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.

Produced by the Borderlands Foundation.

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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

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

All episodes: https://ukrainemilitaryhistory.org/

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@UkraineMilitaryHistory

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