Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.
Sophie Bambridge grows quality potatoes for McDonald's Iconic Fries in Norfolk. I think McDonald's are one of the biggest supporters of British farming. They have a real commitment to British potatoes. The Sustainable Fries Fund is a collaborative investment by McCain and McDonald's.
to help us understand and try different growing techniques for potatoes so that we can understand what we can do to help reduce our impact on the environment but still produce a good quality potato. It helps enable us to try things without having the risk and cost of potentially it going wrong. The support from McCain and McDonald's is really useful to us. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's Plan for Change on the McDonald's website.
Zero in a word, easy. Yeah, invoicing from the van makes my life super easy. Gives me a snapshot of everything all in one place. My accountant loves it. My bookkeeper loves it. It's so easy. Join over 4 million subscribers who've chosen Zero. Try free for 30 days. Terms apply.
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 one of our regular guests on Frontline, George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War. George is the head of their Russia team. George, always a pleasure. Welcome back.
Thank you so much, James. Good to see you once again. To begin with, I wonder if you can just reflect on the few weeks we've had in terms of the war in Ukraine. There has been a lot happening. Is this one of the most significant periods since Russia's full-scale invasion began, in your view?
We are definitely at a pivotal moment of the war. I mean, the war has always been interesting. There's been more interesting parts than others, but this is definitely one. This is up there. Look, we can talk about the variety of inflections that have happened across the theater and in the political world globally over the last several weeks. But I think the key takeaway for the listeners and for the viewers and the policymakers is this war is not stalemated.
We have North Koreans now confirmed joining as a co-belligerent with the Russians against Ukraine, which is a massive inflection. We now have the long-awaited Western permissions for the Ukrainians to use attack them in storm shadows on the territory of the Russian Federation, long-awaited. I would argue it'd be quite consequential if the Ukrainians can pull off the kind of attacks that we need them to correctly.
We have very interesting Russian tactical gains in eastern Ukraine and Donetsk Oblast, near Gullidar, Kurochov, Bolikino-Vasilka, Pokrovsk. The Russians have seized over the last two, three months well over a thousand square kilometers of territory there, much more than what the Russians managed to seize in 2023. So these lines are moving. The war is not stalemated. It's quite dynamic. And we're heading into a politically uncertain time.
The Russians are burning through a tremendous amount of equipment that they cannot afford to keep losing at current rates. And all estimates indicate that the Russians, between the next 12 to 18 months, they will start to tap out with their gas tank. And a lot remains in flux. And we'll see whether or not the West decides to set conditions to exploit the Russians having vulnerability or if we're going to
concede early and go into some, what I would argue are premature negotiations and seed premature concessions. So yeah, it's a very interesting time. Lots to unpack.
Well, let's drill down into some of the detail. I mean, first of all, you mentioned the issue that Russia have with supplies. I mean, there has been so much focus on Russia's manpower problem and the very high casualty rates in the east of Ukraine. Why do you think there has been less focus on the supply issues Russia is facing, particularly given we spend so much time talking about the supply issues that Ukraine faces?
Yeah, absolutely. So I think there is an increasing amount of coverage for the Russian supply issues. I think part of it is just that it's a very sophisticated assessment and it has a lot of caveats.
There's great open source analysts that are doing research that are imaging Russia's main storage areas where they have the bohemians from the Soviet era tanks, armored personnel carriers, and how over time, over the last three years, you can watch them slowly empty out. And all the current estimates of these open air storage areas indicates that at the current loss rates, the Russians are going to be running very low, if not be out of their Soviet era inherited equipment by late 2025, early 2026.
That's not just my opinion. CSIS and RUSI and other organizations have made similar analyses as well. So this is sort of the analytical consensus at the time. Of course, there's the caveats. It assumes that the Russians don't magically get an offset from the Chinese or other partners who might be able to provide a lot of vehicles quickly. It assumes that the Russian defense industrial base isn't able to rapidly integrate
increase its current serial production of new vehicles. But there's no reason to necessarily assess that'll be the case given the limitations. But it's sort of like we all believe or we all have this little idea that the Russian military is sort of like
It's the Red Army, and no matter how many tanks and armored personnel carriers you destroy, the Russians are constantly just going to come back with hordes and loads of more stuff. That's just a myth. Actually, Russia's resources are finite. They're burning through a tremendous amount, and I actually think that the intensified campaigns that we see the Russians conducting now are in large part in order to shape the information space and make us think that the Russians can sustain this current tempo indefinitely, when in fact they cannot.
There's a whole very interesting conversation we could have about the Russian economy, too, and their forced generation problem. I mean, the Russian economy seems to be sort of imploding in real time as we talk now as well.
Well, let's just drill down into that briefly as well, because the Russian economy is kind of the key factor here. If Putin were going to be somehow persuaded to change tack when it comes to Ukraine, if he were persuaded to maybe cede some ground, if he were even to come under threat in terms of his personal position, what happens with the Russian economy is crucial. We saw earlier on this year how the ruble tanked following the incursion into Kursk.
What is the current situation? What are the weaknesses currently with the Russian economy? Sure. So today's November 25. As of I last checked yesterday, the Russian ruble is going trading against the dollar. It's less than one penny. One US penny is equivalent to a ruble. Look, the Russians have massive macro and microeconomic issues right now. The Russian central bank has set an overnight low interest rate of 21%.
21%, which is extremely high. The Russian economy is overheating. The Russian Ministry of Defense has been giving out rubles for the one-time sign-on bonuses and all the economic incentives like candy to anyone who will go fight in Ukraine. So the Russian economy is flush with cash. And this is causing inflation to just go completely out of control.
Meanwhile, there's a huge structural Russian labor deficit on the supply side. Look, Russians can fight in uniform in Ukraine as employees of the Ministry of Defense, or they can work in Russia's domestic civilian economy. But they can't do both. And we know that as of December 2023, the Russian economy was already facing a 5 million person labor shortage.
The Russians cannot offset that. And in fact, because the Ministry of Defense has been putting forward such absurd and lucrative contracts to go fight in Ukraine, oftentimes the one-time bonus is exceeding what the average Russian annual salary is. That has forced the private firms to have to artificially inflate their salary compensation in order to maintain a modicum of competitiveness for an increasingly limited number of laborers. 30,000 Russians are killed in action or wounded per month.
that's going to just continue to degrade the number of Russians that can actually work or serve. And I really do think that when you look at the current hard status of the Russian economy, be it the inflation, the interest rates, the prices of commodities like butter is now a hot topic within Russia. It's becoming quite clear that the economic roosters are coming, our hens are coming back to roost. And it's also clear that, look, there's these Russian efforts to court the North Koreans to recruit workers
many tens of thousands of North Koreans to go to fight in the war, the effort to get Yemeni men via the Houthis, the previous failed effort to recruit several thousand Indians, right? These are all the ways that the Kremlin is trying to stitch together at the seams as current effort and tempo, because if we keep the Russians on course for the current attritional war for another 18 months, this system is going to break.
You mentioned the Yemenis. I mean, this is a relatively recent development, it would seem. We know about the North Korean troops fighting on the side of Russia. But the fact that they're now going to Yemen, trying to recruit from the Houthi fighters there,
I mean, how fraught with risk is that for Vladimir Putin, both in terms of the fact that it speaks to his underlying weakness when it comes to manpower, but also in terms of, you know, you have an incoming Trump administration who some argue may be more sympathetic towards Vladimir Putin, but they would not necessarily be sympathetic to anyone who is buddying up with Iran, which Russia have been, and with the Houthis in Yemen. So does it speak to Putin's weakness and what risks are there attached to that?
Sure. Well, it's to be determined exactly the scale and size of the recruitment. So the Financial Times just yesterday broke a story that the Houthis have been the fixers for the Kremlin, and they've been apparently involved in helping recruit several hundred Yemeni men. The FT report described the majority of them as not having previous fighting experience to go fight in Russia. And that's fine. The Russians have developed a concept of operations where they can take
untrained personnel like prisoners that were languishing in jail for a long time or criminals or other people and just hunt them to the front lines and mass meat assaults and you can make some tactical gains that way. The current Russian warfare can use essentially poorly trained, not very capable infantry to make some gains on the battlefield.
I think it depends entirely on the scale and size of what they can get from the Yemenis, but it's not just the Yemenis. I would be inclined to look at all these alternative force generation pipelines as the system by which the Russians are trying to offset their current operational monthly losses. So, for example, between the North Koreans, the Yemenis...
I believe we've got Cubans fighting in Russia for the Russians as well. All of these little things, a couple hundred here, a couple thousand there, those add up. And if, for example, the Russians can pull in 10,000 foreign fighters from a variety of different countries per month, then that basically offsets one-third of their monthly casualty rate, which is not a bad offset. So that's what that is about. Regarding the policy and the politics of it all, look...
It's unfortunate that Iran and Iran's larger proxy network throughout the Middle East are becoming increasingly involved in the war in Ukraine because they do grant the Russians important capabilities. Thankfully for people such as myself, they help us make the argument that you cannot be an Iran hawk and a Russia dove.
These are incompatible positions. And in fact, when you see the North Koreans and the Chinese and the Iranians increasingly supporting and working with the Russians in exchange for other capabilities the Russians are giving these states, you now actually have to realize that this is actually resembling more of an axis of power.
of hostile authoritarian states. And in order to effectively deal with these adversaries, you actually have to treat them all as adversaries. And so, you know, with Iran's deepening engagement and now the Houthis becoming fixers for a forced generation, it helps us make the case that, look, if we're going to be serious about being tough on China and Iran, then you also have to be tough on Russia, too.
It's a really good point. And on that, there has been increasing discussion on all sides of this conflict. This is becoming now a global conflict. I mean, you know,
You speak to some people and they say, you know, are we on the precipice of World War Three? I mean, that may be overstating it. But in terms of, you know, this expanding into a proper global conflict, you even have, I mean, Putin's used some of that rhetoric. Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, has come out and said that the threat is serious and real when it comes to global conflict. Do you think we are moving in that direction, George, that this is expanding and becoming a proper global conflict now?
I think definitionally, it's just difficult to not call it a global conflict. We have North Koreans sending self-propelled howitzers to the Russians. We have the North Koreans sending their forces to support them. We've got Iranian drones that have stood up their own Iranian drone production facility in Tatarstan in Russia.
in part so that the Israelis can't strike them in Iran anymore because US policy will deny the Israelis from conducting airstrikes in Russia. Um,
This is clearly no longer a regional war. It is taking on a more global characteristic. I think those of us in the West were hesitant to acknowledge that because we are scared about the implications that this undertakes. But I think just in terms of a neutral objective definition of the geography, yes, there are columns of power and belligerence that
don't operate just in Russia or Eastern Europe. It's now taking on more of a global characteristic. There's a reason why the former head of state of Taiwan just the other day urged that the United States should actually prioritize defeating the Russians in Ukraine as opposed to supporting the Taiwanese. Because what Beijing ultimately decides to do vis-a-vis Taiwan is in large part determinative of what can Putin achieve
successfully in part or in whole in Ukraine. I think that's these volumes.
Just to return to the situation on the front line, as you say, it is not a stalemate anymore. It is very dynamic and Russia have been making gains. And yet your colleagues at the Institute for the Study of War released an interesting report last week looking at how in particular the failure of the Russians to capture Pokrovsk actually speaks to the fact that the Ukrainian defence is still having some really significant successes. So what do you read into Russia's operations around Pokrovsk in particular? Yeah.
Sure. So what it tells us is we can learn a little bit about the Russian operational art and how the Russian command staff and their theater commanders are learning. So the Russian stated objective for their fall campaign cycle in 2024 was the seizure of Prokrosk. They got Avdeevka back in April. Since then, they've been driving to Prokrosk, and that was their explicit objective.
The Russians, however, have since then hit very stiff resistance on the immediate outskirts of Prokrosk. They managed to seize many of the fields and the villages. They advanced about 30 kilometers from Avivka up to the vicinity of Prokrosk, but since then, they have not been able to advance. And starting in the fall, the Russian command actually stopped conducting these sort of headbutt frontal assaults directly into Prokrosk, but then they started to attack the flanks south of Prokrosk, and they expand their penetration, expand their salientity.
And what the Russian command was doing was they were finding opportunities by looking for these weak spots in the Ukrainian line. They exploited Ukrainian unit rotations. They found weak spots in the line and they reinforced it. And the way I like to think about the Russian military here is they sort of think like water.
Sort of like how water tries to find the path of least resistance when it's thrown on a bunch of rocks or something. When it hits a hard object, sometimes they just slog through. But in this case, they actually decided to not slog through and they decided to find other paths through which they can develop some advances as well.
And the Russians have advanced. They found some weak spots in the line and they have seized more territory south of Prokhorovsk. And we actually just last night on November 24 published a new piece that forecasted what the Russians might be attempting to do in that territory south of Prokhorovsk. I'm quite concerned about those Russian gains.
But I think what's been lost in all of this is, yes, the Russians have seized these fields and this territory. And on the map, it looks quite big, but none of this is strategic territory. And actually, the achievement of blunting a major Russian offensive and denying the Russians their preferred objective for this season is actually a successive defense. Yes, the Ukrainians have lost ground in other places, but
for a prepared pitch battle where the Ukrainians could anticipate the main Russian effort and blunt it, that's good. Now let's talk a little bit about south of Prokhorovsk, if I might. So the Russians seized Vulidar, which is an operationally significant town, on October 1st, and the Russians have succeeded in leveraging their tactical gains in Vulidar to be able to further advance in that sort of southeasternmost corner of the theater, if you're looking at the map.
The Russians are currently advancing north of Uladar. They created a pocket, a salient near a town called Krakow, right next to a large reservoir. And they're currently trying to collapse the flanks and envelop that pocket. And then the Russians are also trying to attack the easternmost flank of a town called Vlika Novosilka, which is operationally significant, which is a Ukrainian strong point.
These Russian gains are quite concerning because the Russians are actually now just under 10 kilometers from the border between Donetsk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
And if the Russians wanted – if they're not able to get to Pokrovsk through the direct frontal assault, then what they might decide to do is attack the rear and envelop the Ukrainian positions and try to intersect the key highways that actually run to and support the Ukrainian positions near Pokrovsk. I know a lot of this sounds abstract, so maybe the listeners could look at a map while I'm talking about this. And there are some weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the Ukrainian line the Russians are exploiting.
Um, and they're making some relatively rapid advances for this war, but in the grand scheme of what is normal and mechanized warfare, still quite slow and quite attritional. Um, I'd also note that the Russians seem to be getting better at waging, uh, more complex operations. So, uh,
What we see now operating in this sort of Pokrovsk, Krakow, Volodar, Velikonovo, Silka corner of the theater is we see elements of at least three different major Russian groups of forces from the Central Military District, the Southern Military District, and the Eastern Military District all operating here. That's a big deal.
Historically, the Russians do not have – well, historically, they've not been successful at having multiple elements of different large formations and groups of forces be able to work out the interoperability to effectively converge on a single area and conduct those combined operations before.
What we're seeing now is a more complex cast of characters involved in the operation, Russian gains to boast for it, and...
If the Russians are successful in the coming months of success, continuing the momentum that they're building right now, then that would indicate that the Russian command is actually taking some learning, some lessons, becoming more effective and restoring some of the principles of the great venerated Soviet doctrine and the operational art that the Russian Federation seemed to have forgotten and not successfully executed for all of this war.
So, a lot of eyes are happening right now and pointed at that southern part of Donetsk Oblast and trying to see, all right, the Russians were not prepared to have an opening here in the south. They were trying to go for Pokrovsk, but they now have found themselves with an opening here. They did not prepare for it necessarily. How far will they be able to take it?
And that's the sort of the open research question that we have now. So, yeah, it's fascinating stuff. Yeah, that's a really fascinating summation of where we are on the front line. I mean, do you think, you know, despite as you, you know, articulated at the start that the long term challenges facing Russia in terms of supplies and in terms of personnel, do you think they're in a position for potentially quite a strong winter, given what you've just outlined in terms of what's happening in the southeast? Yeah.
I suspect what the Russians are doing now is they are throwing everything that they got into these offensive operations. Because I think Putin's theory right now is with the change of U.S. administrations that will happen in January, if he can change the map and generate a lot of pessimistic reporting...
And the coverage of this war is such that it doesn't discuss the nuances and the price the Russians paid for this territory. And they just see the lines on the map changing without understanding that over the last year, the Russians lost five divisions worth of equipment to seize Ukraine.
to advance 30 or 40 kilometers, and that's how that's a bad trade, then decision makers who don't have a good understanding of military affairs might actually think, oh, geez, this looks really precarious for the Ukrainians. Maybe we should consider this operational pause. And then Putin will successfully evade
these problems that he has percolating with his economy, with the fact that he's no longer going to be able to conduct these mechanized offenses that depend on losing lots of vehicles and equipment, that sort of thing, just in a matter of 12 to 16 months. So I expect the Russians will lean into this for informational purposes. They will try to expend themselves and maybe burn the wick at both ends, go for as much ground as possible,
with the intent of, don't worry, guys, once we convince the West to engage in these premature negotiations, we will then have our operational pause and we will successfully evade the economic and resourcing problems that are waiting for us in about a year's time.
We probably should also, George, touch on what happened last week in terms of the approval of the use of US-applied attack missiles inside Russia in the Kursko blast, and then also the approval, it would seem, of Storm Shadow British missiles. We don't know definitively if Scout missiles have been approved, correct me if I'm wrong, but what significance do you think
that a lot of people would argue too late, but nonetheless, it's kind of a significant decision. How significant is it in your view?
Yeah, it's very significant. I mean, look, we're nearly three years into this war, and we're only now starting to give the Ukrainians the full suite of rules of engagement and the equipment that they need to win the war, right? So all of the conclusions that the Ukrainians can't win or, hey, the Ukrainians have tried counter offenses before, some were successful, some were not, and therefore they can't do any better, like, we don't even know. It's like saying, hey, let's give the brain surgeon...
you know, two thirds of the tools you need for a brain surgery. And then when the last brain surgery didn't work out so well, say, oh, well, I guess this brain surgery just can't pull it off. So we're finally getting the tools and unnecessary. The decision is consequential.
There's several things that are going to happen. We've written at length and talked at length about how this is going to impose immediate decision points on the Russian command to how to redeploy their Tesco-sized and Costco-sized depots full of lubricant and ammunition and fuel further back away so the Russians can't exploit economy of scale to marshal a tremendous amount of material that every single soldier needs at the front lines. That does have a consequential effect.
There's also another consequential effect, which is we can expect Ukrainian strike packages to become more effective. The Russians
experiment with how to overcome an integrated air defense umbrella by using a combination of a variety of different ordinance in a single coordinated attack. So the Russians will, for example, use Russian made drones, ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles, air launch cruise missiles, sea based air, sea based missile launch missiles, a variety of different drones and decoys. And
The theory is you send all this stuff that go on different speeds and different arcs and different targets and place and time, and you can overcome an integrated air defense bubble. The Ukrainians have been long conducting their own strikes with the Ukrainian-made drones and some Ukrainian-made missiles, but that's about it. But now that the Ukrainians can use these more difficult-to-intercept and more capable Storm Shadow and Atacom's missiles,
then it enables the Ukrainian organizers of these commensurate strike packages on Russia to think about, hey, how are we going to mix and match and play around with these things to defeat the Russian integrated air defense bubble? And that's important. Just yesterday, the Ukrainians reportedly destroyed a radar for the Russian S-400 system in Kursk Oblast, if I'm not mistaken. That's a big deal. The Russian company that makes the S-400, Almaz-Ante, radars are really, really difficult to manufacture.
The Russians are, for example, delinquent on delivering S-400s for a longstanding Indian contract for over two years now. And if you manage to take out the eyes of these air defense systems, the radar, then the rest of the launchers connected to your battery can no longer function. And that was reportedly done with an Atacom's missile. So, yeah.
If the Ukrainians can use these missiles, they can really start to push back and degrade the Russian air defense bubble. That enables the Russian, pardon me, the Ukrainian fixed-wing aircraft like F-16s and other aircraft to have more freedom of maneuverability and then get closer to where they need to and at the front lines to do their job in the air domain. Right. So all the tools are coming together. And I'm really I'm looking forward to seeing what the Ukrainians can achieve with these resources.
It will be key that we, of course, continue to supply the Ukrainians with these resources, and it will be key that the Ukrainians use the limited resources in an intelligent way and not waste the missiles on low-priority targets.
And just finally, do you think there's a piece of weaponry that will be sort of the next demand from the Ukrainians? Because we've seen time and time again this kind of lag between what Ukraine could really do with and then it being supplied. It was main battle tanks and it was F-16s and now it's these long range missiles. Is there something else that if we were really serious about helping Ukraine, we would be providing right now? Sure. Yes. The short answer is yes. A lot of it's actually going to just be quantities. So the Ukrainians don't have a lot of attack them. They're going to need more attack them.
There's one system that the Ukrainians don't operate yet, but that can be consequential to JASM. It's essentially a guided smart bomb, cruise bomb that's launched from a fixed-wing aircraft. That could be quite successful. It would sort of be the Ukrainian equivalent of the Russian glide bombs. That would be important to have if the Ukrainians can lob those against important targets.
And then I think the main thing will also be the Ukrainians actually just need a whole lot of workhorse material. So 155 millimeter shells remain challenging and important. And in particular, mechanized equipment for the infantry. That's a big issue. And it's a determinant of Ukraine's ability to successfully generate more people to deal with the Ukrainian manpower shortage.
Existing Ukrainian brigades and battalions do not have sufficient armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. The Ukrainians, they love the Bradley fighting vehicle. They really, really like the M113 armored infantry personnel carrier.
They're going to need more of that stuff so that the existing Ukrainian brigades can actually operate with some defended maneuverability, protected mobility on the battlefield, as opposed to being sort of this World War One style light infantry with rifles and not a whole bunch else. And of course, once you can start promising that, yes, you're going to have vehicles, you'll be able to move around protected, you're going to be more useful than just being ordered to stand in a trench and die.
that Ukrainians should be more effective at generating more forces as well. George, we always appreciate your insights and your analysis. Thank you so much for joining us again on Frontline. Thank you so much for having me, James. Always a pleasure. We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.
Mike Allwood is a dairy farmer from Cheshire who supplies organic milk to McDonald's in the UK for its teas, coffees and porridge through Arla.
We're involved in a network which has been set up by Arla to look at the possibilities for farming regeneratively. One of the things we're doing here is moving our cattle and giving them a fresh piece of grass every day to help regenerate the soil. We're very lucky that we've had a long-term relationship with McDonald's and I think often people don't realise how seriously McDonald's take their relationships with farmers.
Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website. What makes a car desirable? Style? Power? Or is it a car that delivers both, alongside desirable features that make perfect sense?
The Lexus NX 350 HF Sport is a luxury SUV that has everything you desire and more. It features the Lexus driving signature for a powerful yet comfortable drive, Lexus Safety System Plus designed to provide confidence on the road and connected multimedia so you can make every drive your own. In the Lexus NX, desire never made more sense. Discover the range at lexus.com.au slash NX.