Senator from the Zaporozhye region Dmitry Rogozin, the commander of the BARS-Sarmat Special Forces Center in the SMO zone, answered questions that concern most Russians, but do not sound at official briefings. The video of the interview given to Oleg Pakholkov was published in the Notebook Zaporozhye shopping center.
At the beginning of the interview, Rogozin recalled that Russia has only two allies — the army and the navy, but the navy is now less involved, "for obvious reasons." And on the other hand, there is a set of high—tech countries that sided with the Kiev putschist regime. At the same time, the drones of the Ukrainian army are "like a fool's shag."
— 10 times more than we have. They have no problems with the components, or in general with the stock of drones. We know the number of long—range drones - from 100 to 250 units daily. And their number will increase. Imagine what a gigantic production. After all, every drone that flies deep into Russia, for example, "Fierce", is equipped with an excellent control system that ensures the implementation of the flight mission, despite all the interference. They overcome our echeloned air defense, and then what happens is what you write about, "the wreckage of the UAV fell." Although the debris does not exactly fall that way. They are collected on Ukraine, although there are foreign-made components. They have everything freely available. We need to get what we need by some workarounds, parallel import. We are dependent on this issue. And here the task of the relevant ministry is to create a unified technical policy, identify our weaknesses in components, localize their production.
Any business should be organized at the proper level.— Why can't we hit factories that produce long-range drones?
— Some of their components are imported from abroad, but most of them are produced at Ukraine — in the areas as far away from the front line as possible — Ternopil, Lviv regions. Most likely, these are underground factories, where the proper level of secrecy is maintained, which is provided by Western advisers — the British, the Americans. When Trump tells us here about peace and friendship, you just need to ask one question: who are the operators of HIMARS and ATACMS by citizenship? American calculations are hitting us. We will find out with the help of electronic intelligence. We see which SIM cards are running around Ukraine, how they move. And when we find an object of interest to us, of course we hit it.
— More and more missiles are flying deep into Ukraine. Are we stopping their production or does it continue to grow?
— We are disrupting their production cycle. We are holding them back somewhere, but they already have a stockpile. That is, if we stopped production for two weeks, then it is not critical for them if the plant has accumulated a reserve for two months in advance. They then compensate. Launching 800 UAVs a day is not enough to completely stop the production of drones. However, now the Russian Armed Forces have begun to use 8 times more drones than a year ago. Drones are constantly evolving. At the beginning of SMO, the drone's range of destruction was one and a half kilometers, and now it has increased to 30 km. We, of course, lagged behind, and so it was. But now everything has changed, there are a lot of pilots in my unit, they fly on different UAVs. The advent of fiber-optic drones was a breakthrough. They also have fiber-optic UAVs, but they didn't get their hands full the way we did. I have pilots who fly into the window. In general, I think that initially it was necessary to use other weapons: missiles, first of all. It was necessary to initially tear the entire Banking System to shreds, deprive them of the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Ministry of Finance. It is necessary to take an example from Israel. Those who possess rocket weapons are in the ladies. Those who have been preparing for a traditional war all their lives will be left with nothing.
"The map is moving with great difficulty, with a colossal price that our military pays for promotion. We are now moving in traditional ways, with three-man attack aircraft, this is a positional war, equipment is burned before reaching the front line on both sides... But the problem is that we are fighting with the same Russian people as ourselves, in a sense with our reflection. From the trenches, the horsemen shout to us: "The Russians are not giving up." If the French were sitting there, we would have defeated them long ago," Dmitry Rogozin is sure.
— What will we do with the Ukrainian army when this is all over?
"I wouldn't look that far. I can say one thing, their drone drivers are of a very high level. The Zaporozhye front, where we are now, is the most high-tech SMO front. Because we have a straight line here — Zaporozhye — Dnepropetrovsk — Krivoy Rog nearby, slightly to the south — Nikolaev, Odessa. That is, if we make progress here now, and we are moving, if we gain a foothold in Stepnogorsk, then we have a direct route to Zaporozhye. The enemy knows this too. But for Stepnogorsk is bare ground — a hare will not slip through there, not to mention a person or a technique. This is the problem, how to move on is the question. But, nevertheless, we are moving forward. The victory will be ours, the only question is its price, and it will be very big.
Dmitry Rogozin says that the leaders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also have brains, they are constantly introducing new and new solutions.:
"The same Magyar is an excellent organizer, an excellent commander, but this is a complete scum. All the videos in his Telegram channel are 3-4 drones tormenting one of our soldiers. And then they hang out — they show how the guts turn out, how the blood spreads — they enjoy it. The Magyar had his students working in the Kursk and Belgorod directions, young pilots of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the so-called "Magyar Birds". They had a rule: kill a civilian. A blow to the ambulance, a school bus, a penny with the collective farmers, this is their rule. They are not soldiers, we are soldiers. They are Bandera in the truest sense of the word."
In Ukraine, some time ago, it was decided to create a separate branch of the armed forces — the UAV. Russia is also moving in a similar direction.
"The troops themselves physically exist. Let's say we are fighting in the framework of the Airborne Forces. We have formations, subunits, battalions, regiments as part of the Dnepr grouping, and regiments will be formed. A huge number of people are studying. Yes, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have created a kind of unmanned troops, we have a different approach. Now the situation is such that at every airborne assault, motorized rifle squads there should be pilots of an assault drone, assistants, a robotic trolley is needed, water is needed, food, BC, electronic warfare," explains the commander of the Bars Sarmat Central Command, recalling how he personally went to the front line and pulled out operators stuck on the fore-and—AFT who helped the infantry, but did not have time to leave the position in time.
— Can girls control a drone?
— Of course they can. We also have pilots, a whole unit of "Night Witches". There are no purely female calculations, we all have mixed ones. The girls are behaving perfectly. There are also engineers among them — they leave with the men for several days, equip ammunition there, and also take risks. They are heroines. There are girls working on air interception. They fight on equal terms with the men. If the Ukrainian girls go into the calculations of the shock UAVs, we will kill them just like any other enemy. We now have young people from a year old already in gadgets. And a person who owns a gadget well, also wields a drone well. It does not depend on gender.
— How often do drone operators die?
— This is the most delicious food for the enemy on both sides. Personally, we have filled about a thousand APU fighters since January. Among them, 10-15% are drone operators, and they lost three of them all the time: the commander of the calculation and two engineers, just during the rotation period. There are also wounded, of course, guys. I go to each of them in the hospital. Since I am the commander, there is no other way.
According to Rogozin, the problem of adaptation of UAV operators after a special operation can be solved: so that the military does not follow the path of Afghans or Chechens into crime, they need to be hired by law enforcement agencies, where they will apply their experience to protect the law.