Key trends on the frontline - with Gustav Gressel
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What is happening on the front line of the Russo-Ukrainian war? How is the war changing technologically? What does Ukraine need from its partners? Why is Europe slow and indecisive and why is it wrong? You're listening to the Explain Ukraine podcast. Explain Ukraine is a podcast by Ukraine World, a multilingual media outlet about Ukraine. My name is Volodymyr Rekirmolenko. I'm a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of Ukraine World and the president of Pan-Ukraine.

My guest today is Gustav Gressel, an Austrian political and military analyst, former senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and currently a researcher at the National Defense Academy in Vienna. Ukraine World is brought to you by Internews Ukraine, one of Ukraine's largest media NGOs. You can support our work at patreon.com slash ukraineworld. We really need your support now because our media is increasingly relying on crowdfunding.

You can also support our volunteer trips to the frontline areas in which we help both soldiers and civilians, bringing mostly cars for soldiers and books for civilians. You can support our work at paypal: ukraine.resistinggmail.com So let's begin.

Gustav Gressel, welcome to this podcast. Welcome, thanks for having me. So I would like to talk with you about the topic that you understand very well, the military context of this war and what is happening if we look at it from the military perspective. On the one hand, we see in the information space that Russians are advancing,

But on the other hand, they are advancing taking villages and not big cities. So it seems that their advance in 2024 is very, very minimal. If you're talking about the East, for example, what is your assessment? Yeah, so first of all, it's a war of attrition. So in a war of attrition...

We see that the fighting capabilities of both parties usually deteriorate and they try to adapt to shrinking resources and a shrinking potential to act in a very

cohesive manner because mobilization dilutes the kind of professional nature of armies that they had before a war for attrition and material shortages reign in. That said, therefore,

even minor territorial gains do not matter that much for the Russian side because their aim is to kind of erode and destroy the Ukrainian armed forces by constantly attacking. And the equation goes that once Ukraine's defenders are so broad to a breaking point that organized military resistance would collapse and then kind of the Russian army would have

have reached its goal. That said, of course, on the Ukrainian side, again, what matters most for them is to inflict as much casualties on the Russian side and to preserve their own forces as good and as long as possible, because this kind of calculus cannot succeed if the cohesion and

and ability to mount an organized resistance continuously on the Ukrainian side. So yes, the Russian territorial gains have been minimal. I mean, to be frank, I don't think the Russian army is really capable at this point of having large-scale maneuver operations.

They're not capable of this in terms of logistics. They're not capable of this in terms of maneuver, having the sufficient amount of vehicles, etc. They're not capable of this certainly in terms of officer training and experience, especially amongst junior officers where they have a really high rate of attrition.

But again, that's not the point at this stage. They just basically try to use the sledgehammer against the Ukrainian wall as often as they can and basically hoping the wall will break down sooner or later. In this context, the psychological side of it seems to be very important, right? Because

Yeah, what matters is what is happening on the front line, but it also matters what is happening in the minds of people, what is happening in the minds of the government and of the society, how people perceive it. And the dangerous trend that I see that in Ukraine there is more and more this feeling that we are losing this war and therefore there is...

increasing mistrust to the government, to Zelensky administration, increasing mistrust to the Western partners and to each other within the society? And isn't it something that Russians really want to achieve, to achieve this kind of a psychological destabilization inside Ukraine in order to force Ukraine to collapse from within?

I think that's very much part of their warfare. They have also been clever in amplifying grievances and difficulties that of course occur in a longer war. And they have very targeted information policies. I have to be honest, I think the biggest problem right now is more in the West amongst the supporters of Ukraine.

So yes, there is a psychological side, but there is also a material side. Ukraine needs a constant supply of ammunition, constant supply of armored vehicles. The loss rates are extremely high, but this is a full-scale war between industrialized nations. It's not the Taliban. So we were not used to it, but it's actually not unsurprising from a military point of view. And the problem now is that

A lot of the problems that Ukrainian army has for various reasons, of course, in the West also, or in Europe and the United States are amplified by those who basically want to quit military support and portray the war as something unwinnable. And I think that is particularly dangerous because it erodes the...

The support for the military supplies to Ukraine, and this is exactly also what Russia wants because Russia wants to have a kind of interdiction policy to kind of separate Ukraine from the West and to peel off Western support.

knowing that without ammunition supply in various fields from the West and continuous supply of armored vehicles, that the Russian victory in this war of attrition will be easier to achieve. And that is particularly dangerous, I have to say.

I will come back to this question of Western support a little bit later, but let's talk about the technological side of this war. I remember you were saying once on our joint meeting, I think with ECFR, that the technological advances are very, very important and at some point there is kind of a very complex breakthrough. We can speak about the technological breakthrough during the First World War, during the Second World War,

What is technological breakthrough today? What technologies are deciding now the future of this war and maybe of the future wars as well? Well, to be frank, there is a technological side and there's a doctrinal side, and they both go together. So, of course, what we've seen with the mass advent of drones, of remotely piloted

vehicles, especially the massive quantity of small drones, we saw a dramatic increase of defensive firepower. The problem with an armored assault right now is that if you kind of approach the zero line, you have a very short time till you are swarmed by enemy drones that will

after some time damage your vehicles, hinder you from maneuvering forward and your operation bogged down. And this is further complicated by the fact that drones have in combination with electronic warfare

a kind of wider horizontal than vertical range. What do I mean with that? They can move alongside the zero line easier than behind the zero line because behind the zero line, they get easier victim to electronic warfare and defensive measures. That again reinforces the defense.

Then, of course, we have the increased transparency on the battlefield by using reconnaissance means, by all means, drones, improved electronic reconnaissance, improved computing power of combat information systems that will sort of turn information into an operative and tactical situation awareness very quickly.

All that is making it very difficult to maneuver, to attack. You see that on the Russian side. You see that on the Ukrainian side. You saw that in the counteroffensive. It is brutally difficult to attack. And of course, these capabilities come on top of very well-established defensive strengths like minefield. They, of course, still play a role. Barriers still play a role. Strong defensive positions and trenches still play a role.

But this new technology, of course, amplifies it and amplifies it more on the defensive side than on the offensive side. Said that, there is also a doctrinal and tactical dimension to that. So how do we synchronize new capabilities like drone strikes, electronic warfare with conventional warfare or conventional warfare capabilities like infantry fight, armored maneuver,

engineering work like clearing obstacles, etc.,

How do we mix our forces? So how much drone capability does a company, a battalion, a brigade need to fulfill its tasks? What is exactly the mix of the new capabilities? All that is still basically under discussion and it's under probation. How do we use the new technologies also for offensive duties? That's more difficult to try out than on the defense side.

But it still is something that both sides are experimenting with. And actually, if we look at how the Ukrainian Kursk offensive broke off, it was, of course...

And of course, the Russians were ill-prepared because they were planning an offensive on their own. They had kind of cleared some minefields and that made it easier. But on the other side, you saw also new tactics by Ukrainians using, for example, drones as mobile jammers, sort of different tactics to synchronize maneuver forces and electronic warfare.

So some clever new means, and these are the things that will determine whether a party can get to the offensive back again. And this is also the things that people will watch very closely when they examine the war and take the lessons learned. Because in the First World War, a lot of people think that, yeah, it was just technology. So machine gun and artillery made the trench war, and then the tank came and...

and broke the technological stalemate. But that's actually a horrible oversimplification. The tank was very immobile in the First World War, and we had a lot of maneuver in the First World War even at the end. And we had then wars that contained maneuver without having a lot of tank forces. Like if you, for example, look at the Polish-Soviet War,

where you saw a lot of maneuver, but neither the Soviets nor the Poles had large amount of tanks. But they took the tactical lessons from World War I. They basically built their experience on the late German tactical innovations in infantry tactics, how to get back to maneuver using the technology of the day.

how to differently organize and synchronize forces compared to what an army has been prior to World War I. And that basically enabled them to maneuver. And that's also one of the many reasons why, for example, the Polish-Soviet war happened.

looked quite different than the First World War. And if the French had taken the right lessons from this war and had a deeper look into that, they could have probably anticipated what would come in 1940. But this is, of course, the trick then in anticipating the next war where both technology progresses and matures from sort of small experimentation to real weapon systems.

But on the other side, the tactical innovation, the kind of mental map on how to really use this stuff, what technology is spitting out now, that is one of the most important things to learn in such a war. And here on many things, the verdict is still out and experimentation is still going on. And to be very frank, that's also my...

My rest of optimism, why despite the very bleak situation, I don't share all of the fatalism amongst many colleagues because on this, Ukrainians still have an edge as they're more innovative and more adaptable than the Russian army.

Still talking about technology, you mentioned that the drones are very important. But what I see from the fact of speaking with soldiers is that the drones that Ukrainians are making are mostly dependent on Chinese technologies.

and maybe Taiwanese a little bit, but they all come from China. And it seems to me that on the both sides of the front line, there is this technological battle, and it is very fast. The cycle of technological innovation when it comes to drones is very fast. It just maybe takes months and not years.

But my impression is that here Western partners are lagging behind and it's all about who is more smart in using Chinese parts and Chinese technologies. Am I right in this assessment? Yes, unfortunately. And the other thing that Western observers underestimate is we see...

especially the Markshift drones. This is actually something very typical that happens in each and every large-scale war. It's the militarization of civilian manufacturing and capability and knowledge. So if we look at Ukraine's drone program,

You have the small drones, the FPV drones that are produced in the millions a year. They are based on commercial off-the-shelf Chinese products or parts. Then with either 3D printed or otherwise produced frames put together and fitted out with a warhead.

That is basically a militarization of Ukraine's IT sector that programmed these drones, that developed the steering, the encryption for the signaling, the steering and command software, etc., that also have knowledge on consumer-based electronics. And now you basically militarize this. Instead of building computer solutions for an office, you build drones.

The same is for the long-range strike drones Ukraine had before the war and industry producing light sport aircraft.

especially for the smallest classes of civilian sort of sporting licenses, pilot licenses. There were some enterprises that produced them in Ukraine because it was cheaper there. Ukraine has the technological base, the etiquette people to do that. And now, of course, you militarize this. You have people who have knowledge in building vehicles.

propeller, small, lightweight propeller driven things. So let them build drones. The same goes for naval drones. You have a shipbuilding industry, a civilian shipbuilding industry. And this civilian ship industry with using commercial parts can build naval drones much easier than, for example, if you would say, I want to build dedicated

wartime munitions like a torpedo, which would be kind of the counterpart to the Seababy drones. Because the parts for torpedoes, the steering systems, these are

very specialized parts and very specialized subcomponents. They're much more restricted in the availability. It's much harder to get, it's much more expensive. Hence, you can produce only a very limited number of these munitions because they are super expensive. In naval drones, you can mass produce them and mass is a sort of quantity, is a quality in itself. Even if the Russians intercept some of these drones, they're still

many that will come through and pose a constant threat to the Russian Navy. And that's what you see in the effects. And now coming back to the Chinese parts, I still don't see it popping up in especially US debates on a potential war in the Asia Pacific. If you look into the fact that China is

is responsible or commanding now 35% of the global manufacturing power in all sorts. I'm not only talking about consumer electronics and drones and drone parts and gimbals, etc., but cars, sport planes, ships, toys, whatever. And you think that in a wider...

confrontation in the Asia Pacific, the Chinese government will start to militarize all these civilian production capabilities for the sake of presenting a quantitative overmatch to US forces in the Pacific. I don't see the American military and military debate reflecting this kind of threat. And if I were Chinese, I would look exactly into that because it's the thing where I

on the fastest track, get a huge advantage quantitatively over the Americans. Which brings me to the next point. The Europeans underestimating the importance of the manufacturing sector, industrial politics, industrial capabilities, the capabilities to still produce things on their own. We kind of got spoiled and used to the global market that

will provide everything we want. And it's, of course, much more comfortable if you are a service industry because services is nice and fine and you can wear a suit and tie in a shiny office instead of getting your hands dirty in a factory. But at the end, if we look at the dependencies we have created and the

the advantage of others to militarize things that are outsourced production in the wherever else world that is something we need to take in account and and second if you look at at a civilian drone market at the capabilities or at the sort of dynamic of the civilian market for drones and the

the hurdles you have to take to produce them they're particularly high in europe especially here in germany the regulations are high the tag the sort of incentives for investments are very low

And if we fall behind in the civilian world in this kind of capabilities, we will have a very difficult time in war than to use a non-existing civilian capability for the military effort. Absolutely, I agree with you. And I also try to persuade our Western colleagues and make them less blind about what is happening right now

Wars are always revolutionized technologies. And we see right now the main beneficiary of these technological revolutions is probably China. And this is a big question to the Western world, whether it is thinking about this enough or

Let me ask another question also related to arms. I see that the debates about helping Ukraine, aiding Ukraine, assisting Ukraine in this war are mostly debates about money. So how much money can we spend, etc. What I see from the front line...

I recently traveled to one of the frontline regions in Sumy Oblast, and we brought a car to a unit, basically a volunteer unit who is not even the part of official armed forces, who are downing the Russian drones. And they are downing it with the arms which are 100 years old.

It seems to me that we are, you know, coming back to the 1930s. And why they are doing that? Not because, you know, Ukraine lacks more sophisticated arms, but because the drones like Shaheds are very cheap and you cannot use very expensive arms to down them because otherwise you will just run out of them. So basically what Russians are doing, they produce a lot of very, very cheap things like these drones.

And we need to, but in enormous quantities. And we need to have enormous quantity of cheap arms to down them. And it doesn't seem that these cheap arms are coming from Europe or America. We need to, you know,

invent something else or use old Soviet arms. So the question is not about how expensive one unit of arms or armed vehicle is, but how efficient is in the current war, would you say? Absolutely. And again, especially in the war for attrition, it's about quantity. And if you compare it to sort of the Shahid drone, basically is a primitive cruise missile. It's actually not a drone because...

the capability to remotely pilot is very limited in terms of its total range. It's a primitive cruise missile, and it has a much higher rate of being intercepted, and it has a much lower warhead, so it's much less efficient than a real cruise missile, like a Khab 101 or a Tomahawk, etc. But it's so much cheaper.

that at the end, the quantity is a quality on its own and the sheer quantity you can throw at your enemy using this kind of cheap stuff is an advantage on its own. The second thing, quantity opens up the possibility to strike multiple targets and put pressure on many sectors in the enemy's economy that you couldn't otherwise.

And here again, if you look, for example, in a possible Chinese-American war in the Pacific, yes, the Chinese have a large cruise missile and ballistic missile program, but that will be pretty much occupied striking military targets in the Asia-Pacific, well-defended targets where you need a high capability missile.

cruise missile or ballistic missile to really sink a warship or damage a military port or facility or airfield, etc. But cheap drones would allow the Chinese to strike very deep into the American rear to start to erode the American defense industrial base without resorting to nuclear weapons.

and that will be something that they will very quickly look into, not because they don't trust their cruise missiles or official cruise missiles are shit, but because this high-quantity cheap stuff gives you the opportunity to also strike targets that otherwise would drop off your priority list because you can't afford to strike them.

So again, and as yeah, of course, what Ukraine does now and this kind of mark shift

modernization of very old anti-aircraft guns, machine gun troops on Toyota's mobile machine gun groups to intercept them, to also decrease the costs of intercepting these cheap missiles is something that we should also look into in the West. Because let's not always talk about the Chinese military.

American war if NATO would be attacked by Russia.

The same kind of problem would be there for the Russian general staff. They would, of course, immediately use the long-range strike missiles at the high-value NATO installations, military airfields, barracks, arms depots, etc. But that's a fairly long list all across Europe. And even though the Russians have a lot of deep strike means, or they are able to produce a lot of them, they would...

if you would attack the entire continent, immediately be presented with a very long list of targets. So of course they would go with very cheap drones against the multiple civilian targets that fade into the defense industry, that are the defense industrial base, that are the financial base.

With what do you attack banking headquarters in Frankfurt? With what do you attack the small enterprises and workshops that repair vehicles for the Bundeswehr, etc.? You would use Shahids and the high-tech Patriot, IRIS-T air defense systems can't stand everywhere across the country. You need a territorial defense force everywhere.

not only as a kind of sort of military police system, but as a territorial air defense force to have means that are very cheap per shot, that are easy to operate by voluntary soldiers or by reserve soldiers that are

easy to learn to newly mobilized personnel and that do the job in protecting these objects. And I think we see now the kind of

the rebirth of air defense guns, but I guess also microwave weapons and lasers also will probably have a say in this in the future as well because they're cheaper shot. I mean, a laser is for the time being very expensive to produce, but once you have produced it, basically each shot only costs a bit of electricity.

And these systems and also the operational units that operate them, they're kind of having a territorial air defense force. That is something the West really needs to recreate. On this, we also really can learn some lessons from Ukraine on these mobile air defense forces, on the multiple belts of sensors to detect these incoming threats. Because

Again, every enemy will immediately see the advantage of these cheap attack means. Yes, I totally support your point because I see how it is actually happening. And I myself participate a little bit in this process by bringing these pickups like Toyotas or Nissans or...

By the way, most of them are Japanese, not American or Europeans, but it's also an interesting thing. And you just put a gun, which can be very old actually, but still very efficient and very cheap on the top of this pickup truck. And yeah, and you are now

capable of what is called to become a mobile force and travel from the road to the road, from the village to village and try to down these drones. And the important technological thing that makes them capable of doing this

is that you can buy a thermal night vision optic now for actually very cheap. Unfortunately, they are all also Chinese produced, or most of them are Chinese produced, but still you can buy that. You can buy a data receiver that you can receive the information from the air defense command where the drones are flying, and then you go into position, you see in the night if you have the...

The best option, then, you also have some sort of ballistic computer for your gun. All these things were horribly expensive in the 80s.

But now they are basically you have consumer electronics that can provide you the computing power, the ranging power for a fire control computer for an air defense gun. And you have the consumer electronic base for night vision that is good enough to see these kind of drones. All that was impossible like 10 years ago or 15 years ago and unaffordable. And now it is affordable. You just have to have the organization that takes care of that and you have to

You have to be aware and in mind that you need to provide this capability in war.

Coming back to the question of Western support, what are the major problems in your opinion, in the way how Ukrainian-Western partners are actually thinking about helping Ukraine and helping Ukraine? What are the major problems and how to solve them? I would divide the two problems into political problems and in industrial problems. So starting with the political problems, our politicians have

have a long time to grapple what this war really is about and what it means to defeat Russia. First, while they do not openly talk about what is the kind of war aim that they want to achieve, they say, well...

let Ukraine decide nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, blah, blah, blah, blah. But of course, behind closed doors, they say basically they want to freeze to the front. Every time Ukraine is in a position to exert military pressure and reverse the Russian lines or is kind of in a position to do that, you see the Western officials being very nervous about the possible consequences, nuclear consequences, etc. So basically, they want a stalemate in the war. And

That, for the first time, makes them prioritize weapon systems that they think are good to reaching a stalemate and underestimating that even for defensive work, you need a lot of weapon systems and capabilities that are deemed offensive, like tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, etc., heavy, long-range artillery equipment.

Because even if you are in defense, you need to counterattack, you need to delay, you need to rotate forces. And needless to say, the mechanized forces have a much harder punch even on the defense. The second thing is they underestimate the willingness of the Russians to go through heavy casualties in the process of that. I don't know how often I heard this absolutely idiotic phrase, Putin...

must recognize that he can't win this war putin must recognize that the losses are not worth the gains but he doesn't he doesn't give a shit about his people uh he never gave um and and that's that's not the calculus he's he's playing at um

His whole term in government, his whole claim to power was to reestablish the Soviet Union or to reestablish the great Russian Empire. That's from day one, from his first speech as a prime minister. This was his goal. And he's not giving up just because there are many casualties. So the West underestimated that this would be something

that there needs to be a long perspective in all of that. Especially at the beginning of the war, for example, when we had this debate what to supply and the Germans were like, no armored vehicle of Western designs because they were afraid, of course, that...

Well, the SPD was first and foremost afraid that how this looked to their own electorate if German tanks would play a decisive role in a war against their beloved Russia.

That was the main reason. The second reason was they didn't think it was necessary. You give them some kind of old Warsaw Pact stuff. This is easier to train because Ukrainians are usually used to operating BMPs and T-72s, which is also a bit wrong because the main battle tank was the T-64, which has a different engine and different fire control, etc. But for Western politicians, they all look the same.

And so you save the training time and it's not such a big fuss. And if you want to build up the logistical chain to operate Western equipment, that would last longer than the war would last, they thought. And this was a mistake from day one. The war will last long because Putin is really into this.

The second then, when the Western delivery started, they gave some vehicles they had at hand now. But if you ask them about new production, they said, oh, yeah, no, that takes far too long time. Even a lot of people, when Ukraine ordered this first self-propelled howitzer as an artillery, everybody said, yeah, that's for post-war use. And now they're going to be delivered into the war.

And we constantly underestimate the time that we need to support Ukraine and the amount of stuff that is needed.

And here, of course, I dial even down from politicians to military. We have been in kind of wars of opportunity, if I may say so. Iraq, Afghanistan, low-intensity wars, more comparable to the old colonial war. And you saw in the First World War and the Second World War that a lot of armies that were used to colonial war were very ill-prepared for a kind of full-scale war against a peer opponent because...

The loss rates in a colonial war are much lower. The use of equipment was a different one, different amounts, and the loss rate, of course, was much lower. Starting from spare parts, even well-intended, when we gave Ukraine equipment, we underestimated, for example, the demand for spare parts, spare barrels, spare engines, etc.

Because this stuff will break down far quicker than if you would send this stuff to Afghanistan where it would be engaged in base defense duties and kind of move around only very little and not be attacked by Lancets and FBE drones, etc.

Then, of course, the quantity. For Germany, 18 Leopard 2A6 is a large number because the whole Bundeswehr at that time had 225 main battle tanks. For Ukraine, that's nothing because the total amount of losses of main battle tanks by now, they account for more than 1,000 certainly lost in this war.

18 is basically one defensive operation somewhere in the Pokrov sector. And people couldn't grasp that what they had experienced in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is something so totally different than what is happening in Ukraine. And that basically, this lack of

of knowledge, this lack of political will or political grasp of the series then led to industrial problems. Contracts were not, orders were not placed, contracts were not given. We did not switch to war economy in most fields but artillery ammunition. And what I mean by war economy is not sort of forcibly mobilizing people into the defense industry, but

You have two very different procurement modes in peacetime and in wartime. In peacetime, you go to a company, let's say Rheinmetall, and say, I want to buy 200 Pumas, for example. And then Rheinmetall goes, okay, here's the contract. You sign the contract.

And then Rheinmetall stretches the production of Pumas so that it can keep its operational production line open and for as long as it sees the next contract flying around because it needs to maintain a decent amount of production capability over time. In a war time, you say, dear Rheinmetall, every Puma, you build Pumas now and every Puma you build, I will buy.

Either I give it to the Bundeswehr or to Ukraine, I don't care, but you build as much as quick, as fast as you can. And then the defense industry is free to hire people to double down, to make more contracts with enterprises in the whole supply chain, etc. To really crank out as much as they can and not to stretch the production to existing contracts.

On Leopard 2, I can tell you the difference between the two. If a Karlsmeyer 5 Wegmann would be in war production mode, they could produce roughly 200 Leopard 2s a year. Now they're producing with the contracts they have 36 a year. That's a huge difference. Over the years, we were three years in the war. That makes a huge difference.

And it makes a huge difference in being able to supply Ukraine, either from new produced stuff or from stocks you take out of your own armed forces, resupply your own armed forces. And the problem here is that the kind of political indecisiveness and industrial problems then reinforce each other. Because if you are politicians who don't...

sign contracts and don't order new stuff, um, uh,

And then at a later stage, they said, yeah, go to defense industry and say, yeah, we actually would like to do something. Then defense industry tells them, yeah, but it takes us to really spin up production. It takes us two years. It takes us three years. And then they again say, oh, that's much too long. The war will be over then. Again, don't order. And then in one year, they come back again. And we should have ordered something back then two years ago, but we haven't. How about now going to war industry? And industry says, well, it's still two to three years because, you know, if

So if you decide and there's the money on the table, then we can start really producing and really cranking out stuff. We can't do that kind of in advance, just hoping somebody somewhere will buy the things we produce.

So these two problems are mutually reinforcing and they are now responsible for us being in this bad situation where we actually don't know where the American support will go to and how far and how big it will be. But we don't have the capability

We have the theoretical potential, but not the practical means at hand to supplement or replace, substitute the American support effort. And that's kind of the worst position you can ever be strategically. And I'm really mad at our politicians because they knew that this is going to be the problem. And they were told that this war will last for years. And they just bloody ignored it. How...

realistic you think that in light of this how realistic you think Europe can replace the United States if the American aid is cut the military aid we see for example now the freezing of USAID funding all across the world but also for Ukraine and Ukraine uh

civic sector, Ukraine reconstruction, decentralization efforts, infrastructure really depends on this assistance. So if American assistance is cut in the military sphere, Ukraine will be in big, big trouble. But from what you are saying, Europe is unable right now to replace America. What do you think?

Well, as long as finances go, of course, we would be able to substitute the American effort. So as long as there's stuff to buy, it is possible. The problem is there. So in the military field, of course, the Europeans are not able to replace the Americans, simply because we have not invested in only three years, except for artillery munition, we have not invested

in cranking out production for vehicles, aircraft, etc. And in some cases, actually, we have put some money into our hand. For example, Germany has invested in increasing the Patriot production capability in Germany, but on Patriots, this really takes a long time to materialize. The problem then is,

Can you buy something? Let's pretend Trump kind of decreases support, but you can still buy at American sort of, you can buy American Patriots, Europeans can buy from American surplus Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and M113 number personal carriers. They can buy some

Some other, they can buy American artillery shells and ammunition. Then it's possible because we have the money.

And via the US, we can convert this money into military capabilities or military goods that can be supplied. The problem is that a lot of people in the Trump administration say, we can't even sell you this stuff because we will need this for the big war against China. And we need this to deter China. Even if we want to, we can't give you more Patriots and we can't give you more infantry fighting vehicles, etc., etc.

Because if we do, we kind of expose our reserve stock and we need that for the great next world war. And if that is the case, then of course we are screwed because then we have, of course, in theory, a lot of money and we can generate money, but that money is not convertible into military equipment. And we would need again years to invest in it to our own defense industry to crank up

to the point where they could do that and could deliver the equipment then needed. But that would take a lot of time and it is very hard to plug the hole with donations from our own armies or renovating equipment that is still in store. I mean, there's still a little bit of equipment in store. It's, of course...

It takes a lot of time to renovate old Mardis and Lepad ones that have been parked around for 30 years, but it's still possible. The problem is all these measures, all the supplies that is now going to Ukraine, these old renovated vehicles, this should have been a gap filler for the time you need to increase defense industrial production.

And we kind of enacted the gap filling policies, but we never increased defense industrial production. So the prospect in this is sort of getting into a slump where you're running out of old equipment or the old equipment is so badly worn that it really takes a very long time to renovate each of the vehicles and put it to the front lines. But you're still not yet able to supply Ukraine from newly produced stock.

That is really a threat. Well, to be honest, on the Russian side, things don't look so bright either. If the Chinese don't supply them with stocks from their old equipment, which for the time being they're not doing,

They also increasingly have difficulties producing the vehicles that they need. We also see that in the Russians mounting attacks with motorbikes and quads and whatever they can find because they have a shortage in armored vehicles. And they also have the problem that now they are

Of course, they have some stock that they can still renovate and put to the front lines. And most of the vehicles they're using are not newly produced, but kind of renovated old stuff. But of course, this stuff has been parked around in the open for a long time. And it needs a lot of time to really renovate these vehicles. But the thing is, if you then roll back to the political situation, as long as Putin is still confident that he...

he has enough Soviet scrap to, even if it's bad, even takes long and even takes a lot of costs to renovate and put to the field. By that way, we'll outgun Ukraine because Ukraine can't be supplied from newly produced European stocks, which would kind of give Ukraine a kind of open-end supply line. He is confident that he will win the war for attrition. If we buy now, if we had acted decisively in 2022 and really cranked up

production yes it would have cost a lot of money but by now we would actually be in the position to supply Ukraine predominantly from newly produced equipment stocks and that would give Ukraine a theoretically indefinite supply line and that would put a lot of question marks on the Russian war strategy and on on

on Putin's vision to win the war. And probably if we had done that, we would actually see what all the pacifists want to see some kind of negotiations because the Russians would cry for it. We're not.

And that's because we didn't act back then. And it's getting increasingly difficult to catch up and get in front of the curve right now. If Europe is so weak, how realistic do you think that Russia will attack European Union countries and NATO countries like the Baltic states or maybe Finland or maybe some others? I fear it's almost a certainty.

So the way we have acted on Ukraine, the indecisiveness, the lack of will has reinforced Putin's disgust for us and this kind of Russian perception that we are all decadent and not worthy and not willing to fight. I fear also that a Russian army that is not decisively defeated in Ukraine and that might even be victorious there

is almost thrown to horribly overestimate itself. I mean, look at 2022 when they thought they would take Kiev in three days. They needed four years for Aleppo. Aleppo is considerably smaller than Kiev and the Syrian rebels are considerably weaker than Kiev.

than the Ukrainian armed forces. Yes, of course, there were fewer Russian soldiers, but still, I mean, they needed four years, four bloody years for Aleppo. And they overestimated themselves. And that army that needed four years for Aleppo thought it would take three days for Kiev. So this kind of blindness by your own success and not even having a critical thought at what you perceive as a success and kind of

merit into your wishful thinking what you can do to others led to this kind of overestimation. And yeah, the Russians, I mean, look at their propaganda, look at what they're saying daily on TV, look at what the elite think and say.

They want to ornament Putin's mausoleum with all the flags of countries they conquered in Europe. It's, I mean, what Dugin said now. And he's not alone on that. This is the perception that they can do that, that they will do that. They now see that the transatlantic relation seems not to be what it was, and if the Americans can't.

It can be peeled off from Europe the better. That's why they invest in the trucker Carlson and the like. And probably the Chinese will do them the favor in bogging down the Americans in the Pacific in a couple of years. And then they will perceive the Europeans as the kind of bounty that is there. And even if that doesn't work the way, and even if then the Europeans show spine, right?

And this will be just as much a grinding, bloody, protracted war where the Russians don't make the gains they've hoped to. I just fear they will nevertheless start it because their perceived success makes them think they can. And yeah, I'd say... Maybe my last question, so...

I'm very thankful that you are realistic and you're sober and we see that the future is quite gloomy. So we need to be prepared for worse. But what gives you hope? I have a bit more hope in the kind of street smartness of people. If, for example, I look at polls in Germany, the support for supplying Ukraine is still there and up. It...

it really takes the Russians a horrible amount of propaganda effort to discredit Ukraine and it's not very successful. So there's still a moral compass in our societies. We have stupid politicians and incapable politicians, but if there is still a kind of moral compass in society,

there is the chance that when it really matters, they will accept a Churchill and kick out the Chamberlains. That's my hope. Otherwise, I just have a dramatic appeal. I mean, you know, in my previous military career, I was also sent to the Chinese National Defense Academy and

I've studied a bit in Russia, and I have to say, if you have seen the other side of systems, you really cherish the West, even with all its downfalls and stupidities and the head scratching about our politicians, the

Growing up in a free society, having kids that can decide on their own what they're going to do and what they're going to think and what they're going to say is an enormous luxury and treasure. And we would be... And it took a very long time to actually get that. So if we would give that out of the hands because the Russians are threatening us militarily...

we would be the greatest idiots of all times. And I really, really, really hope that when push comes to shove, that our society will see that. And basically in Ukrainian society, I mean, there was a lot of apathy and political cynicism before the war, but you saw then when the war came about that society stuck together. And...

And I hope the same will be there with us when the next big war comes. Because it's going to come. That's for sure. Gustav Gressel, thank you so much for this conversation. You're welcome. This was a podcast Explaining Ukraine by Ukraine World, a multilingual media outlet about Ukraine. My name is Volodymyr Hermolonko. I am a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of Ukraine World and the president of PEN Ukraine.

My guest today was Gustav Gressel, an Austrian political and military analyst, former senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and currently a researcher at the National Defense Academy in Vienna.

You can support our work at patreon.com/UkraineWorld. We really need your support now because our media is increasingly relying on crowdfunding. You can also support our volunteer trips to the frontline areas in which we help both soldiers and civilians, bringing mostly cars for soldiers and books for civilians. You can support our trips at paypal: ukraine.resistinggmail.com. Thank you for listening. Stay with us and stand with Ukraine.