1/ After spending years demanding a full mobilisation, Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin has come to the realisation that it would now be pointless: Ukraine's swarms of drones are capable of destroying "any number of infantry", and Russia doesn't even have enough weapons to arm them. ⬇️
2/ A reader of his Telegram channel asks:
"Question: there's increasing talk of possible mobilisation—do you think the government will take such a step? And is mobilisation necessary under the current circumstances?"
To which Girkin replies:
3/ "Mobilisation was needed in the spring of 2022, the spring of 2023, the spring of 2024, and perhaps even the spring of 2025. Now, mobilisation is catastrophically late. Currently, mobilisation, as perceived by the majority of the population, will yield no results.
4/ "What we need now is to mobilise the military economy. The time when we could defeat, trample, and drive the enemy into the ground with masses of infantry is, unfortunately, over. It existed in '22, '23, and '24. It's doubtful in '25, and it simply doesn't exist in '26.
5/ "We are currently waging a war of drones, capable of destroying any number of infantry deployed to battle on any front, no matter how broad.
6/ "The enemy has established such a production of drones and missiles in Europe and in so-called Ukraine itself that it is now capable of holding the front almost entirely with them, which is precisely what is happening.
7/ "This means that large masses of people and equipment will be destroyed without achieving any success. Time has been lost.
8/ "Therefore, mobilisation is, of course, necessary if we are to win at all, but not so much and not only mobilising people for the army, but mobilising people for the military industry, science, and production.
9/ "And only then, over time (not now, not tomorrow, and not the day after), will we achieve a military economy capable of competing with and winning the confrontation with the military economies of Europe and so-called Ukraine.
10/ "This kind of mobilisation is necessary if, I emphasise again, we want to win, and this desire has been absent since the very beginning of the Special Military Operation Although what the Kremlin actually wants is completely unclear.
11/ "[Presidential spokesman] Peskov's statement that Russia is only a few kilometers away from achieving a peaceful settlement in Donbas is, forgive me, a lie and a bluff. Well, which, strictly speaking, is nothing new for this person and the department he represents.
12/ "Even if we manage to overcome those few kilometers separating Russian forward positions from Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and other cities of the Donetsk People's Republic, the war will not end at all, not even in the slightest.
13/ "Moreover, the enemy intends to wage it and has sufficient forces to do so. Therefore, whether it's a few kilometers, or even a few dozen kilometers, the war must be waged to win, and not to advance a few kilometers, strewing them with the corpses of our soldiers.
14/ "Right now, you can mobilise as many people as you want to the front, but they won't be able to turn the tide of the war. That moment has passed. I've been calling for mobilisation for four years.
15/ "Now I no longer call for the kind of mobilisation I spoke of earlier, because it's pointless. We, our economy, don't even have enough weapons to arm them." /end
1/ Over four years into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian commanders have still not beaten their deadliest enemy – the cumbersome centralised bureaucracy of the Russian military. 'Two Majors' gives a flavour of how badly Russian commanders are swamped with paperwork. ⬇️
2/ In an essay titled "On the Need for a Radical Overhaul of the Management System for Security Forces Involved in the Special Military Operation. Thoughts on the Topic, with Some Profanity", one of the contributors to the prominent 'Two Majors' Telegram channel writes:
3/ "▪️ The principle of multitasking and prioritisation. Even before the war, we once asked a young officer from a garrison unit subordinate to ours: why aren’t you working on such-and-such a task, since it’s objectively important?
1/ The steadily increasing number of Ukrainian drones being flown into Russia is a major cause for concern among Russian warbloggers reflecting on the weekend's attack on Moscow. 'Older than Edda' sees Russia's air defences being progressively worn down and overwhelmed. ⬇️
2/ "When assessing the prospects of a "drone war," it's important to understand that massive attacks using a couple thousand or more UAVs per night are just around the corner.
3/ "This means that in selected areas, the enemy will attempt to simply breach air defences by exhausting the missile launchers' ammunition—which, even with timely delivery on launchers, doesn't appear automatically; reloading takes time.
1/ Could Yevgeny Prigozhin have become Russia's equivalent of Ukraine's Robert 'Madyar' Brovdi if he had been allowed to live? A provocative Russian commentary suggests that Wagner's 'civilian-controlled military' operating model could have been applied more widely by Russia. ⬇️
2/ 'Russian Engineer' writes:
"The answers to the questions are about what changes allowed the enemy to halt the downward trend in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which was clearly evident throughout 2025."
3/ "And now they're striking along the Novorossiya highway, and simultaneously in Moscow and Sevastopol.
1/ Ukraine's massive penetration of Moscow's air defences is sparking a great deal of gloomy and angry commentary from Russian warbloggers. The military-technical Telegram channel 'Atomic Cherry' warns of an escalating trend of Ukrainian capabilities. ⬇️
2/ "As an interim observation, I will note that the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for the first time in years of the conflict, have succeeded in destroying a number of targets in the Moscow region:
There are a number of statements and testimonies about hits on other targets as well, but listing them all makes no sense. The trend is clear without this.
1/ The Russian government is warning that the Ukrainians are trying to buy Russian Telegram channels that are now unprofitable after the government's blocking of the app. Russian commentators say it's an inevitable result of the government's restrictive policies. ⬇️
2/ Russia has been severely restricting Telegram since the start of April, as well as making it retrospectively illegal to use Telegram for advertising. This has been a disaster for Russian businesses, for which Telegram was an essential marketing tool.
3/ Individual Telegram bloggers have also faced a collapse in their income from Telegram, both because of the advertising ban and due to the blocking reducing their user bases (though many Russians continue to access it through VPNs). Some are now trying to sell their channels.
1/ Russia's anti-drone defences are said to be severely hampered by bureaucracy, such as bans on interceptor drones with explosive warheads, and legal liability, which makes mobile fire teams liable for damage caused by shot-down enemy drones. ⬇️
2/ Russian drone developer Alexey Chadayev looks for answers to the eternal question of "where air defence?". He highlights legal and bureaucratic obstacles that he says are major obstacles to the effective protection of facilities that are being targeted by Ukrainian drones:
3/ "A few thoughts on counter-drone defence of rear-area facilities.
1. The very fact that we have legally limited the ability to use explosives to combat drones in the rear leads to an increase, not a decrease, in collateral losses.