They are filled with belts of razor wire and anti-infantry wire laid to tear Russia’s soldiers to shreds as they attempt to cross.

Behind that wire are the anti-tank ditches which are over 6 feet deep, 9.

8 ft wide, and amount to open graves just waiting for Russian armor that will get trapped and then destroyed by artillery and drones.

And so it continues.

More wire, more ditches, mines, and dragons teeth make their appearances a little closer to the cities.

These fortifications run across the entire 30 mi of the fortress belt, and they will be incredibly difficult to break down.

After all, these are just the defenses.

Ukraine’s offensive weapons, especially its FPV drones, will be on constant patrols, aided by reconnaissance drones, and ready to deliver their explosive payloads to the Russian soldiers and equipment that are unfortunate enough to be ordered to make
the crossing.

There are also similar scenes emerging in the cities that make up the belt.

The Economist says Constantin, which is widely believed to be Putin’s next target if falls, already has streets that are laced with razor wire.

Ukraine is signaling its intent to bleed Russia dry for every inch that it attempts to take in the belt.

And even the fall of Constantin would just mean that there are three cities left, including the much larger Slavansk and Krammurk.

Ukraine’s fortress belt gets even clever than that.

According to the Atlantic Council, concealed within the fortress belt are non-traditional barriers that complement all of the static ones we’ve just discussed.

Ukraine is building concealed and flexible defensive networks that amount to smallcale defensive positions that are embedded in tree lines or situated underground.

Decoys and remote fires support this network of nodes which are in place to both ambush invading Russian soldiers and to corral them into pre-prepared kill zones where drones and artillery will rain down upon them.

The Ukraine war has often been called a meat grinder for Russia’s soldiers.

These nodes combine to form the funnel that moves that meat into the defenses that will tear that meat to shreds.

In short, the fortress belt is hell made real on earth for Russia’s soldiers.

But if Putin wants Donetsk, the belt has to fall.

And Putin really wants Donetsk.

As the Institute for the Study of War or ISW points out, the regions of Donetsk that are behind the fortress belt are considerably less defensible than the belt itself.

Flat ground comes after the favorable terrain seen in the belt.

The ISW says, and Ukraine would have to rush to build more fortifications across the Khiv and Anropatrovk sectors to defend against a Russian advance.

that would naturally accelerate once the hilly terrain of the fortress belt is conquered.

The Wall Street Journal agrees with this assessment, adding that Putin likely sees the price that he would have to pay in soldiers blood to capture the fortress belt as one that is worth paying.

It’s just one that he wants to avoid paying.

As you’ll discover when we get to the strategic mistake that Ukraine has to avoid.

The fall of the fortress belt would almost inevitably lead to the loss of Dnetsk.

Putin would have everything that he wants for now.

And that brings us to the strategic mistake that Ukraine has to avoid making.

Right now, the fortress belt is making headlines, not because it’s a brilliant example of the defenses that Ukraine has set up, but because it’s part of the territory that Putin is demanding that Ukraine seed to Russia.

The reason for those headlines is simple.

The US has allegedly renewed its pressure on Ukraine to give up Donetsk in the Donbas region.

On January 26th, United 24 media reported that the Kremlin had reaffirmed that the seeding of the Donbass region would be key to any peace negotiations with Ukraine.

That affirmation came in the wake of talks between representatives of Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi.

Putin’s favorite mouthpiece, Dmitri Pescov, made clear what Russia wants in a statement where he said, “The territorial issue is of fundamental importance to the Russian side.

Ukraine continues to reject this request, though a second round of talks is scheduled to begin during the weekend starting on January 31st.

” Just a day later, the US reportedly came wading in with a new round of pressure intended to force Ukraine’s hand in giving Putin exactly what he wants.

According to Reuters, the US has told Ukraine that it will provide security guarantees if a peace agreement is reached.

However, it will likely only provide those guarantees if Ukraine hands over the Dombas.

This is a massive twist in the proceedings as it would essentially make Ukraine subservient to the US and more vulnerable to Russia.

After all, losing the Donbass means losing Donetsk.

And with Donetsk gone, Russia would control the fortress belt.

Making things worse for Ukraine is that there is a cloud of uncertainty over what guarantees the US would actually provide.

It was only on January 25th that Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zalinski was claiming that a document on the security guarantees to be provided by the US was 100% ready and just waiting to be signed.

Presumably that document didn’t contain any conditions about Ukraine seeding the Donbass.

Otherwise, Zalinski wouldn’t be saying that it’s ready.

Just 2 days later, the US is telling Ukraine to make the single biggest strategic mistake it could make against Russia.

Allegedly.

The reason that we say allegedly is that January 27th also brought with it a report in the Kev Independent in which the US denied attempting to use security guarantees as the carrot on the end of a stick that would see Ukraine lose the Dombas.

However, the outlet could only quote an unnamed US source who is reportedly close to the matter.

That source said that the US is not trying to force any territorial concessions upon Ukraine before adding both sides must agree to a peace deal, but the contents of the peace deal are up to Russia and Ukraine.

That quote doesn’t specifically say that the US is using promises of security guarantees to get its way, but the denial of pressure for concessions is hope enough for Ukraine.

It has to be.

Losing the fortress belt that Ukraine has spent so long building would be an enormous mistake.

And there are four key reasons why.

The first of the reasons is also the most obvious.

Losing the fortress belt leaves Ukraine low on defenses.

That’s obviously the case while the Ukraine war is ongoing, which is why Ukraine must use this 30-m barrier to wreak as much havoc on Russia as possible.

However, it would also be true if Ukraine seeded the fortress belt as part of a peace deal with Russia.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, taking the fortress belt would put Russia in a prime position to seize Donetsk and to further fight into Ukraine whenever it’s ready.

The belt will become both a launching point and a barrier to any future Ukrainian effort to retake its territory.

Why would that matter if the seeding of the belt is a part of a peace deal? Zalinsky said it himself back in April 2025 when he pointed out that Putin has broken a staggering 25 peace agreements over the previous decade.

Ukraine knows that Russia’s president is a sort of man who will say one thing and do another.

And it believes that any peace agreement formed, and it believes that any peace agreement formed that doesn’t involve Russia leaving Ukraine entirely isn’t really a deal at all.

It’s a piece of paper that Putin will tear up the moment he feels Russia is ready to take the rest of Ukraine.

This is an assessment that Nick Reynolds, who is a research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, broadly agrees with.

Reynolds tells the BBC, “Even if the Trump administration tries to use ongoing US support or security guarantees as leverage based on previous Russian behavior based on the explicitly transactional approach that the US administration has taken, it’s hard to see how the Ukrainian government would want to give up that territory.

Very hard indeed, especially when you take the second reason why seeding the fortress belt would be such a massive mistake.

Russia is destroying itself in its attempt to take the Dombas and attacking the fortress belt would only lead to more losses.

Ukraine today says that Russia is unlikely to be able to capture the Donetsk region by August 2027, which is an assessment it appears to have drawn from an interview published by the ISW in December 2025.

That interview noted that Russia has managed to conduct small infiltration operations into Constantin which is one of the fortress belt cities.

But those infiltration attempts haven’t amounted to much and it’s going to take so many resources to tackle the entire belt that 2027 is the best that Putin can hope for.

2028 appears to be just as likely assuming that Ukraine continues to receive support from its international partners.

Assuming an end of 2028 deadline, that would mean almost another 3 years of fighting for the belt to fall.

And Russia knows that it can’t sustain the kinds of losses required to finish that fight.

Prosk has shown Putin that much.

We mentioned Povsk earlier as one of the cities that lies just outside the fortress belt.

The city, which had a pre-war population of around 60,000 people, has been under siege for well over a year, with the Wall Street Journal claiming that Russia has amassed over 150,000 troops in the Papovsk sector for a final assault on the city that was meant to have ended last year, but is still ongoing.

Russia has already lost enormous numbers of soldiers in the battle for Povsk.

In October, David Axe claimed in his trench art column that Russia has sustained 100,000 casualties between the start of 2025 and the beginning of October, all while trying to claim Brosk.

About a month later, Zalinski said that Ukraine’s drones had eliminated 25,000 Russian soldiers, most of whom were operating in the sector.

There have been many more deaths since, but you get the picture.

Prosk has been far from an easy city for Russia to take.

That city has been characterized as the gateway to Donetsk in Russian media.

But nothing could be further from the truth now that the fortress belt has been built up.

Some of the cities that Russia still has to topple and it hasn’t even taken yet are even bigger.

Slavansk for instance had a pre-war population of 111,000 people.

Krammatsk is even bigger with a pre-war population of 200,000 people according to Lemon.

Much larger cities than Povsk have more territory to capture which means an even slower Russian advance.

Ukraine will also take the lessons that it has learned from the defense of Povsk into these cities.

So the question has to be asked, if Russia has taken so long and lost so many soldiers in its siege of Povsk, just how much longer will it take and how many more losses will it have to absorb to topple the fortress belt? Making sure that Russia gets an answer to that question is a huge reason for Ukraine to force Russia into the fight for the fortress belt that Putin is trying to avoid.

Who knows, Ukraine might even be able to achieve the casualty ratio of 15 Russian soldiers to every one Ukrainian that it’s seeing in Brosk.

You can find out more about that ratio and what it means for Russia’s attempts to take Brosk in our video.

The point in all of this is that Russia has been trying to frame Donetsk as a free game, as United 24 media puts it.

Putin wants the West and especially the US to think that Russia will easily take the rest of Donetsk once Picrok falls precisely because he knows that nothing is further from the truth.

As long as Ukraine has the fortress belt, it has what amounts to a weapon that will cost Russia years of extra warfare along with hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions more casualties.

The craziest thing about all of this is that the 2027 and 28 estimates may even be a little bit too kind to Russia and its bumbling war effort.

And that’s because of the third reason why Ukraine seeding the fortress belt will be a massive mistake.

Russia’s rate of advance is slowing dramatically.

That’s according to the new voice of Ukraine, which highlights statements made by ISW analysts that the 2027 deadline has conditions that Russia isn’t coming close to meeting.

For Russia to seize Donetsk by the end of August 2027, it would have to maintain the pace of advances it saw in November 2025.

And even then, taking the region would be a big ask.

But Russia hasn’t been maintaining the pace of its monthly advances.

December 2025 and early January 26 saw that pace slow to a crawl, which if Russia isn’t able to speed up, could add months or even years for the time it would take for Daetsk to fall.

We don’t need to go much deeper into this reason beyond noting the obvious.

The longer that Russia has to fight for Donetsk, the more of its soldiers, tanks, artillery, and other equipment it will lose.

We said earlier that Ukraine will bleed Russia dry for every inch that it takes in the fortress belt.

And we meant that in terms of time, equipment, and monetary cost as much as we did for the price that Russia is paying in manpower.

And finally, that brings us to the fourth reason why Ukraine seeding the fortress belt would be a huge strategic mistake.

Ukraine likely still has no idea what a security guarantee in return for making this decision would look like.

After all, Russia has made it clear that there are certain people whom it won’t allow to take part in the ongoing protection of Ukraine.

January 26th or Russia’s foreign intelligence service head Sergy Narishkin claimed that terms being put forth by the coalition of the willing which has also promised security guarantees to Ukraine were absolutely unacceptable.

That likely amounts to Narishkin saying that coalition members won’t be allowed into Ukraine under a peace deal.

A day later the Russian state doomer defense committee deputy chairman Alexe Zaravlovv seemed to confirm this by openly rejecting the prospect of any NATO troops deploying into Ukraine after the war.

That means the coalition of the willing is out.

And it also leads to a lot of questions being asked about the US promises given that it’s a NATO member.

Ultimately, Putin won’t stop at Donetsk or the Dombas if he gets his hands on them.

Russia’s president has very openly said that he doesn’t consider Ukraine to be a real country to the point where he believes that Ukrainians are actually Russians.

Seeding the fortress belt today means that Ukraine sets itself up for a fall tomorrow.

And with Russia struggling to maintain the strength of its assaults, that is a blunder from which Ukraine would never recover.

So, it won’t make that mistake.

It will keep its 30 mi of fortifications, and Russia will bleed trying to take them.

Russia is doing that right now.

And it’s because Ukraine has an unexpected ally on its side.

It’s something so terrifying that it leaves Russian soldiers paralyzed with fear.

Built with the help of Ukraine’s partners, it is a literal wall of death that kills Russian soldiers the moment they’re stupid enough to attempt to cross it.

A new level of fear has been unlocked.

A new stage of slaughter has been achieved.

When the Russians move, they die.

And it’s all thanks to something that Ukraine has been building for an entire year, the drone line.

This wall of death has cost Ukraine and its partners just $880 million to build so far, which is a drop in the ocean when compared to the $2.

5 trillion that United 24 media reports the Ukraine war has cost Russia so far.

And in return for that outlay, Ukraine has built a systematized wall of dronebased defenses that are shredding through Russia’s forces as they attempt assaults.

The front line is now a death sentence for Russia due to a program that has seen Ukraine combine 1,000 drone crews into a cohesive unit of fighters that are now responsible for a third of all the kills that Ukraine achieves against the Russian military.

What does that add up to during this winter alone? The drone line has destroyed 30,000 Russians.

And as you’ll discover if you stick with us, it’s only going to get bigger, stronger, and more effective.

But hold on a second.

Ukraine using drones to shatter Russia’s offensives is hardly a new concept.

It’s been doing just that from the very start of the war.

And plenty has been written and said about how Ukraine’s use of drones has been key to its defense and is forcing other countries to completely rewrite their military doctrines.

With all of that being true, it’s natural to wonder just what this drone line is, if not just another phrase to describe what Ukraine has been doing.

So, let’s explain why the drone line is so important.

Back in March 2025, Ukraine launched what it called the drone line doctrine, which it said was designed to strengthen the country’s frontline defenses.

The idea was to take Ukraine’s existing use of drones from a defense that typically relied on isolated drone units working in tandem with ground forces and turn it into a systematic form of coordinated defense that Ukraine could apply across the entire front.

In other words, the drone usage that had already grabbed so much of the spotlight in the Ukraine war was going to be formalized into a new military doctrine to make those drones more efficient and effective than they had ever been before.

Ukraine’s former defense minister, Rustm Amirov, announced the project launch in a Facebook video, and he explained that the ultimate goal was to equip Ukraine’s specialized drone units with more modern resources and technology along with specially trained personnel.

These units would then work
in tandem to create what Militani refers to as a 10 to 15 km or 6.

2 to 9.

3 mile no-go zone that would make it impossible for Russia to approach key Ukrainian fortifications without incurring enormous losses for doing so.

The project was wide ranging and involved the recruitment of military personnel and civilians into some of Ukraine’s most important drone units such as the Birds of Madar.

Fast forward a year and we’re now seeing the fruits of this project in Ukraine.

In March 2026, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported on how the drone line has expanded in scale and scope since it was announced the year before.

The drone line is now much more than a set of kill zones spread across Ukraine’s territory.

It’s become key to Ukraine building a sustainable technology advantage that it can use to attit Russia’s assaulting forces to such a level that the war becomes unsustainable for Russia to continue.

The ministry mentions the $880
million figure we shared earlier and it reveals that the drone line isn’t an initiative that Ukraine is managing on its own.

Support has been provided by the Netherlands to scale up the drone line project, the ministry says with the funding provided being used to enable the mass procurement of FPV drones that now litter the kill zones that stretch beyond the combat lines.

Plus, Ukraine has been spending big on bomber unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, which may include the long and mid-range strike drones that it’s been using to wreck Russia’s rear.

Plus, the drone line project has seen Ukraine invest more heavily in ISR, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, which likely amounts to far more drone eyes in the skies that are beaming real-time footage of what they see to Ukraine’s Delta system, which allows Ukraine to coordinate its drone strikes and other assaults.

The drone line project
demonstrates Ukraine’s transition from fragmented use of drones to a systemic approach in which drones become a full-fledged element of defense tactics, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says.

But much more than that, it signifies that Ukraine’s cooperation with other nations, particularly its European partners, is leading to the creation of a military power that is far beyond anything Putin expected.

Far from being a country that was supposed to roll over, Ukraine is a country that has caused over 90,000 more casualties for Russia during just 3 months in winter.

Around 30,000 of those casualties can be traced back to the drone line.

Detect and destroy using airborne drones has become the new Ukrainian defense doctrine.

The drone line is at the heart of everything, and it’s a huge reason why Ukraine is suffering far fewer casualties than Russia in the war so far.

Just imagine that you are a Russian soldier for a moment.

You know that even earlier in the war, Ukraine’s drones always presented problems.

They destroyed Russian armor and conducted strikes against troop gatherings.

But back then, there were gaps to exploit.

Ukraine’s drone defenses were fractured.

So, as long as your commanders found the right routes, which was never a guarantee, you might actually make it to Ukraine’s fortifications so you could launch an attack.

Now, just making it to the defenses is a lot harder.

To get where you need to go, you have to traverse miles of terrain that you know is constantly being monitored by drones that are coordinating with every component of Ukraine’s military.

For all you know, a reconnaissance drone flying far overhead may already have eyes on you.

Every step that you take is being transmitted to Ukraine’s delta system, and before you know it, FPV drones have descended on you.

You’re dead before you even make it a mile through the drone line.

And it’s not like things are going to get much better for those who go deeper.

They have to deal with more drones and perhaps even Ukrainian search and destroy units that are leaning on the data being transmitted by the drone line to hunt them down.

Now, we told you earlier in the video that one of Ukraine’s goals with the drone line is to build a systematic advantage over Russia based on the technology that Ukraine employs.

We’re going to dive deeper into that very soon, but before we do, you are watching the military show.

So, if you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet, now is the perfect time to hit the button.

Returning to the expansion, Uramidan Press reports that Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense now sees the expansion of the drone line as a key condition for stopping Russia’s ground offensives in their tracks.

The new Ukrainian Defense Minister, Milkyo Federov, has even put a number on this halting of Russia’s assaults.

He says that Ukraine needs to get to the point where it’s eliminating more than 200 Russian soldiers for every square kilometer that Russia gains.

According to Fedorov, this is the level of losses at which further advance becomes impossible.

We’ll be looking at whether that really is the case toward the end of the video.

But to achieve numbers like these, Ukraine needs to turn its already impressive drone line into an overwhelming behemoth that is capable of destroying Russians at a rate that is even more impressive than the 156 soldiers per square kilometer that is managing along with Ukraine’s other defenses in places like the Donetska blast.

That means more drones, more
operators, and even greater collaboration that builds on the foundations created during the first year of the initiative.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says that all of this is coming.

On February 28th, the Ministry announced that it was seeking further backing from the Netherlands to help it expand the drone line initiative.

The meeting has already taken place between Federov and the Dutch Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Yzelgarius.

That meeting resulted in both describing the drone line as one of the most effective initiatives that Ukraine has in terms of strengthening the country’s military.

Fedorov added that he wants Ukraine’s partners to support other drone projects that feed into the drone line initiative, such as an ongoing project to ensure that all of Ukraine’s brigades have a baseline capacity when it comes to using UAVs.

So, that’s a
hint at the upcoming direction that the drone line is going to take.

Ukraine has the drones and it has over 1,000 crews capable of operating those drones.

But if the drone line is to expand to the point where it can be spread across the entire 700m plus front line, then every single Ukrainian brigade needs the capabilities that those 1,000 crews deliver.

In other words, more crews, more training, and more Russian deaths caused by brigades that may have had limited use of drones being upskilled so they’re ready to make the drone line even stronger.

Fedorov believes that this deeper integration of the drone line initiative into Ukraine’s armed forces is the gamecher that will allow Ukraine to hit the defense minister’s ambitious targets for eliminating Russia’s soldiers.

In Fedorov’s ideal world, Ukraine will find a way to inflict at least 50,000 casualties on Russia every single month.

If that happens, Russia’s assaults will stall out.

Hitting this target would mean that Russia loses 600,000 soldiers per year.

In 2026, Russia aims to recruit 409,000 soldiers.

So, you’re already seeing where the shortfall would come into play if everything goes according to Fedorov’s plan.

If Russia is recruiting fewer soldiers than it’s losing, Ukraine starts to see light at the end of the war tunnel.

Russian offensives weaken as it can’t bring reserves in to make up for its catastrophic losses.

And Putin might end up becoming so desperate that he’s forced to mobilize, which Russia’s leader knows will be so deeply unpopular that it could tank the already diminishing support that his supposed special military operation has inside Russia.

This is all part of Ukraine’s long-term war goals.

And as what appears to be even deeper cooperation with the Netherlands on the horizon seems to suggest, it also means that Putin’s attempt to manipulate Ukraine’s European partners into withdrawing their support has failed.

Stick with us as we’ll be getting to those manipulations and their failure in a few moments.

Before that, let’s take a closer look at Fedorov’s plan.

On February 24th, the Kev Independent reported on this plan, which has been designed to ensure that Ukraine stays 10 steps ahead of Russia.

A large part of the plan focuses on securing Ukraine’s skies as best as possible.

Fedorov wants to achieve a missile and drone interception rate of at least 95% which will require cooperation from Western partners along with the creation of more interceptor drones to tackle Russia’s Shahid type longrange drones.

Perhaps the drone line will be expanded to help fund the creation of these interceptors, providing another way for Ukraine’s program to feed into its long-term war goals.

Ukraine’s second goal is to make Russia bleed for every scrap of territory that it occupies, which we’ve already covered.

200 deaths for every square kilometer is a lofty target, but it’s one that is possible if Ukraine can expand the drone line.

However, perhaps the most important of Fedov’s goals is the third that he has presented, which is to destroy the Russian economy to the point where Putin is no longer able to fund his invasion.

Fedov mentions Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, oil, and the shadow fleet as key parts of this third goal, which doesn’t seem to directly correlate to the drone line.

However, Ukraine’s drones are sapping Russia’s finances in other ways.

Every contract soldier that Putin sends into Ukraine costs Russia an enormous amount of money.

Russia is essentially bribing the poor and otherwise disadvantaged to fight by promising vast sums of cash that they’ve never seen before.

Take the one-time bonuses that Russia is paying out for its contract soldiers as an example.

In a January 6th report, Kev Post revealed that Russia was paying out an estimated $21.

5 million in signing bonuses every single day back in May 2025.

Russia signed up $422,000 soldiers in 2025.

If we divide that by 12 months, you get an average of about 35,160.

That’s not too far away from the 30,000 soldiers that the drone line is costing Russia during the winter alone.

and it’s likely far lower than the total number of soldiers the drone line has eliminated since it was formed in March 2025.

There’s some even more interesting maths.

May is a 31-day month.

If Russia was shelling out $21.

5 million per day in signing bonuses in May, that amounts to over $666 million spent on bonuses alone in a single month.

And this is before we even consider the salaries offered to contract soldiers or the cost to Russia to train and equip these soldiers.

It’s here where we see the drone lines impact on Russia’s finances come into play.

Around 30,000 Russian soldiers eliminated during the winter by the drone line alone amounts to close to a month of soldiers destroyed.

That’s well over $600 million down the drain.

And Ukraine is expanding the drone line so that it can repeat and grow this feat over and over.

It’s probably not too much of a stretch to assume that Ukraine’s $880 million investment into the drone line has already repaid itself and then some.

since March 2025 in soldier deaths alone.

A lot more is going to be coming with the expansion of the line.

Let’s return to the point about Putin’s attempts to manipulate Europe that we mentioned earlier.

On January 15th, the Moscow Times shared comments that Putin made in which the Russian leader suggested that he was ready to restore relations with the European countries that have been supporting Ukraine.

Russia was and remains committed to precisely these approaches and is ready to restore the level of relations we require.

Our relations have deep historical roots full of examples of mutually beneficial partnership and mutually enriching cultural cooperation.

Putin said this was a carrot on the end of a stick.

It’s also a sign of Putin’s desperation.

Russia’s leader is trying to convince Ukraine’s partners that abandoning Ukraine and allowing Russia to have its wicked way with the country is in the best interests of all involved, apart from Ukraine, of course.

It’s attempted manipulation at its most base.

And the very fact that the drone line exists at all showcases how badly this manipulation is failing.

While Putin dangles the carrot, the Netherlands is not only contributing to the drone line, but is actively working alongside Ukraine to expand it.

In other words, Putin’s manipulation attempts are only leading to yet more examples of cooperation between Ukraine and its partners.

We’re seeing this practically across the board.

In 2025, Europe essentially replaced the US as Ukraine’s main donor.

Chattam House reports that meant a 67% increase in military aid during the year.

The European Union has also approved a 90 billion euro or 104 billion loan to Ukraine that has been designed specifically to prop up Ukraine’s struggling economy so that it can continue its fight against Russia.

The UK has also pledged more support for Ukraine in 2026, as have many other countries.

So, it’s clear that whatever carrot Putin thought he could dangle is nowhere near tasty enough to convince Ukraine’s partners to withdraw their support.

If anything, that support is only growing stronger, and programs like the drone line prove it.

Right now, the Netherlands is Ukraine’s main partner on the project.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that other partners will come on board to provide more funding, which will only help Ukraine to scale its Russia destroying drone line even faster.

And those partners have a secondary motive beyond helping Ukraine.

The better and more effective that Ukraine’s drones and the tactics that influence their usage become, the more that the rest of Europe can learn about how to adapt their own military doctrines to account for precisely the kind of war that Russia wages.

Ukraine is even expanding the scope of its cooperation with partners outside of Europe and North America.

On March 4th, the Odessa Journal revealed that Ukraine is going to be working alongside the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to help them counter Iranian Shahid drones that have been causing problems for those nations ever since the US launched its campaign against Iran.

Putin might want to see that sort of cooperation.

It only means that Ukraine is building bonds with yet more countries, this time in the Middle East region, where Putin is trying to cling to influence.

More relationships could lead to further support for Ukraine, which again means possible expansion of the drone line and other programs.

And that only means more deaths across the entire front line.

With that, we return to Fedorov’s claim that Ukraine eliminating 200 Russian soldiers for every square km occupied would put an end to Russia’s advance.

Is that true? It seems very likely as Ukraine already seems to be at the point where it’s destroying more soldiers than Russia is able to recruit.

That’s according to Western officials reported on by the Telegraph who claimed that Putin’s forces have been suffering around 40,000 casualties per month since November at a time when Russia is recruiting 35,000 soldiers per month to
sustain the invasion.

One of those officials, Al Kahn, who is the UK’s armed forces minister, says that Russia’s attempts to recruit more are also becoming more and more difficult.

The reason Kahn’s claims is that people are realizing that it’s a one-way ticket when they sign up for Putin’s war.

The drone line is one of the reasons why.

As Ukraine’s drones deal out more death than they have ever done before, the average Russian, who will likely have seen many of their friends and family members take one-way trips to Ukraine, is taking notice.

The tens of thousands of dollars that the Kremlin is offering to each recruit are tempting, but it doesn’t mean all that much when Ukraine’s drones are snatching lives away at an incredible rate.

It’s only going to get worse for Russia from here on out.

The drone line is getting bigger and there’s nothing that Putin can do about it.

Another way to put all of this is that Ukraine has been turning the hunting of Russia’s soldiers using drones into a 24/7 McDonald’slike operation.

In fact, that’s precisely how we put it when we covered Ukraine’s Lazar group, which has been a massive influence on the drone line program.

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