Ukraine Military History

They did not win the hackathon. They did not even place. Twenty-four hours in a room in Los Angeles, two hours of sleep, a 3D printer that would not cooperate, and somebody putting dubstep on at four in the morning to keep everyone upright. The judges said "cool, sounds good" and moved on. Ian Laffey posted what they had built, slept eighteen hours, and woke up to millions of views and a phone full of messages. Today that technology flies on the front line in Ukraine.

Ian Laffey is co-founder and CEO of Theseus. They build navigation that lets a drone fly with no GPS at all, which is the single hardest constraint on a battlefield where satellite navigation is jammed across every inch of ground that matters. He had never touched a drone before February 2024, and he met his third co-founder in the hackathon room.

Sam Cook sat down with him in Kyiv for the clearest account yet of how a defense product actually gets proven. Ukraine, Ian argues, is the closest thing to a free market that exists anywhere in defense: units buy what works, at brigade level and below, often with donated money, and there is nowhere to hide. Ship a hundred million dollars of kit here and if it is not good enough it sits in a warehouse and everybody knows. His line: you can prove you can sell a hundred million dollars of something somewhere else, but you cannot prove it works anywhere but here.

He is unusually hard on himself about getting it wrong. On the first visit in November 2024 the drone was launched off a catapult his team had never seen, and the product failed outright. There are three ways to do this, he says, and two of them fail. Fly in for two days and take photographs, which is worse than not coming at all. Come for a fortnight at a time and watch every relationship go cold the moment you leave, because nobody here is sitting by a laptop waiting for your Zoom invite. Or move here. He moved here.

Then it turns to Washington. The three most critical technologies in this war, two of them American and neither of them military: the Chinese commercial electronics supply chain, Starlink, and AI. Why he thinks building interceptors in the United States makes little sense when there is nowhere to get the repetitions. And why SBIR dollars spent on slide decks made in America could instead fund American companies to develop and validate the same technology in the one place it is actually employed.

And the reason he is here at all: a best friend adopted from Ukraine just after independence, a father who told him never to hit first but to hit back as hard as he possibly can, and his own conclusion that it is a terrible circumstance, but in a lot of ways a privilege to get to work on things that matter.

Recorded in Kyiv, October 2026.

KEY MOMENTS 4:58 - "Completely by accident": what Theseus builds 17:49 - His best friend is Ukrainian, and "I'm not a sniper" 19:17 - Jack's adoption, and his father's rule about hitting back 22:49 - 24 hours, two hours of sleep, and dubstep at 4 a.m. 26:44 - "You can't delay your stupid moment" 27:09 - Getting your ass handed to you by the real world 36:40 - Every combat drone in the world is in one place 38:29 - The closest thing to a free market in defense 42:53 - Three ways to come to Ukraine, and two of them fail 45:44 - "I just need to move here" 56:43 - The three technologies deciding this war 61:12 - SBIR dollars for slide decks, and what they could buy here 71:41 - "I'm not putting you in a Signal group chat from California" 76:21 - Price it so Ukraine can field it, and the money follows

Produced by the Borderlands Foundation. Support our work: https://theborderlandsfoundation.org

Why War Matters — Sam's San Francisco talk. Part I is free: https://ukraineforfounders.com/talk/

All episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/

Guest: Ian Laffey / Theseus: https://www.theseus.us

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Before this podcast had a name, it had General David Petraeus.

This is the first interview the show ever recorded — Kyiv, 2023, during the counteroffensive, when Valerii Zaluzhnyi was still Commander-in-Chief and Petraeus had a new book a month from publication. We are releasing it from the vault now. The war has changed a great deal since. The argument has not changed at all.

He commanded the 101st Airborne in the invasion of Iraq, then the Surge, then ISAF in Afghanistan, then the CIA. Sitting with Sam Cook in Kyiv, he lays out the framework he and his students built at Harvard for what strategic leadership in war actually consists of — and then spends an hour testing it against every war he knows.

There are four tasks. Get the big ideas right. Communicate them through the breadth and depth of the organisation. Oversee their implementation. Then work out how the big ideas have to change, and start again. The order is the whole point. Get the first one wrong, he says, and it does not matter how good you are at the other three, because you are building on a foundation of sand.

Then he walks the cases. MacArthur, whose genius at Inchon is inseparable from his catastrophe at the Yalu — brilliance at one level of war is not the same skill as judgement at another. Korea, an outcome short of victory that has held for seventy years, and the man who actually delivered it: Matthew Ridgway, who took command after MacArthur was relieved. Vietnam, where America borrowed the model that had worked in Korea and applied it to a war that was not Korea, ran command tours of six months at most, made body count the measure of success, and did not get the big ideas right until 1968 — more than a decade too late to turn it around. Iraq, where de-Ba'athification without reconciliation helped produce a full Sunni-Shia civil war in Baghdad, and where the eventual turn meant reconciling with 103,000 combatants: 80,000 Sunni insurgents and 23,000 Shia militia. And Afghanistan, which he warned Rumsfeld in 2005 would be the longest of the long wars, where the inputs were not right for nine years and then held for six or seven months.

The same four tasks, he argues, explain Netflix and Kodak as well as they explain Baghdad. Kodak held more than two thousand patents on digital photography and still failed to act on the fourth task in time.

His closing comparison is the one that has aged into the present: the strategic leadership of America's partners in Afghanistan, set against the strategic leadership of its partners in Ukraine. The best and the worst on full display.

Recorded in Kyiv, 2023. Introduced in 2026.

KEY MOMENTS 0:00 - From the vault: why a 2023 interview, now 9:50 - Could the British have won the American Revolution? 14:53 - The four tasks of a strategic leader 19:10 - Battle rhythm: how a commander spends his time 25:40 - "A foundation of sand" 26:30 - The same four tasks in business: Netflix and Kodak 31:12 - MacArthur: genius at Inchon, catastrophe at the Yalu 34:10 - Korea, and the quiet excellence of Matthew Ridgway 42:50 - Vietnam: the big ideas arrive in 1968, a decade late 46:30 - Body count, six-month tours, and constant churn 56:30 - Baghdad: a full Sunni-Shia civil war 60:00 - Reconciliation, and 103,000 combatants 67:50 - Afghanistan: why it looked easier, and was not 73:10 - Nine years before the inputs were right 76:00 - The Achilles heel of the whole defence concept

Produced by the Borderlands Foundation. Support our work: https://theborderlandsfoundation.org

Why War Matters — Sam's San Francisco talk. Part I is free: https://ukraineforfounders.com/talk/

All episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/

Guest: Gen. David Petraeus (US Army, ret.) — "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine", written with Andrew Roberts

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In the autumn of 2022, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi pulled a book off his shelf — force ratios, artillery counts, manpower tables — and told the woman across from him that if he followed it, Ukraine would lose, for sure. Then he gave her a job: robotize the front line.

That woman is Eveline Buchatskiy. A Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who moved to Kyiv in 2007, whose first Ukrainian investment became Preply, and who helped lead a company with 850 engineers in Kyiv when the invasion began. In July 2023 she launched D3 — Dare to Defend Democracy — a pure-play defense fund at a moment when no bank would open an account for one. Three years later: 27 portfolio companies across air, land, sea and the software binding them.

Sam Cook and Rob Lee sat down with her in Kyiv for the map of how defense innovation actually gets funded and proven. Why she tells founders to drop the dual-use disguise. How a hustler goes from idea to procured product in three months. Merops and the first reliable intercepts of Shaheds. The German-Ukrainian JV that turned battlefield credibility into a $128 million Bundeswehr contract for 10,000 strike drones. And the unit that bolted Starlink onto a 100km drone and more than doubled its reach — what Eveline calls free R&D from the best military laboratory on earth.

Then it turns to Washington. Russia is doubling its Unmanned Systems Forces from 87,000 to 165,000. The US Army disbanded its one experimental drone battalion. Policy still takes six months to approve one change to a fielded drone. The Pentagon just cancelled a lessons-learned briefing from the Ukrainian officers offering to give it. If America learns less from this war than China does, we have failed.

And her definition of victory: not a line on the map, but true independence, a young generation that comes home, and a 900-year problem settled for good.

Recorded in Kyiv, August 2026.

KEY MOMENTS 5:15 - The road from chemical engineering to Kyiv 15:12 - Zaluzhnyi: "Your job is to robotize the front line for me" 16:46 - July 2023: capital in hand, and no bank would take it 19:01 - The thesis: drop the dual-use disguise and commit 20:54 - Certified and procured in three months, if you hustle 26:44 - What AI is actually doing on the battlefield 37:06 - The coming revolution in radars 42:25 - "If you're not in Ukraine, you're not in defense" 48:57 - Six months to approve one change to a program of record 52:10 - Russia doubles Unmanned Systems Forces to 165,000 63:23 - Merops, and the $128 million Bundeswehr contract 69:10 - What victory actually means

Produced by the Borderlands Foundation.

Support our work: https://theborderlandsfoundation.org

Why War Matters — Sam's talk for MilTech Founders: https://ukraineforfounders.com/talk/

All episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/

Guests: Eveline Buchatskiy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eveline-buchatskiy Rob Lee: https://x.com/RALee85

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🎓 Why War Matters — Sam's San Francisco talk for Defence Tech Founders https://ukraineforfounders.com/talk/

Rob Lee and Francis Farrell have just come back from a week on the front line — Zaporizhzhia, the Donbas, Izium and Kharkiv on the way home. This is the debrief.

They arrive with an argument that has a deadline in it. The first half of 2026 went better for Ukraine than expected; the second half is turning. Russia's advances are slower than last year, but they are landing in the worst possible places — the approaches to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last great cities of Donetsk Oblast. Sloviansk is where this war started in April 2014, and some of the brigade commanders defending it today fought there then.

The thing that worries both of them most is not a weapon. It is the weather. Last October, four days of heavy fog blinded the drones over Pokrovsk and let two companies of Russian infantry into the city, and they could not be cleared out. October is coming again, and Russian forces are closer to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk than they were. The next month decides whether there is a window.

Along the way: what the kill zone actually measures — not FPV range, but how far an infantryman walks to his position, which around Kostiantynivka is fifteen to twenty kilometres on foot. Why Mavics pushed back from the line mean you need more crews to keep the same eyes in the sky, so every technological problem turns back into a manpower problem. And what a contested city really looks like now, with Russian and Ukrainian infantry in the same building using different entrances, both under orders not to engage, because both sides want the drones to do the killing.

CHAPTERS

00:00 A week on the front — where the war actually stands

09:54 The narrative roller coaster, and why it misleads

13:00 Drapatyi's principles — can the brigades feel it?

17:18 Inspections stopped, the counterattack order delegated

22:36 The kill zone, measured in how far a man walks

25:44 Underground, logistics, and the confused city fight

28:24 Infiltration is not a new problem for these units

30:30 What a unit can solve with welders and engineers

33:35 Kostiantynivka: why infantry still decide urban fights

36:00 Artillery now deters more than it destroys

38:13 Glide bombs and Western aviation: still no answer

42:10 The sledgehammer, and where Ukraine has the edge

46:30 Middle strike: what it achieved, how Russia adapted

48:37 Autonomous drones — no radio link, no human in the loop

51:20 Jet-powered Gerans, and the intercept problem

55:00 Starlink jammers, and Russia's Rassvet constellation

59:00 What changes if Ukraine can strike into Russia

62:18 October, fog, and the month that decides the winter

66:00 Dobropillia: a five-to-one drone disadvantage

68:10 Russia's hybrid war reaches Germany

73:00 Would Europe actually come? Narva and the Baltics

75:00 Only Ukraine and Russia know how to fight this war

78:10 The defence of Ukraine as the defence of your own security

80:08 Russia only respects strength

83:20 Escalation, Ratcliffe, and talking to Moscow

87:28 The men who were in Sloviansk in 2014

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Ukraine's answer to the question every war asks — not who invents a weapon, but who fields it fast enough to win — has a name, and a CEO.

Andrii Hrytseniuk runs Brave1, the platform the Ukrainian government built in 2023 to connect industry, combat units, ministries and universities into a single innovation engine. He is not a career soldier. He was a chief information officer at Ukraine's largest banks, and that is precisely the point: when the full-scale invasion came, scientists, teachers and IT project managers turned civilian skills into weapons development. Short of tanks, they fielded heavy-lift bombers and FPV drones. With no navy, they invented naval drones. That improvisation became an institution.

Sam Cook and Rob Lee sit down with him in Kyiv for 40 minutes on how the machine actually works: problem statements instead of requirement documents, agile iterations instead of ten-year programmes of record, and six laws plus nearly fifty Cabinet decrees rewritten so a civilian company can go from an idea to a codified weapon in weeks.

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Guests:

Andrii Hrytseniuk / Brave1: https://brave1.gov.ua

Rob Lee: https://x.com/RALee85

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0:00 - Who fields technology, not who invents it

4:46 - Welcome: the engine of Ukrainian innovation

5:10 - What Brave1 is, and the Army of Drones project it grew out of

7:40 - Out-innovating an enemy with more of everything

9:15 - The banker, the scientists and the teachers who built weapons

10:38 - What other militaries should learn from civilian thinking

11:02 - ePoints: a banker's bonus scheme, applied to the army

11:46 - Design thinking and agile instead of technical requirements

12:55 - Why US requirement documents produce unchangeable technology

13:24 - Breaking open a closed defense market: six laws, fifty decrees

14:11 - Building the new process in parallel rather than fixing the old one

15:08 - How a frontline need becomes a product

16:14 - The feedback loop Brave1 sits in the middle of

17:13 - Early funding, like an angel investor

18:51 - 600 products tested and codified to NATO standards

19:54 - 400 venture funds asking which companies to back

20:13 - Reviewing the categories every nine months

21:43 - Foreign companies: Test in Ukraine

22:46 - Brave International, and Brave NATO, Germany, Norway, France

23:27 - Brave Prime, and why the global primes came

24:07 - "If you're not in Ukraine, you're not in defense"

25:19 - Why 95% Ukrainian-made drones is a problem, not a win

26:00 - Priorities: domain by domain

26:47 - Deep and middle strike: the gray zone from 10km to 70km

27:54 - Counter-UAS, and interceptors cheaper than a Shahed

28:51 - Data links, mesh networks, and the range problem

29:21 - AI: drone versus drone

29:52 - From manually operated, to human-in-the-loop, to human-on-the-loop

30:55 - "Next year the majority of hits will be fully automatic"

31:59 - Russia's autonomous strikes

33:30 - Countermeasures, and working with allies on autonomy

34:08 - Turrets

35:42 - UGVs: kamikaze, logistics, evacuation, hybrid buggies

36:59 - 50,000 ground robots contracted this year

38:02 - 100,000 UGV missions in seven months

39:14 - Four lessons for Western militaries

40:00 - One: assume you are not defended enough

40:47 - Two: the economics of war, and cheap weapons at scale

41:31 - Three: speed of innovation, and the three-to-six-month window

41:57 - Four: flexibility, scalability and supply-chain dependencies

42:38 - A culture of readiness for threats you cannot predict

43:16 - "Real strength, or the illusion of defense?"

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Francis Farrell is one of the very few English-language journalists who still goes right up to the front line in Ukraine. He is Australian, he arrived a week before the full-scale invasion, and he has spent four years reporting the war from the places most outlets can no longer insure their people to enter.Sam Cook and Rob Lee sit down with him in Kyiv on 14 August 2026 — as the Russian advance closes on the Donbas fortress belt of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Druzhkivka.Francis describes Dobropillia as the most destroyed city he has seen: twelve glide bombs in three hours, not one civilian on the street, and a basement he slept in that was gone a week later. Rob maps the front around it — why the maps lag reality, and why October and November worry him most.Then the harder question. Russia's assault philosophy runs on a constant supply of expendable infantry. If Putin mobilizes again, what changes — and what does Ukraine do about the manpower asymmetry no drone fleet has solved?Francis closes on something he has been circling for years: there are two Ukrainian militaries now — the elite drone units fighting the war of the future, and the worn-down legacy brigades filled with unmotivated mobilized men. Understanding the gap between them, he argues, is the only honest way to read this war.Timestamps0:00 - Francis Farrell8:50 - The journalist who still goes to the front12:06 - Researching Russia is now nearly impossible14:29 - Kremlinology15:52 - Rosgvardia on the Belarus border17:41 - The Kyiv Independent19:42 - The counteroffensive that made his career21:03 - What the Kyiv Independent is actually for22:07 - The dearth of frontline reporting in English23:31 - The communication gap that keeps widening25:00 - Dobropillia: the most destroyed city he has seen26:09 - Twelve glide bombs in three hours27:20 - The basement that was gone a week later27:45 - Sloviansk and Kramatorsk29:46 - Why the last month has been faster31:18 - Dobropillia and the FPVs that emptied it33:21 - A logistical nightmare: roads, rails, nowhere to sleep35:21 - When it stops making sense to go39:21 - Putin's minimum, and how long it takes to take a city41:28 - Sloviansk 2014, Girkin, and what these cities mean42:52 - Why cities matter militarily — basements and antennas44:13 - The pincer, and the 22 July assault in the Azov Corps sector46:25 - A year ago: the Dobropillia infiltration, and who holds the flanks now48:49 - Kostiantynivka: how a fortress city gets overrun50:35 - Logistics by moped, UGV and trolley52:19 - Can UGVs replace infantry?54:15 - Keeping human beings underground56:54 - The 45-day UGV position that was really drones58:28 - Manpower, being chased by an FPV, and why a breached city is a liability1:02:23 - Five kilometres underground1:05:02 - Weather, Pokrovsk, and the October-November danger window1:08:46 - Back to the strategic picture1:13:45 - Russia's war economy and the recruitment quota1:14:53 - Mobilization: the X factor1:16:29 - North Koreans, and what 10,000 more would mean1:19:54 - Crossing the Rubicon1:21:53 - Sustainability as strategy1:24:03 - Syrskyi, Drapatyi, and valuing manpower1:26:52 - How the US and Europe have actually responded1:28:35 - The commander who told Putin he had taken Kupiansk1:29:55 - Lucky that Russia's system is still broken1:33:23 - Watching the Oval Office meeting from the front1:35:14 - Social media war vs the real war1:37:47 - The human factor that gets lost1:39:35 - Why frontline soldiers sound more pessimistic1:42:41 - Two Ukrainian militaries

Produced by the Borderlands Foundation.Support our work: https://theborderlandsfoundation.orgSubscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraineMilitaryHistoryGuests:Francis Farrell: https://x.com/francisjfarrellRob Lee: https://x.com/RALee85

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In early August 2026, Ukraine got a new commander-in-chief. General Oleksandr Syrskyi was relieved, and Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi — forty-three years old — took over an army in the fifth year of a full-scale war. It followed the public fight over the firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that we covered in episodes 10 and 11.

Sam Cook sits down in Kyiv with Rob Lee, one of the most widely read analysts of this war, and Dima Putiata, who served four years in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and left as a sergeant in the Unmanned Systems Forces. The question: have we reached a turning point?

The answer is more careful than the headlines. Russia is advancing slower than a year ago — but it still holds the initiative.

Timestamps

0:00 - What this episode is and why it matters

7:18 - Have we reached a turning point? Why Russia is advancing slower

10:19 - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk: the hardest direction

12:51 - Why both sides fight so hard for the Donetsk cities

14:21 - What people get wrong about "turning point"

16:01 - Shahed-4, Shahed-5, the pulse-jet engine, and Banderol

19:39 - Ukraine's gap in pulse-jet deep-strike drones

20:39 - The counteroffensive that never came, and the airborne counterattacks nobody reported

22:53 - "Tanks are not dead" - combined arms maneuver

24:18 - What you never see on Twitter or Telegram, and why the best units stay quiet

27:00 - The biggest lie starts at division level, and Russia's 300 vehicles

29:04 - Artillery is not dead either: weather, counter-battery radar, acoustic sensors

33:29 - Preparing the battlefield for armor

35:01 - The casualty debate: drones vs artillery

37:32 - Ukrainian artillery brigades that fly their own drones

40:16 - North Koreans in Kursk: from company assaults to squads

42:13 - Reestablishing maneuver: the First World War parallel and the Azov Corps assault

44:01 - Lancet, Zala, Orion, and Russia's mesh network

48:42 - Arena-M: twenty FPVs to stop one tank, mine rollers and sixteen mines

51:49 - Rubicon's 150-page doctrine - and Ukraine's silence

53:12 - Eighty percent of armor losses come from UAVs

54:26 - The most sophisticated Russian assault of the war

56:39 - Political demands, the lying problem, and the post-war Russian military

1:00:02 - Russia's daily target list, and why their micro-tactical execution still fails

1:04:44 - Starlink: the game changer of this war

1:06:22 - Middle strike: heavy and light

1:08:39 - Lancet-Zala, interceptors, and Ukraine's middle strike campaign today

1:12:34 - RuzSat: Russia builds its own Starlink, and echelons of electronic warfare

1:18:07 - "Starlink is a bit of a crutch", and Kursk: crossing the border and losing it

1:21:15 - Crimea, Operation Spiderweb, and what adversaries learn

1:25:24 - Ground-launched ballistic missiles, KN-23 and KN-24

1:27:50 - Zelenskyy's ask to Trump and Musk

1:29:50 - The PAC-3 shortage, and why missile defense stays hard

1:33:03 - Deep strike: refineries, Wildberries, Flamingo - and is it working?

1:37:08 - The economic war: the Black Sea, the port of Odesa, and attrition

1:40:54 - The firing of Fedorov, a new commander-in-chief, and Bilecki's three reasons

1:44:05 - Syrskyi built a system that worked for him

1:46:32 - Unity of command and the Unmanned Systems Forces

1:49:11 - What is Ukraine's actual strategy, and the manpower problem

1:53:04 - What Drapatyi will change first

1:57:29 - Why mobilization got harder: Bakhmut, and orders with no purpose

2:00:45 - AWOL, desertion, and criminal liability for withdrawing

2:05:38 - How AWOL should actually be punished

2:07:17 - France 1940: leadership, training, then technology

2:10:50 - Better than a year ago, but not a turning point yet

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Guests:Rob Lee: https://x.com/RALee85Dima Putiata: https://x.com/kriegsforscherD

His face is blurred and his voice is altered — because he is still fighting. In this episode, Rob Lee sits down with the commander of a separate special forces company in the International Legion of GUR (Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Directorate): a veteran of the SBU's elite Alpha unit who fought through the Battle of Kyiv, the Kherson counteroffensive, and Bakhmut before taking command in the Legion.

From the Zaporizhzhia front, he describes a war transformed. Russian "rat tactics" — two- and three-man teams infiltrating between positions with no evacuation and one order: advance or die. A kill zone where at least 80% of all casualties, on both sides, come from drones. Up to 12 FPVs expended on a single soldier. Urban fights where your unit holds one house and the enemy holds the next one for days. And a new pattern of FPV terror attacks on civilian cars and buses in Zaporizhzhia.

He also explains what the drone war has retired — snipers down to 10% effectiveness, mortars now "like snipers," an FPV team worth more than an anti-tank system — and what NATO special operations forces must learn from it: units that are at most 25–30% infantry, built around technology, adaptability, and commanders who put their soldiers' lives first.

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0:00 - From SBU Alpha to GUR's International Legion

6:25 - The Unit's Drone Arsenal: FPVs, Mavics, Vampires, Ground Drones

8:26 - The Zaporizhzhia Front and "Rat Tactics": Do or Die, No Evacuation

10:37 - FPV Terror Against Civilians — Up to 12 FPVs Per Soldier

12:56 - Russian Spetsnaz and 2–3-Man Infiltration Instead of Assaults

15:17 - 80% of All Casualties Are From Drones; Glide Bombs as Terror

17:06 - Urban Combat: The Enemy in the Next House

19:08 - Walking 10–30 km to the Zero Line; Anti-Thermal Suits

21:33 - Who Joins the Legion (Norway to Nigeria): "You Must Become Better"

25:04 - The Alpha Years: Combat Medic in Donbas

28:16 - The Battle of Kyiv: Hunting Russian Agents Building to Building

30:16 - The Kherson Offensive: Village by Village

33:26 - Bakhmut: Mortars, Mavics, and a First Wound

35:24 - Weapons the Kill Zone Retired — and the Future: Max 30% Infantry

37:45 - How to Join or Support the Legion

In this special episode, Ievgen Malik sits down with Shaun Pinner — British soldier, Ukrainian Marine, Mariupol defender, and fellow survivor of Russian captivity. The two served in the same battalion of the 36th Marines but in different units, fought through the siege of Mariupol from February to April 2022, and both ended up in Russian captivity — where they got to know each other.

This is not a standard interview. It's two veterans who shared the worst experience of their lives sitting together for the first time since their release, comparing stories, filling in blanks, and discovering what the other went through. Shaun talks about leaving a successful business in London at 45 to join the Ukrainian military, falling in love with Mariupol, training Ukrainian soldiers to move away from Soviet doctrine, and watching the full-scale invasion destroy the city he called home. Ievgen tells his side — the fog that could have been their escape, the breakout that went wrong, and why the second year of captivity was worse than Mariupol itself.

Together, they describe the Russian way of war from the receiving end: Grad rockets fired at two soldiers, tanks shooting on the hour like a clock, 80 rockets for a two-man position. They talk about what captivity was really like — the electric shocks, the stabbings, the guards who called themselves Spetsnaz but couldn't name their own weapons, and the forced propaganda videos where the torturer stood behind the camera. And they explain why Shaun now considers it his mission to warn Europe about what's coming.

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Timestampts:

0:00 - Ievgen and Shaun's Story — Mariupol and Captivity

4:57 - A True Ally of Ukraine

6:48 - Why Shaun Came to Ukraine: Unhappy in Business, Happiest in the Military

9:40 - Shaun Joins Azov as Sniper Instructor, Then Transfers to Marines

12:14 - Ievgen's First Memory of the English Guys at the Battalion Gate

14:25 - Parachute Training at 45: "You Couldn't Stop Me"

17:00 - Nine Jumps, One Night Jump — the Only British Foreigner to Complete It

19:13 - "I'm Not a Foreign Fighter — I'm a Ukrainian Marine"

21:30 - The Transition from Soviet Doctrine to Decentralized Command

24:03 - By 2022: Sergeants Making Decisions

26:27 - "We Were Now Ukrainian": British Borscht and the Platoon Family

28:00 - War Has Changed: Drones Are the Sniper, the Mortars, the Artillery

30:01 - The Drone Story: Two Marines, One Drone, 80 Grad Rockets

32:46 - "The First Time in My Military Career, I'm Now the Taliban"

35:01 - Mariupol: "Very Emotional, Very Dangerous — We Lost So Many People"

37:56 - "In War Films, a Tank Is the Worst. For Us, a Tank Was the Minimum"

40:01 - The Encirclement: 200 Kilometers Deep, No Way Out

41:58 - Preparing for Escape: Snapping Credit Cards, Clearing Intelligence

44:14 - Shaun's Capture: Planned to Surrender to a Russian Officer — Got DPR Instead

47:00 - Ievgen's Negotiated Surrender

48:44 - Beatings Begin: Bag Over Head, Stabbed in the Leg

51:05 - Electric Shocks and Psychological Torture: "They're So Good at It"

53:23 - "You're James Bond, You're SAS" — "No, I'm Senior Sailor"

56:08 - The Last Question: What Would Happen If Russia Invaded Britain?

59:34 - "It's My Job to Tell People What Actually Happened in Mariupol"

1:01:32 - "This War Needs to Be Finished Here — It's Imperialism"

In Episode 10 the panel unpacked the politics of Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal as Ukraine's defence minister — the protests, the strategy clash with Syrskyi, and why soldiers took it personally. In Episode 11, they go deeper: Fedorov's explosive farewell press conference, where he published an 11-point list of systemic problems inside Ukraine's armed forces — and invited the country to judge.Rob Lee takes the panel through the list point by point. Ryan O'Leary — American volunteer, still serving — and Dima Putiata — Ukrainian veteran sergeant — push back, agree, and add stories from their own service that the official accounts never tell. The result is the most granular public discussion of what is actually broken inside the Ukrainian military in the fourth year of war: the E-points system that rewards killing infantry over destroying logistics, the half-built corps reform, brigades that cannot count their own battalions, a mobilization apparatus that has lost public trust, the foreigners' revolving door, and a constitutional structure that means the minister of defence cannot fire a single general.They close with their verdicts — and a shared warning: the window for a Ukrainian offensive operation is open now, but it may close by early 2027.Built with Storyfunnels.aiTimestamps:0:00 - Fedorov's Problem List1:57 - Fedorov's 11 Points from His Farewell Speech2:35 - Problem #1: The Army Fights at the Tactical Level4:06 - The SSO Told Me to File Reports in PDF6:45 - Battalion Targeted Drone Operators — and Got Punished7:32 - The E-Points System9:00 - Brave One Marketplace11:23 - Destroyed Over 100 Starlinks13:03 - Fedorov's Lack of Military Background14:37 - Middle-Strike Coordination20:20 - Problem #2: The Corps System Is Not Yet Fully Formed25:00 - Third Corps Under Biletsky27:50 - Problem #3: Brigades and Corps Have Been Fragmented — Piecemeal Deployments33:58 - Problem #4: No One Is Held Accountable for Anything34:13 - No Ownership & The US Military Model36:24 - 30 Cadets Die in Training37:23 - Mobilization & Busification39:22 - Ukraine's Biggest Mistake42:42 - Civilians Don't Feel Safe49:39 - Foreigners Are the Only Ones Still Dumb Enough54:33 - The Bureaucratic Nightmare 56:35 - Dedicated Foreign Service Branch59:00 - 6-Month Contract Costs Ukraine More Than It Gets Back1:01:10 - Manpower Is the Biggest Issue1:02:01 - Fedorov Identified 200,000 AWOL1:03:59 - The MOD Cannot Fire Generals1:06:00 - Fedorov Was Blamed for Things Not in His Remit1:07:43 - Swap Out the Commander-in-Chief1:09:04 - Post-War1:10:17 - Unfortunate Fedorov Is Replaced1:13:00 - Fedorov Was the Best Minister of Defence1:15:54 - The Golden Opportunity1:20:02 - How Long Can Each Side Sustain This?1:25:38 - We've Got the Russians by the Balls1:27:53 - Sign My Damn Citizenship, ZelenskyProduced by the Borderlands Foundation.🎧 **Listen & subscribe:**All episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/Apple: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.s.gy/d6Vm9DSpotify: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.s.gy/bEE3Y9Amazon: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.s.gy/hun4CH▶ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraineMilitaryHistory