Frontline special - Russia analyst George Barros of ISW
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.

Hello and welcome to Frontline for Times Radio. I'm James Hansen. And today we're talking about the latest on the war in Ukraine. And I'm delighted to be joined by George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War. George is the head of their Russia team and he's a regular contributor here on Frontline. George, always a pleasure. Welcome back. Thanks so much for having me once again. Happy New Year. And to you. To begin with, I just wonder if you can bring us up to speed with what we've seen on the ground today.

Over recent days, in particular, in Kursk, Oblast, where it appears Ukraine is launching new offensive operations. What is the latest? Absolutely. Well, the first thing I want to say is that the situation is still unfolding quite rapidly. So we're still figuring out what we know exactly. But we do know is that the Ukrainians, after several months of being on the defensive in Kursk,

They have resumed offensive operations in Kursk, and they have been making some tactical gains. That is small gains at the tactical level of war, not any sort of major gains to begin with.

Yesterday, we observed geolocated footage and combat footage and satellite imagery that confirmed that the Ukrainians managed to advance their frontline in the northeastern sector of the Kursk salient towards a current frontline village called Berdin. That's where the current fighting is happening. As of this morning, January 6th, the Russian Ministry of Defense claims that they have stopped the Ukrainian attack in the direction of Berdin, but they

That remains inconclusive as the fighting continues. Yesterday, we saw some Ukrainian vehicles make it actually into the southern part of Berlin, not just the outskirts of the town, but actually into the part of the town. And the fighting is ongoing. The Ukrainians are also pushing on a corner of the southwestern portion of the salient, as well as a southeastern portion of the salient.

Russian sources have been warning for many weeks and months that the Ukrainians would be preparing to conduct a new offensive operation in winter 2025. And many Russian sources are hesitant to describe this current Ukrainian attack in Kursk as being the new offensive. They think that this could be condition setting or perhaps a diversion and that the actual Ukrainian offensive could occur in

either in a different tactical area within the Kursk salient or in an entirely different area in the theater, for example, in Zaporizhia and your Prokrosk or in other places. So, um,

and I am hesitant personally to make the call that this is going to be the main effort. Generally, the scale of the attack is relatively small. What we're seeing in the combat footage are small units, platoons, maybe groups of five to six mechanized vehicles at a time. And it seems that the attacks in Kursk for now are at the battalion level. So maybe the Russians say that the Ukrainians are using between two to three companies so far.

So this is pretty small scale for now. But that leads credence to the argument that this is probably just the opening sequence for something larger. But that is to be seen. I mean, that is, I suppose, the crucial question. And it is obviously too early to tell whether this is just a diversionary tactic or whether this is the start of something larger. But in a way, I suppose, from Ukraine's perspective, that uncertainty is helpful. If you keep the Russians guessing, that's a good thing.

Absolutely, James. I mean, you want to achieve operational surprise. You want to have your adversary not know how to effectively respond to you in any event. The whole reason the Ukrainians are in Kursk in the first place is because they achieved operational surprise back in August of 24 when they went in and managed to go 40, 35, 40 kilometers in the span of just a couple of days relatively quickly.

And so keeping the Russians guessing, keeping them on their toes, not making it clear where is going to be the main direction of Ukrainian attack, be it in Kursk or elsewhere. That is how you help increase the chances of you having a successful operation at the end of the day.

What will be the key things you'll be monitoring in the ISW over the coming days to see what exactly Ukraine is trying to achieve in Kursk? Exactly. So what we're going to be looking at very closely is, of course, the evolving control of terrain and the ground. We're looking very closely at the tactical objectives that the Ukrainians set up for themselves. So that is what strong points they want to seize, what ground lines of communication, roads, highways, logistical nodes, crossroads between towns, etc. do they want to go for, etc.

When will the Ukrainians send their, well, to what extent do the Ukrainians actually have viable reserves? That's a big research question and it's completely unclear to us. To what extent will the Ukrainians deploy their reserves and try to go for exploitation?

The current small scale of the attacks could suggest that this is actually not the main combat box. These could just simply be reconnaissance elements that are doing what we call reconnaissance in force. You send a small fighting force up to go engage the adversary, collect information and learn about how they fight back to tell the main body of forces, and then you send the main body of forces in.

Or this could just be the main attack. But to what extent do the Ukrainians actually have a prepared main frontal attack force or a follow-on exploitation force prepared to go into this? And what are the Ukrainian objectives? The other thing is going to also, of course, for us be how do the Russians respond?

depending on what kind of reserves the Ukrainians have, what implications and requirements does that impose on Russia to reinforce this Kursk area of operation? Of course, we've got a lot of media coverage in recent months about how the Russians have reinforced Kursk with roughly Division 10,000 infantry from North Korea and how that's changed the nature of this war. But beyond that, will the Russians have to deploy even more forces?

Well, that is one of the crucial questions. And actually, on the topic of North Korea, President Zelensky said in recent days that Russian forces, including North Korean troops, have lost up to a battalion of infantry fighting around one village in southern Kursk in roughly two days. Assuming that is accurate, what does that tell us about the current sustainability of the Russian casualty rate?

Well, the Russian casualty rate across the entire feeder is not sustainable. We've talked about this for a long time, but all the open source intelligence indicates that the Russians lose between, on average, 30,000 troops per month killed and wounded. In the quarter four of 2024, the Russians pushed harder because they were, I think they're sprinting at the end of a marathon and they were losing closer to 40 or 45 casualties per month.

So when North Korea gifted the Russians 10,000 soldiers back in the fall, that was really just roughly 10 days worth of soldiers if you were to aggregate it across the entirety of the theater. Now, within Kursk itself specifically, we've not been able to confirm independently the number of North Koreans killed or wounded because we actually just, we're not prepared to look at people's faces and pictures and say, yep, those are North Koreans versus Asiatic Russians living, you know, coming from North Korea.

Eastern Siberia, parts of Russia. However, that's all consistent with the reports that we've gotten from Pentagon officials and UK officials and, and Ukrainian officials. You know, I think it was just about a couple of weeks ago, the Pentagon claimed that the Russians have taken on about 1000 casualties and

battalion being between 500 and a thousand in total which was over the course of several weeks of fighting and then um that was before that the russians even started to decisively deploy north koreans in these wave attacks the purported combat footage that we've seen of the north koreans being used shows them being used as dismounted infantry without vehicle support being marched across fields to go seize tactical land and the ukrainians uh

engaging them relatively effectively because that is not a particular effective use of infantry. But you make gains that way, but it comes at a tremendous human cost. And the frontline villages where the North Koreans are reportedly fighting, according to Russian reports, they are indeed frontline towns and they are indeed places where the Ukrainians are attacking in some areas now as well.

So it's not inconceivable that you would see up to a battalion's worth of casualties over a 48-hour period. That actually occurs in other parts of the theater, too. Just yesterday, there was a Ukrainian brigade commander in the Prokros area in southeastern Ukraine who reported that about a battalion's worth of Russians are killed and wounded per day there as well, about 400 guys a day. So the hotspots are really hot.

I mean, there has been speculation for so long as to whether Putin will be forced to launch a fresh wave of mobilization to try and address the casualty rate. How do you rate the chances of that happening at some point in the coming months, George? I think if we can hold the Russians to the current tempo of operations where they continue to lose between 20 to 30k guys a month, it's a question of time. When will Putin have to call mobilization?

because really starting since the fall, we've seen the system for Russian force generation, the system by which they generate volunteers by using insane financial incentives, economic incentives, it's become less effective. The system's not working as well as it used to. You can plot the XY graph for...

how much the various Russian regions are now offering for these one-time enlistment bonuses and so on and so forth. I mean, just yesterday, the Oblast, and I believe it was Samara, they broke the record with a now 4 million ruble one-time signing bonus. That's about $36,000 USD. The average Russian annual salary is 1.2 million rubles.

So you can basically make four times the annual salary in Russia just by a one-time sign-up bonus, which is absurd. And of course, this is breaking the Russian economy in real time. Inflation is a major deal within Russia. The overnight insurance rate is, I have to double check, last I checked, this is before the Russian Central Bank met in late December, but it was 21%. They were reportedly going to raise it to 23%.

Russia's burning through its sovereign wealth fund, right? Everyone's flush with this ministry of defense cash, but that's just causing a whole lot of inflation. And it's not sustainable from the Russian economic perspective. Neither is it sustainable from the Russian forced generation perspective because it feeds into an existing Russian labor deficit. They have over a million vacancies in the workplace due to

tremendous number of people going to go bite and die. And so I really do see it as a, as a question of time. Putin wants to stay off for as long as possible. The requirement to have to do mobilization. And I think that's part of the reason why the Kremlin is actually doing this sticks and carrots thing.

charm and coercion offensive now with the Areshenik ballistic missile strikes. And we'll also simultaneously trying to go into negotiations because Putin would love to off ramp himself from the current collision course that he has with difficult decisions and accumulated risk coming down the pike in the next several months. But look,

Provided that the current tempo of operations keeps going, I think Putin will have to call mobilization within the next 18, 18, 24 months. I just I don't know exactly when.

It's such a good point you raised, George, about the state of the economy as well. It's almost like Putin is in a kind of vicious circle of unsustainability. He's got two things that are unsustainable. The casualty rates on the front line, but he can only get out of that by essentially bribing, as you describe, ordinary Russians to sign up. But that comes at huge economic expense that makes the Russian economy unsustainable. So whichever way he turns, he's got a different form of unsustainability.

Precisely. And look, even to end the war, if he ended it today and the casualty rate dropped to zero overnight, that would also impose problems on him as well, because now he has to deal with several hundred thousand violent men coming back into Russian society where there are not going to be sufficient jobs and opportunities to employ them. And so how do you deal with the externalities of all these violent men then returning to domestic civilian life?

because that will definitely cause problems too. And of course, the Russian defense sector is employing so many people too. And so if you were to decrease the requirements of the defense sector employment, that will cause other structural unemployment as well. So really, yeah, it's sort of, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't in many sort of ways. And I hope that the Western leaders, as we continue to think about conflict termination and negotiations, we realize actually there's a lot of leverage that the Russians have put

allowed themselves to give up to give to us. And we should exploit that leverage and seek concessions from the Russians as opposed to delivering onto the Russians pre-concessions before just to get to the table.

Just on the topic of Kursk again, according to your latest campaign assessment, Russian sources have expressed concerns about Ukraine's use of electronic warfare, which has prevented Russian forces from operating drones in Kursk Oblast. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, George? What exactly are they doing and how big a headache is it causing for the Russians?

Absolutely. So Russian reports claim that the Ukrainians are using very aggressive electronic warfare to block out the variety of the spectrum of the astro-magnetic spectrum that the Russians use to fly their aircraft.

They're FPV drones. And this, of course, is important because FPV drones have become one of the favorite tactics to destroy and defeat mechanized pushes. There's a lot of great Ukrainian combat footage from all around the theater, basically how the Ukrainians are actually more effective at engaging and destroying, say, a mechanized platoon with all the infantry riding in infantry fighting vehicles or infantry vehicles.

personnel carriers, then they aren't fighting infantry dismounts because when they get themselves up into the vehicles, um, they have a relatively large signature. The drones can go engaged in a very accurate sort of way. It's very easy to do follow on shots. Right. And so if you have to kill a hundred infantry, it's easier to kill a hundred infantry riding in a series, a relatively small series of vehicles than it is to kill a hundred infantry dismounted running across the field. Um,

The Russians use this tactic too, but of course, one of the prerequisites is you have to be able to have the drone operators communicate with the drones. And so when the Ukrainians are blanketing the space with interference that deprives Russians of being able to use the drones, that causes problems. And I'd note that for the Ukrainians, it's a good indicator that the Ukrainians are conducting combined arms operations because we actually see at least three, maybe four different combat service arms supporting this Ukrainian operation that's unfolding in Kursk.

It's a huge problem when you want to fly your own friendly drones, but then your own friendly electronic warfare basically does electronic warfare fratricide, and it denies your ability to do the drones, to fly your own drones, while also conveniently denying the enemy drones. So there's a high degree of coordination that actually has to occur between the ground forces and your own friendly electronic warfare so that when you use your drones and you do your advances, you don't also gum up what your friendly drone support is trying to do.

So that's actually quite difficult. And it's a challenge for both sides. And it's a modern challenge. I mean, no, the United States military still hasn't quite figured out how to do that either. There's a lot of implications for how do you echelon drone forces and electronic warfare forces and your ground forces to do all that deconfliction. So that's actually quite good as a prerequisite for modern combined arms warfare.

We also see the Ukrainians using deep strikes. They're using HIMARS artillery strikes to disrupt the Russian rear areas, prevent redeployments, and degrade their command and control nodes while also, again, doing these electronic warfare attacks. So this is interesting. It demonstrates that the Ukrainians are indeed integrating lessons from the battlefield. They're becoming more effective at using combined arms operations, and it's causing problems for the Russians. Now, big picture,

with this operational learning that we see in curse, it then implies the bigger challenge for the theater, which is, uh, we should not be so, uh,

readily able to accept the premise that the war is helplessly and hopelessly stalemated, that there can no longer be maneuver warfare. I think actually the challenge for military science is actually how do we restore operational maneuvers to the warfare? How do we create those conditions? And that of course has big implications for denying the enemy drones, allowing your own drones to work at the same time, how to effectively coordinate this EW stuff with your ground forces. How do you integrate fires into this?

So these are the sort of lessons learned that came from the unsuccessful counteroffensive in 2023 that we basically tee up all the problems for how do we get past those issues. So hopefully they can figure out how, if the Ukrainians can figure out how to do it successfully in Kursk on a smaller scale, it can then be replicated on a larger scale elsewhere in the theater in the future. And would it be your view, George, that ever since the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine has been far better at learning these operational lessons than Russia have?

They have been. They have been, at least for drones. The Ukrainians have a comparative advantage when it comes to innovation with drones and especially using electronic warfare at scale and deconfliction of the two. The Ukrainians, they're a lot more innovative. They have a very strong IT sector. That's not to say the Russians are not innovative and have an IT sector, but they have a comparative advantage.

And unfortunately for the Russians, the Russian Ministry of Defense actually is trying to establish a Russian Ministry of Defense run monolith that will subordinate unto itself all of the various irregular and organic drone shops that have spawned up in various Russian units.

The Ukrainians have all these independent organic drone shops that do great work and the Ukrainians are very good about letting those drone shops do what they do well, learn, innovate and then take the best of that and they proliferate it across the force.

The Russians have been doing that as well, but the Russians want to control everything. And my colleague here at the Institute, Katarina Stepanenko, she actually published a recent special edition for us where she talks about this new Ministry of Defense campaign that basically seeks to stifle all of those independent shops, bring them under this one sort of abomination of a Ministry of Defense-run corporate entity, which will likely stifle the Russians' ability to continue innovating freely because they have to use

and drone components and things that are procured by the Ministry of Defense. They can't do their own procurement. And of course, that's going to then become victim to Ministry of Defense graft and corruption. The standard operating procedures are going to be a little bit stricter and a variety of other problems that is going to not be conducive to on-the-fly battlefield learning. So I would say, yes, it's accurate to say the Ukrainians have an advantage in this. And it's one of the reasons why the Ukrainians have been able to use drones to offset the conventional standards

superior Russian military strength that the Ukrainians cannot conventionally meet. Something else we've seen in recent days is Russia vowing to retaliate after claiming to have shot down eight US-supplied Atakums missiles fired by Ukraine into Belgorod. How would you say Russian air defences are coping with Western-supplied long-range missiles so far, George? They've been more effective than we'd like them to be.

I'm not able to confirm the specific instance of the air defense shooting down those five attack missiles. But what we do know from U.S. official statements and documentation and combat footage is that

Russian integrated air defense is able to destroy attack missiles, which is not particularly surprising by itself. So the challenge for the Ukrainians is how do you conduct more effective strike packages? Does that mean you have to now integrate more dummy drones with them? By dummy, I mean decoy drones. How do you conduct offensive electronic warfare operations at the same time to be able to try to help suppress or confuse the air defenders?

Um, do you potentially, how do you sequence the timing of the strikes relative to the drones, the decoys, right? So there's a whole lot of playing and learning that has to be on how to make those strikes more effective. But then of course, also, how do you take out the various different Russian air defense systems that are good at doing certain things, not all air defenses. So the Russians have a variety of high end air defense systems. You've got the S 300, the S 400, which are, um,

which provide your larger area of protection. But there's tactical air defense systems too. There's the Panzer system. There's also some books for tactical, very close air defense. And what the Ukrainians have found is that there's sort of this complex game of chess where you can trade certain kinds of drones, certain kinds of systems that are better at taking out

uh, nodes within this integrated Russian air defense system. And so all of these systems are dependent on the ground-based radar stations, which are sort of the eyes of the system. And all of these guns are completely useless without the radars. And so really the Achilles heel of the system is, are the radars and the radars tend to be protected and, and hidden quite well because it's such a vulnerable spot. Um,

So what the Ukrainians have done is they've been trying to play this cat and mouse chess trade game where, all right, if we trade these sorts of drones that use these sorts of technologies that can evade these sorts of things to then get after the radars,

You can then degrade this. And so in order to actually degrade the, the big, more sophisticated Russian air defense systems, like those S 300 S 400, which can shoot down the attack thems. You have to do all these trades at a lower level to take out these smaller systems and these radars and these other things to then create the windows of opportunity to then send in your bigger stuff. So,

The air war game is very complex, and there's a lot to be learned and to be done about what it is. But of course, attack guns are not a silver bullet. I never argued that they would be a silver bullet. They are a requirement, and they are necessary for successful Ukrainian operations. You do need to be able to strike deep and hard into an adversary's rear. And it's fundamentally a good thing that the Russians now have to think about

protecting these rear areas because that doesn't, it allows the, it denies the Russians the flexibility to now deploy these air defense systems at the front, most tactical positions to cover the frontline because now they have to worry about engaging these ballistic missiles in the rear.

I'd note for you that as it pertains to the air war, the Russian use of glide bombs has decreased in many areas of the theater over recent months. And in space and time, that is correlated with the new policy changes that have allowed the Ukrainians to use attack bombs in some limited capacities in Russia. I'm not going to argue that it's a one-for-one causation, but all of these things are connected and it's important.

That's really interesting. Just finally, George, I wanted to get your take on what we saw on Christmas Day, which was the downing of that Azerbaijan Airlines flight in Russia. It is believed by Russian air defenses. I wonder what you think the potential significance of that is, given Azerbaijan is a de facto ally of Russia and given presumably Russia's other regional allies will be looking on and asking serious questions about it.

Sure. Um, well, you know, it's a tragedy that civilians were killed, uh, needlessly. Um, it's unfortunately part of, uh, the latest string of incidents with Russian friendly fire attacks against civilian airliners. Of course, everyone remembers, um, about 10 years ago in 2014, when the Russians shot down, uh, MH 17 flying from the Netherlands to, uh, to Southeast Asia, um, Russia 53rd air defense brigade conducted that attack, but, uh, denied it. Um,

But look, it's a bad look for the Russians. The Ukrainians were reportedly conducting some drone attacks that day. And I think the air defenders at hand, they became confused about what certain targets were. They didn't properly do the targeting correctly. That's on the air defenders. And they accidentally shot down a civilian plane.

Now, I would challenge your characterization that Azerbaijan and Russia are allies. They actually have a very complex relationship. Azerbaijan is not a member of Russia's post-Soviet treaty bloc, the CSTO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Azerbaijan is actually an actual stated adversary of Russia's actual ally, Armenia. Of course, we had the whole war in Nagorno-Karabakh and the recent Russian seizure of Nagorno.

Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia. They're aligned with Turkey, and Turkey, of course, is an adversary of Russia, or is a complex relationship there, too. But I think what it does do is it further solidifies Azerbaijan's

sphere and policy that they do not want to be involved in anything that Russia does. Azerbaijan is a significant producer of gas, and I think Azerbaijan wants to produce gas to help offset the recent ending of Russia's gas exports through Ukraine to the rest of Europe. So I think Azerbaijan might play a role there. And of course, I think if anything, this will

further increase the animus that, uh, the Azarias not only have for Armenians, which is long and historical, but also the Russians in general. Um, they already are not buddies, but, uh, this most recent incident, I'm sure will only make those relations worse. And so, uh, the relationships in the caucuses are becoming more complex and more interesting. Um,

Russia is less so a neutral player, increasingly so the antagonistic player. And these political dynamics in the former Soviet space are just, you know, getting even more complex and even more messy, not that they were not messy to begin with. And just finally, George, here we are having this conversation right at the beginning of 2025.

If you put yourself in Vladimir Putin's shoes, what is the one thing you are most worried about happening over the next 12 months, either on the battlefield or off it? I think the most worrying thing that I'm concerned about is what does the upcoming Trump administration decide to do vis-a-vis Ukraine? Will Trump take the bait and will Trump essentially do what Putin and what Lavrov and the Russian foreign ministry have been asking, which is

uh pre-concessions just to get to the negotiating table on ukraine's sovereignty and right to association they want ukraine to not join nato in the eu of course it is a sovereign state's right to be allowed to freely associate and so um i think putin would love it if if uh he could get an off-ramp to this war get put not a deal where both sides negotiate and both sides take some thinking uh concessions but the version at which

The Russians get everything they want, but sacrifice nothing. That'd be very good. But of course, the dangerous thing is that the new Trump administration, they go into this very clear eyed with strategic sense about American interests. And they realize actually that there's a deal to be made here. But it's a deal that involves really serious Russian concessions. And that if you actually just continue what we're doing, that is sustaining the Ukrainian fight, maintaining as high tempo of operation, which is burning and destroying Russia's combat power and economy.

um, that come hell or high water in the, you know, within the next 12 months, there's going to be difficult, difficult, uh, economic demographic, uh, military readiness problems that are going to only further mature for Russia. So, um, I think Putin's put all of his eggs into the basket of what is Washington going to do. And, uh,

I think he's very, very concerned about what American policy towards transit will look like, you know, coming into the next month or two. Well, we won't have to wait too long, just a couple of weeks to go now until Donald Trump's second inauguration. George, it's always fascinating talking to you. Thank you so much for your time. Likewise, James. Thank you so much. Thank you.