Welcome back to The Restricted Handling Podcast, where we cut through the fog of war, propaganda, and geopolitics to bring you the sharpest look at what’s happening behind the Kremlin’s walls and beyond. In today’s November 7, 2025 episode — “Russia: Nukes, Pokrovsk, Pyongyang & Paranoia” — the temperature’s rising across every front.

We’re breaking down Putin’s latest nuclear flex: his not-so-subtle move toward restarting nuclear testing at the infamous Novaya Zemlya site — the same Cold War range that birthed the Tsar Bomba, the largest explosion in human history. What was a vague “assessment order” yesterday is looking a lot like a live prep mission today. Defense teams, intelligence chiefs, and even civilian engineers are dusting off tunnels and recalibrating sensors buried since the 1980s. Call it nostalgia with a mushroom cloud twist.

Meanwhile, Russia’s grinding offensive in Pokrovsk keeps turning the city into a living chessboard. The fighting is brutal, block by block, and Ukraine’s adapting fast — drone warfare, underground ops, and controlled retreats to drain Russian forces. Zelensky’s focusing on endurance and morale, not PR. If Pokrovsk falls, it opens the door to the Donetsk fortress belt — but Kyiv’s making sure that door has a minefield behind it.

On the economic front, Ukraine’s drone war inside Russia is lighting up Moscow’s energy heart. The Volgograd refinery remains offline after sustained strikes — taking out nearly 6% of Russia’s refining capacity. Add fires at power plants and sabotaged railways, and you’ve got a Kremlin trying to plug holes faster than it can build propaganda. We’ll tell you how these attacks are reshaping the war’s logistics and why Russia might soon be importing its own fuel from Belarus.

But wait — there’s a new old friend in the mix. North Korea. Up to 10,000 “engineers” (read: troops) are now on Russian soil, working to free up Russian units for the front. From Pyongyang to Pokrovsk, the world’s most isolated regime is now propping up one of its most paranoid allies.

And that paranoia is showing. Inside Russia, the Kremlin’s security machine is arresting its own loyalists, branding pro-war bloggers “foreign agents,” and pushing local militias to guard oil depots. It’s empire meets meltdown — a country stuck between the 1980s and a TikTok dystopia.

All this and more — nuclear brinkmanship, cyber shadows, hybrid warfare over European skies, and a look at how Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” is rewriting 21st-century combat.

Hit play, share with your network, and buckle up — Restricted Handling brings the world’s most volatile headlines straight to your feed with energy, insight, and zero fluff.