I'm Dom Nichols, and this is Ukraine the latest. Today, we report on how one of Ukraine's new flagship brigades that was trained in France has seen hundreds of soldiers go absent without leave, and we hear from Ukraine about how all the talk of negotiations has gone down on the streets of Kyiv.
Travery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory. The first duty of my government is security and defence to make clear our unshakable support of NATO and with our allies towards Ukraine.
Nobody's going to break us. We're strong. We're Ukrainian. It's Friday, January the 3rd, two years and 308 days since the full-scale invasion began. And today, I'm joined by executive editor for Audio Francis Durnley and from Ukraine, Francis Farrell, a reporter with the key of independent. I'll start with the military and political stuff. No real change on the ground yesterday, a relatively quiet day at the front. Ukraine's MOD saying only
1,080 Russian personnel killed or wounded. Yes, that I'm being very glib in that statement. I mean, that is a staggering number with the lines not moving anywhere. I doubt that would even register with the senior Russian commanders at all, but yes, nothing much moving at all on the ground. However,
Ukraine says it targeted a Russian command post in marino in the curse god blast about 50 Ks north west of suger So outside the pocket that Ukraine still holds in curse god blast so north of the korunova that the town there Ukraine's general staff reported that yesterday They said the strike targeted the eight hundred and tenth russian brigade and resulted in significant losses this comes from andrey kovolenko and
the head of Ukraine's counter disinformation center, although there's no way of verifying any of that information. Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces downed 60 of 93 drones launched by Russia overnight. This comes from the Ukrainian Air Force. Another 26 drones were lost. That's either electronic warfare or they are decoys, so they're designed to draw Ukrainian fire, but obviously then they eventually just pile in.
Tragically, the wreckage of one of the drones that was shot down killed a driver of a truck. It came down, hit the ground, hit the guy in his truck, and he was killed. That's acting governor Mikayla Kalishnik said that chap was killed in, I think it was, somewhere in Kiev. Another person was killed in Chassiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast.
There were numerous injuries across Hezon, Oblast after the Russia launch attacks against 39 towns and villages. The city of Hezon was also hit. No deaths there, thankfully. Then in the north, Sumi was hit with an airstrike this morning. No casualties reported so far. Search and rescue operations still ongoing there.
Couple more from me. A bizarre story today, doing the rounds, Joe Barnes, our colleague has covered this for us. You'll find it online, but elsewhere as well. About 1,700 soldiers from a Ukrainian unit, equipped by the West and trained in France, went AWOL before going into battle before firing a shot.
At least 50 members of the new 155th Mechanised Brigade, known as the Anne of Keve Brigade, and one of the few to operate Leopard 2 main battle tanks, disappeared while elements of the unit were being put through their paces in France. And by the time the brigade actually got into action, about 1700 of its troops had gone missing. AWOL through various points through their training.
It's reported, or as of November, last time the stats were updated, that some 500 soldiers still missing. So it's a pretty bizarre story there. Keen to dig into that with Francis Farrell of the Key of Independence very shortly.
And the last one for me on the updates, the next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, unofficially known as the Ramstein Group. It's going to be held on Thursday at the US Air Base in Germany that gives the series its unofficial title. The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is going to host his counterparts and military chiefs for the 25th such meeting. This series pledges hard military equipment. So this is not humanitarian aid or cash and or just cash. This is hard military pledges of support.
Now, this will be the first such meeting of the Ramstein group since the last planned meeting that was in Germany in October. That was going to be at national leader level. That was then postponed in October last year because Joe Biden cancelled all foreign trips to handle Hurricane Milton back in the US, so they've not had a meeting for a little while.
So this is not at the national leader level. This is the sectors of defence and equivalent and military chiefs. Nonetheless, they still get firm pledges out of it. This will almost certainly be the last one of the Biden administration. Probably the last time we see Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin on such a world stage. So what does that mean? Are they going to come out with the big package to go out with the bank? We shall see on Thursday.
Now then, that's it for some military updates. Let's turn over to Francis Durnley for political and diplomatic updates. Francis, are you under the weather today, I think? So how are you feeling and what have you got for us? Well, thanks, Tom. And yes, apologies for the nasal quality to my voice. First day back at school, as it were, and I caught cold yesterday, clearly someone at telegraph towers had the plague.
But we beat on boats against the current. I want to start with the fallout from the end of the gas pipeline deal we discussed yesterday, which means that no longer can any gas enter the EU via Ukraine. This is, as we said, a major story and a further indication of Moscow's increasing economic severance from Europe.
Matt Oliver, industry editor at The Telegraph, has written the best piece I've seen explaining the significance of this, complete with maps, graphs, diagrams, catnip, for those of you who are statisticians.
He talks about the ramifications in detail and the timeline of how it all came about. He also talks about some of the issues that it will throw up. To quote him, it will create fresh supply headaches for a handful of European countries that remain dependent on the Kremlin. It will push up gas prices across the whole continent, including in Britain.
He's right. Yesterday, the benchmark European gas price hovered at around 50 euros per megawatt hour. That's the highest level since October 2023. He goes on. In recent months, the prospect of the deal's collapse had prompted a frantic round of diplomacy by Slovakia and Hungary to keep it from closing. Robert Fitzsow, Slovakia's prime minister, demanded compensation from Kiev and warned he could retaliate by cutting off electricity exports to Ukraine.
The fact is, though, following the earlier closure of the Nord Stream and Yamal pipelines, the only way Gazprom can now pipe gas to Europe is via Turkey, using the Turk Stream and Blue Stream pipelines under the Black Sea. So where is the energy coming from instead? In short, as we discussed before, liquefy natural gas LNG is being bought in huge quantities from suppliers such as the US and Qatar.
On the former, it's noteworthy, I think, to reflect on what it might mean towards Trump's attitudes on the war. The fact is, the conflict has significantly shifted European energy purchasing to the US, which is not only profitable, but strategically significant.
And when I interviewed Victoria Coates in Washington, who served in Trump's administration at one point was a senior adviser to the Energy Secretary, she said that Trump was in favour of the US being an energy exporter to Europe. That seemed pretty radical when I was talking to her. It doesn't seem quite so radical now.
On the flip side of course, Trump has a good relationship with Hungary's Viktor Orban as Slovakia's Robert Fizzo, and they may well complain to him about how badly in their view the Ukrainians have behaved and why it's bad for global energy markets, etc. That's also not necessarily a positive development.
So, an interesting story, we'd also publish another interesting read by our business columnist Ambrose Evans Pritchard, which we'll link to in the show notes as well, looking at the state of the Russian economy as we enter 2025. That perennial question, to quote him, it's impossible to know when Russia's hyper-Kanesian war economy will snap.
Don't we know it? It is already clear that export earnings from fossil fuels are not enough to sustain a military complex that has depleted the shrinking pool of skilled workers and that is absorbing a tenth of GDP. Earnings have halved since mid 2022 to $600 million a day. This revenue has just been trimmed by a further 5 billion a year after the Ukraine halted transit rights from Russian gas going to Europe.
The liquid portion of the National Wealth Fund has dropped to a negligible $33 billion. Russia has no access to global capital markets. China has refused to step into the breach. Russian analysts say the economy has finally hit a wall and faces an impossible trinity.
The Kremlin has not been able to simultaneously fight its war in Ukraine, fund social infrastructure projects and keep inflation and the ruble under control, they say. The ruble has lost a third of its value since August. It crashed in November after the US Treasury sanctioned Gazprom Bank, the last major bank still able to operate within the swift payment system. This time, Russia is struggling to fund a workaround. The central bank has lost control of the exchange rate.
Months on month inflation is almost 30% on an annualized basis, a level close to stage 1 hyperinflation. Interest rates of 21% and above have been high enough to set off a credit crunch for small firms, with even louder warnings of mass bankruptcy, but not enough to hold down prices.
In short, the well-behaved budget is a fiction. Deficit financing is happening by stealth. Banks are being coerced into funding the bodies that sustain the war machine. At the end of the day, Russians may discover that they have lost their savings just as they did after the collapse of communism.
A director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center put it as follows. The situation in Russia is getting worse than many have thought. It's like the last years of the Soviet Union. So a quote there from Ambrose Evan Pritchard in our paper. We don't yet know how long the Russian economy can continue under this strain. It could be the remainder of 2025 by some calculations, but it could also be sooner. Either way, it is not sustainable at this level forever.
Now, in some other news, interesting remarks from President Zelensky in the past 24 hours, he gave an interview on Ukrainian television where he said that Ukraine's incursion into Kursk Oblast is quote, a very strong Trump card in any negotiations, especially with countries that are very important for us, the countries of the global south. He went on, I never thought it would have been possible to see how much it's influenced the idea of invincible Russia there.
I think that speaks to several points. One, that negotiations are being openly talked about, and two, that other countries outside of Ukraine and Russia are seen as being critical for applying pressure, which makes peace possible, including developing countries, something we're speaking a lot about last year.
Senzkyi also said to your point yesterday, Dom, that the deployment of North Korean soldiers in the region was a tactical mistake. He said there are 12,000 North Koreans who came with weapons and also couldn't do anything. All of this works against Russia and is a strong argument for us.
Lastly, he called out European politicians who wish to seek Ukrainians returning home. He said some countries asked to send Ukrainians who don't work or pay taxes, while those who used as cheap labour should stay in the EU. I tell our partners, provide more air defence and I'll call everyone to return. An obvious point perhaps, but an important one giving some conversations taking place in the moment.
I just lost two quick stories. In 2024, Russian military prosecuted far more of its own soldiers for refusing to fight in Ukraine than it did in the previous year. This is coming from data from media's owner, and they've said the judges handled 10,308 cases of refusal to serve in 2024, almost twice as many as the year before. They compiled those figures from the websites of garrison and district military courts throughout Russia.
They write, since the start of the invasion, military courts received almost 16,000 criminal cases. The most common offense remains going AWOL. 14,182 cases made two in the courts with 12,460 sentences already handed down. This article of the Russian criminal code implies punishment of up to 10 years in prison, but many soldiers receive suspended sentences, allowing them to be sent back to the front lines. Another quite interesting snippet of information there.
And just finally, a tiny one in the grand scheme, but also indicative of trends, I think Moldova has switched to using the euro from the dollar as the reference currency for the official exchange rate. That was announced by President Sandu yesterday. She said, with over 60% of our trade and 70% of our remittances in euro, the move strengthens our economic ties with the EU, bringing more stability and predictability for all Moldovans.
It's stories like that, which underscore like the gas story I started with, that in many places the tide is going out, as it were, away from Moscow. It's a clear trend, quite hard to reverse, and which will have major implications for Russia in the long run. And I would argue unlikely to be good ones. But that's enough for me from one Francis to the next.
Lovely. Thank you, Francis Durney. You're going to take a break for a moment. Rest the old Schnosser. Come back to you a little bit later. Francis Farrell, delighted to turn to you. First time we've spoken this year. Happy New Year. Mate's great to hear from you. Be really keen to hear your views from inside Ukraine right now. We are halfway through winter-ish, but your views on the energy infrastructure, how it's
putting up with all the attacks that have been rained on it in the last few months would be very, very interesting. We've got lots to talk about. Not at least two remarkable documentaries published by your outlet, the Key of Independent. Just to start us off though, New Year 2025, we've already reported on the extensive bombardment by Russia on Key of Harkiv and elsewhere.
How does it feel to you on the receiving end? How serious were they? How do you account for the energy infrastructure still carrying on to a certain degree? Has it been as bad as people feared? Welcome back, Francis.
Yeah, G'day Dom, Happy New Year to you. G'day Francis, great to be back. When it comes to the recent strikes, there were these couple of hits, one in one strike and one, and I'll just a few days ago on New Year, that were very visually shocking because they were in the center of Kiev, they were historical buildings damaged, and a couple of fatalities.
But on the other hand, for the people here, and especially when you do have the holiday season, taking people's minds off a little bit, they do end up melting all one into the other, these attacks. And as you rightly point out, the big question, when we come into December and January was always going to be
the energy infrastructure, and surprisingly, it seems to be holding pretty well. When we had mass missile attacks in the last few weeks, sometimes there were emergency blackout schedules made for the capital, but by and large, it's not even as bad as it was in summer when we had consistent power half the time, no power the other half of the time. Now, more or less, unless something's really gone wrong or it's just a strike, the lights are on in key.
Yeah, I read the stats earlier today because they are, well, because it's news and also because it's absolutely staggering the amount of air attacks. But the last statistic I saw was about, I think it was between 85 and 89% of Russian air munitions are shot down almost impossible against the glide bombs as I understand it. But the Shaheed drones, other drones, even some of the ballistic missiles, I hear that the air defenses in the main cities
are statistically coping. Is that how it feels on the ground? When we were last there, it was the air alerts going off a lot of the time, so it's very unsettling. But is that how it's communicating through to everyday life that actually the air defence is, in many respects, they're capable and doing its job?
Yeah, as I'm sure you would know as well, having stayed in Kiev, it makes a lot of a difference for your personal experience where exactly you are living in the city. I happen to be down in a district right on the river and kind of protected from most of the sound by the hills of Kiev. And it's the place where there haven't been any strikes at all. And so I normally honestly just sleep right through it. It's not only the missile strikes, of course, it's the almost daily drone attacks which were throughout November and most of December.
But yeah, on the other hand, again, people are woken up, people are certainly shaken by these explosions, especially when you have debris falling. But on the other hand, been through this, like the way that people just adapt to this, whether the power stays on or whether it's cut out, it's just become an aspect of ordinary life at this point.
Thanks. Now, in our episode yesterday, Francis Durnley and I talked through what we might expect over the next few months, just a few thoughts for the year ahead. Now, when our Francis spoke to you in key in November, you talked then about not being able to see a clear pathway that would get both sides to actually sit down for meaningful negotiations. Is that how you still see it? Is that how you're starting 2025?
Yeah, I would say more or less yes, because since the elections when there was this wave of ungrounded confidence that maybe Trump will just pull some magic out and negotiate a quick end to the war. The thing that we've seen since then, we've seen a few things, basic indicators that Trump seems to be taking this problem seriously, that he's not
planning to just abandon Ukraine which is great news obviously but then on the other hand Russia trying to play the kind of strongest card it can and start negotiating from the highest point it can saying that we're not interested in stopping we're not interested in freezing the conflict we're going forward and I think that was really
well expressed in Francis' op-ed late last month about that exact reaction and what happens next. And it's really the next reaction of Trump that is going to potentially decide the way we go. Like, how does he respond to this hardball approach from Russia? And Francis went into great, well-grounded detail about these economic problems in Russia that are really building up.
But at the same time we've seen over the last two months that the battlefield trajectory has not changed. Most of the frontline sectors, tough but stable, as the Ukrainian military likes to say, but down in southern Donetsk around Khurakhova, which has certainly fallen now, and Prokrosk. The Russians just keep moving forward every day, and we see very slowly on the maps that their plan is not to attack Prokrosk directly, but to go around and maybe even enter a completely new Ukrainian region.
And so when we talk about the short-term, the frontline, which is still out of control from the perspective of the Ukrainian defense in that area, but also about the long-term economic worries for Russia, which are then going to certainly come knocking
at their door over 2025. That's when we understand that the real road to peace and to a secure peace for Ukraine is by first addressing the balance of power between two sides and that in itself will move us much more quickly to potential conditions for some kind of termination and maybe long-term Russia sees
that there's definitely problems on the horizon but when it comes to balance of power right now they see that every month that this war continues they're taking so much more of Ukrainian territory and that in itself as Ukrainians have said for a very long time it's the battlefield that must be addressed first before we can talk about negotiations.
Yeah, agreed agreed agreed. Now Francis one last question for we turn to those recent documentaries that you're that the keeping the pen has been running. I referenced the story at the start of this episode about the Ukrainian brigade where a number of soldiers have gone a wall absent without leave. What do you think that tells us about the manpower crisis and is that
Another reason why Ukrainian officials but also others outside Ukraine seem to be so keen for this training to be done inside Ukraine. This issue of going AWOL is obviously harder if you are not, if you are inside the country. What do you think about those two points?
Yeah, well, you're right to draw attention to it. It is a pretty big story and we're just slowly learning more about it. There are a few things to touch on here. First of all, when it comes to the soldiers going AWOL, it's important to note that as per the investigation and
the initial sources that reported that story, only 50 of them actually left the brigade and went AWOL inside France. And then there were more that ended up leaving after they came back. It was about a thousand that actually left the unit before even going to France in the first place. So it wasn't even a question of now they're being taken overseas and they know that if they disappear that they won't be caught again. It's deeper than that. We also know about this brigade that
Although it was meant to be one of the strongest, kind of largest new brigades formed, a lot of the manpower that was meant to go into that brigade was actually peeled away and sent to the front line earlier. And they never even got a chance to go to France in the first place. And so it touches on a lot of issues. Of course, it's not a good looking number, so you immediately conclusions
are made about perhaps the motivation of Ukrainian mobilized troops and issues there. But I would say that what it really reveals is deeper and more complicated than that. And it's first and foremost about
the overall manpower picture and the organization inside these new units. Of course, it's really not a good look for Ukraine because this was Zelensky's plan that this is how Ukraine could quickly train a lot of new brigades was by having different countries take responsibility for training and equipping them. Ukraine would just need to provide
the mobilized men. And this was meant to be the one first poster child of these brigades. It was by France, a ally of Ukraine, and they were going to have leopard tanks and Caesar Howitzers. And unfortunately, Kiev couldn't hold their part of the deal in terms of providing
and organizing the manpower to have an actual combat effective unit. But it also speaks about another problem, which is the choice in the first place to prioritize the creation of new brigades. The logic being, of course, that new brigades, as opposed to just filling the old ones that are already on the front line,
New brigades are able to be rotated in and so old ones can come out and you can have some kind of workable system of rotation which is notoriously a big problem along the front lines that brigades.
have just been fighting on the same sector often for over two years without rotation. Unfortunately, because they're so overstretched in manpower in general, and that hasn't been made easier, of course, by the Korsk Offensive, they're in this catch-22 where
there are all these problems with creating new brigades, but just sending them in, sending new manpower into existing brigades who already overstretched themselves, who desperately need just men to be filling trenches. All both of those things end up with losing more infantry being the most important, valuable resource that Ukraine has, losing more infantry than is needed.
So I think it's good that this story is coming out now, but it's just important to realise that on a kind of more big picture level, it just also shows why it's really dangerous and counterproductive to have this kind of blame game between Kyiv in the West. Kyiv saying, well, we don't want to mobilise younger people, we just need more weapons and more help.
while the West says you need to solve all your problems first and so on and so on. I think it's just important that we're open and Kiev is open about their problems and they try and solve them without trying to blame them on the West and so the West can be more useful in their help and part of that I would agree would be taking the brave step to come in and train units inside Ukraine closing the distance between the training ground and the battlefield.
Yeah, something we've spoken of for many times before, and I'm sure we will do again. Now, it's something I've not been able to work out. I've been trying to search around this morning, but of course, as journalists, we always need to ask ourselves when we look at a story like this. There are 50 people going AWOL in France out of the gate of 1700. We have to ask ourselves, well,
is that a big number that works out as just under 3% of the force. So a question I've been trying to work out this morning is what is the normal AWOL rate. All ARMYs have soldiers that go AWOL. I've invited a few for interview without coffee in the guardroom when they've come back in my time. So yeah, all ARMYs have soldiers going AWOL. So I'm trying to work out if this figure, 3%,
50 soldiers doing a runner in France and yeah okay there were others later on but that figure I'm trying to work out if that is in and of itself a big sort of shock horror figure if the story needs to be in and of itself is the number the big story or is it what does it say about mobilization I have to say and I think we said reported this at the time I was a bit surprised that Ukraine was going for brand new
brigades with all the some of the newest equipment that pledged by external supporters rather than try and seed a significant portion of the new units with veterans melt swear but of course if you can't spare them from the front line then how do you solve that but it is tricky taking people brand new and then banging them on a leopard too and saying off you go fellas on those weirdos over there on the caesar howitzers and you got to work nicely very tricky so yes we will come back to this i have no doubt
Now, turning to your documentaries or the key of independence documentaries, for instance, if I may, you've recently published two, both very sober viewing. The first is about your trip to the Achilles FPV drone unit, the first person view drone unit on the front as they were taking the fight to Russia. Absolutely remarkable footage. How did you go about securing that access and what did you take away from your time there?
cheers yeah well i guess i wouldn't call that one exactly a documentary it was just a kind of more more standard frontline report but it has seemed to have certainly taken off on youtube because it's not just the access but especially what happens once you get the access and
This is the Achilles battalion in Ukraine's 1992 salt brigade, consistently understood in Ukraine to be one of the best, most competent, most professional and most well-equipped drone units in Ukraine. This is the first
I think if we rewind to the end of last year, a lot of the brigades were realizing that this was the way forward and they started to form these strike drone companies inside their brigades. But Achilles was the first one that then made the leap from a company to a battalion. And now almost all of the big name Ukrainian brigades have their own battalions.
of drones. And so when we arrived, it was snowing, it was foggy, we thought, okay, the weather's rubbish, that nothing's going to happen. This was just outside the city of Koopjanska in Harkiwob, which has also been quite a hot spot in the front line. And we arrived there about six, the guys were just waking up
But sure enough, the work began basically immediately because it's exactly when the weather's bad that the Russians like to perform their assaults. And now when we think about FPV drones, which I'm sure these first person view drones, which I'm sure everyone of your listeners knows about already,
When they first showed up, there was all this talk about a $400 drone, killing, destroying a multimillion-dollar tank. And that's what we started to see at first, especially since these tanks had not prepared for drones. So they weren't equipped with the cages and the sheets and the electronic warfare units that you see now. But the point is now that the targets have shifted.
to the point where there are so many drones on both sides that Kamikaze single-use drones just with a bomb strapped to them for a one-way flight. There's enough of them, especially with good units like this, there's enough of them to spend two, three, four, maybe five of them just on one single enemy soldier.
And what we ended up watching in real time was exactly that. Just first thing in the morning, they spotted these Russian soldiers walking through a tree line, of course, which in winter the thermal cameras were picking them up. And then this young drone pilot who was from Bucher and he liked to play piano in his free time was now hunting.
these Russians in the forest with incredible skill you think. You see them on their screen and you think, how is the pilot going to make it there? But sure enough, he weaves his way through the trees. The Russian is peering around the tree trying to shoot it down with his rifle and it becomes like this children's game when you're playing tag and someone's hidden behind a pole or a tree and you're going one way than the other.
and eventually the pilot just tires out these Russians and they just stop running away and they go in for the kill and yeah we saw about I think that the team that day they took out about eight Russian soldiers and two Russian armored vehicles in one day which was a lot of work even for them and just a reminder of how this war is being fought because
in a situation where you have that we use the term meat assault. It's a bit crude, but that's really what they do, whether it's on armored vehicles or in small groups, creeping forward or on these motorcycles or buggies or scooters or whatever it is. They're just trying to get infantry upfield as much and quickly as possible, and that is working especially well because Ukraine's own infantry.
situation is so bad and sometimes there's barely anyone in the defending positions but what Ukraine does have and this is really the growth sector of the Ukrainian military are these really competent drone teams whether they're using the the Kamikaze drones or the ones that just dropped little bombs and they can obviously be reused they've just gotten so good at stopping these Russian assaults and it just makes you think well it would be
The Russians would really not be having much success going forward if Ukraine could solve their own manpower problems because when it comes to just seeing everything on the battlefield and immediately having some kind of fire asset, it used to be artillery. Now it's more dominated by drones. To pick them off one by one, it's an incredibly powerful way to defend.
It certainly is. And we spoke yesterday about the innovation of using fiber optic cable to control the drones rather than an RF link, a radio frequency link, which can be jammed. We'll need to discuss that in more depth another time. But it's got one eye on the clock here, Francis. So I just want to ask you about your other documentary about medics. And then I'll hand over to Francis Dernley. But what was this other piece of work that Keith Independent did with the Ukrainian medics? And you've taken this work around Europe, I understand.
Yeah, cheers. So this is the first documentary that is done by long-term documentary done, not by the Cuban Dependents War Crimes Investigation Unit, but by our newsroom, and specifically by myself and videographer, Elena Zashko, who we normally do all our frontline videos with. So that, when it comes to access and scheduling, we just did it. We filmed it in normal time while we're doing the rest of our work. But what it's about, the focus is on actually the mental health.
of Ukrainian medics and we follow a group of them from the front line to Sweden actually to the idyllic coast of Scandinavia and coast of Sweden where this program conducts a really unique
Mental health focused retreat for medics from all across the front line, from different units, from different roles, some of them are combat medics, some of them work in field hospitals, ambulances. And we just really explore what these people go through, who they are and what it means to be going through this conveyor belt of mental trauma over and over again. It's through their hands, so many wounded.
come through and yeah I think it was a success we had a premiere in Kiev where we had the medics who we actually filmed come and see it and they said yeah it did hit the spot and then we're very lucky to be able to take it on tour to 10 countries around Europe, Poland, Germany then the Nordics and Scandinavian countries and we might be organizing more screenings in the UK and the US
In the future, but in the meantime, it is available on our YouTube channel, on the Key of Independence YouTube channel in full. It's just a little bit censored because YouTube makes you blur every drop of blood that there is. But it's there, and I think it's just an important reminder that
We like to talk about weapons, we like to talk about big data, about manpower and so on, but it's also worth remembering that this war is being fought by humans and that they rely on their internal resources, their internal energy, and that itself is not necessarily, well it's not at all, infinite.
Hi Francis, it's Francis, congratulations on both documentaries or report and documentary because they are really, really powerful pieces of work and of course we'll link to both in the show notes. I wanted to ask first of all about the report and the drone story because watching it it was it's incredibly sobering first of all because you are
watching somebody of course who is first wounded by one of these drones and then as you say they immediately send another drone out to essentially finish the job and you're watching that in real time and of course they are soldiers who are pleased with the kill as it were and it just puts it very much in in sharp reality of what that kind of warfare means but
The other thing that really struck me is there's so much talk at the moment about the way that drone warfare is evolving and that we might not be far away from AI drones. So in a sense, you would just send out a swarm of these and they would just hit targets without the need of the human element at all. And I wonder whether when you were speaking to this unit that they were talking about what they expected the next steps of drone evolution to be.
Cheers, Francis. Yeah, great, great question. You know, we're already there. These AI drones are already basically capable of doing what you said. They don't have to necessarily work in a swarm, but the technology for them to lock onto a target and sometimes even identify the target before locking on. In the first place, it is there.
And the technology is sometimes a little bit different. The most basic version is where they just lock onto one pixel on the screen, which represents their target. Or they can employ a more complicated computer vision system where they are really
The AI is there on the drone analyzing and understanding what it's looking at, hopefully, before engaging and going forward. And then it's funny, we have those really futuristic kind of fiberpunk developments. But as Dominic mentioned, what's proving to be really effective and the Russians have actually taken the initiative with this is the fiber optic stuff, which also removes any problems of jamming and gives you a crystal clear image right to the end.
But yeah, they are right in the thick of it. They understand that they live in this kind of cyberpunk world, as one of them told me. Because the astonishing thing, of course, about this is how short the feedback loop is. So a unit like Achilles, they have their own workshop where their people are always tinkering with drones, but they've worked very, very closely with some of the country's biggest drone makers.
And it was just, I think, a few weeks ago that we had news of, and we don't really have many visuals of it, but news of another very competent unit in how to give or bless the hard tier brigade, conducting a whole assault only with automated systems. So that's definitely the direction we're going in when it comes to the AI drones.
One of the manufacturers I spoke to recently, he mentioned that those are useful for taking out vehicles, but because the hardware needed to have the computing power to see and recognize an individual soldier, for example, is actually quite costly. That makes the drone no longer cost effective for hunting that individual soldier, if that makes sense.
But both sides are going full throttle with this and obviously with Ukraine and with its contact with, I would say, the free world and NATO countries. There are a lot of these questions about ethical guidelines because the technology is far outpacing the old rules of war that we had. But at the same time, we also know that
the enemy is not going to be worried too much about these questions and no one cancelled the fact that there's still an existential war for Ukraine's existence in the first place. So I think predicting now that 2025, it is the year when manpower will become more of an issue.
than ever for Ukraine and potentially for Russia as well. But at the same time, it will be, I think, the year when we start to see all of these scary new futuristic technologies implemented on a larger scale. That's really fascinating. Just one final question from me going back to what you were talking about, the ethical point. I wonder how the soldiers felt. It's quite clear their immediate reaction on the footage that you recorded.
whether you got any more detail about how the soldiers felt targeting wounded soldiers because of course usually in war a soldier that's wounded would then expect to be treated but in this situation you can see that the soldier is by appearance is wounded and then is hunted down after the fact by the second or third drone that goes in. Was there any reflection or regret even from any of the cranium soldiers or was this
as you say, that just the front line of the bloodiest war on European soil, and this is just the reality of what this war means for soldiers who are at the front. Yeah, cheers. It's a good question, and it's fair enough, because it's very confronting, and that's, I think, a lot of the things that the commenters in the video were pointing out. And one of the pilots, actually, who I stayed in contact with, he was actually messaging me after, like, yeah, I love the video, thanks. But the comments make me feel a bit uneasy.
Because again, he's just the loveliest guy who wouldn't hurt a fly in civilian life. Of course, before attempting to, I think, to really tackle this question, you do have to all put it into context, put, understand the difference between how someone
observing this in a comfortable place in a country in the West, which has never been at threat of complete annihilation, would perceive the deaths of these Russian soldiers compared to someone, for example, who was one of the drone team members whose home is just a few dozen kilometers away from Koopiansk, who understands that
if that person is ended up, does end up getting evacuated and they could return to the fight. And I'm sure, yeah, it was in your question that you did take that into context. And I think most of our listeners would as well. But beyond that, of course, when we talked about this, unfortunately, it was just off camera right when we were leaving because we didn't have time. But he was saying that, yeah, the
This pilot was saying that yes, it does stick with him and it does build up. Again, when it comes to the wounded soldiers, they don't really, I don't think they spend much time thinking about whether this is right or wrong. Again, because the assumption is that if they're evacuated, then they could come again and kill more Ukrainians and take more Ukrainian land. And so that question isn't really there.
And it is something that the rules of war as well will need to be adjusted for drones. How do you surrender to a drone? What's the rules there if someone still has their weapon in their hand when a drone comes? Are they still considered an active combatant shooting a drone and so on? But they weren't turned into some kind of psychotic killing monsters, even though there is this element of them kind of turning it into a bit of a video game.
in their heads and maybe smiling when they finally get the guy. But yeah, the guy was opening up to me and saying that it does end up coming back to him at night and so on.
Thanks Francis. I mean, that last point is very interesting. You say that these images kept coming back to the individual and you're right, we're not trying to portray them as psychotic killing monsters, but I think the world would do well to have a look at this question, the legal definition of order combat as in when you are no longer able to take part in combat and you're therefore protected under the Geneva Conventions as a fighter and how that needs to evolve in the face of drone warfare.
because it needs to be sorted out firstly, but also secondly, because of the effect on the individual. If that man or woman is then going on thinking that they've done something absolutely terrible, that's going to affect them for the rest of their life. So as we were talking about this, I was thinking about my experience from Afghanistan.
And so the Geneva Convention says, when you are, if you're a soldier and you are wounded, and you are rendered horde of combat, so you are no longer able to take part in military hostilities, then you are protected under the Geneva Convention and you cannot be targeted. Now that is...
exceptionally difficult to apply when you are delivering ordinance from the air. You are not able to render first aid. You don't know if that individual's got any first aid coming. So what do you do? And this idea of some people say, well, it's a mercy killing. If they're injured and you're finishing them off, that doesn't wash in legal terms. And so it can lead to some very, very tricky situations. And in Afghanistan,
I know friends of mine, Apache Pilots, who were very, very deeply affected in the first few years when they were doing a gun run, usually with a 30 mil cannon, and then they would see the effects afterwards, where they would see that people were still alive, albeit in a very, very bad way and would probably die, would probably bleed out in a few minutes, but they were still alive afterwards. And this was very affecting. And the legal definition for the British military involvement in Afghanistan, the legal definition
of how an Apache gunship can do a gun run was changed to allow the aircraft to do a gun run, attack people on the ground, and then do one turn and come back again for a second pass. That was deemed to be one single act of violence. Not two separate acts with the individual being rendered order combat and therefore subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention in the meantime. And that was partly to try and work its way through this muddled area of how to affect a legal
satisfactory legal solution to that. It sounds if something similar is going to have to happen with drones as we learn more about how these things are now employed on the battlefield. Questions you ask about how to surrender to a drone. I covered in my dissertation from my MA in defense sciences about if you put your hands up wave a white flag figuratively and say I'm not fighting then you are order combat and you cannot be targeted. So if you do that to a drone
And then you pick your gun up and start running at the enemy position. That is not correct. You can't do that. There needs to be some way of addressing how you can surrender to a drone. But of course, it's exceptionally difficult as you've described here. So I'm not an international lawyer. I'm not a military lawyer. If anybody is, then please let's have a conversation about this. How do you think the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law needs to evolve in the face of first person view drones where you are picking an individual to attack and then maybe attacking
him or when they are still wounded. At what point are they rendered all the combat and can no longer take part in combat operations, therefore allowing them to be targeted again? I'd be very interested in anyone's thoughts on that, especially if you happen to be a director of military sciences at a global defence think tank, just throwing that out there.
Let's go to final thoughts. Francis Dernley, please come to you first. Well, thanks, Tom. Just changing the subject. In our final thoughts yesterday, I mentioned reports about the batting of St Nicholas in the occupied territories. It's hard to verify, but there is
previous examples of this sort of thing taking place, and so personally I think that it's unsurprising if it is true. They said they wanted to discredit Santa, which seems to me rather unnecessary given that he tends to do that in self over time. But on this subject, several of you have written in to share the Russian propaganda video from over Christmas showing a
traditional red garbed Father Christmas driving a sleigh filled with NATO branded rockets being shot out of the sky above Moscow. Obviously we weren't broadcasting at the time that this was happening but it is worth us bringing up so thank you everyone who sent it across. That there's a second Santa who's in a control room who's watching this in the video and he says good we don't need anything foreign in our skies.
Now, you can read a lot into that video, but what made it especially crass, of course, was the fact that it was published at the time the Azerbaijan already passenger jet was shot down by Russian air defense, killing 38 people on board. The fact that the Kremlin didn't try to suppress the video tells you a lot about their mentality, and, of course, too, the speculation that the damaged aircraft was diverted so that it didn't crash on Russian soil and thereby potentially cause an even more embarrassing incident.
even if they may well have been able to save more lives on board. I cannot help but feel that at some point one of these incidents caused by Russian ineptitude or malice won't seriously backfire for them. When a power is reckless in this way, at some point they go too far, it always happens if you look at history. A merchant, for instance, if this flight, this Azerbaijani passenger jet had been full of an American tour party, for instance,
It's these kind of things which could be the slacks, Black Swan, which changes the course of the war that put pressure on a new incoming American president. It's just insane as a strategy. But again, we've just seen more and more examples of sabotage and other incidents which may well trigger unintended consequences. But yes, thank you very much Francis for your time today as well. I just wanted to add that a really, really interesting conversation.
Thanks, Francis D, Francis F. I'd just offer one final thought. I'd be very interested, as I say, to hear from people about that idea of order combat and how it works with drone warfare. My final thought that I actually had prepared was back to that comment that Francis Durney mentioned earlier on when President Zelensky said that Ukraine's incursion in Russia's cursed gold blast is a quote, very strong Trump card in any negotiations.
As well as international lawyers, I'm after psychologists. So do you think that Zelensky's use of the word Trump there, very strong Trump card, is deliberately just trying to tie himself into Donald Trump? Am I overthinking this? Or is he just constantly just trying to keep that little sort of nudge, constantly drip, drip effect to Donald Trump?
Talking about Kurt Schorblass, keeping Ukraine on the agenda for Donald Trump. I know it's a phrase that many people use, but equally, it's a very loaded term now that Donald Trump's coming in. Anyone out there, particularly psychologist, was that deliberate by President Zelensky using the phrase Trump card? That's my final thought. France's Farrell, delighted to have you back. We're going to chat more this year and hopefully meet up soon in Ukraine. But Francis, would you like the final thought for today, please?
Yeah cheers Dom, thank you Francis. Always really really good to talk to you guys and a brilliant final thought from you Dom. I really don't know how I can say anything that compares. I was just gonna say something kind of big picture and boring maybe which was just that when we talk about these stories, the manpower problem, the problem with this brigade, the
evolution of drone warfare and even when it comes to Russia's own issues it's just that I just feel sometimes that if Kiev and the West could come together and not even think about winning the war but just think about changing the way they
go about what they do with the life of the Ukrainian infantrymen, specifically the Ukrainian infantrymen, as their absolute top priority. I think there could be a lot of positive changes to how things end up flowing, but it needs to be done together. That's all, I guess. Thanks again, guys.
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