This is John Batchel, a conversation with Foundation of Defense of Democracy's John Hardy on the

conflict in Ukraine. The drone campaigns by the two sides look similar, but then they're not coming up

with similar results, called medium strike ranges, medium ranges.

The Ukrainians have an advantage that the Russians do not.

It's called Starlink.

Here's John to explain.

More of this tonight.

The Russians have done this.

I think it's not, does not seem to me to be as concerned in effort the way the

Ukrainians are kind of going after Russian logistics. And I think for the Ukrainians, you know,

in terms of things like, you know, air defenses, for example, that's just not as target rich in

environment, you know, given Ukraine's kind of paucity of short and medium range air

defense systems. So with the Russians, you still see more of an emphasis on kind of deeper

strikes, targeting energy infrastructure, for example. But we have seen, you know, going back

to last year and actually earlier, but I think it kind of

ramped up last year that the Russians using their Garan series drones that kind of, they're modified

versions of their running Chehed 136, four strikes on like tactical targets and modifying some

of them to drop mines, for example. I think what's challenging for them is they

don't have Starlink, which for the Ukrainians, they often put Starlink on these mid-strike

drones, and that enables you to have operator control and to strike dynamic targets even beyond the radio horizon.

And the Ukrainians are also getting some valuable assistance from Western companies,

especially Eric Schmidt from former Google CEO, his perennial autonomy, which is supplied

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