This is the hardest moment of Putins life.

So right now as I'm speaking, Crimea is being evacuated.Fully evacuated.And I cannot believe I'm even saying these words.And look, this is a huge deal.Crimea is about the size of Wales.And Russia took it in 2014 and they didn't think that anything like this would happen.

They thought they had it in the bag.They referred to it endlessly as the unsinkable aircraft carrier.And I've only just arrived back here in Ukraine.And honestly, this entire country feels like an entirely different place to the one that I left just a few weeks ago.Moscow is burning right now, an unprecedented strike.St. Petersburg was hit in exactly the same way, right in front of Candace Owens and all their favorite influencers.

And this is happening right now because the weather forecast looks like this every single night.These red arrows pointing straight down are mid to long range drones, Ukrainian made drones, and they go one way and that is into air defense systems, incredibly expensive, irreplaceable air defense systems, by the way, into railway bridges, into roads, machinery, cars, tanks to move in and out of Crimea.And these things are launched all across Ukraine from top secret locations in the dead of night.But I just got access to film up one of them to show you exactly how it looks.It's kind of dramatic being with these guys filming this taking off because obviously a huge target for the Russians.Look you can see the levers coming back down here now so they can load up the next plane.

These guys have said that they've been doing this every single night.Okay, so that was entirely fascinating.These guys were based in the Zaporizhia direction and that drone was headed straight for, you guessed it, Crimea.And I've been speaking to Ukrainians all day about this, what they think about what's happening in Crimea, and people here are stunned.But they're not as stunned as how Russians are reacting to this right now.And that can only be described as basically screaming into their phone screens.

There are traffic jams and queues forming all across the nation from people who are shocked that the war is finally reaching them, that gas prices are through the roof in some areas over 3 euros 50 per litre.And I think one way to perfectly capture just how bad things are getting in terms of the gas situation in Russia is to look at this graph.It shows a massive surge in the search term how to siphon gas in Russia.And I know that it's a meme that Russians are great at stealing, but this is really taking it to a whole new level.And just to show how unprecedented this is, how unprepared Russia is, this road, this highway connected Russia to Crimea.And if you type in the name of this highway into YouTube or any search engine, just last year, 2025, it's filled with videos posted every day of summer last year of Russians putting on some factor 50 lotion, grabbing some sunglasses and taking a drive and documenting the whole thing, showing how great it is, showing how exciting it is, going on holidays.

in the occupied territories.And now this exact same highway is now known as the road of death.Right now, as I'm speaking, there are cars, trucks, military hardware burning on either side of it.And these satellite images published in the last few days show exactly how dire the situation is.Forgetting anything, not just in and out of Crimea, but across the entire peninsula.And all across these blown bridges are these constant platoons that the Russians are trying to do to fill them in, these sort of back roads and dirt roads.

And the Ukrainians decide to continue blowing them up every single time.And the most fundamental part of this is the fact that Russians have absolutely no defence to this.Zero.Because the last air defence systems that were protecting that region are now all centred around Moscow to protect Putin's palaces and to protect the people in the capital of Russia.A panzer air defence system was just installed on a rooftop this morning by these helicopters right here in the centre of Moscow.Probably

taken from Crimea.These systems are incredibly expensive and they're very hard to replace during sanctions and during a labor shortage.So these things are like gold dust right now.And Putin has decided to scatter them over his favorite city.So that leaves the peninsula completely open.And this isn't a video to say that Crimea is suddenly going to be liberated, that the Ukrainians are going to march right across and take it back to their rightful ownership.

I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.The region is heavily mined.and there's still a huge troop presence there.But it's a symbol that Russia isn't as strong as it likes to put out on the world stage.And it's also a symbol that Ukraine's strategy right now to hit Russia in the places it's weakest is absolutely working.And this whole thing is unbelievable to witness right now.

Honestly, I don't think anyone could have predicted that sitting here in the summer of 2026, Crimea would be having a state of emergency declared by the local government.But here we are.It's pretty unbelievable.

Russian -installed officials in Crimea declared a state of emergency today.

The situation is pretty bad.Crimea is becoming a very, very uncomfortable place to live.The situation in Crimea really shows that Ukraine has been able to put a lot more pressure on Russia in recent months.

When I started filming this video this morning, the queues out of Crimea looked like this.And since then, the reports have only gotten worse.The queues have doubled, the fights have just broken out, and Russians are realizing that the peninsula that was sold to them as a paradise has now become a trap.And tonight, there'll be almost certainly more strikes, more weather forecasts that look like this.But instead of standing here every single 30 minutes and bringing you update after update over what's happening, I want to step back for a second.Because this, this is bigger than Crimea.

What we're watching right now is one of the hardest moments of Vladimir Putin's entire career.In 2022, he launched his full -scale invasion.He thought his tanks would reach this capital in just three days.And he thought Ukraine would collapse.And he thought the world would get bored.And now, look where we are.

The war hasn't ended.Ukraine is still being hit every single night.And yes, civilians are still dying.But the direction of this entire war has changed.Russia is no longer just trying to invade Ukraine.Russia is is trying to defend itself from the consequences of its own actions.

Its refineries are burning, its logistics are under pressure, its air defenses are being stretched, its soldiers are now being fed into a war that now devours men faster than Moscow can explain why they're dying.And Crimea, Crimea is a symbol of all of this because for Putin, Crimea was never just about land.It was the trophy, it was the myth, it was the sacred prize.It was the place that he could point and say that Russia is back, empire is back.It was supposed to be unsinkable, Russia's aircraft carrier right there in the Black Sea.a fortress, a holiday brochure with air defense systems.

And now that image is shaking.And not because Ukrainian infantry are about to storm Sevastopol tomorrow morning.That's not going to happen.Ukraine doesn't have the resources right now to simply walk back into Crimea.But Ukraine doesn't need to do that tonight.Ukraine can isolate it.

Ukraine can make it expensive.Ukraine can make ordinary Russians truly feel for the first time that nowhere in the Russian empire is truly safe.And that matters because Russia's strength has always been its size.That was the legend, the impossible distances, the winter, the depth, the geography that swallowed Napoleon, bled Hitler, and convinced generations of Russians that their country was too vast to be defeated.But in this war, that size is now becoming its vulnerability.A railway line can be hit.

A refinery can be hit.A bridge can be closed.A drone can fly 100 kilometers from the borders of this nation and turn the map against Moscow.That very geography that once protected Russia is now too big to defend.And that, in some ways, is the great irony of this war.Because Putin wishes for the past.

He wishes for empire, for parades, for flags, for victory day, for the mythology of sacrifice and greatness and destiny.But when you drag a country backwards, you don't always just get the glory days.You get the silence, you get the mothers waiting for their sons that don't come home.You get men sent to die for meters of mud.And you get a state that's so obsessed with looking powerful, it forgets how weak it's become.And tonight, standing here in Kyiv, something else feels different.

And that's that it's quiet.Normally at this time of night, there's a buzzing in the sky, the sound of drones.But tonight, it's strangely quiet.And that might very well be because the relay systems just over there in Belarus that has helped Russia for years guide drones right into this country, it might be quiet because they've stopped operating.But think about what that actually means.Belarus, the country that allowed that famous convoy to speed towards this capital in 2022, is now apparently too afraid to let Russians use their towers to guide drones into the same city.

And look, that silence isn't peace, but It's a signal.It's a signal that tells you that something has shifted.And while Putin scrambles to preserve his image abroad, sending ambassadors, stooges, cultural embassies, the real propaganda battle is now at home.It's no longer about convincing the world that Russia is great.It's literally now just about convincing Russians that everything is normal, that the queues are normal, that the shortages are normal, that the explosions are normal, that the empire is still rising, even as the fuel stations run dry and the bridges close behind them.So wherever you are tonight, scrolling through the chaos, the propaganda, the claims, the counterclaims.

Remember these simple facts.Russia is no longer unreachable.Crimea is no longer unshakable.And Ukraine is no longer simply surviving this war.Ukraine is changing the shape of it.And that doesn't mean the victory comes tomorrow.

It doesn't mean the suffering is over.And it doesn't mean that this war is going to end neatly or mercifully.But it does mean that the myth is cracking.The empire that promised Russians glory is now giving them cues.The very fortress that was supposed to protect power is now struggling to stay supplied.And the very war that Putin started to make Russia feel the world has shown us all something else.

That Russia can be reached, that Russia can be pressured, and Russia can be made to pay.And tonight, standing here from a very silent rooftop in Kyiv, this feels like a very different beginning.