Mariia Berlinska: The best-case scenario is to take up active defence and build a 40-km-deep mined strip along the front line

Mariia Berlinska is one of the most prominent Ukrainian volunteers. She has been promoting the importance of using technology in war for many years. As she puts it herself, she "spreads the religion of technology".

Thanks to Mariia's team, the People's Drone programme was launched, and over 20,000 UAV operators have completed courses developed by the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Centre that she founded. Berlinska's advice and forecasts sometimes sound too pessimistic to civilians, but they always enjoy widespread support among soldiers.

Not long ago, the Ministry of Defence came in for harsh criticism from Mariia when she was one of the authors of a much-talked-about article, Umierov's Ministry of Chaos. Ukrainska Pravda spoke to Mariia about the vital changes needed in the defence sector, a meeting of NGOs with President Zelenskyy, and changes in approaches to mobilisation.

"If Russia has the resources to reach Lviv, it will reach Lviv"

We've been through different stages of this war.

The surge of enthusiasm at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the liberation of Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts, the failed counteroffensive, then what Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief, has described as a stalemate, deadlock. What stage of the war are we at now, in your opinion? We are at the point where the Russians are on an active offensive and they are succeeding.

They will continue this offensive because it makes sense for them: I would not stop at all if I were them. We are at war against the combined military-industrial complex of not only Russia, but also China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and many other proxy allies, whether open or covert. And unfortunately, Western countries are supplying the Russians with components for drones, missiles, aircraft and other equipment.

So we are at the point where the enemy has learned from its mistakes, regrouped, and decided to keep going to the end. Analysts at The New York Times have described the Russians' latest actions as a way out of the stalemate. Would you agree with them?

There is no positional artillery war. One side has the advantage and the momentum, and it is very clear which. You only have to look at the DeepState map to understand everything.

Yes, we can see the obvious advance of the Russians on DeepState.

But we expected the Russians to encircle and occupy Pokrovsk in September 2024. It's November now, and they are a few kilometres away from Pokrovsk. So they are advancing, but at a very slow pace.

Will this pace of progress continue? I would look at it from a broader angle. Right now we take it for granted that Ukraine is functioning and has a banking system, coffee shops and public transport - that is, we still have statehood, and the basic economic, cultural and political processes are still there.

But this is a miracle, to be honest. People get used to good things very quickly. The fact that Pokrovsk has not yet been captured is purely down to the heroism of the Ukrainian people.

They are holding on to every forest belt and every metre to the last. Volunteers are going all out to raise money for drones. And among the mediocre commanders, there are still some decent people who stay with their units to the last.

They get killed and wounded, but they cling to every metre. This is the only explanation as to why Pokrovsk is still ours as of November 2024. With such dense artillery fire, intense aircraft activity, thousands of aerial bombs falling on us, and the Russians constantly improving their tactics, it is a miracle.

The Russians aren't shy about learning from us, and they are adopting our best practices and scaling them up all the time, including in terms of technology. We're at the point where the enemy has decided to keep going to the end. And if we compare this to sport in a cynical way, they're somewhere in the 3rd, maximum 4th, round, and we're somewhere in the 10th or 11th round.

Is that in terms of the level of exhaustion?

Yes, exhaustion. We're increasingly on the ropes [getting tired - ed.], and they've just got this war machine going. So they're not feeling the catastrophic nature of the losses yet.

They cover the issue of the lack of personnel mostly by paying huge amounts of money when people sign contracts [to join the army]. And also, it's a one-way street. That is, you can't leave the army; you're just stripped of everything and that's it.

So by signing a contract and getting, say, tens of thousands of dollars, they're signing up to stay there until the end. The Kremlin elite understands that losing the war or failing to achieve any visible results wouldn't just mean political death for them - it would also mean actual death. It could mean a rebellion within Russia, it could mean irreversible processes that have already started.

That's why they're not letting go of the situation and they'll throw as many resources into this fire of war as they have to, non-stop.

"Achieving results" is not limited to the occupation of Donetsk Oblast and the full consolidation of control over Donbas. Do I have that right? Putin will take exactly as much as we give him.

This isn't about administrative borders. If they can capture Zaporizhzhia Oblast - the whole of Zaporizhzhia Oblast - they'll do that and they'll fight for it. If they can advance towards the city of Dnipro, they'll advance towards Dnipro.

I've noticed that Ukrainians are often under the illusion that it's enough to give something to Putin - just make some sacrifice and he will stop. But Russia only understands force, I know that for sure. I also know for sure that Russia will take exactly as much as we give.

And if they have the resources to reach Lviv, they will reach Lviv. This is why I've said multiple times that it's very important to think like the enemy. The enemy thinks like a maniac.

I was shocked by the figures even for September 2024: Russia received 200 ballistic missiles from North Korea which it used to target our cities, while the number of missiles we received from all our partners during that time was less. That being the case, what can we do to counteract not even Russia alone, but Russia and its allies? First of all we have to accept reality and not allow ourselves to be lulled into sleep.

Secondly we have to be aware of the worst-case scenario. What is the worst-case scenario for you, as of November 2024? The worst-case scenario is that we would gradually turn - this is starting to happen now - into one of the main battlefields in a Third World War between the Axis of Evil countries and democratic countries.

We'd become one massive military training ground. And the worst-case scenario is also if, on the one hand, the countries in the Axis of Good don't wake up in time and realise that they need to provide resources - and maybe even their soldiers - as quickly as possible. And on the other hand, if we don't have unity and consensus amongst ourselves, we'll lose our fighting spirit and be demoralised.

After that we'll lose control of the troops, and after that, we'll gradually lose our statehood as such in principle. Given the inaction of Western countries, internal strife within Ukraine, and maximum consolidation with its Axis of Evil allies, could Russia conquer us? Yes it could, completely.

I'm not even talking about just left-bank Ukraine [on the left (east) bank of the Dnipro River - ed.].

Mariia Berlinska.Photo: Mariia Berlinska on Facebook

In recent months, I've had the impression that our European partners want to do whatever they can to freeze the war. They say they have a lot of domestic problems of their own. What could make these people realise that this is a threat to them as well?

You see, crime is organised, and we are not. Terrorists and maniacs are organised now, but the Western world, unfortunately, is very polarised and does not fully understand the existential threat to the very system of coordinates, the very rules of the game, because the countries of the so-called Axis of Evil are aiming to extrapolate their own worldview to this territory. If you compare this to what went on in history, these are new pastures, new resources.

They want to plant their tribes here.

The best-case scenario is not the 1991 borders today. We need to forget about that

You had a meeting, off the record, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. You speak with the command, and with the heads of some important ministries responsible for our defence capability.

Do those in power have this understanding of the threats facing us now? I have noticed that there is a desire to listen, and some ideas are accepted. I've also noticed that unfortunately we have a lot of processes that are done manually, from the most strategic level.

What else have I noticed? The worse the situation gets, the more they want to listen. To listen, or to look for people to share accountability with?

Perhaps both. Put it this way: I have considered it my duty these past 10 years [since Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 - ed.] to go around repeating the same mantra: drones will determine the course of this war, technology will determine the course of this war. We need to prepare the public, improve people's skills and knowledge, and change the way we think about the entire war.

We need to stop thinking that it won't affect us or that we just have to make a small sacrifice. Truces with Russia will lead to an even bigger war. That's why I believe that we need to train the entire population for resistance, to fight intelligently and technologically.

And believe me, this can be done absolutely everywhere. My team of volunteers and I are ready to take this on and make sure that at least 10,000-20,000 people in each oblast know how to fight with ground robots, and aerial robots, and understand software and communications. I understand that you've spoken about this with the Ministry of Defence and at your meeting with the President?

I repeated one simple point: the only process that will help us is technological militarisation in society. That means that everyone in the tribe should be able to produce or use technology to protect themselves and their tribe. So that it won't be a human being going forward to reconnoitre, but an aerial drone flying or a ground drone covering fire, mining, demining, dealing with logistics, etc.

I've already talked about the worst-case scenario; now let's move on to the best-case scenario. There's definitely going to be some mud-slinging in the comments from people without critical thinking skills, but the best-case scenario (no matter how blasphemous it may sound now, we must tell the truth) is not the [internationally recognised - ed.] 1991 borders today. We need to forget about that.

This may become our reality, but with a good forecast, it will take years. We are not giving up our land, we are not giving up Crimea and Donbas. But we have to remove the idea that this should happen in a year from public discourse.

It will take years, with a good forecast and with proper, very comprehensive preparation. Right now, the best scenario is to take up active defence and build a 30-40-km-deep echeloned, fortified, mined strip along the entire line.

Is this what is called stabilising the front? We shouldn't even be thinking "How can we lose so many square kilometres of fields and the agricultural sector?" Put all that nonsense out of your mind.

We can learn from the enemy; they have echeloned defences of 7, 8, sometimes 10 rows. We must invest in it. And this territory should be patrolled primarily with technology: attack drones and ground drones should be used to detect the slightest movement.

This is a huge resource, but it's the only way to stop the horde and prevent it from breaking through further. The war does not arise in Donetsk Oblast or in Kursk. The war arises deep within Russia: in tank factories, at repair facilities, in their research and engineering centres.

We need to strike them and burn up all those resources. We need a serious missile programme of our own, and we are only just beginning to approach this. And thirdly, we must bring the whole country, the whole population, round to the idea of a long war, a sprint marathon, and the fact that everyone needs to be ready.

From 5th or 6th grade onwards [aged 10-11], children should be learning programming, robotics, understanding the basics of communication, and so on. It's not because I want our children to go to war. It's because the war started in 2014, and those who were 12-14 years old then are at war now.

And they were not ready.

"In this country, if they want to get rid of a commander, they promote him"

If you talk to soldiers at the front, they all complain that there are no people, no infantry. How should the state - the country - address this issue now? People don't want to go to war.

We have a high percentage of personnel absent without leave... Last week there was a scandal about combat medics being transferred to the infantry and mobile fire groups. What can we do about the fact that there is a catastrophic shortage of people?

Three specific steps can be taken right now at the very least. The first is to simplify the transfer process within the army. This will really give the army some breathing space and allow them to treat people like human beings.

It's absurd that the people who went to defend freedom have ended up in the greatest slavery. This has to be done wisely so that a whole brigade isn't transferred to another brigade at the same time, leaving a hole in the front line, as the General Staff has explained. On the other hand, if everyone is leaving a particular commander, that's a question for the commander.

Perhaps it's a signal to change the commander. Number two is mobility within the vertical itself. If someone in the leadership of a division has not performed their tasks, then we should definitely reconsider their participation.

And people leaving a senior position only to be promoted has to stop. In this country, if they want to get rid of someone, they give that person a promotion so they don't sue. Or they send them to a medical assessment board, and then they retire, on a pension.

As a result, we now have a lot of military-age men - with the rank of colonel, lieutenant colonel, general - being paid a good pension out of our taxes. What I think would be fair is this: if you fail to carry out the tasks, you get demoted, and you can be a platoon commander or just an ordinary infantryman. I think we need to ensure mobility within the divisions as well.

What do I mean by that? Let's say someone like [successful businessman] Andrii Onistrat joins us. He used to work in banking and manage large teams of people.

But who does he join us as? A sergeant or lieutenant. The army got tens of thousands of people like this.

Enlistment offices were filled with great managers, great economists, outstanding businessmen and so on. They joined up voluntarily; the army would never have got them otherwise. This personnel resource needs to be used rationally, because leading a brigade is actually managing a large team.

A brigade commander is the CEO of a large company. If he has 3,000-5,000 people, he has about UAH 10 billion (approx. US£240.76 million) at his disposal if we count the equipment as well.

The logic of war is the same as the logic of business. And maths too. In business, you're constantly driven by the logic of profit.

There's also a logic of profit during a war. I'm going to say something which will probably sound very cruel, but if you've lost 100 soldiers and a few pieces of equipment, but you killed five times as many enemy soldiers and they had five times as much equipment, it all adds up in money - you're in the black. But if you've lost 1,000 of your soldiers but you only killed 100 of the enemy and they had much less equipment, you're in the red.

The third thing I would do is satisfy society's and the army's demand for justice. We need to give people a break. The same people have been carrying the burden of war all this time.

So I would give at least a few weeks or even a month of leave at least once every 3-4 months. By rotating like this, it won't just be my sister-in-arms, her husband and me serving all the time while three other people rest. Let those people serve for a while first, then these people can come for a couple of months, then rotate and so on.

If we plan the system properly in order to avoid collapse [of the front], bring it into the digital field, and think carefully about the order of priority, this is totally realistic. Then there will be no suicides, no divorces, and there won't be this high percentage of personnel gone AWOL - because people will be able to go home, even just to hug their children, spend time with their family, go to the cinema, or see their doctor for a check-up.

Is the vertical prepared to make such decisions? Right now, the vertical is prepared to lie, distort facts, protect each other, and carry on.

That's what we hear from almost all soldiers from various brigades. I don't want to generalise: there are different brigades. There are some outstanding ones where planning is in place and preserving lives is the priority.

But you know very well what the situation can be like in some brigades where they just present the right picture, even though things are terrible. How can an inefficient management system be changed? What I'm about to say is going to sound like some kind of space science, a form of urban madness, but I think of people as robots.

I've been warped by my profession over these past ten years. I believe the only way to use a resource effectively is to digitalise it. Each of us has our own tactical and technical characteristics (TTCs).

You have the TTCs to manage a large team of journalists. But there are some things you can't do. For example, do you like Excel spreadsheets?

I hate them. There you go. If we asked you to work with them, you wouldn't be very good at it.

We have good engineers who become bad mortar operators, we have good drivers and mechanics who become bad snipers. In other words, we use people for the wrong purposes, and we don't know what their characteristics are. If you think of a person as a robot, we have our own TTCs.

You don't plough a field with a robot vacuum cleaner, do you? And you don't use a robot that can irrigate fields to cook borshch.

Mariia with some UAVs.Photo: Mariia Berlinska on Facebook

That's what we call human resources and how to use them. But how do we best use them?

Conduct an audit, perhaps? Describe each robot. Imagine if the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Office had such a digital panel.

And when you had to decide whether to make one person a brigadier or another person, you could tap a digital card and see the person's career history. It would be based on the feedback that people around them have given that person. We evaluate pizza delivery people, Uber drivers, and coffee shops.

Big data doesn't lie. If you see a 4.9 rating for a coffee shop and it has 6,000 reviews, it's likely to have really good coffee. It's the same here.

It's the only way to make reasonable decisions, not based on emotions, not because you have social connections somewhere, not because someone married someone else.

"The Ministry of the Last-ditch Attempt"

Ukrainska Pravda published your piece on the Ministry of Chaos in early September. Now it's early November. Has anything changed in the ministry since then?

How would you describe the Ministry of Defence now? The Ministry of the Last-ditch Attempt, probably (smiles). Those pieces weren't intended to annoy anyone or take revenge on anyone.

The characters in these stories often perceive them that way. Some people do. We don't really have many high-ranking people who can take criticism gracefully and then engage in some kind of dialogue without harbouring any hard feelings.

We could afford to work at that pace even in 2017, 2019 or 2020, but we certainly can't now, when the war is so intense. One interesting thing is that many ministers and most of his [Defence Minister Rustem Umierov's] deputies have said to me: finally someone said it, finally someone had the courage to really highlight these problems. I really hope that it helped our military and political leadership to have this balanced picture.

At times, someone has to be the first to say that the emperor has no clothes, as it were, and that we have really serious problems in the Ministry of Defence. And I think the issue is primarily about finding an alternative. In other words, who would be the person who could theoretically replace Umierov.

What kind of person do you think the ministry needs now? You know, I said at one of those high-level meetings that there was a time when it was enough for us to have people in the relevant positions in the security and defence sector who were just smart. That was the 1990s and early 2000s.

Then, after the outbreak of the war in 2014, we needed talented people in senior positions in the security and defence sector. We are now coming to a time when we need geniuses. And there are very few such people.

Personally, I don't consider myself one of them. And I know what I can do, what our team can do. We have some objectively brilliant, talented and intelligent specialists in our team, but genius is something else.

So I would move in the direction of logic, TTCs and track record first of all. Don't give in to emotions, personal connections, or positive attitudes, simply because someone may flatter you, giving out great compliments to the management, bending over backwards, and so on. That's nonsense.

I believe that people like that do a disservice to their managers. And I always tell my colleagues: look, if I feel like I'm the smartest person in the room, then I'm in the wrong room. But it's a familiar story going back to biblical times, when false prophets emerge in difficult times, flattering various rulers and procurators, trying to win them over with their loyalty alone...

Mariia holding a drone.Photo: Mariia Berlinska on Facebook

But you realise that the entire system of the current government is built on loyalty, and that probably can't be changed.

Look, I had this one opportunity to talk to the president. And I told the president what I think, completely sincerely and honestly - basically, just as I have done for the past ten years with everyone I've had the chance to speak to. MPs, ministers, CEOs of defence enterprises - I've told them the things that I consider it my duty to say.

I don't need anything. I came here after the full-scale invasion. I'd been living in America since 2018, everything was going well, I had a good management position.

It was a classic scenario: a family, a home, lots of travel, and everything was great. In 2014 I objectively went to fight for my people; I was a student at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and I believed that I needed to volunteer and do this for my people. But in 2022, it wasn't for my people that I came back.

Was it for yourself? For myself first and foremost. I love Ukrainians as I do myself, and I call all of us Ukrainians, whatever your faith, gender, education or skin colour.

Ukrainians today are human beings, humanity. That's why I tell the President the truth. I had the opportunity to tell him to his face, and I told him: if we drown, we'll all drown.

And he told me that he wanted to live. Are you prepared to work for the Ministry of Defence, for example? No, I'm not.

It's not because I want to have a moral high ground to hide behind, or because I'm afraid to take on any responsibility. I'm not prepared to because I think I'm effective right where I am. If I was in my early 20s, maybe I would have had that sort of ambition - a career, a gilded plaque on my door, a comfortable chair.

I believe that this is a huge responsibility in times of war. Our team at Victory Drones and Dignitas is doing a lot to help the security and defence sector make some genuinely good changes. Some things can't be talked about right now.

But, thank God, the time will come when we will be able to talk about how much has been done under the cover of positive reforms. I believe that in times of war, everyone should be where they are most effective. My TTC is dissemination.

I am best at spreading the religion of technology. I am best at sowing this technological field. And my Victory Drones colleagues and I are really engaged in getting millions of people involved in this and interested in it.

We used to joke when we were setting up the People's FPV programme that it's like with drug addicts - the first dose is the crucial one. A person assembles their first drone and it's like, wow. How many drones are currently being assembled through the People's FPV programme?

About a thousand drones are being transferred. I don't think that's a lot. The more important thing is that we have removed the obstacles in people's minds.

People think it's something super complicated. I always use myself as an example: I'm a hopeless humanities person, I have a history degree, and until 2014 I didn't think I would be doing anything like this. But I spent three years flying drones on the front line.

My colleagues and I launched the first technological training in the country back in 2014 -- we taught the army to fly unmanned aerial vehicles. I fly piloted aircraft myself. I flew as long as the skies were open.

I really want my tribe to survive, I really want to save Ukrainians, I want people to love this as much as I do. As a tool. When you use a £300 drone - even 10 of them - to burn up a two-million-dollar Russian tank, and the consequences of that operation are worth hundreds of millions...

We need to destroy their tanks more quickly and constantly focus on addressing the causes, not the consequences. Because the consequences mean surgery, prosthetics, payments to the fallen soldiers' families, recovery, reconstruction... And shattered lives.

We need to focus on tackling the root causes. Our resources are much more limited, so let's invest in addressing the causes. Let's fight wisely.

And then, in this David-versus-Goliath battle, we will prevail. Author: Sevgil Musaieva, Ukrainska Pravda Translation: Myroslava Zavadska, Yuliia Kravchenko, Violetta Yurkiv, Yelyzaveta Khodatska

Editing: Teresa Pearce