Ukraine Military History
Ukraine Military History is a podcast that delves into the operational details of warfare, focusing on the war in Ukraine. Co-hosts Rob Lee and Dmytro Putiata, both Marines and military analysts, analyze drone warfare, force structure, and frontline developments. Host Samuel Cook, a former West Point instructor, provides historical context on campaigns and doctrines that influence modern combat. Produced by the Borderlands Foundation, the show aims to preserve and teach lessons from Ukraine's conflict.
Episodes
Ep 21 – Russia Will Lose the Way It Lost Crimea: Andriy Zagorodnyuk
In the winter of 1855 the most powerful man in Russia put on a summer uniform, walked out into a St Petersburg winter, and inspected parades until it killed him. Nicholas I had started a war he was certain he could not lose: a million and a half men mobilised, the glory of beating Napoleon behind him, God on his side. He lost it in Ukraine. No decisive battle, no enemy at the gates of Moscow, half
Ep 20 – Ian Laffey on Why Ukraine Is the Only Market That Proves Your Weapons Work
They did not win the hackathon. They did not even place. Twenty-four hours in a room in Los Angeles, two hours of sleep, a 3D printer that would not cooperate, and somebody putting dubstep on at four in the morning to keep everyone upright. The judges said "cool, sounds good" and moved on. Ian Laffey posted what they had built, slept eighteen hours, and woke up to millions of views and a phone ful
Ep 19 – "A Foundation of Sand": Gen. David Petraeus on Getting the Big Ideas Right
Before this podcast had a name, it had General David Petraeus.This is the first interview the show ever recorded — Kyiv, 2023, during the counteroffensive, when Valerii Zaluzhnyi was still Commander-in-Chief and Petraeus had a new book a month from publication. We are releasing it from the vault now. The war has changed a great deal since. The argument has not changed at all.He commanded the 101st
Ep 18 – You Don't Have a Weapon, You Have a Toy: Eveline Buchatskiy on Ukraine's Defense Tech
In the autumn of 2022, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi pulled a book off his shelf — force ratios, artillery counts, manpower tables — and told the woman across from him that if he followed it, Ukraine would lose, for sure. Then he gave her a job: robotize the front line.That woman is Eveline Buchatskiy. A Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who moved to Kyiv in 2007, whose first Ukrainian investment bec
Ep 17 – "The Next Month Decides the Winter": Rob Lee & Francis Farrell Back From the Front
Built & Promoted with https://storyfunnels.ai🎓 Why War Matters — Sam's San Francisco talk for Defence Tech Founders https://ukraineforfounders.com/talk/Rob Lee and Francis Farrell have just come back from a week on the front line — Zaporizhzhia, the Donbas, Izium and Kharkiv on the way home. This is the debrief.They arrive with an argument that has a deadline in it. The first half of 2026
Ep 16 – "If You're Not in Ukraine, You're Not in Defense": Brave1 CEO Andrii Hrytseniuk
Ukraine's answer to the question every war asks — not who invents a weapon, but who fields it fast enough to win — has a name, and a CEO.Andrii Hrytseniuk runs Brave1, the platform the Ukrainian government built in 2023 to connect industry, combat units, ministries and universities into a single innovation engine. He is not a career soldier. He was a chief information officer at Ukraine's
Ep 15 – What Happens If Russia Mobilizes: Rob Lee & Francis Farrell on the Upcoming Winter
Built & Promoted with https://storyfunnels.aiFrancis Farrell is one of the very few English-language journalists who still goes right up to the front line in Ukraine. He is Australian, he arrived a week before the full-scale invasion, and he has spent four years reporting the war from the places most outlets can no longer insure their people to enter.Sam Cook and Rob Lee sit down with him in K
Ep 14 – Russia Is Learning Faster Than You Think: The Most Sophisticated Assault of the War
Build & Promoted using StoryFunnelsIn early August 2026, Ukraine got a new commander-in-chief. General Oleksandr Syrskyi was relieved, and Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi — forty-three years old — took over an army in the fifth year of a full-scale war. It followed the public fight over the firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that we covered in episodes 10 and 11.Sam Cook sits down in
Ep13 – Inside GUR's International Legion: An Elite Commander on Rat Tactics, the 80% Drone War, and the Future of Special Operations
His face is blurred and his voice is altered — because he is still fighting. In this episode, Rob Lee sits down with the commander of a separate special forces company in the International Legion of GUR (Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Directorate): a veteran of the SBU's elite Alpha unit who fought through the Battle of Kyiv, the Kherson counteroffensive, and Bakhmut before taking command
Ep #12 – Two Marines. One War. Both Captured. Shaun Pinner about Mariupol & Captivity
In this special episode, Ievgen Malik sits down with Shaun Pinner — British soldier, Ukrainian Marine, Mariupol defender, and fellow survivor of Russian captivity. The two served in the same battalion of the 36th Marines but in different units, fought through the siege of Mariupol from February to April 2022, and both ended up in Russian captivity — where they got to know each other.This is not a
Ep 11 – E-Points, Busification, and the Generals Nobody Can Fire: Inside the Army's Systemic Crisis
In Episode 10 the panel unpacked the politics of Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal as Ukraine's defence minister — the protests, the strategy clash with Syrskyi, and why soldiers took it personally. In Episode 11, they go deeper: Fedorov's explosive farewell press conference, where he published an 11-point list of systemic problems inside Ukraine's armed forces — and invited the country
Ep 10 – Zelensky Fires His Defense Minister: Soldiers Speak Out — Rob Lee, Ryan O'Leary & Dima Putiata on the Week That Shook Kyiv (Part 1)
On July 15, 2026, President Zelensky dismissed his entire cabinet — and with it, defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, six months into the job and, to many soldiers and civilians, the most effective minister Ukraine's military had ever had. Within a day there were protests in Kyiv. Two days later, we turned on the cameras.In this emergency panel — filmed in Kyiv on July 17 — Rob Lee sits down wit
Ep9 – "You Were Allowed to Breathe. That's All.": Ievgen Malik on Mordovia Prison and the Road Home (Part 2)
On February 7th, 2023, Ievgen Malik was told he was going home. He smiled. A prison officer looked at him and said: *"What are you smiling about? You're going to be beaten hundreds of times before you get home."* That was the truth. He was being transferred to Prison No. 10 in Mordovia — the hardest facility in his captivity — where he would spend the better part of a year.In this co
Ep8 – Captivity Is Ten Times Worse Than Mariupol: Ievgen Malik on the Fall of Mariupol and Russian Captivity (Part 1)
On April 9th, 2022, the Ukrainian garrison in Mariupol attempted a mass breakout. Around 400 men were killed in a single night. The attempt failed. Three days later, Senior Sergeant Ievgen Malik's unit — cut off, out of food, out of ammunition — made the decision to surrender. What came next took two and a half years.In this first of two episodes with Rob Lee — FPRI Senior Fellow and one of th
Ep7 – The Making of a Marine: Ievgen Malik on Poltava, the Decision to Fight, and the Last Stand at Mariupol
Ievgen Malik grew up in Poltava — one of the most historically loaded cities in Ukraine, home to the 1709 battle that ended the last independent Ukrainian hetmanate. He studied international relations in the Czech Republic, watched Maidan from abroad, and understood immediately what Crimea meant. He tried to enlist in 2014. His parents stopped him. In 2018, he went to Mykolaiv, signed a contract w
Ep 6 – Battalion That Killed Over 2,000 Russians in 2 Months – Rob Lee × UAV Commander "Shram"
Rob Lee sits down with Lieutenant Colonel Vladyslav "Shram" Tovstyi — commander of UAV Battalion "Corsair" within Ukraine's 38th Marine Brigade, operating in one of the hottest sectors on the Donetsk front. Tovstyi built the Corsair battalion from scratch in 2022, starting with two men and a Mavic, and scaled it into a five-division drone force that became a model for the e
Ep 5 – Rob Lee: Back from the Front — Ukraine Closes the Deep-Strike Gap (June 2026)
Rob Lee is back in Kyiv after another round of frontline visits — from Zaporizhzhia to Donetsk to Kharkiv — talking directly with frontline commanders and the R&D teams building the war's newest capabilities. In this episode Sam Cook stands in for Dmytro Putiata and interviews Rob on what's actually changed as of early June 2026.The headline shift: deep strike is no longer Russia's
Ep 4 –The Kill Zone: Drone Warfare & Brigade Autonomy – Rob Lee & Dmytro Putiata (Part 2)
In this second installment of *The First Draft of History*, analysts Rob Lee and Dmytro Putiata pick up where they left off to tackle one of the most defining features of the current war in Ukraine: the kill zone. Once just a couple kilometers deep, this lethal band of contested airspace and ground has expanded dramatically—now stretching 15, 20, or more kilometers along the front lines. Rob and D
Ep 3 – Why History Wins Wars: Gen. Zabrodskyi on Blitzkrieg & Mission Command
This episode began with a question from a Ukrainian brigade: how can military history help us fight better right now? Samuel Cook sits down with Lieutenant General Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, Hero of Ukraine, to answer it. They explore military history as a tool for creative thinking under fire, why Blitzkrieg was "a product, not a process," how mission command and decisions made at the right l
Ep 2 – Russia's Next Move: The Front Line Right Now — Rob Lee & Dmytro Putiata (Pt 1)
Rob Lee and Dmytro Putiata break down the war in Ukraine as it stands right now: a front line that has stabilized but stays fragile, and where Russia is putting its weight next. In Part 1 they get into Russian force redeployments across the Dobropillia, Pokrovsk and Oleksandrivka directions, Ukraine's deepening campaign against Russian operational depth — the "middle strikes" on logi
Ep 1 – Welcome to Ukraine Military History — Sam Cook & Rob Lee
Sam Cook, founder and executive director of the Ukraine Military History Institute, launches the inaugural episode of the Ukraine Military History Podcast. A former US Army officer and West Point history instructor, Sam shares his deep passion for military history and his personal commitment to Ukraine, where he has lived for eight years. He explains how this podcast is a culmination of his life's
