- A lot of people in the West like to say, you know, "The Ukrainians are so brave, they can do anything."

And many of my friends and soldiers tell me, "We're not superhuman.

We die, we bleed.

There are fewer of us than there were three and a half years ago."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music fades) - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today the war in Ukraine is entering a dangerous new phase.

In mid-September, Poland shot down Russian drones that entered deep into its territory.

A few days later, Romania's air force detected Russian drones moving across its borders.

And just days after that, NATO intercepted three manned Russian fighter jets violating Estonia's airspace.

Suddenly, the conflict that has consumed Ukraine for three and a half years feels one miscalculation away from spilling into NATO territory.

Meanwhile, inside Ukraine, the war looks very different from the one that Putin launched in 2022.

Russia is sending near daily drone swarms across the border.

Ukraine's civilians live under constant aerial threat, its soldiers are stretched thin.

So where does this war go from here?

How long can Ukraine hold out?

Is a peace deal at all a possibility?

I'm joined by the "Financial Times" chief Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

- Donald, I need your help.

They gave me 27 years just for trying to overturn an election.

- Boy, what kind of banana republic would punish a guy for that?

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor: Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (bright music) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform.

Addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Announcer] And by: Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

(lively music) Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York; Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities; and... (lively music) (graphic whooshes) (dramatic music) - Russia's war in Ukraine began as a 21st century David versus Goliath story.

Goliath had a massive army, tanks, Soviet-era artillery.

David had drones.

(drones buzzing) Soon it became clear that Russia's military was bloated, disorganized, rife with corruption.

Supply lines broke down, soldiers abandoned their tanks, casualties quickly mounted.

Meanwhile, Ukraine innovated.

They outmaneuvered Moscow's forces using cheap, nimble quadcopters armed with grenades.

But wars are long and Putin is patient.

Two years in, after embarrassing setbacks and staggering losses, Putin hit reset, and soon Russia began swarming Ukraine's skies with bigger and more powerful aerial attacks.

- The Russian forces have been carrying out their largest ever drone attack.

188 drones were launched overnight.

- [Reporter] 273 drones.

- [Reporter] 550 drones.

- [Reporter] More than 800 drones and 13 missiles were launched from Russia.

- September 2024 was the first month that Moscow sent more than 1,000 drones across the border.

Now it's averaging 5 to 6,000, including more than 800 in a single night, some of which struck Kiev's main government building in early September.

In 2022, Russia's biggest swarms topped out around 40.

So how did Moscow erode Kiev's early drone advantage so quickly?

(dramatic music) Step one: retool the military.

Putin replaced his longtime defense minister Sergei Shoigu with Andrei Belousov, an economist with no military background tasked with merging defense production and the Russian industry.

He streamlined supply chains, he brought in scientists, and he created a specialized drone unit called Rubicon that's been so effective that Russia is now building a whole new branch of its military dedicated only to drones.

Step two: it adopted new tactics.

Russia has learned to deploy their drones more effectively, overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses by flying in massive swarms, routing them along rivers and forests and sending in more decoys.

Step three: To prioritize production, Putin reoriented Russia's entire economy to create a drone manufacturing empire.

Factories now run around the clock, funded by state loans, staffed by students, by migrants, even by prisoners.

Leaning on China and Iran for parts and expertise, Russia is producing at least 30,000 attack-style drones a year, according to analysts, with over a million smaller tactical and FPV drones.

Those numbers are likely to double in 2026.

It's also improving the technology.

The Geran-2, which is Moscow's version of Iran's Shahed drone, can fly higher, it can carry more explosives, it's also more resistant to jamming.

Which brings us to the next phase: artificial intelligence.

Today, most drones still need human pilots, but AI-powered swarms will transform the battlefield, allowing drones to talk with each other and adjust tactics in real time.

Insert your own dystopian sci-fi nightmare right here.

Soon, a single soldier could control an entire robotic air force.

Ukraine is making advances of its own, striking Russia's oil refineries and energy infrastructure to wipe out refining capabilities.

It also has some advantages.

It has a vast archive of combat drone footage used to train AI, and that could help it leverage machine learning to regain its edge.

But for now, the scale favors Russia.

If 20th century warfare was defined by tanks and missiles, 21st will be about swarms of autonomous robots.

The winners will be whoever adapts the fastest.

Joining me to talk about how drones have changed Ukraine's front lines as well as life in its cities is Christopher Miller.

He's chief Ukraine correspondent for the "Financial Times."

Chris Miller, welcome to "GZERO World."

- My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

- You've been spending a lot of time, more than just about any Western journalists, on the ground in Ukraine, not just since the war has started, but, I mean, you know, since the precursors to the war have started, right?

Talk a little bit about how your experience of the war is changing, how Ukraine's experience of the war is changing.

- Sure.

So I've been in Ukraine for 15 years, so, as you said, even before not only Russia's full-scale invasion, but its covert, illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

- [Ian] In 2014.

- And the first war under the guise of a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, that summer.

You know, it's changed dramatically.

Fast-forward to 2022, what we saw was the first major land invasion in 80 years.

And we saw mechanized forces, heavy artillery, air forces used early on.

You know, this was a regular, conventional war.

That has since changed even more dramatically, and what we see now is a ground war where infantry are stuck in positions for not days-long or week-long rotations, but months.

I even know some Ukrainian soldiers who have been in positions for nearly a year.

And that is because we are looking at a high-tech war with artificial intelligence, drones, new swarms of drones, all types of robots, essentially, being used to wage war alongside these other conventional means.

So, in some ways, this war looks like the Second World War or even the First World War.

If you, you know, zoom in and you look at the trenches- - The trenches, sure.

- And the bunkers and that type of warfare, right?

There are heavy artillery systems that are being used that were used in the Afghanistan war in the '80s.

But there are now, with great prevalence, tens of thousands of drones in the air at any given time in eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine, being used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies.

Now, that has changed everything: the way war is fought, the fact that now we're only seeing small infantry forces of three to five, on the Russian side, advancing, you know, very slowly and methodically- - Three to five?

- Three to five soldiers.

- Individual soldiers.

- Individual soldiers.

So if, you know, your viewers will recall these long, snaking lines of armor tanks, you know, at the beginning of the war, dozens of soldiers, you know, advancing across the battlefield, now it's, you know, sabotage units of three to five guys at once.

And this is can be, this is done because of the prevalence of drones.

So nothing happens on the battlefield now that isn't seen by both sides' surveillance drones as well as these FPV, or first-person drones, that you've got a soldier 5, 10, 20 kilometers behind the front line- - Who's operating these drones.

- Who's operating these drones and viewing what's happening- - Essentially a virtual soldier, if you think about it.

- Of course, yeah.

You know, they're using a VR headset.

And they're sitting there, looking at a computer screen, and, you know, that's the way in which a lot of these soldiers are viewing the war now.

But because of the prevalence of these drones, you can only get these small groups of soldiers sort of penetrating areas in the front line.

Now, that means that, of course, Russia is taking huge losses.

Anything larger than these groups of, like, three to five soldiers would- - Get blown up by Ukrainian drones.

- Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

- Because they can see them.

- Exactly.

- Right.

No cover.

- So the war, it's a war of attrition now.

It's a real grinding war.

Russia's taking heavy losses.

And the battlefield in eastern and southern Ukraine has seen some changes this summer, but very slowly, right?

Russia's not advancing like it did in the first days of the war when it, you know, swept in and took bigger cities and went for hundreds of kilometers from, you know, the border of Crimea through southern Ukraine.

Now it's inch by inch, meter by meter.

- How far from the front lines is it possible to live as a civilian, on either side, given that nature?

- Well, it is determined by the length of the fiber optic cables that are attached to many of the drones that are being used now, or the ranges of the FPV drones that are being used, right?

So the Russians have drones that can fly 20 kilometers, 30 kilometers, 40 kilometers.

I've heard that they're experimenting with some that might be able to fly upwards of 50 kilometers.

Now, that's, you know, much larger than just a frontline area.

That is the width of, you know, numerous cities.

It could be the length of a road that spans two major cities in eastern Ukraine.

So I'll give you two examples.

Right now, there are two cities that Russia has in its sights, one is called Pokrovsk and the other is called Kostyantynivka, and both are in Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine- - Which they have illegally annexed, but they don't occupy.

- Correct.

Yes.

Putin claims these areas, all the way to their administrative borders, to be Russian territory, even though they don't control them completely.

And they want these cities very badly.

Trying to take them is difficult because these are urban environments.

Urban warfare is slow and plodding and grinding and bloody.

And so what they're using in conjunction with these drones are large aerial bombs that are equipped with wings, that can fly in and destroy giant city blocks.

So that's making life hell for the people who live in these cities, which used to be populated, you know, each tens of thousands, you know, 60,000 to 100,000 people.

Now there's a few thousand or in some cases a few hundred people.

- Living in these cities.

- Living in these cities.

And it's hell for them because if they are to leave, there is this constant buzzing of drones.

The prevalence of drones is everywhere.

So that's what life is like for the Ukrainians on the front line and also why we've seen this mass exodus from eastern Ukraine to the rest of the country and, you know, this flood of internally displaced people, and also more broadly, you know, the millions of refugees that now have, you know, arrived in Europe and even the US.

- Much of the reporting that we are seeing on the war in Ukraine is about longer range missiles, artillery bombs, and the rest that are being used against Kiev, against Lviv, against major cities across Ukraine, where civilians are targeted, as well as critical infrastructure, and are getting killed.

What's day-to-day life like?

How is it different when you are spending a lot of your time in still what one would call an act of war zone, right?

- I have an apartment in the capital, in Central Kiev.

And along with the other 4 million residents of that European country, or European capital, you know, I go to bed every night anticipating there to be another air attack.

They've become much more frequent.

This year, in 2025, we've seen Russia launch not only in greater frequency, but also in greater scale, these attacks using Iranian-supplied and designed drones, attack drones, you know, numerous types of missiles, including ballistic missiles, that are only really... Ukrainians are really only able to shoot them down using the American-supplied Patriot weapon systems.

And so we go to bed, you know, anticipating these attacks.

And, you know, like clockwork, usually between, you know, 10:00 PM and midnight, there'll be an air raid siren.

Everyone in the city has, you know, their own kind of personal plan.

My friends who have children, they run across the street to a bomb shelter, to the metro systems, which were designed after World War II to be bomb shelters- - As atomic, yeah, anti-strikes, yeah.

- And so, you know, myself and many others, we don't have bomb shelters in our buildings, so we sort of curl up in our bathrooms.

And everyone who doesn't have a bomb shelter has learned to live by this rule of two walls, which is: try to, if you can, place yourself behind at least two walls, one to take the initial impact, the second to take the shrapnel and debris from that so you won't be badly injured.

And then, of course, inevitably, these attacks happen.

And you can hear the buzzing and whirring of these attack drones, you know, huge reverberating explosions from the missiles, and then, you know, we don't sleep much.

And we get up in the morning and we look outside and we see the destruction wrought by these aerial attacks.

That might mean 20 people killed on one day, it can mean 40 people injured the next.

And then, of course, there are the attacks on energy infrastructure and other critical infrastructure.

Right now, that's a big focal point on the Ukrainian side as we head into the autumn and winter seasons.

So it's, you know, from the front lines to Kiev, all the way, as you mentioned, to Lviv in western Ukraine, near the borders of the EU and NATO, it's a war zone.

- So a lot of support for the Ukrainians right now, particularly from Europe.

And that doesn't seem to be, in any way, winding down going forward.

But hard to imagine how much longer the Ukrainians are going to be able to stand up, given what they're facing.

Not to say they're not courageous, not to say they don't care about their country, but this is just grinding, grinding attacks on the population at large and on a dwindling number of healthy men over 25.

Look, if you look forward, how resilient do you think the Ukrainians can continue to be?

- Look, I know the Ukrainians to be incredibly resilient, and they know themselves to be.

They're also astute observers and readers of Western media and they follow very closely what our leaders in the West say.

And one of the things that they've noticed is that a lot of people in the West like to say, you know, "The Ukrainians are so brave, they can do anything," and, "Look at them stand up to, you know, what was believed to be the second most powerful military in the world."

But they're getting tired of being framed that way and talked about in that way.

You know, many of my friends and soldiers tell me, "We're not superhuman.

We are the second part of that, human, just like you.

We die, we bleed.

There are fewer of us than there were three and a half years ago."

So you're right that there is a manpower problem.

The Ukrainians are very well aware of that; it is a very painful issue.

At the same time, the Ukrainians understand this is an existential war.

There is a sort of mantra that has been spoken by the Ukrainians since 2014, and that is, you know, "If Russia stops the war, there will be peace in Ukraine.

If the Ukrainians stop, there will be no more Ukraine."

- No Ukraine.

- Right?

- Yes, hear it all the time.

- And I do think that that's more or less accurate, right?

If the Ukrainians stop fighting, their country is going to look completely different than it does today, than it has for the last 30 years following its independence, you know, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

- If you're Putin... And you see that he can take the losses, clearly, in terms of his own population.

He's not showing a great deal of concern about that.

But the amount of time it's taking him to get very incremental gains on the ground in Ukraine is growing.

Is time necessarily on Russia's side here?

Is that the way that it is perceived?

- That is the way it's perceived.

I think that's right.

Perhaps not forever.

I don't think that he can continue the pace, the scale of the war that he's currently waging for many, many years to come.

But certainly in the short term, we're talking months, six months, a year, possibly upwards of two years, I think he can continue to wage his war as he is now.

You know, taking territory isn't the ultimate goal for him here, you know?

He takes territory and he uses the ground offensive as leverage, right?

He can dial it up and down.

Ultimately, what Putin wants to see is the destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign, independent state, and, you know, he wants to damage Europe and NATO as a cohesive, you know, security structure.

And so, you know, the people, his soldiers, as you mentioned, they matter much, much less for him, right?

He still is able, through recruitment, by using, you know, promising large salaries and bonuses, to get 30,000 plus soldiers every month to sign up.

He hasn't had to mobilize soldiers, except for the one time, I believe, in autumn of 2022.

Should he need to do that, I think then there might be a little bit more domestic pressure on Russia.

It's true that its economy is, you know, not great, right, but it's not overheating and they can continue prosecuting the war, I think, for at least several months, if not a couple of years.

This is also what the Ukrainian military and military intelligence believe and have told me.

- Now, I wanna give you at least a little time to talk about the diplomacy, since that's what you've been focused on of late.

Do you think that we are meaningfully closer to a diplomatic breakthrough today than we were, say, six months ago?

- No.

No, I don't think we're any closer.

And the simple reason is because Putin has not been made to be put in a position where he is forced to negotiate an end to this war.

We're seeing, you know, Putin go out and say publicly, you know, be very clear about what his goals are.

And those goals have not changed or shifted at all since 2022, when he launched his war.

He doesn't want Ukraine to exist as an independent country.

He is only ready to sit down at the negotiating table and negotiate away Ukraine's independence and sovereignty, and he said that.

He's not provided any serious concessions, so I don't think that we're any closer to a sustainable ceasefire, let alone a lasting peace, because Putin's positions haven't changed, and until his position does, we're just not there yet.

I think it is good that we're seeing the Europeans discuss a coalition of the willing to try to get more specifics, or more specific, rather, about what they're willing to provide should there be a ceasefire and a lasting peace, right?

Boots on the ground, intelligence on the part of the United States, air defenses, right, those are all crucial things that Ukraine will need.

And it will be great to get those guaranteed, in writing, should there be, you know, a ceasefire or a lasting, you know, solution to this war.

But that's not gonna happen until more pressure is applied on Vladimir Putin to get him to negotiate in earnest.

- And that pressure, as of right now, is being applied primarily and only ineffectively by the Europeans, in your view?

- Correct.

I mean, I think the Europeans can do much more, but I think the real pressure should come and probably will need to come from the White House, from the United States and the Trump administration, which has been, of course, hesitant to do so, right?

We've heard Donald Trump level threat after threat of new harsh sanctions, you know, against Vladimir Putin if he continues to prosecute his war.

We've heard Donald Trump air his, you know, grievances about feeling as though he's being, you know, led along by Putin and being frustrated about these attacks on civilian areas that continue.

- But so far, no impact.

- But so far, you know, what we hear from Donald Trump is, "I'll think it over.

And in two weeks time, several days from now, soon, you know, I might have to take some action."

But so far these have been empty threats and Vladimir Putin, of course, knows that.

- Chris Miller, thanks for joining the show.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

(gentle music) - And now to something slightly less disturbing than swarms of autonomous battle drones, but just slightly, I've got your "Puppet Regime."

- Donald, I need your help.

They gave me 27 years just for trying to overturn an election.

- Boy, what kind of banana republic would punish a guy for that?

- You must force Lula to free me.

Put sanctions on him, tariffs, anything, okay?

- I will handle that little communist.

(Lula speaking in foreign language) (phone ringing) - Hello.

- You listen to me, Lula.

The United States is ordering you, very strongly, to free Jair Bolsonaro.

- No.

- Oh, you too with the no, huh?

What, are you Vladimir Putin?

(sniffs) In that case, I'm going to put very strong tariffs and sanctions on you.

Is that what you want?

- Yes.

- Well, then I'm gonna... Wait a second.

You want that?

- Sanctions, tariffs, anything.

My approval rating is even lower than yours.

Give me your best shot, Donald.

- Fine, 50%.

- Yes.

Brazil will never bow down to America.

(crowd cheering) - What the (censored)?

60%.

- We will protect our democracy.

(crowd cheering) - [Citizen] Boo, Lula you're a tyrant.

- Ah, who was booing?

Send him or I have to find him.

- Oh, cracking down on free speech, huh?

(sniffs) I guess that makes two of us.

80%.

- We are not your colony.

(crowd cheering) - Ah, this is even harder than pretending to like soccer.

(Trump sniffs) (phone ringing) Dammit.

Give me a second.

Hello?

- Donald, how is it going?

Am I going to be free?

- Yeah, it's going, uh, (sniffs) it's going great.

Let me, uh, let me call you back.

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week if you like what you see, or even if you don't but you wanna build your own army of flying robots, we got you covered.

Just check us out at gzeromdia.com.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor: Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (bright music) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform.

Addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Announcer] And by: Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

(lively music) Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York; Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities; and.

(lively music) (triumphant music)