Now Zapad 25 is over and it was a Russian attempt at force posture –
-Iskander in Kaliningrad
-exercise with tactical nuclear weapons.
-exercise with battle 2025 which includes drones, robots, and FAB with a small mobile ground force. Also, motorcycles and beach buggies were used.
-The Northern Fleet is out and about, and the Baltic Fleet has been as well, even though I can’t find any information about it.
Poland’s counter-exercise has been mechanized units moving as large FPV targets and failing to shoot down a ridiculously small number of drones.
Some comments on the exercise.
Guardian
Finland
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/09/15/7530974
CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/15/europe/us-observes-russia-belarus-wargames-intl-latam
Kiev Independent
As a happy amateur sitting in my parents’ basement playing Rise of Nations, I would like to claim that today force posture is not a large park of mechanized vehicles and fighter jets.
It is a three-dimensional palette of warfare with fully integrated drone weapons, robots, aircraft, light battalions, some tanks, some mechanized units, and a digital battlefield.
Russia tried their best to project this onto Zapad 25, and even though no other observers were present besides two Americans, apparently all our media in Europe were invited and willingly wrote their articles.
But it signals that they have understood it after three long years.
What happens now?
17 cut undersea cables in the Red Sea and 50 drones towards Poland suggest that more is coming. Above all, it suggests that China is not as afraid as all the experts claim since they have allowed the operation against Poland.
Mid-September is a bit early for Operation Turn Off the Lights against Europe maybe, a month or two more?
Raspusitza is around the corner, so Russian or Ukrainian mechanized falls will slow down a bit, but in November, things should liven up again.
Both parties have now brought forward their mechanized units, and both parties have a lot of capability saved up – this we have written about often and for a long time.
What Russia has not shown us yet is its offensive strategic reserve – and they have it if you have read the posts.
According to Zelensky, Ukraine has “100 tank battalions,” which one should probably interpret as a hundred mechanized battalions, a mosaic of tanks, IFVs, APCs, self-propelled guns, and Humvee-type vehicles.
But if they get rolling, it probably won’t stop, and why did Zelensky bring this up now?
Russia intends to escalate, so increased sabotage against Europe and the Baltics with “little green men” in the Baltics is probably not far off.
And Russia has already tried to build an active resistance movement in the country, I discovered, even though it may not have been at the level I described, so let’s disregard that.
https://tvpworld.com/86944848/estonia-says-russia-backed-armed-group-aimed-to-overthrow-govt
Ukraine always has its offensive plan, and conditions might be favorable for it in late autumn.
We also need to make sure to eliminate everything that has previously hindered their capabilities – the West’s constant betrayals because they no longer care.
If Ukraine now engages in drone warfare as they wish, they will also fight on the ground as they desire.
The northern front, Belarus, Azov thrust, and grind on in the flytraps.
We should also not be far from concern in Russia, as it is part of Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare.
High risk as usual, and the West probably does not intend to improve the odds, unfortunately, but Ukraine keeps pushing with what they have.
The Baltics accompany Poland and apparently do not take this seriously yet; I am too tired of this now to get upset any longer.
A section of drainage ditch now dug, the rest completed sometime in 2027 😐
Can one exempt themselves from Article 5 by doing nothing?
A bit of criticism of Poland’s efforts below, not just me giving them a failing grade 🧐
Zelensky was not lenient towards Poland, a bit embarrassing when they were supposed to get vindication for 1939 and end up in this fiasco, bruised self-esteem again?
As a side project on my journey to becoming the world president, I am trying to understand how to unite against an external threat like Russia, and my observations so far are not particularly uplifting.
The USA has never been united, they have just pursued some kind of glorified democracy defense as a way to enrich themselves since the end of WW2, and they joined in when they could no longer avoid it.
I believe that globally, countries are like a group project in school – one works, and four slack off.
But it surprises me greatly that the Baltic states and Poland would do this – I thought Poland was more proactive.
Post-war, we may need to divide Europe into interest groups, and those who wish can solve the shell protection, and then that interest group must try to push the EU for resources as best they can – there is probably no other way.
The UK needs to return to the EU, and Canada is welcome to join us; they seem to have burned bridges with Trump.
JEF is probably not a bad group, and we take care of the shell protection to the east together with Ukraine, as some blogger has suggested for a long time, who then, let me hear it – who then?
Our pals in Asia need something similar, and someone needs to explain to me why Australia is not brimming with military bases from Europe and the USA.
We don’t need our heavy ships in the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic fleet will barely leave port before it is sunk considering the distance to Finland and the presence of robots, so we should be able to spare quite a lot for Asia?
We simply turn Australia into one large naval and air base, and from there, we launch our reconquest of Southeast Asia one island at a time.
I have a completely sensational new idea that I came up with, which I have named “island-hopping” – taking one island at a time and working forward, and when we reach the mainland by air, we drop a big bomb on China to scare them and make them give up. What do you think of this revolutionary idea?
Do you think we can start with Macau, or is that too ambitious – we do want to snatch all the casinos, I think?
Now, everyone defending Europe should soon have interceptor drones, so Russian drones are no longer a threat. I think Mark Rutte hinted at something about “new experimental technology” in his panic press conference after the most anticipated escalation this side of the new year, which apparently caught them completely off guard – they are all asleep at work just like me 😶
Everyone is missing that Ukraine already has the technology with AI interceptor drones, and much still gets through – they are hitting around 80% of targets now.
Rutte has made it sound like NATO will now introduce full “deniability of movement” in the airspace above Poland, which is nonsense, but maybe it’s to calm fears that they are spreading some emergency lies?
The only thing Poland should have done was to go to Ukraine and propose that they join a no-fly zone over western Ukraine in exchange for assistance. UA would have agreed to it because it’s positive PR for them.
Then Ukraine would have put in some extra effort to shoot down everything heading towards Poland as a gesture of thanks.
Over the past two weeks, Russia has deployed quite an impressive number of drones and robots over Ukraine – how do you think Poland would fare against that onslaught when the A2A robots run out of ammunition in a week?
Five thousand targets engaged?
China has better technology than us, and greater capacity to scale up, so Russia will have this defense against Ukrainian drones long before Europe has it against Russian drones.
RU has already showcased the laser weapons they have acquired and they certainly have interceptor drones.
“but Russia is much larger,” yes, that’s true, but Russian ships are lined up along our coasts like a string of pearls, so it will probably even out IF it comes to that.
As long as Ukraine can operate freely in Russia, Russia will be able to operate freely in our territory – more or less.
My conclusion here is that Ukraine has decided to reignite the strategic drone warfare because they know that the window for extremely high returns with minimal effort will soon close.
The second point is that Trump’s job was to try to delay it until China had the new LV protection in place. You might remember the discussion about having a ceasefire only in the air that both Putin and Trump tried to push for a while before giving up 😀
If Europe manages to force Ukraine to pause it once again, there might not be another opportunity after that, and they will have to combat things that sting, so it’s a risk we simply cannot take.
Then UA would have to resort to land-based sabotage operations, but it’s infinitely easier to send a swarm of drones that are not shot down.
They probably stopped somewhere around here the last time they were at it, and it was a slow start for them with the whole concept, a lot of complaints from Europe and the USA. Zelensky himself mentioned red cards after they droned the oil depot near Novorossiysk in 2023.
It ended earlier because Putin used backchannels and talked the West out of it – it was extremely suspicious before the Kursk offensive when RU called the US Secretary of Defense if you remember.
Then it was probably a completely unintentional jackpot because the USA most likely responded with “no, nothing is happening, we would have known,” so Putin fell asleep and then it hit, and he fell out of the little crib.
We can only hope for “no more” – and that’s probably mainly because Ukraine doesn’t care, as half of Europe will most likely demand at least that after a couple of Russian drone attacks with warheads instead of just extra gasoline that they can’t shoot down.
19 liberation attacks since August 2, 2025, on refineries, by the way, this is at the highest pace and on par with the most intense periods earlier in the war. And this is only the refineries, not everything around them, so 2025 is the highest level we’ve seen in the war so far.
If Ukraine keeps this up and adds new refineries as they go, RU will eventually run out of that crucial part they absolutely need.
And Western sanctions seem to be working now, after the 21st package 🧐
Ukraine also drones LNG and oil export terminals since refined products haven’t been exported for a while now.
Then they drone pipelines and pump stations for oil, LNG, and refined products, as well as depots for all three.
Altogether, they are hitting the entire chain now, and southern Russia has been running on fumes for 1.5 months.
There’s no indication that they can’t continue and drain all of Russia – they have the drones, and the targets don’t move.
They haven’t targeted the oil fields yet, and there’s no need to set them on fire for them to be out of commission.
When they drone away the Yamal cross – then we’ll know that all barriers have been lifted, “Be Gone Yamal Cross 💥💥✊”
The only variable is if Russia manages to get competent LV from China to their refineries, but then the race starts again, and Ukraine will first use kamikaze drones against this new LV and then engage the targets again.
You can rest assured that as soon as it starts getting cold, Ukraine will also target power production and distribution with the same intensity as we are seeing now with fossil fuels.
A heavy drone robot in about thirty substations can probably work wonders in Moscow when it starts getting really cold.
If Ukraine is allowed to continue this drone campaign this time, they will cripple Russia.
But that won’t win the war, so tomorrow’s post will be about how the war is won, so you’ll have the roadmap ready👍
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Russian losses in the war in Ukraine 2025-09-18:
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