77452 - Transcription of Podcast With US #56: Drones of shame

Ν. Lygeros

In this podcast we want to study the relation between Russia and Iran in the invasion in Ukraine. It’s related to the fact that the Russia army got new drones, the Witness -136. It’s from Iran. They’ve used it before, I mean the Geranium-2 was already something which was a new name of the same thing, but they said at last at that moment that they don’t use any arms like this. But now we know that they are using this kind of drones, low-cost drone which are made to kill and to destroy. So it’s not the usual drone used just to see something but it’s In fact ‘kamikaze’ drone. So low cost $20.000 up to $50.000. The point is to destroy infrastructure of Ukrainian civilians. And you see the difference, it’s not to target something which is only military, it’s specific for civilian targets. So they use this to destroy also the Ukrainian power stations and we know now their strikes. The Russians proved that they don’t have the level to do this by themselves. So they need Iran to do this job, the dirty job. The point now is not about deny, it’s about reality. But the problem for us is that it is relevant for our analysis, that the Russians have to change their mind about the invasion and have to use new kind of tools and weapons because they have many problems. The counterattack of Ukrainians is successful, so they want to use now those weapons to stop more or less the counterattack. But at the same time at the level of strategy it’s a proof that they don’t have the level to do it. So it’s in fact an operation that can be interpreted as a weakness. That’s the point we want to emphasize about this. So now it’s not about just hypothesis, it’s a reality. They use it for that reason and this is a new proof for their failure at the strategic level.