastrophe, but it was difficult. And it was, you know, maybe every second fuel station in the cities, one in four, one in five on the interstate. Danyatskoblast was even worse off. Rostov was heavily hit because there was a lot of traffic going south for the summer, too, on top of that. When I went down a month ago on vacations, we came back a week ago.

I took one fuel canister, never touched it. Fuel was, well, I wouldn't say difficult, but we spent some hours in lines here and there. But then again, I kept topping it off every quarter tank. So, you know, just in case. Coming back, I was topping it off every half a tank, maybe even less of a tank left. There was no problems on fuel. fuels everywhere. Some mom and pop stores don't have fuel.

That's true. And by the way, the government's got none on that because it's accusing the larger companies of using that, this crisis, non-crisis, as an excuse to just push out their competition because those mom and pops buy from the big guys. They obviously don't have refineries of their own. So again, lucky for these journalists,

they don't really have to write any stories. They just need to change dates because we had the exact same thing last August. They're just doing it a month earlier this year. We had the exact same thing the month before. And then I think it was Reuters last year that came back and said that, you know, after everybody was screaming that it was 30, 40% cut in production. And Reuters came back and said, it's actually 3%.

You know, so we don't want to admit it, but it's actually only 3%. And it's basically the same thing. Well, like I've been saying, most of these hits on these refineries are the fuel storage tanks. They burn nice and pretty. You get the big picture of flame and smoke. But that's it. The pipes are cut off on them.

Nobody's going to put them out. They just let them burn out and they replace them. So week, two weeks, the refinery is back up and running. So that's from that side. Wildberries. Plenty of wildberry trucks on roads, by the way. The problem for the propagandists is everything has to be same state and getting worse. Because they can't.

propaganda doesn't work if the other guy starts reacting to it. I'm talking about taking measures to react to it. Well, Wildberries has been around a lot longer than these giant warehouses that they use have been around. Wildberries just went, two things happened. First of all, Tatiana Kim, who owns Wildberry, she's worth about $8, $9 billion. She did two things. Even though in the contract she didn't have to, she's paid back everybody that was selling through wildberries and lost their property. So she's compensated out of her own pocket.

Plus the families of the people injured and killed. She's been very generous in compensating them. Second thing the wildberries did was it dispersed. They went back to their old model of using lots of small warehouses all over the place. I just order some stuff from wildberries. Okay, so it may take an extra day to get it, but you get it. The women will not be denied their C cucumber gel cream for, you know,

for sea cucumber sleeves that they put on their faces. For you, it's still coming. That's not an issue. So wild berries, and they try to do the same thing with ozone too. And again,

they just dispersed back to a dispersed warehouse model. It works. They're still there. It took a little adjustment. So, yes, you can destroy the, the warehouses are mostly empty. Most of them have been damaged or destroyed,

but the company's still rolling and products are still moving. but the only reason to hit wild berries, as opposed to new post, Nova Portsta, in Ukraine, is just to bring terrorism. Now, Russia responded by destroying everything that's associated with Nova Portsta. Nova Portsta, on the other hand, actually did move military equipment, and they even advertised it. You know, Russians actually do watch Ukrainian telegram channels where they tend to put everything up there like that. And they showed how Nova porch the trucks were actually being used as part of the military logistics systems to bring in flak vests, bringing in helmets. I'm not talking the family bought a helmet for their guy and sent the helmet forward.

I'm talking about large shipments that their trucks are moving around. So Russia started taking them out and nobody wants to talk about that one. But those have been destroyed. And now that it's become an economic war, Russia's gone over after all the warehouses. Kiev is running out of food. The videos out of the grocery stores is empty shelves. Very, very empty shelves because the warehouses are being hit. And it serves another purpose.

Gets the civilians out of the kill zone. That's one of the things Russia's won because Ukraine uses its own civilians as human shields. Zelensky even admitted as much once. He must have been really stoned on Coke when he said it. But because any rational person would not have thought to say this, He's like, yeah, we can't remove all the civilians because the Russian military starts moving really fast. So right there, thank you. We're using our own civilians as human shields,

knowing that the Russians are going to try to avoid casualties among the civilian population. So that Ukraine's Russia optiante. Russia went and started hitting the actual logistics systems in Ukraine. They've taken out a lot of, they've taken out a lot of the gas. or Petro stations. Now, in Sumi and Hadakov, this was primarily done because Ukraine went to a dispersed model of drone warfare. So they were using these gazelle trucks.

These are small trucks with box beds and in the boxes. They cut out one side and they put two drones in there. They drive up to the line of contact, launch those two drones and get the hell out, shoot and scoot, or launch and scoot in this case. But the problem is these. Tracks, finding these trucks is hard. There's hundreds of them. Finding them is hard because they hide them in garages. They hide them in underground parking areas and other places. But they all rely on the local gas stations or local petrol stations to fuel up. So Russia went and destroyed the petrol stations. And unlike, both Russia and Ukraine strike at night, but for very different reasons. Ukraine strikes at night because it's mostly striking civilians when they're sleeping. Russia strikes at night because it's a strike. targets that will have minimum amount of people or will be closed all together at night. So 400, 400 fueling stations were taken out in those two oblasts.

And then Russia started expanding that into Zaporosia, into Paltava, into D.NEPA Petrovsky, Kiev and Chernigov. And that, by the way, also crashes the local economy because there is no fuel. There is no fuel. People can't get goods in and out. And they tend to leave the area because they can't. survive in that area. So again, that goes back to getting the civilians out of the war zone. You force them out because they can't survive anymore. They can't get the produce in. They can't

keep their business running because the fuel's gone. Ukraine, as they've posted on X, they'll hit, they've hit fueling stations in Belgrade and other areas, but they do it in the day while their civilians lined up to refuel. They've posted these videos on X with big pride. It was good to see that The American audience and others that are viewing it were just screaming at them, your terrorists. They put these videos up of them attacking civilians standing in a line to fill their cars up. But that's the different tactics. That's why you see, you get 200 drones or 150 drone attacks,

and there's five, six people killed because the civilians aren't the target. And the people killed are either the guards or maybe a night crew working in a military plant. Well, if you're working in a military plant, you've got to know that you're a target. And that's another thing that has been noted. The volume of Russian attacks, the quantity of frames, airframes used on that attacks have gone down. But they've gone down, but the damage has gone up. They've gone down because there's nothing shooting them down. You don't need to send two or three drones per target to get one through.

You can just send one. It's going to get through. And that's the point now. Ukraine is out of air defense systems, and it's being heavily attritted in the rear and in the near rear. So that's going to lead to a collapse of the front for obvious reasons. Now, what you're describing? Sorry, go on. As for civilians, that's a whole different issue.

The terrorism against civilians has upgraded. And that's a real thing. When Zelensky comes out there, it was like three people who were killed, those damn bastard terrorists. Yeah, you killed 10 to 15 to 20, 30 a day. That's the reality is. They're hitting factories these days, hitting anything is hard, particularly because there are gun trucks everywhere. The refineries, the oil companies have now been allowed to hire their own gun crews.

They have gun trucks circling and patrolling the areas. There's volunteer brigades being set up everywhere for machine gunners and drivers. and money being raised to buy more pickups and turn them into technicals. They're technicals everywhere. So that makes it difficult, again, to strike these specific targets because, you know, they're coming for a refinery. So you wind up having a lot of gun trucks running around. And these drones are actually very easy to take out machine guns.

And, you know, when I just understand volumes, destroyed drones. First of all, when I was in Annapa, four to ten sirens every day. and sometimes you watch the drones flying overhead, depending where they're at. We're just north of Anapa. It's all now Anapida. They're next to all these villages up and down the coast into the city. We were about 100 kilometers southeast of the bridge.

So again, Russians are Russians. It's an air raid siren, whatever. We're staying on the beach. It's just the Russian mentality. It's hard to phase Russians. But you see the drones go ahead. and overhead. And then you can sometimes hear them getting shot down somewhere,

machine gun fire and explosions. Now, when we went to the Azov Sea, we were quite literally one row of houses away from the beach. We were renting a house there all night long. And this was not, there weren't shot down by missiles, they were shot down by outer cannons because there's pancer, pancer standing there. All night long, you hear this, boom, boom.

boom. And this is like every five, 10 seconds, maybe half a minute, maximum a minute, all night long. So there's hundreds of drones being shot down. The amount of resources that are being used up, because believe me, the auto cannon rounds are still a lot cheaper than these drones. No matter how the drone may run you 40,000. That auto cannon drone round is going to run you a dollar, maybe $5. And you know, you throw 30 of them, you're still making a much cheaper investment. and to taking those drones out. And there's just, it was all night. The two nights were there all night long.

You're just hearing them taking out. You hear the explosions of the other drones being taken out, and they're detonating. We did see one tanker that was smoking off in the far distance. We were there the night, we were in, this is in Costa Dada, so we were maybe about 100, 150 kilometers away from the night that the Zaporosia resort was hit. That's what they're aiming for now.

Resorts, they hit them at night because that's the people who are sleeping, killed about a dozen civilians, women, children, families, injured twice as many. Gillen Jek, all the people are talking about, oh, you know, it was shot down. It was not shot down. There's one pancer, well, I'm not going to say exactly where it's up, but there's pancer systems there, but they're aiming outwards. They're not aiming into the Gulf for obvious reasons. There's civilians there. That drone, you could see that drone that came in. It wasn't smoking.

There was no trace around. It was premeditated murder because you also saw it kind of tarned and then aimed straight down at the civilians. So that was premeditated murder. You know, the thing is you can still overwhelm any system. No matter how many drones you throw out, sooner or late something will get through just by sheer numbers. And they're aiming for apartment buildings. And there's a lot of apartment buildings, obviously, in Russia. And in private residences, too.

They've been taken out two-story, single-family houses. You can't defend all of that. We've had two days ago, they hit an apartment building in Belgrade. And Belgrade is especially vulnerable because between Haidkaev and Belgrade is 45 kilometers. And the border is halfway there. And the front's moving toward Heidecalf, but it's not a very far flight. So by the time you start picking up the drones coming in, and particularly a lot of these drones,

the only metal parts on them is the fuel tank and the engine. Everything else is wooden. So they don't exactly shine on the radar systems. By the time you're picking them up, it's already in the city. Two days ago, eight civilians were killed. Two dozen were injured when their apartment buildings were struck, including the small children were killed. Two small children were killed.

Yesterday, they struck in the... In Tarterstan, again, apartment buildings, I think there was 13 people who were killed. So this is, they've gone to full terror mode. That's the only thing they can do. They're losing on the battlefield. 40 days of pressure didn't work and would have never worked. Fuel crisis is not a crisis. It's not even an issue anymore.

And they go out for civilians. Well, perhaps also for one specific person, because I'm just going to give you the headline. in the Daily Telegraph. This is also about a recent attack in Krasnodar. And the headline is Ukraine destroys air defenses guarding Putin's holiday home. And then we have a picture, a photograph of the famous Italianate palace, which supposedly was built for Putin. And then we would tell that an S-400 system was attacked there, a launcher. And we would tell that the launcher was being used not as an air defense system,

but in order to strike particular, to launch missiles to strike Kiev, presumably. Then we have a map which shows us where this S-400 missile system was located relative to the building. they refer to as Putin's Palace. And then further down, they tell us that this is also the general area where there had been an attack on the beach, the very attack that you're just talking about, and where people were killed on the beach. So it gives a fairly clear impression that they are targeting this building.

And by the way, they also say that Alina, what is it know, Kabayevah, the gymnast that she lives there under Putin's protection. I mean, this is all in the Daily Telegraph. But it all reminded me very much again of what happened in December when there was the attack on Valdai. And this same article, by the way, talks about Valdai and says that this is where Putin mostly hides. he lives in Valdai. Now, the accumulating effect of all of this, if you put all this together and all the other articles that have been written,

I find it difficult to avoid the impression that they are hunting Putin himself and that this is certainly the impression that the Daily Telegraph wants us to come away with. Daily Telegraph, well known for having very close contacts, we're sure we call them important officials within the British political and civil service system. So what are your thoughts about this?

Well, first of all, we'll just begin with, if they ever managed to kill Vladimir Lideharic, it would probably be the nuclear end of Europe or something close enough to it. Because talk about doing the stupidest thing humanly possible. Vladimir Ligiegna of Ligemrich is the only thing keeping European cities from burning at this point, quite literally. The military wants to strike deep strikes.

And Russia can deep strike anything on the subcontinent, the other 58% of Europe that's not Russian-owned. And the civilian demands are pretty much the same right now. Instead of breaking Russian resolve, it always increases Russian demands to strike harder and strike deeper. So this would be about a, this would be, you know, there's a Russian saying, freezing off my nose to spite my grandmother. This would be more like cutting off my head despite my grandmother. This is about as stupid as you can be.

Not to say they're not doing it, because we've seen the knuckle draggers that pass for the intellectual class in the European Union do even stupider things. So they quite well may be doing. As for this palace, I remember the exclusive when it opened up. Never mind that this giant, it exists kind of. It was a hotel that was still only halfway built. Interior, there were people were doing tours through it. Interior was still, you know, a bunch of guys white while painting the walls, putting in wiring. And it was, it's a hotel.

Yeah, it's going to be a very expensive hotel when it opens up, but it's a hotel. And Gell and Jek is a more expensive beach resort area, which I never quite under sick because the beaches aren't. I think the beaches of Napa are better. But, hey, you know, to each his own. The, I mean, if it was so badly done by Western hack artists, they put on the gates, because the gates don't even exist. So they, they photoshopped the gates in. And they copied the gates from a Macedonian, I think it was a Macedonian. gates from some part of Macedonia.

And why do we know this? Because there's a double-headed Imperial Eagle on there. Well, the thing is, it's not just the Russians that use that. And when people zoomed in, it was the Macedonian flag coat of arms on there, except for Russian coat of arms. I mean, this was very badly. It was Navalny's crew, if I remember, that did it back then. So I guess we're back to that.

Second of all, why in the world would you use an S-400 system to strike Kiev? A, it doesn't have the range to do it. It's got a 360 kilometer engagement range. I'm sorry, S-400 has a 380, S-300 has a 360. Still not going to get the Kiev to begin with. Sure, you can remodify these missiles, and Ukraine has done that with S-300 and S-200s to use them as a ballistic missile. But it's pointless, especially when Russia is mass-producing Iskandars that can, literally reach out and touch, never mind things like Arashniks and plenty of other missiles.

Why would you do that? That's about a sillier thing as possible. Now, whether or not there was an S-400 hit, I don't know, I've seen that. All I saw was published pictures of smoke and videos that some locals took, which are stupid enough of them to take that. Opsack is Opsic. Obviously, civilians keep forgetting about that. But all you saw is a pile of smoke. just as well been a fuel storage. In fact, I think it was even too much smoke coming up for something like a missile launcher. But that's my view on that. But again, there's nothing more that was ever shown.

So whether or what was hit, I don't know what was hit. And obviously the military is not going to say anything, and rightfully so. So that's just the Western media jump into conclusions. Whether or not that's a good place to put it probably is a decent place. I wouldn't put it right in need of building, obviously. It's a little too obvious. But it's a good enough place to put it in case something heavy is coming toward Geel and Jek,

you want to intercept it as far out over the Black Sea as you possibly can. And it's high ground. I mean, it's a mountainous area. There are low mountains at this point, but they're already mountains. It's a high area that gives you high reach and far reach while you put the more tactical systems

up further front to cover the beach areas. So, yeah, I'm sure there's somewhere up there. There would be a system. I'd put one up there somewhere. Whether that was hit or not, nobody knows, and if I knew, I wouldn't say it, for obvious reasons. But that palace is not a palace.

It's a very expensive hotel that apparently still hasn't opened. Because if you go on there, you can't find it listed. But, yeah, that they're rehashing this. It's silly. You know, Val Dye, Putin has a residency. I knew about everybody knows about that. They knew about that residency. Most people in the area knew about that residency.

I found out about that residency. I went to a C.S. Supplier in a Chibarri. It was the name of the town. I can't remember in the town now. But Civerstahl is located there. And it's right near that Valdai area. And that was back 20 years ago. So this isn't exactly a secret.

The fact that 92 drones were launched at it, you know, that's a little bit of a different issue. I doubt Putin spends that much time there because the man is on the move and he's in, he's, he spends actually, according to his own admission, he spends most of his times in the Kremlin, because Kremlin is heavily defended. And he's on the move a lot between events and meetings and so on. But why would anybody, now his family members may be up there. That's a whole different issue.

And I'm sure the West would try to take them out too, just because. as the Americans have set the standard, murdering leadership of other countries is A-O-K. It's A-O-K because not a lot of Americans have been targeted yet, but that's coming too. And then they're going to start screaming bloody murder about that. And now that Trump has now been listed at target, supposedly he was removed off of his Air Force One,

moved to a different plane because Iranians were targeting. Well, Mr. Trump, you set the standards. And you're now one of those targets. And so is everybody in your administration. You set those standards. actions have results. Can I make just a quick few observations? Because I've been following these stories about specifically about this palace, but I mean, many other things.

One of the things I've discovered about Vladimir Putin is whatever bad information, I mean bad, incorrect, wrong information is circulated about him in the West, provided it is sufficiently scandalous, it becomes accepted and internalized. and internalized often within the very highest levels of the security and political system. So you may prove any number of times that this building is not a palace, but indeed a hotel. And I've argued that point myself. I've explained why it is, in fact, exactly what you said. But you will not get anybody in Whitehall in Foggy Bottom in Langley and, of course, in Kiev, to believe you.

That is one thing I have discovered. The second is that we have had leaks and commentaries in the West as well, that the way to win this war ultimately is to provoke a crisis and internal crisis inside Russia. After all, wasn't that what the 40-day terror, that Zelensky was talking about, the 40-day campaign, ultimately was about. And isn't this what we are seeing now with this attack on this building? We may know that the whole thing is nonsense,

but they don't believe that it is nonsense. They do believe it is some kind of palace owned by Putin. And to me, I have to say, it does look like they're hunting them. Yeah, I quite believe they have. They are hunting them. You know, even going back, I mean, maybe it's a conspiracy theory, but maybe not, the Malaysian aircraft that was shot down back in that.

Let's keep away from that because that's a very tell. That can get us into trouble. Okay, okay. Yeah. Well, okay, let me say it. There have been rumors that Putin's plane has been targeted before in different areas. so they may be and the drones we saw in Valdei

I'm sure they're very awaunting them it's a stupid move because the people that would replace them are going to be much more hard line and the other thing to consider too elections are coming up in Russia 20th of September

United Russia has been the power party has had super majority for quite a long time looks like they may be losing supermajority They'll still probably retain majority, but they'll lose supermajority. The two parties that are coming up is LDPR, which I'm a member of, and the communists. So you have the right and the left pushing up. And by the way, both are demanding a much harder response to the West and to NATO.

So what comes out of the elections after September 20th may be a very different political landscape at that point. if either of those parties gay enough and the United Russia loses enough that they have to form a coalition with one or the other, and more likely they form a coalition with LDPR, but you never know. Then the policies may change quite a bit, and the pressure on the executive will change quite a bit. So we'll see. That's a little over a month ago. I'm sorry, away. Things may change radically. We may change tragically. Stanley's up, we have to finish there because this is, but again, an invaluable program, and thank you very, very much for the information that you've given us.

Let's have you on again soon, because I'm sure that an awful lot of things are going to happen, and they're going to happen very dynamically and quickly. Absolutely. Always a pleasure. And by the way, if anybody wants to be an observer to the elections, international interviews, they're taking volunteers right now. All right, thank you Stanisoff. Thank you, Stanisov. Thank you, Stanisov.