Shownotes Transcript
The End
You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks, and I'm sitting here with two guests, and we're going to be talking about the sort of fumbling and stumbling to the ever-elusive peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. I'm sitting here with my friends who are just about to introduce themselves right now. Dara Masako, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Mike Ottmans, also senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment, same program as there. Thank you both for taking time out of your weekend to talk about this.
Let's step back and discuss how we got here. Let's say post disastrous Zelensky meeting at the Oval Office, how we sort of got to where we are today. Just a little narrative, little chronology. Let me try to do a very brief version. So immediately after that meeting, I think Zelensky goes to London. Brits meet with him and then try to smooth things out with the United States. And they sort of act for lack of a better term as a sort of whisperer.
I've heard the term marriage counselor thrown around by Europeans, but essentially the British and the French start trying to figure out how to make this work. And things do begin to smooth out a couple of weeks later. The U.S. cuts off military support and intelligence to Ukraine, but then restores it. Zelensky starts to kind of say the right things, give the right signals. Behind the scenes, they're still negotiating the minerals deal, which is really a series of deals. It's actually three different agreements. And those things are being handled by technical folks.
And in the meanwhile, you have a whole separate parallel effort, I guess, led by Woodcuff with Russia. And these negotiations start taking off with Russia. It's not really shuttle diplomacy. It's more like two parallel tracks. Woodcuff is handling engaging with Russians in Riyadh and then in Moscow, meeting with Dmitry, meeting with Putin. Meanwhile, Kellogg and his team are supposed to be handling Ukraine along with the help of the Europeans. And then...
Separately, Europeans themselves, primarily Brits and French, are trying to see if they can come up with some kind of security assistance, implementation force, whatever you want to call it, after the ceasefire to see what that might look like. And in the interim, basically, as these months go on, at least my impression is, first, there's a series of supposed agreements made with Russia. There are non-agreements because the U.S. comes out saying that they made a ceasefire on halting strikes against Russia.
critically important infrastructure. Energy. Energy infrastructure. Yes. And it seems like Russian strikes do refocus from energy onto other civilian targets in Ukraine. Instead of energy infrastructure, they hit more playgrounds, which tells you what you need to know if you didn't understand it before about Putin. But yeah. Yeah. And so it's not clear basically how they made the distinctions, but maybe there's a shift of focus onto other civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. But this deal doesn't seem to have that much of an impact.
Then there's another deal supposedly for broader ceasefire that then Russians come out as actually conditional on a bunch of things rather than them agreeing to it. You know, a bunch of things have to happen. And long story short,
We get to last week because my impression is that the administration had set for itself an internal deadline around April 29 to see if their peace efforts could actually bring about a ceasefire. And if they couldn't, then they would make a decision on what to do next. But the bottom line is that April 29th was kind of the cutoff date. Yeah, I think that's a really good wrap up of the major moving parts. If we could talk a little bit of substance about the U.S. proposal.
And then there's also a European one, and they're slightly different. So the elements of the U.S. proposal were trying to get Russia to and Ukraine to agree to a full ceasefire for 30 days so that they can begin the technical long-term conversations. And we covered the no strikes on energy infrastructure.
Russia never agreed to it. The Ukrainians agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, stopping the strikes. But they're still continuing to throw drones at each other. Russia's launching missiles into Ukraine, I think, twice since that time. Including one of the biggest barrages in a single day ever targeted at Ukraine. Yes, it was over 100 missiles of various types and a similar number of Shahed drones.
President Trump was very angry about that. He tweeted about it. This is bad timing. Vladimir, stop. It was on Truth Social. It was Truth Social. Yeah, you're right. But that's where it was. If that's the only correction I have to make on this whole episode, Dara, we're doing all right. Right, right, right. But, you know, it's worth noting that the Russians have not really stopped or changed things.
course in any way since these conversations are happening in Kyiv, the conversations are happening in Moscow, the shuttle diplomacy, it's not really changing what they're doing on the ground. And just as of yesterday, the United States is signaling that we're not going to be a mediator forever and we're not going to be flying around anymore and that our involvement in this process will change. So
All that is to say, there's a lot of wheeling and dealing from four different groups of people, Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans, United States, and things are changing on a 24-hour basis. So depending on when this is released, there'll probably be more information that's shifting. And there seems to be different tracks in the U.S. government, too. There's sort of whatever Witkoff does when he goes to Moscow and talks to Putin. Then there's whatever General Kellogg and his team are doing, primarily with Ukrainians.
But it doesn't seem, it's not clear to me how closely coordinated these two are. And then you've had Rubio over the last few weeks, Secretary of State Rubio, and now acting National Security Advisor, I believe, signaling that this is not, after trying for a matter of entire weeks, signaling that this is not something the United States can focus on for very long. It doesn't seem that there's a lot of patience in diplomacy from this administration. And then Trump
Kind of jumps back and forth between criticizing Zelensky and then criticizing Putin. What are we to make of all this? Well, I think you're right. There are parallel efforts, and I think they've clearly designated General Kellogg as the main interlocutor with Ukraine. So I think that's actually a good thing to have that continuity. The Ukrainians, that's how they do business. They don't like to see a revolving door of new faces. So he's working on developing that relationship. And it's the same for Witkow.
General Kellogg has a team with him at State Department with people with a lot of background in this to support him. Witkoff, in my understanding, tends to do these things pretty solo. He, I'm assuming, provides his readout to President Trump and maybe very few select people, but I don't think that it's really institutionalized, the readouts from these meetings in Moscow and across the interagency. So it's hard to
really get a sense of what's happening in that room, particularly as Wyckoff does not appear to be traveling with anyone. My concern would be if he doesn't have his own translator, if he's relying on the translator provided by the Russians, that's actually a bad idea. You should have your own translator so you can be confident in what they're saying and they're conveying your points. I think the
the main takeaway is that President Trump, to me, seems, I don't know his moods, but just the tenor of the conversation seems to be shifting to, okay, we're realizing that this is really hard and this is really complicated and it's not likely to be solved on our 100-day timeline as we prefer. So maybe we'll just walk back. Maybe.
Maybe we'll just move on to a different policy priority and move on from here. And I do think that he's frustrated. It sounds like he's frustrated with both parties for not agreeing to neatly wrap this up. But this is a very complicated war. I mean, this is tough.
Putin has gone from being very optimistic with how these things are going to probably not being too optimistic anymore. Trump openly threatened secondary sanctions, for example. How serious do you think he might be about that? What does walking away from the negotiations actually look like? Does it mean continuing to support Ukraine militarily? Does it mean imposing harsher sanctions on Russia? Does it mean just walking away and not getting involved and continuing to normalize relationships with Russia on a second track?
I mean, Ryan, honestly, nobody knows. So the administration is both sending mixed signals because there are different camps in it that have been fighting all along to shape this policy. On the one hand, they're saying that they are done with the shuttle diplomacy and they're not going to focus on the peace effort anymore. They kind of want both Russia and Ukraine to talk to each other. On the other, they're also saying that they're not walking away.
So far, there's been no change in military support for Ukraine. And in fact, they've shown that they're willing to sell articles to Ukraine. There's been a $50 million sale and also a much larger one, now approved by State Department of Parks, Equipment for F-16s, which is a positive sign. That means that at the very least, their initial reaction is not to do a cutoff like they did a couple months ago. Now, on the Russian side, it's very hard to say if they want to proceed with trying to normalize diplomatic and economic relations with Russia. Right?
And if Trump is still of that mind and is being convinced of that by Witkoff and other folks who are regularly interacting with Russians, or if he's also going to get disappointed and blame Putin for this, and then you can see that Republicans...
particularly in a Senate who have finally appeared after not hearing much from them in the last three months. You know, it's always good to discover that Congress is still there. Yeah, they're openly pressuring Trump to crack down on Putin. Yeah, they've been working on a sanctions package and they sensed the opportunity. So they're trying to convince Trump that Putin's been kind of playing with him all along and that now it's time to get tough on Russia, right? This was the line that one camp was taking in the administration the whole time.
And the question now is, is Trump going to go through this or was he intending for this to be simply a threat on Russians? Because it seemed to be very reticent to punish Moscow. Maybe last point, I think, on the Russian side. I don't know how optimistic or excited Russians were, but I think the game for them has been to not agree to any ceasefire, to stall for time.
And try to do it in a way that looked like they were engaging in negotiations seriously so as not to draw Trump's ire. I'm not sure how much of that they were able to pull off. But from my point of view, this was never going to end in a ceasefire agreement at the end of April. And the whole game was who is Trump going to blame? Because the way both sides were positioning, Russians wanted the agreement and the conditions first, then the ceasefire.
And they seem to have been changing their mind a bit on what the terms were with Woodcuff, or maybe he's just frankly amateurish at this, and that's also a part of it. Whereas Ukrainians made it clear that they wanted the ceasefire first, and this was also the European position, and that kind of seemed to be increasingly the Trump administration position as well, because he wanted to get the comprehensive ceasefire in and then work the rest of the deal. And Moscow...
And Moscow, I think, was never going to agree to that. And the Russians have not done themselves any favors in this process. And that's kind of what we're expecting out of them behavior-wise. President Trump is very clear. I want the killing to stop. I want the dying to stop. And so while these peace conversations are trying to happen, what is Russia doing? They are putting a Iskander missile in the middle of an apartment block with cluster munitions in multiple cities.
civilians and children especially are all over the news and it's very graphic. I mean, these are the things that tend to stick in Trump's mind. And the Russians have failed to learn from watching the Zelensky Oval Office melee, I guess I would describe it. They don't like it when games are played with them. The Trump administration does not. And the Russians, by continuing to do these kind of strikes,
hitting hospitals or hitting apartment buildings with Shahed's cluster munitions. These are the kind of games that signal to the Trump administration, these people aren't serious. These people are just jerking me around. And so I do think the Russians at some point, my view is I don't think they can predict these mood swings about frustration because they're clearly not making decisions to avoid that outcome. They could have withheld the missile strike for a while. They could have withheld
you know, launching Shaheds while Witkoff is literally in Moscow. I mean, they could avoid these kinds of situations. They have the power to do that and they don't, they don't make that choice. Yeah. A good friend of mine, I won't name because there's a private conversation, but I'll tell you who it was afterwards. Cause he wouldn't mind me telling you. It's a friend of all of ours. We were talking and he was observing. He's like, you know, if Putin was smart, he would actually take this deal that's being briefed out to press by the U S side. And it was reported in the, by David Ignatius basically is that
Russia would continue to administer the five regions and occupies without Ukraine formally ceding sovereignty. United States might implicitly recognize Russia's hold on Crimea, but Ukraine would not. Security guarantees would be finessed so that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO, but it would keep the language in its constitution declaring that as the goal. Russia would accept Ukraine's right to a post-war robust security guaranteed, understood by all to mean European troops.
And then there's still details to be worked out. But my friend was observing, our friend was observing, that if Russia was smart, Putin was smart, this is actually a pretty good deal for Putin. And then we had a discussion. It's like, well, to what extent has Putin demonstrated intelligence and wisdom in his major decisions on how to launch and continue and wage this war? And he really hasn't been that smart. He is stubbornly stuck to his war goals, but I don't think that the strategy overall has been
I mean, maybe it's been good for his regime, but it certainly hasn't been very good for Russia or Russian power, certainly not for Russian prosperity. What do you think? That's really meant to be a prompt for two smarter people who study Russia on a much closer level than I do. My first thing is to say, yes, that's true. And if you go back to 2021 and early January 2022, if he was smart,
He would not have launched the war. He would have taken whatever deal and compromise he could have gotten out of the two ultimatums Russians issued, then try to come back for more from the Biden administration. That's what a lot of people thought they were going to do. Not me, not Dara, but others. A lot of people close to Putin thought he was going to do this. Pretty much everyone. Actually, most Russian elites didn't think the war made sense. They thought coercive diplomacy made sense. And then Putin basically saying, I was never going to invade, pocketing the win, coming back for more later.
But historically, there have been plenty of times when leaders don't want the deal. They don't want the agreement. They actually want the war. And he generally wanted the war. And where we are now, he does not want to take a reasonably decent deal and then come back later because he could take the deal, break the ceasefire later, try to blame Ukraine a year later or maybe wait out four years, come back when Russia's recovered somewhat. He doesn't want that either.
He wants either Western or Ukrainian capitulation. The means that Russia has available in the way they're fighting are not sufficient to achieve Ukrainian capitulation. That's just the reality. But it looks, at least the way Russians have been playing, that they thought maybe they could get U.S. capitulation.
It's not, I think, nearly obvious why he should take this deal now, necessarily, and not try to push for more in the fall if Russians believe that the Trump administration, disappointed, will walk away. A lot really depends on what's going to happen next couple months. What I'm basically saying is this entire effort, which from my point of view had very little process behind it and was just outcome-oriented, had a couple of fundamental problems. One of the biggest ones was is
If the United States was saying that, look, if we don't get a deal, we're going to walk away, then you're naturally incentivizing the Russians to not agree to a deal. Because then what you're essentially saying is one of the principal backers of Ukraine's war effort is going to potentially abandon Ukraine within a matter of months. And why would somebody then agree to a ceasefire if they think that they might get a better deal three, five, six months down the line?
Right. So what are outcomes that are successful for the Russians is just letting the United States get frustrated and walk away from it and then just see what they can do on the ground. I want to back up for a second, though. Let's talk about back in 2022 when Russia annexed these four territories that it never controlled.
That was in the context of the Kharkiv positions falling apart. It was in the context of the Kherson front about to fall apart, or at least half of it anyway, and they had to get back over the river. And so Putin made a policy mistake by declaring ownership of things that he did not control. It was a political response. It was a political response. He thought that that would shock everybody into not going any further, and it failed.
So we should not help him out of his policy mistake. He will climb down. He will find his own way out of that. So they're saying, you know, I want all of these things. I declare that I shall have them. But they don't have the actual military capacity at this time to do that. And there's a few reasons and conditions why that would change. We could talk about that. But as of right now, they don't have that.
So I get a little concerned when I see statements coming out of the administration like Putin's going to take the whole country or it's all going to fall apart and the Ukrainians don't have any cards. Neither one of those things are true. The Russian military power is very troubling and I have a lot of concerns, but that articulated point is not accurate. I think the military balance, and I think we should talk about that next, is I think there's a really important point, Dara. In a way, Russia is way more dependent on
on outsiders, especially China and North Korea, to deliver military power than it was at the beginning of the war. Ukraine is still very dependent on outside powers, but is less dependent than it was before. It has built more domestic capacity. That doesn't mean it's enough to wage the war independently, but the balance has changed overall. One last thing on that deal that was proposed. I think
It's hard for me to imagine Putin accepting European troops. I think that's like, would be a big, like, especially British and French troops. That would be a big climb down for him. And it would require him totally publicly conceding to, I've actually changed this war game of giving, getting rid of this quote unquote Nazi regime, which he just had his foreign ministry reiterate the other day and so on and so forth. So my honest view is that I don't know. I don't think either way that was going to be part of an agreement. And, um,
I think, unfortunately, Britain and France weren't going to come up with much in the way of troops on the ground anyway, if you follow the recent reporting on us, who have been at best moving a training mission into Ukraine. Yeah, they could, but they won't. They could, but they won't. Okay, so it doesn't look like it's going to be that big of a problem that Russians really have to be dealing with. But my honest answer is, I don't know. Their position was definitely not. It was still very useful to create troops.
the option, both for Ukraine and Ukraine's benefit, and also to have this as a potential part of negotiation looming in the background, right? Because then people are forced to come off of their maximus position. I mean, so from my point of view, either way, it was very good to discuss it, to try to make it real and to put it together. And I'm a little disappointed by the results.
And I would just say, stepping back for a minute, I take the point that some in the administration have said, look, you know, we did three years of all carrots to the Ukrainians and all the sticks to the Russians, and it didn't solve this problem. So we're going to try a different approach. We're going to put some tough love on the Ukrainians, and we're going to see what we can get by trying to engage with the Russians, you know, diplomatically, because they are correct. There was not high-level diplomatic engagement with Putin's government for years, and I do think that was a mistake. But
But I think they're getting to the point that they realize when you play nice with the Russians, you're not really going to get much for it. And so they have to be ready to use the sticks on the Russians. And there's still actually quite a bit of leverage still on the table and sticks that we haven't used that I think could change the tenor of this conversation if they want to go down that route. I'm Elijah Kang at War on the Rocks, and we are going to take a quick break from this conversation to highlight a great clip from one of our members-only shows, Unspent Rounds.
This episode is a 25-minute conversation between Ryan and Rick Langraf on Ukraine's often disappointing post-Cold War relationship with NATO, which has always been hostage to Moscow and trepidation in Washington.
No, you know, that's what's so interesting is that at that time in 2002, Putin actually said publicly that he would not be against Ukraine joining NATO. He said that this decision was up to Ukraine. It was between Ukraine and NATO to figure out by themselves and that Russia was not against it and that it would not, quote, cloud relations between Ukraine and
Russia I mean it was seen as a path to prosperity because EU and NATO membership were very closely wrapped up together and it was the scene is this is how you become a prosperous liberal democratic Western country is you do these two things you join these institutions yeah absolutely I mean all the countries that have joined
The EU, since the end of the Cold War, except for Sweden and Finland, first joined NATO. So NATO membership in many ways is sort of like a stepping stone to EU membership and a stepping stone to greater prosperity. How is that when the Ukrainian president said that at the time in 2002, how is that first received in Washington? It was a welcome aspiration, but it wasn't realistic at that point. Become a member at warontherocks.com membership to listen to this great episode and hear what went wrong.
Now, back to the show. Yeah, this is the problem with lots of things this administration does, both in its first iteration and the second Trump administration is, you know, they could have come in, lifted the Biden era restrictions on weapons use, imposed secondary sanctions and created real pressure on Russia. And then from a position of greater strength negotiated a deal, but they did it
the other way it looks like. Well, they could still at this point say, you know what, I tried to engage with you and you just gave me the runaround. And so here's what I'm going to do now. And that, I think, would get them more, honestly, compliance out of the Kremlin. Can I interject? I think my criticism for us to look at the previous administration is that it was pretty much all process, no outcome. They built a really great effective security assistance machine for managing a conflict in 2023.
And after that, it was clear that the world was on negative trajectory and weren't actually going to any place. And they didn't seem to have any theory of success on how to end it on acceptable terms. This administration has come in and is entirely outcome-driven, zero process, no coherency in it. And it's sort of the polar opposite. And the truth is that you need both. You need folks who can manage the process and also have it be outcome-driven or oriented towards a particular outcome you're trying to achieve. Yeah.
Yeah, and I think you could also, even beyond Ukraine, make the same critique of the Obama administration and the first Trump administration. This seems maybe something baked into the parties, or at least when Trump's controlling the GOP. But let's talk about the Ukrainian side. Let's talk about, before we get into military balance, actually, let's talk about how Ukraine, how Kiev modified its approach to all this after the Oval Office meeting and how they perceive the deal and how they've tried to work with the Europeans. Yeah.
Dara, starting with you. Sure. I think the Oval Office meeting, it would seem as time has gone by from that moment, I think that there was a lot of regret on both sides, actually, that it got to that point. And we've seen both kind of climb down and say things publicly like, you know, that was regrettable how that ended up. That's not how I wanted the day to go. I do think Zelensky has been having some good advice provided to him by his European counterparts. And so we've seen him change and understand the rules of the game a little bit better and try to modulate to that.
And I think there has been, from our side, more of an attempt to be a little more gentle. Because the American people, polling-wise, you know, we still, regardless of party breakdown, are still supportive of Ukraine's plight, basically. And I don't think people like to see that kind of, you know, treatment of Zelensky in particular. So I do think both sides have learned differently.
It depends on where we go here. The minerals deal getting signed, I think, was a really important thing to just get done. Yeah, symbolically, nothing else. And I would like to see that cooperation and collaboration expand because Ukraine actually has a lot to share with us about learning lessons from how modern warfare is fought.
And that is something truly invaluable that only they can provide to us. Some of our allies are getting that kind of exposure now. And on the Russian side, the Chinese and the North Koreans are there with them in some of their command posts back in Russia learning right now. Why are we not doing the same? So I would like that to be the next phase of our cooperation to have more of that defense mill mill flavor to it. There's really a lot that we can do to cement this relationship that's not just based on weapons provision or things like that.
Yes, and in ways that don't create whatever the critics say, that do not create risks for World War III. Right, right. I just don't think so. I don't think that's a risk. I think what I'd add to Dara's great comments is there was an evolution that you could see from that rather disastrous White House meeting and also the initial negotiations over the memorandum on the minerals deal on the Ukrainian side. And I think you saw the results of that evolution, for lack of a better term, or maybe learning, in the...
the rather opportune meeting in the Vatican, the 15-minute meeting that Trump had with Zelensky. And you basically saw the arc of Ukraine handling a lot better. I think, frankly, Zelensky learning to handle a lot better. I would say it's probably not for lack of advice he was getting and more for not listening to that advice from folks both inside Ukraine and outside of it. But it was really good to see
that some of the worst possible outcomes in U.S.-Ukraine relations were avoided. The minerals deal to me is still, I'm sorry, a nothing burger, and there will be years before anything comes out of this deal, if anything does come out of it from my point of view. But it was significant in both helping to create the political basis for sustained U.S. support for Ukraine, and it also, I think, is probably going to be one of the factors
in U.S. decision-making on what does walking away mean? Because the current position, I think, is that we're done managing negotiations, but we're not going to walk away from Ukraine. And the big reason for that is this minerals deal. So I think it ultimately worked out, but it's a little too early to tell what the results are.
Moving forward, though, what won't change is the overall U.S. approach of shifting the financial burden and, to the extent possible, the military burden of sustaining this war and Ukraine to the Europeans. That is the central pillar of Trump administration's approach, and that, from my point of view, is going to remain unaltered.
And so to some extent, Ukraine has done much better in managing its relations with the U.S., but I think there is a sense amongst Ukrainian colleagues that they're going to have to go it alone without the U.S. one way or another and focus now on Europe.
And that could well be true. I mean, to me, it's always important to base planning around worst case scenario. At least that's the mentality of a defense analyst. And I think that if they're focused on trying to go it alone or going it with Europeans to the extent they can, then that's probably the right mindset, given it's going to be very hard to predict what the U.S. is going to do next or what support they can depend on. Lastly,
Part of the reason situation, I think, is not nearly as bad as it could be is both increased defense industrial capacity in Europe, Europe finally getting its act together. Also, the U.S. delivered a lot of things to Ukraine that were essentially obligated under the Biden administration. And so Ukraine was significantly plussed up in recent months, such that I think a lot of worst case scenarios could be avoided.
Although some big question marks on what will happen as we get from the summer into the fall, assuming this intensity of fighting or even that the intensity of fighting will increase. And I would just say there's going to be some interesting dynamics going on within various European countries about what does it mean if the United States is pulling back from Europe. And so...
We could see a tension within some of these countries, particularly those on the eastern side of things. What do I need for my own defense versus what can I spare for the Ukrainians? And that tension will be happening as Russia really begins reconstituting its military in full force if combat operations slow down.
You know, and I would say to Mike's point that the situation, it's not good, but it's not what they were thinking it would be in the fall of last year where they told us they thought things were going to end up in a pretty bad place by now. And it hasn't because Ukraine, not only did they get the weapons deliveries that Mike was discussing, but they also got a really large financial stimulus into some key defense industries.
So now Ukraine is really producing a lot of drones, a lot of FPVs. They're making big purchases into combat robotics. Most of the losses and the casualties that Russia is experiencing right now are due to these things. And the Russians know it. So again, if the Ukrainians continue to have that kind of support, things along the front line are not stable. They are being walked back slowly, and we should acknowledge that. But they have something called the drone line. And there are ways that we can try to stabilize this that are organic to them. So.
How successful has this adaptation been at allowing Ukraine to maintain a relative static situation in terms of not letting the front collapse with its, let's just call it what it is, regrettable manpower situation, which is largely a result of choices that Ukraine has made?
on mobilization? How much has that drone line been a successful adaptation to deal with that? Just to be clear, this is part of a coherent plan. It wasn't just line of drones. It's also a lot of investment in air defense and in expanding particular parts of the force structure. I've kind of known about it and these ideas going well back to last year, but they actually began implementing it. Combined with a degree of Russian exhaustion after the big casualties they took last fall,
I think it's been chiefly responsible for significantly stalling Russian momentum over the winter going into the spring. And it's an adaptation both to how the Russian military was fighting and to Ukraine's manpower issues and manpower deficits. Because I think a lot of folks accept now that even though the manpower situation is somewhat improved in Ukraine compared to last fall, including the situation with AWOLs, but it's unclear that Ukraine's really going to be able to solve this over the course of this war at this point. So they are focused on this as the main approach to stabilizing the front.
Last point. Offensive intensity has really begun to increase as of about the last week of March. It never died away, but it started building from second week of February to end of March to now we're seeing kind of sustained Russian offensive efforts. Where? Most of the same places. Right now, you can see a big Russian effort to try to push right in the middle between Taratsk and Pokrovsk.
as one area, another area southwest of Pokrovsk, and the same areas where you've seen much of the fighting over the course of the last year. The only thing about that is that it's not gained them a lot. You do see increased rate of gain, though, again, which is about where they were last spring, maybe a bit more than where they were at last spring. And so to me, the real test is going to be as we get into the summer, that is June and past June, towards
To what extent Ukraine is really on a path to stabilizing the front, or if we're going to see, hopefully not, but if we're going to see a repeat of the pattern we saw last year. Remember, things looked pretty good up until the latter part of the summer, and then Russian rate of gain significantly accelerated again. We're going to see that kind of repeated pattern again. Darrell, what are some things that are happening in Ukraine?
Ukrainian and Russian society that come to bear on this larger political dimensions of the war. So we hear from our colleagues in Ukraine that there is a lot of exhaustion and fatigue
And that, you know, if the line froze where it was, obviously it would be something that no one is happy with. But they're very tired of living this way. And it's completely understandable. The concern, though, is that Russia will just rebuild in the next two or three years and they'll just try to finish what they wanted, which was all four of these territories and maybe come into Kharkiv again.
There's that scenario. Another thing that we're watching on the Russian side of this equation, there's three topics. We're watching the rate of reconstitution and what their plans are going to be. We're watching how they're learning as an organization and what kind of directions they're moving in. But right now, the thing I'm looking at is how they're preparing for the end of the war and what to do with all the people coming back in. How do you reintegrate these veterans?
And the Russians, I think, unfortunately to say, I think they're a bit ahead of Ukraine on this. They've already developed some programs to try to grab the people that they want and give them decent jobs in the government to keep them on side. That's not a particularly large number of people that are going to enter into that program, but it's still something. It allows them to say, look,
These guys have come home from this war and they're fine. They look fine. They have medals on their chest and now they're deputy governors. This is fine. So this is about political legitimacy and stability. Right. I mean, they also want to give these people jobs.
They're pulling people right now. An economic transition. Economic transition back into a future life. And I think there's probably a certain segment of people that they're going to create a pipeline to mercenary groups for so that they don't actually come home to Russia because there is going to be a group, I think, of people who are pretty problematic. Wagner 3.0 or 4.0. Yeah, I think we should prepare for that. Or they'll keep the people that they screen out as borderline. They'll keep them in the military with a lot of incentives to be part of the occupation force.
But all I'm saying is there is a lot of thought, more than I thought in the first 18 months of this war, to how to properly reintegrate these people into Russian society so that they don't become a problem. Ukraine is trying to do that, but there are still a lot of problems centrally, I think, in who owns this problem and how are they going to resource it.
The Ukrainian veterans and soldiers now actually have a pretty good idea of what they want for themselves after the war. They want a good job that pays good money. Some of them want to go into their own business. I don't know. I just, looking at the two societies, I think Ukraine is going to have a big issue, particularly as so many of these soldiers' families either live abroad now, maybe they're not coming home, or maybe they're about to become divorced. I mean, there's a lot of issues that I see on the imminent horizon
for veteran reintegration in Ukrainian society. And it's not a medical issue. This is a stability and a national security issue. There's a question for both of you. What are some things, stepping away from the front, stepping away from some of the issues we've already discussed, what are some things happening in the broader militaries on each side that pertain to the political direction of the war and whether and when it might end?
or influence negotiations and willingness to negotiate on each side and timelines, things like that? - I think first looking at the Russian military, on the one hand, they have forced generation down and they're still getting large numbers of contract recruits every month. But they're basically forced to fight with a very low quality force
And they're grinding their way through the front. Their biggest challenge is that they are increasingly suffering from deficits of equipment. And that's also part of the reason you see them using a lot of light motorized tactics, motorcycles, ATVs, what have you. And also the way they're forced simply fighting, as I've said before, it's not a method that can attain any kind of operation significant breakthroughs.
And last year, Ukraine started effectively adapting to it. So it's essentially really increasing the butcher's bill for every square kilometer the Russian forces take. And they could be fighting over just what's left of Donetsk for the entirety of this year, fighting if the approaches are taken. On the other hand, they got a lot better at dynamic targeting. Russian production of a lot of missiles and key type precision guided munitions has gone up from three times what it was in 2022 in some categories, four to five times what it was
And that shows no sign of abating. Basically, if you're looking at their strike capacity, it keeps improving. And in drones, it's hard to say because of some areas where Russia is more, some areas where Ukraine has more. And I sort of broad brush it as a notional parity for some time. Ukraine is qualitatively better. Russian units are better sourced on numbers in a lot of cases. On the Ukrainian side, very briefly, I think that the Ukrainian approach to negotiations was actually very well informed by the military situation.
The front was not about to collapse. They hadn't stabilized it either. But there was nothing urgent or dire that would motivate the Ukrainian leadership to have to negotiate some kind of bad deal on a 100-day timeline. All that motivated it was Trump said, you better do this or we're pulling support. And I think Zelensky's play was to show that he was more willing to do it than Putin. Yes. And there were two challenges with that effort to compel Ukraine. The first is Ukraine is far less dependent on U.S. support now than it was in previous years.
The second, the Trump administration never went to Congress to get another supplemental. So he actually didn't have anything on offer in addition to that he could show Ukraine, hey, we've gotten you $8 billion more of- I'll stick, no carrot. Yeah, of carrot that could sustain you through the fight for another year. So I'm sure from Zelensky's point of view was essentially, well, you don't have anything more to offer anyway, for one. Two, if the war's on negative trajectory or if it's not looking good for us, then the difference isn't that material, right? If you're pulling this and not pulling it.
I think it was material in the short term with pulling of certain capabilities, which hurt, and it's good that those are back. But now that we're past that, the longer term, you're right. It absolutely was. But it would have probably shown itself much more over the course of three to six months. And immediately, and the bottom line is that, at least when I kind of look at the main issues Ukraine has, let's say manpower and things of that nature, the U.S. can neither solve or substantially exacerbate that problem.
So if I kind of look at it from a Ukrainian point of view, or at least try to, then I think that the war at this point in 2024, it's not terrible, not great. It's not going great. The dynamic from last year hasn't been reversed.
But it's not nearly as bad as people thought looking at the situation last fall either. And I think that's the fairest thing you can say. I do want to point out, though, that just because it's stable right now, it's stable right now for a few reasons. One is that there's still weapons and there's still residual monies coming into Ukraine. And if that truly dries up by the end of this summer, then it doesn't improve for Ukraine. It doesn't even stabilize for Ukraine. I don't know that we are looking at a situation where Ukraine is going to be in the same position it is now in
That's the real risk.
This is a very casualty intense process that they're doing. They're trying to work around drones and FPVs using this distributed attack of a few armored vehicles, some scooters, motorcycles, ATVs. They're trying to overwhelm Ukrainian drone operators and sometimes they get lucky and they do it. The Russians, the part of them, the brain of the Russian military is back in Russia and they have concluded and they've said this verbatim.
The type of war that we are fighting has now outpaced our tactics and our doctrine, and we're trying our best to adapt, but we really need some time to digest and think about a way to overcome this situation. We have ideas, we're implementing them, but we really need a revision. To the extent we know who are the people or parts of the Russian military that do that kind of thinking.
A couple different levels. So there's the operations groups. These are made of military district staffs. They're the ones that are in the different op groups in Ukraine. They have some staff with them forward.
They do it. There's people who are responsible for repairing equipment and making recoveries. They do a lot of technical analysis to figure out how do we improve certain capabilities on our armored equipment. That goes into the system. There's still a lot that is done in Rostov, which is the headquarters for the war. And there's also different groups in the general staff that are active right now. Most of their materials are not public. But
But I have noticed in the last 12 months, there's really been an expansion in the debate among all the different types of military science organizations. For the first 18 months, they were very circumspect about problems because they were afraid that they would trip some kind of invisible line of censorship. But
The more I see them talking about this war, the more they are willing to dive into that and discuss how to learn and grow from this. And I think we really need to pay attention to that moving forward. Not, you know, it's not going to come to fruition in the next six months, but this organization is going to be implementing things a lot in the next three years, I think.
Thank you both for joining me. And this was a really rich discussion where I feel like we can keep talking for another 45 minutes and still keep going, but I will let you go back to your weekends. Thank you for listening to the war on the rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program at war on the rocks.com slash membership. Also on whatever podcast app that you listen to. If it allows you to rate our podcast, give us as many stars as possible. It makes a difference. Stay safe and stay healthy.
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