
The Briefing Room Four years of war in Ukraine - when will it end?
26 snips
Feb 26, 2026 Rebecca Lissner, U.S. foreign policy expert and former national security adviser, Mark Galeotti, Russia scholar and military historian, Dr Jack Watling, land-warfare analyst, and Christopher Miller, on-the-ground FT correspondent. They discuss stalled negotiations over Donbas, drone-dominated warfare and changing battlefield tactics, manpower pressures on both armies, and the severe civilian toll from infrastructure attacks.
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Drones Redefined The Kill Zone
- Drones and accurate long-range fires dominate the battlefield and extend the lethal zone far beyond traditional front lines.
- Jack Watling describes a 20–30 km kill zone driven by FPV and fiber-optic drones that forces forces underground and limits movement.
Fishing Nets And Fiber Optic Drone Details
- Christopher Miller observed soldiers covering highways with fishing nets to stop small FPV drones.
- He also described fiber-optic drones using a hair-thin cable making them hard to stop except by clipping the line or using a shotgun.
Old Tech Won By Scale And Tactics
- The technology itself isn't new but mass production and troop-level adoption made it decisive.
- Jack Watling explains 1980s-era tech now scaled at battlefield level, forcing new combined tactics like Kupyansk operations.





