SHEYIN Artyom Grigorievich: Aleksey Alexandrovich, describe the kind of end you believe we should be aiming for. Are we talking about carpet bombings? I don’t know—I don’t even want to say it out loud, but please describe it to me.

ZHURAVLYOV Aleksey Alexandrovich: What do carpet bombings have to do with it? We all understand perfectly well—take, for example, the Lviv region. He says 30 percent has been destroyed, 30 percent of the city is without power. Why 30? Why not 99.9? That’s what I don’t understand.

SHEYIN Artyom Grigorievich: When it’s 99.9 percent, what do you think will happen?

ZHURAVLYOV Aleksey Alexandrovich: After that—finish the job, destroy all the junctions, the bridges, so that nothing gets through to the West or the East. We’re already seeing that there's no Soviet weaponry left—they're only using Western ones. Everything’s Western. From gear to guidance systems. All from the West. Didn’t we know this would happen?

SHEYIN Artyom Grigorievich: Didn’t we know this would happen? Of course we did.

ZHURAVLYOV Aleksey Alexandrovich: That’s a whole separate issue. No, the point is, if we don’t destroy the entire infrastructure we’re talking about, then this will just keep repeating. In a month or two weeks, they’ll restore it—and we’ll be back to square one, or worse. Only worse.

SHEYIN Artyom Grigorievich: Only worse. And if we do destroy it to the extent you're talking about—what happens then, in your view?

ZHURAVLYOV Aleksey Alexandrovich: Then that green line you’re showing—it’ll start expanding immediately. Because how are you going to fight if you’ve got nothing left? It’s completely logical, from any standpoint. Logical. What’s more, we see the mobilization underway, our troops moving up. We know perfectly well: if we take some of our new recruits and put them into seasoned units, the outcome is totally different. First, it happens much faster. Second, naturally, they’ll learn more quickly. And of course, everything becomes more efficient. And yes, providing for our troops is absolutely essential. Look, I myself wore a bulletproof vest back in 2014—no one wore them back then. Remember how it was? Now I put one on—it feels completely different, I’ll tell you that. Even just holding the rifle, you need time to understand how to manage it.