Preston Stewart

There are still ways to shoot it down.

I mean, you can shoot it down, of course, but compared with other drones that are being controlled start to finish, there's just fewer ways for Russia to do that.

So that's the kind of stuff that's starting to emerge.

Overall, much more optimistic than my first visit.

Maybe it was weather.

This was springtime in Odessa, which is a beautiful city in the south.

Last time was winter in eastern Ukraine on dirt roads.

So I don't know.

Maybe that plays a part into it.

But overly optimistic in the sense that Ukraine is now, I would argue, for the first time in the war, at least in the last few years, if not in the entire war, they have Russia on their back foot.

Russia is trying to adapt and trying to respond, and they're having a hard time doing that.

Now, we should expect that Russia will find a way to stop the volume of these drones flying between 50 and 300 kilometers.

But they haven't yet.

And it's been a growing issue over the last couple weeks.

And I'm excited to get Matt's take on this because we're seeing the refineries get hit.

But it's very hard to pin down, like, what does that actually mean for the war effort?

I would add that we went to the Black Sea Security Forum.

And in there, they were maybe a little too optimistic, I would argue.

There was a lot of talk about after the war, especially with technology and innovation and how they can bring drones to the rest of Europe.

And I get the desire to want to start talking about that.