The course of the war in Ukraine depends on how quickly Russia’s unmanned systems units are filled with personnel

Military analyst Valery Shiryaev said that the future course of the war in Ukraine will depend to a large extent on how quickly Russia can recruit personnel for its newly created drone forces.

He expressed this view in an interview on the YouTube channel Redaktsiya.

He recalled that Russia is now actively recruiting young people to sign one-year contracts for service in the drone forces. This is the only contract with a fixed term; in other Russian units, as in Ukraine, contracts are open-ended. In Shiryaev’s view, this shows how high a priority these forces are for Russia, as it is trying to recruit more qualified personnel into them.

At the same time, he said, a powerful information campaign has already begun to disrupt these efforts.

“And in the opposite direction, an amazingly powerful propaganda campaign has begun, saying that they will deceive you. That it’s a fixed-term contract, a trap, so they can later assign you all to assault units,” Shiryaev said.

He believes the goal of this campaign is to discourage students from joining the drone forces. Shiryaev explained that it has been launched because the drone forces “are at their peak and will decide everything,” and therefore “must be weakened by any means.”

“They will decide everything. You know, to this day in Russia they still do not have a commander-in-chief; one has not been appointed. Formally there are some deputies and so on. That points to very serious administrative, behind-the-scenes struggles,” the analyst said.

According to him, the future commander will influence procurement decisions “worth many, many billions, maybe tens of billions,” and will therefore have corresponding authority over those resources.

Earlier, media outlets wrote that Russia had managed to neutralize one of Ukraine’s main tactical advantages on the front by launching the Rubikon unit, which hunts drone operators.