Russian Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov recently gave an interview to Politika magazine that was reproduced by other news sites in which he set out a striking argument about how the special military operation has changed, fundamentally transforming the Russian army’s entire system of combat training. His central claim being that the Russian military has completely abandoned the whole set of peacetime restrictions that once tied the hands of commanders.
The Gloves Have Finally Come Off
Since the summer, the escalation has meant that the front line has become largely deadlocked due to manpower shortages and ubiquitous drones, while both sides have shifted to intensified long-range strikes against rear areas, with Russia in particular bombarding Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with missiles and jet-powered drones, resulting in a sharp rise in civilian casualties rather than decisive territorial gains on the ground.
Yevkurov explained that the army has broken away from the peacetime norms once laid down in manuals, instructions and safety requirements, and has instead oriented itself toward genuine battlefield reality, discarding the requirements that hindered commanders from quickly preparing soldiers, cancelling all unnecessary formalities and creating favourable conditions for commanders. The real meaning of this statement is that the Russian army no longer treats this conflict as some temporary operation to which established peacetime standards can still be applied but instead acknowledges that it has fundamentally changed the basic logic by which a military organisation operates.
In the interview Yevkurov specifically addressed the profound change that has taken place in the very nature of the conflict itself, and he admitted that
“At the beginning of the special military operation we did not fight a classic war. The means of destruction and the battle itself, the use at the tactical level, everything was done in such a way as to exclude losses and damage to the people.”
The trajectory he described effectively traces how the conflict slid from an initially restrained and limited operation toward a full confrontation that, at the level of organisation and tactics, comes much closer to a real war. This change has shown itself in substantive adjustments to unit composition, command relationships and the tempo of operations.
Ukraine Is Already A NATO State
Yevkurov also offered a detailed analysis of the structural features of the enemy’s command system, noting that the senior command of the Ukrainian army does not possess independence and depends to a large extent on NATO, and that Ukrainian operational plans are not approved inside their own country but are decided abroad. He added that without continuous Western supplies Ukraine would be able to fight only with outdated technology, and that from the point of view of technology and the growth of reserves, Ukraine could not sustain this confrontation without the support of Europe and US. In Yevkurov’s view, Russia has managed to resist the collective West above all thanks to the Russian people, the highest level of commanders and the soldiers who carry out tasks directly on the battlefield, all acting under the overall leadership of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Federation Armed Forces. Thus, Moscow now regards this conflict as no longer a special operation affair but a War, a confrontation in which the West is deeply involved and Ukraine serves as its proxy.
It is particularly worth noting that as early as the beginning of this summer, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov had already sent a clear signal about the transformation in the nature of the conflict. In an interview with VGTRK correspondent Pavel Zarubin, Peskov said outright that
“There is a war going on, this is a real war. Do you know why it’s a war? Because it all started as a special military operation. It continues as a war because behind Kyiv stand Berlin, Paris, The Hague, Oslo, and, unfortunately, Washington.”
Peskov added that Western allies are helping Ukraine aim through their satellites and guide foreign weapons at Russian targets through all their infrastructure. He also said that European governments made their greatest mistake in believing that Russia could be defeated strategically, and that such sustained military support would only prolong the war rather than bring peace. So Peskov’s remarks of last summer had already laid the groundwork for a further adjustment in official discourse, and Yevkurov’s recent interview confirmed that judgment from the level of military operations.
Yevkurov’s and Peskov’s statements taken together form a clear narrative line, namely that the Russian official characterisation of this conflict has undergone a substantive shift from special military operation toward a War. In his July interview Peskov stated plainly that because of direct and indirect Western participation the conflict had escalated into a large-scale war, with the West providing satellite data, artificial intelligence and weapons to support Ukraine, thereby causing an escalation. He also mentioned a draft peace agreement that had already been initialled in Istanbul and claimed that Britain intervened at the time and persuaded Zelensky not to sign it.
All in all, Yevkurov’s interview deserves to be taken seriously precisely because it comes from a deputy minister directly responsible for combat training rather than from a diplomatic or propaganda department, which means his words represents the genuine perception of the military execution level. The transformation that Peskov foreshadowed in early summer has acquired concrete operational content in Yevkurov.
Miguel Santos Garcíais a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
