What does the war in Ukraine actually look like right now — from inside the country?
Shaun Pinner joins Chris Sampson for a wide-ranging conversation from Dnipro and Kyiv about three stories that reveal where this war is heading: Russia’s growing reliance on foreign recruits, the intensifying campaign against Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure, and the changing military and political system surrounding Mykhailo Fedorov.
Shaun has just returned to a Ukrainian POW camp he first visited more than a year ago. Some of the foreign prisoners he met then are still there.
One young Somali prisoner recognized him immediately and asked a hauntingly simple question: “Got any news?”
For Shaun, the moment was deeply personal. He knows what it means to sit in captivity waiting desperately for fragments of information from the outside world.
That encounter opens a much bigger discussion: Who are the foreign nationals being recruited into Russia’s military? What were they promised? Why are some still sitting in Ukrainian captivity more than a year later? And does Moscow have a reason NOT to bring them home?
Chris and Shaun also examine Ukraine’s evolving approach to capturing Russian soldiers, POW exchanges, and the stark difference between the conditions Shaun sees inside Ukrainian facilities and what Ukrainian prisoners have reported enduring in Russian captivity.
Then the conversation moves outside the prison walls.
Russia’s air campaign is pounding Ukraine night after night. Chris breaks down the changing mix of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic weapons; the pressure on Ukrainian air defenses; and a pattern of attacks affecting warehouses, retail facilities, food infrastructure, logistics networks and emergency responders.
They also discuss something rarely understood from outside Ukraine: what happens when air raids become part of ordinary life — when shopping centers evacuate, gas stations close, businesses stop operating, people wait for the alarm to end…and then simply go back to work.
There is another battlefield as well: information.
Chris and Shaun discuss OPSEC, Russian reconnaissance, the danger of publicly revealing military production and movements, and why civilians, journalists and military supporters have to understand how seemingly harmless information can help an enemy build a targeting picture.
And then there is Ukrainian politics.
Chris examines the growing attention surrounding Mykhailo Fedorov and why his reputation among soldiers cannot simply be explained through the usual Western framing of Ukrainian politics around Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For troops at the front, questions about leadership can be brutally practical: Does the system deliver equipment? Is procurement transparent? Does battlefield performance translate into resources? Does technology actually reach the people who need it?
That makes the “Fedorov factor” about considerably more than one politician.
This is not a conversation about Ukraine from thousands of kilometers away.
Shaun Pinner is speaking from Dnipro — a former soldier who fought in Ukraine, survived Russian captivity and returned to the country.
Chris Sampson is speaking from Kyiv after more than four years reporting across wartime Ukraine.
POWs. Foreign recruits. Drones. Missile attacks. Air defense. Military technology. Politics. OPSEC. And the strange reality of living an ordinary life inside an extraordinary war.
This is THE WIRE TAP.
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Chris Sampson | THE WIRE TAP
