Mike Kofman and Rob Lee on the West’s Aid to Ukraine, and the Debate Over Red Lines and Escalation
56:18 Share

Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Russian Roulette. Maria and I are joined by two fantastic guests this morning, Michael Kaufman and Rob Lee. Mike is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Rob is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Both have become, I would say, the top military analysts when it comes to the war in Ukraine and all things Russian military. Mike also has an excellent podcast over at War on the Rocks, the Russian contingency that everyone should check out.

So Mike and Rob, great to have you with us today. - Thanks for having us. - Today, we plan on asking them about the current state of the war, their understanding of Ukraine's recent Kursk offensive, and also the debate regarding whether or not the West has been quote unquote self-deterred in the face of Russian threats and what is really at stake

with Western hesitation to provide Ukraine with certain weapons and also to allow Ukraine to use those weapons on Russian soil. But Mike and Rob, maybe to start off, you recently came out with a really excellent foreign affairs article titled Ukraine's Gamble, the Risks and Rewards of the Offensive into Russia's Kursk Region. We'll put the link in the show notes. But specifically, we'd like to hear your thoughts on whether the move into Kursk has

called the Kremlin's bluff when it comes to escalation dominance and whether the Kremlin's lack of a response to an invasion of its own territory maybe exposes the West's supposed red lines on aid to Ukraine as being misguided. Ukraine has just invaded Russia and it seems like the Russian response has been tepid at best. Rob, maybe we'll start out with you.

Sure. So I think we keep in mind that it's not the first incursion that Ukraine has conducted into Russian territory. So there was a large one in May 2023, right before the summer offensive, whereas most units from Ukraine's Defense Intelligence that led that operation that went into Russia's Belgrade region for about a month or so. I think it lasted into June. And then in some ways, there's some similar responses, right, where a lot of the Russian telegram channels were also complaining, were making kind of hyperbolic statements about

And that operation, I think, was designed to kind of draw away Russian units from the south from where Ukraine's offensive was going to focus. And ultimately, I think it was probably a decent economy of force mission, whereas a small Ukrainian element, it was certainly embarrassing for Russia. But its overall impact of the war, I think, was probably not that significant, right? Overall, the Ukrainian summer offensive obviously was not successful. Russia did not pull that many forces away, and they eventually kind of pushed out those Ukrainian elements.

Ukraine has been selling another operation in Belgrade in March of 2024 that did not go as successfully. And it didn't have much effect. And I think it's, you know, you can only see so much from open sources, but it seems though it was somewhat of a cost operation. So this one was different, right? And this operation is different in a number of ways.

Instead of it being a operation led by Ukraine's defense intelligence with paramilitary groups, with special operations groups, this is first and foremost a Ukrainian army operation led by General Sersky. Very clearly, Sersky kind of dominated and conceived the operation. The main element of the force was from Ukraine's air assault forces. So several, like three air assault brigades took part as the main component of their force.

And from reporting, it doesn't seem as though the Christmas intelligence was even told about this operation. And Zelensky mentioned that yesterday, as mentioned in reporting before this. So it's not clear that not only did it not necessarily play an initial role in the operation, I don't think they were necessarily told because it was so compartmentalized.

So this operation is quite different, right? It was obviously more ambitious. The units involved are larger, greater forces and resources are committed to it. And it's clear, you know, they are pursuing something more than just a small drawing away of Russian forces that you might do with a raid. And

And we're still at a phase where we're trying to figure out exactly what Ukraine's launcher objectives are. I think it's certainly possible that what began with certain objectives in mind has changed as Russia's response became apparent. And Ukraine's leadership said that one of the main purposes of this operation was to draw away as many forces as possible from Donetsk, from elsewhere on the front line, to try and slow down Russian offensive operations there.

And we know that Russia has pulled some forces from a variety of regions, but they prioritize pulling from non-priority places in Ukraine, right? So Zaporizhia, Kherson, there's some from Kupyansk, there's some from Donetsk, but it is often that they're pulling maybe a battalion at a time, maybe UAV units. So it seems that Russia's response is kind of an economy of force response.

And they haven't pulled everything away to immediately address Kursk. And the question I think going forward is that may have affected what Ukraine's second, third stage of this operation was. Maybe there was other things they were planning on doing, but once Russia didn't move that many forces, maybe we're kind of seeing a different operation that's kind of responding to that. So it's a long tangent there. To get back to red lines,

I'm not sure there are specific red lines this war. I think that when Russia sees events, they look at them, they try to determine what is the strategic impact of each event. I think they judge on a case-by-case basis.

So some of this comes to USAID and USAID decisions about what we provide. I think it's important to keep in mind that the type of escalation risk that there might be might be responses where Russia is not necessarily responding to Ukraine, but they might be responding to US interests elsewhere. That might be providing weapons to people we don't want them to provide to. And we know that Russia has a much closer relationship with Iran and North Korea than they did before.

And it's kind of hard from my perspective to exactly say what all these are, because I don't know all these regions that well. I don't know all U.S. interests that well. And I'm sure Russia will try and find vulnerabilities. That is, I think, one of the escalation risk areas. But again, it comes back to looking at what kind of changes we want to make, what effect that will have on the battlefield.

And then are the escalation risks worth it in terms of how likely they are to occur and how painful they would be for our interests? And I'll be honest, I think it's quite difficult without having the inside information of what exactly these risks are, because many cases, Russia may try and signal they're not happy about something, they might do something, but signal in a way that only our U.S. intelligence community can see.

Things that are not public, that only our government people can see, and in which case I can't analyze that or say how much a problem it is. So I do think escalation risks are one of the concerns the Biden administration has about certain aid, about whether or not to authorize attack and strikes into Russia. It's kind of hard to analyze without that information about what are the trade-offs that might occur here.

May I build on that? Thank you very much, Rob. With a question to Mike. Mike would be really interested in getting your perspective on that. And specifically, it appears to me that you can't really win a war against your opponent, right, if you only fight the war on your own territory without pushing into Russia's territory.

But it seems that the Western governments have been quite insistent since the start of the war that the war is kept within the Ukrainian borders. And Ukraine, as Rob pointed out, has repeatedly tried to push through this boundary for this red line. To what extent do you think it's true? And to what extent do you think Ukraine has exposed the Kremlin bluff?

because as Max pointed out, like you think if anything was crossing the red line, this would be the first invasion of Russia of the scale since the Nazi came in the second world war, right? And yet we don't see Russia responding so loudly, even if Rob has flagged maybe something, there's a lot that we don't hear and don't see being said and done publicly. Yeah, it's an interesting argument. I think the challenge is that

So it's not clear to me how much more Russia can actually escalate the war against Ukraine, right? They've not shown much in the way of constraint, but that's not the issue being discussed. The question is to what extent is the West a material party to the war, which it is.

and how much Western countries supporting Ukraine want to be involved in attacks and in incursion of Russian territory. And that's for everybody involved to decide. I'll be honest, to me, the Red Lines conversation overall is a very low information discussion, okay? And I'll tell you why. It's not a discussion that I participated in because in the past, whenever I've heard to it,

I've often come away actually learning less than what I thought prior to entering the conversation. And here's my view on that subject. First,

Over the course of any war, both the parties involved, but especially when you have lots of external parties involved that are de facto material parties to the war, they end up setting arbitrary thresholds, and then they end up testing them. And these thresholds may fall away, leading to new ones being established. There are no red lines is the wrong term. These, in fact, are thresholds. Some are set by parties, right? They make claims in a form of declaratory policy.

And others are perceived, meaning the parties involved perceive something to be a threshold. And they might be wrong about that because there's no 100% way to know, right? You cannot sit in the decision-making circles of another country. And even then, you don't know what the necessary decide on thresholds cross. None of that's unusual, right? So rather than red lines, we should think of these as more potential escalation thresholds that are arbitrarily set by parties, right?

Okay, and of course, everyone has an incentive to communicate thresholds in a war and to bluff potentially to make claims with thresholds they have that probably are not real escalation thresholds for them.

And over the course of this war, the United States and other countries have fairly consistently gone through thresholds that they perceived Russia had from the very outside of the war regarding provision of material assistance, intelligence, certain types of capabilities, all the way through today. That's been a fairly consistent trend. Now,

I think it's also important to note that when we talk about these thresholds, often there are times when policymakers don't want to do certain things for their own reasons, and they hide behind the threat of escalation as one of the potential reasons, whereas they have a series of other factors that they are managing. Maybe in domestic politics, if in the case of Germany, maybe other things that they don't want to do, right?

The question of thresholds is one we're never going to get away from because arbitrary boundaries have to be set somewhere, right? Somewhere between U.S. provision of artillery ammunition and aircraft carriers to Ukraine, there's going to be a line drawn. And people will never believe they're like or not like where that line is drawn. But somewhere between provision of basic missiles and B-2 stealth bombers, the United States is going to say, no, I'm not going to provide these things because they don't make sense. I don't want to give them, so on and so forth.

some of the concerns are really about cost benefit. The United States has constraints in the number of capabilities it has, and people I think often confuse the US view that it doesn't want to provide certain capabilities because it's just not sure of the benefits relative to readiness issues. And people say, "Hey, the administration is hiding behind us," right? In practice that they're using this to hide behind.

Yes and no. So the Pentagon, which is a place of Excel spreadsheets, is one that kind of monitors their stocks closely and jealously. And it's not always the case that the political leadership is just hiding behind these things. Sometimes it could well be that the Defense Department is using these spreadsheets to justify their reluctance to give certain things that they might be able to give, but they don't want to. Okay, that's fair.

But I'm just saying people need to understand that there are different incentives in the bureaucracy, right? And they sort of imagine it as kind of just the MSC or just other folks trying to use these as excuses. But actually, it might not be an excuse. It might well be the Pentagon is just reluctant to give certain things. That happens all the time. I'm giving that as an example. And that's got nothing to do with red lines or perception of thresholds. It has to do with bureaucratic politics in a country with institutions, right? Like that's just how things play out. Lastly,

So the issue of providing certain capabilities also comes down to weapons whose employment will have to involve direct Western support. There's intelligence support in their operations. A lot of people do not understand this. In year three of the war, they still do not understand this, that it would mean the United States and other countries, in many cases, being directly involved in

targeting, planning, intelligence analysis, and what have you in support of strikes into Russia. And that is maybe for some folks a non-issue, or maybe there's a very minor threshold to cross, but it's not their call. It's the call of people who are responsible for these decisions and the consequences of those actions who have to grapple with them. And what are their main concerns? Their main concerns, from my point of view, and I don't know any of this for a fact, I'm not an administration, I wouldn't speak for it.

It's not nuclear escalation. This is why I say it's a very low information discussion that takes place in the online circles, right?

The first concern, if there is any, is horizontal escalation. There's Russians countering that and retaliating for it by transferring capabilities, know-how, technology, and specialized personnel to countries like Yemen, like the Houthis, to, let's say, enable targeting of major maritime shipping. That would be a problem, not just for the United States, but actually for pretty much everyone who likes to use that commercial route. That would be an issue.

All right. Another one is the expanding Russian sabotage campaign in Europe and the trajectory it could take, which has been very notable over the past year. All right.

There could be concerns over future costs and actions Russia will take that are conventional or principally asymmetric. I hate that term. It's kind of everything's asymmetric. But I think people appreciate what I'm trying to say. I mean, it's not sort of if the United States supports employing attack strikes in Russia, that Russia is then going to start firing attack into a NATO country. It's obviously not going to happen. But that's why I'm trying to use that term to convey that there's other ways Russia can retaliate.

Now, anyone can argue, hey, this is already happening already, and people should not be that worried about it. And I'd say that's a perfectly fair argument. I am just trying to introduce information and trying to convey how policymakers think about these issues into what to me is, like I said, a fairly low information discussion at this point. And from a cost-benefit perspective, folks who want to decide to cross a threshold need to be convinced that

that the benefits are worth it. And sometimes the folks who make that case, I've made this case, right? Like Rob and I are generally supported in enabling expanding Ukraine's long-range strike campaign. We've been writing about it for a long time, right?

Sometimes when you make that case, you are not convincing relative to the cost that policymakers imagine, the benefits that you're conveying don't appear sufficient to them. And folks forget that part of it too, that sometimes it's not an issue of being deterred or being worried about escalation. It's that you're just not doing a good job of selling them on the benefits, and you need to do a better job of conveying to them the benefits of policy.

And maybe it's their fault that they don't get it and they don't see it. But sometimes it's your fault because you're not doing a good job speaking for the facts. Yeah, maybe we could unpack that a little bit. Both, what are the military benefits of the U.S. unleashed Ukraine to kind of do whatever it wanted, so to speak? I mean, I sort of find myself in the camp that

I think the U.S. policy has sort of boiled the frog effectively here in escalating and injecting new technology, new weapon systems without really getting into a real, really dangerous escalation threshold. And now we're actually in a very good place. And it seems like a lot of the demands for pushing the boundaries, I start to get to where you are, Mike. I question maybe what are the military benefits? You two are top military analysts.

Are there real military benefits that could come if the US loosened its restrictions and some of Ukraine's ability to strike into Russian territory? And if so, what would those benefits be? And Rob, maybe go to you on that. Sure. So the main conversation right now is regards ATAKOMs and Storm Shadow Scout Missiles, right? And the reporting says that Storm Shadow Scout Missiles, even though they're made by Britain and France, they have US components. And so the US has a say in how they're used.

And JASM has been mentioned more recently that the U.S. is going to provide them. So there's a question about whether or not JASM will be allowed to be used in Russian territory too. JASM is a missile oftentimes employed by aircraft, by fighter jet F-16s. Yeah, it's an air launch cruise missile too. I think the more important development provided by JASM is that the quantities will be greater, right? So Ukraine will have greater quantities.

It's not fully clear. We know Ukraine fired a lot of storm shadow scallops last summer. I'm not sure what the replenishment rate has been. And it's also a concern with TACOMs because they fired a not insignificant number of TACOMs. And it also is a question of at what point do we reach up into the constraint position, right? Where the U.S. is kind of given as much as it's comfortable giving. It could give more if there are sufficient benefits, but maybe not because of these constraints.

So first off, I think people, a lot of discussions about weapon systems come down to the all or nothing, right? We'll have no effect, or it will be decisive and will have a massive effect. And it's always in between. If the US allows attack on strikes and storm shadow strikes into Russian territory, there will be military benefits, right?

there will be benefits, it will help Ukraine, and it's important not to downplay it. Steve Biddle wrote an article recently in Foreign Affairs where he talked about it is not going to be decisive. And I agree with that, right? It's not going to, if we allow attack on them from shadow strikes, this is not going to win the war for Ukraine, but it can support it. In reality, we talk about how to support Ukraine,

There's never this one silver bullet where it's one capability would change everything. It's holistic. It's about increasing Ukraine's capabilities in general. And then how those capabilities come together comes down to strategy, right? Tactics, right? And planning. And of course, if Ukraine has certain capabilities, they can make certain plans based off of capabilities. They don't have them. They had that adjust their plans as well, right? So a lot of factors here. So I guess some of the things they can't achieve, and I think we should be clear about this, a lot of the Russian missile strikes on Ukraine would not be affected by storm shadow attackings.

The air launch cruise missiles are launched by Stryk bombers and they operate beyond more than 300 kilometers from the border of Ukraine. Right. The most of the glide bomb are dropped by Russian Su-34 bombers that no longer operate within 300 kilometers of the border either. So they operate at airfields that are further away at this point. They used to be closer, but now they've pushed back.

So releasing storm shadows and attack them will not be a full solution to either of those problems. And obviously a lot of the other missiles that are fired are also from calibers are also further away as well. So,

The U.S. and Western countries need a broader plan to help Ukraine respond to these kind of issues. It's not going to solve those issues. What it could help with, so Russia has a number of logistics facilities across the border. There is a 300-kilometer version of attack. There's a 165-kilometer version. Some have cluster warheads. Some have unitary warheads. So they're optimized for different targets.

One thing that would be beneficial is if right now the mid-range attack comes that uses coastal munitions, Ukraine typically uses them to go after air defense systems in occupied areas, at least right now. So S-200 systems, S-400s, that's really been the priority for quite a long time. And they do this with dynamic targeting, right? They locate something and they'll strike it pretty quickly, which attack comes are useful for.

That would be quite useful in Kursk, right? That would be quite useful to degrade Russian air defense capabilities in that region, which could allow other operations. It would also be useful because a lot of Ukraine's long range strike campaign, right, is conducted by Ukrainian produced weapons, right? Drones, we know they've got cruise missiles, they know they have ballistic missile programs.

And so if you knocked out some of the air defense systems on the Russian border, that could potentially make it easier for Ukraine to connect longer range strikes into Russia. Now, the U.S. may not want to be part of that, right? That might be one of these factors, but it would help. Another thing that's important is that when the U.S. made the policy change it made to allow strikes into Russia with HIMARS,

The initial effect, the really most important effect that we heard when we were there in June, is that Russia launched a lot of S-300, S-400 air defense missiles as ground-to-ground missiles. It consistently struck Kharkiv with that. Once HIMARS were allowed to strike into Russia, they knocked out a couple S-300s the first day. And after that, there were no S-300, S-400 strikes on Kharkiv for at least a month at that point.

A few days ago, there were a number of strikes in the Kharkiv, and that was with S-300, S-400. So I think this is the first time possibly since that policy change at the beginning of June, end of May, ATAKOMs would be more effective. ATAKOMs have longer range than Gimbalers for HIMARS. That would be one justification to say, we're trying to help protect civilians in Kharkiv. ATAKOMs could be part of it, right?

And again, it may be the way a change could happen. We've seen before the Biden administration, the initial attack was we provided with a shorter range ones. And then eventually once the longer range ones, where it's just kind of incremental steps, the same thing could happen with strikes in Russia. We allowed high Mars, get more strikes. Maybe you allow the intermediate attack and so on.

So air defense would be useful. The Kursk operation, it looks like Ukraine is there to stay for a certain amount of time because Zelensky mentioned it as a bargaining chip. And that means that in order for this chip to be useful, you have to hold that territory. Well, allowing attack and strikes into Russia will make it easier for Ukraine to hold that area in Kursk.

It's not going to solve everything, but you can knock out troop concentrations, you can knock out logistics, all that kind of facilities. So there are a variety of ways that would be useful. But again, I don't think it will be decisive. And it comes back to the risk-reward and the kind of sense of escalation risk. But it would be useful. It would pose more problems for Russia. And that's kind of one of the considerations here. But I think the broader conversation – and Mike and I talked about this at the end of the article –

Russia's strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure is a really significant problem, right? Mostly the article, we kind of talk about what's happening in Kursk, what's happening in Donetsk, and most of the fighting is at a tactical operational level significance, whereas the strikes in Ukrainian infrastructure are potentially strategically critical, right? Could lead to Ukraine...

Maybe not losing the war, but it could be the situation be much, much worse for Ukraine. I think the implications are greater. So it's very important for Ukraine supporters to come up with a plan. How can we compel Russia to stop these strikes? These really damaging strikes against Ukraine and allowing storm shadow attack them are not enough because the range is not great enough. Right. So it's not going to affect everything.

And right now, Ukraine is going after Russian energy infrastructure, right? We saw refineries. Now we're seeing power plants with the UAVs. I assume that's going to continue all winter. Maybe that gets to a point where Russia decides, you know what, let's make an agreement. We don't go after each other's energy infrastructure anymore because it's becoming painful for us.

But ultimately, right, Western countries need to come up with a plan for how to help Ukraine here because it's a really significant issue. And I think we talk about the strategic role of long-range strikes. The one thing I would kind of disagree with Biddle's argument here is that, and he didn't make this argument exactly, so I don't want to make the unfair to it, you

Ukraine's long range strikes against Russian energy infrastructure. It will not defeat Russia. But if it makes Russia stop striking Ukrainian infrastructure, then it could be strategically critical, right? To help Ukraine sustain this war, stay in the war, and that could have important strategic benefits on its own. I think that's kind of way to frame it.

And of course, look, if there are concerns in other countries of providing attackums and conducting the intelligence to help the strikes in Russia, maybe there's a role of subsidizing Ukrainian produced missiles of that kind of capability instead, right? Maybe that's the workarounds. I don't know. But ultimately, Ukraine, when they look at the problems they're facing, Russia is a bigger country. They have more resources. And they're able to mobilize and, right, at least currently, get enough soldiers to enlist and go fight.

Ukraine needs to respond in different ways, right? They need to respond in ways to try and compel Russia in this war to try and raise costs. And if Western countries don't come up with a plan themselves for this, right, then Ukraine is going to develop their own kind of internal capabilities. And so I think that's the kind of discussion we need to have. Mike, curious, anything to add to Rob? And Rob, thanks for that. I think that was really helpful.

- Yeah, I think Rob, you get a lot of good points here. I'd add that I think the main challenge in our provision of military assistance has been that while we boiled the frog in terms of escalation thresholds,

It seems to have generally been at the cost of transferring capabilities out of sequence with combat operations, such that their advantages when they were deployed could not be realized to have an operationally significant effect. To put it in more simply terms, basically, whenever Ukraine has done offensive operations, you would have wanted to have capabilities that provide an advantage provided to them at scale in advance of it so they could transfer.

Turn that advantage into something that would be operationally relevant and decisive, but often we have provided them in fairly small numbers and often after the actual operation. So it would come up basically a day late and a dollar short. And that's probably the fairest criticism overall of our approach.

Agree with anything Rob said about Steve's argument, which I think ended up being a bit of the best being the enemy of the useful, right? Just because these capabilities cannot achieve the best does not mean that they cannot be useful and cannot attain things in the category of limited aims.

I think that outside of aircraft, which Rob touched on, Russia does have a lot of supporting military infrastructure, logistics, and other things within range of Western strike capabilities, and it would force upon them a significant adjustment period. That could sap momentum, cause a degree of disorganization, forcing them to reorganize the way they operate. And that could certainly play to Ukraine's advantage for a period of, let's say, a few months.

Rob touched on the ability of arch abilities to degrade Russian air defense, thereby expanding Ukraine's own drone strikes. I think that's a better way to think about and look at it and compelling Russia to hold a strike campaign against Ukraine critical infrastructure. Why? Because we are not going to find enough air defense in terms of both systems and munitions to cover Ukrainian airspace. And we're not going to be able to do it in a way such that Ukraine can defend critical infrastructure, such as energy.

its cities, its people, and its frontline. It's not looking like that's going to happen, especially with Russia's expanded strike capacity, both in terms of numbers of munitions, that is the number of missiles that they are producing has grown year on year, and sophistication in how they're actually conducting the strikes. And the last point I would say is that

An expanded strike campaign, what Ukraine is pursuing now in Russia, at the very least, from my point of view, would be a much better use of these capabilities than the Crimea strike campaign that they have been running this year with Western support, which in practice has not been setting the conditions for anything that is what is meant to follow this campaign. It seems to be it's a year after the actual offensive that was meant to get to Crimea and completely out of sequence with it. And no offensive is likely to happen following the strike campaign either.

It's already led to significant adaptation by Russian forces in terms of intercept rates for attackants. Sorry, they're not marginal, not by a long shot. And Ukraine has used hundreds of air-launched cruise missiles, and I won't say how many, but a fairly large number of attackants as well. And if one is going to expend munitions at this rate, you would want to use them against something that's actually going to deliver real effects for you, right? So it'd be much better having an actual strike campaign, I think,

against Russian critical infrastructure or against Russian air defense in Russia, enabling Ukrainian drone strikes, or trying to pursue limited aims such as a cessation to the Russian strike campaign itself. I understood that the Crimea campaign is sort of an end in and of itself, degrading Russian air defense that is like, hey, it's a good, it'll do as an operation until a better one gets here. But looking back on it, it's also quite clear that Ukraine's

are not making much of it. The Kursk offensive is a pretty good indicator that the way they see their objectives and how they're trying to attain leverage over Russia is quite literally in a very different direction from the campaign we've been supporting.

So on top of everything else, there's also an incongruence of goals, it appears, and tactics across the West and Ukraine. On the numbers, Michael, you mentioned that one of the more legit criticisms would be the sheer

number of those weapons systems that are being offered to Ukraine. And this is something that we've heard repeatedly being mentioned by outside external military analysts. On our side, we looked up some information on the internet. This is fully open information. And just to give our audiences a sense,

how much is being provided as opposed to how much the US has in stock, AAWS, for example, compiles this information. Again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about those numbers. For example, the US has roughly 370 HIMARS systems and as of May 2024 had sent roughly 40 plus to Ukraine, about 4,000 of Bradley fighting vehicles.

But again, as of May, it has sent only about 300 to Ukraine. The discrepancies are much higher when it comes to, for example, Abrams tanks, about 4,600 in stocks, and only about 30 have been sent to Ukraine. And when it comes to Patriots,

especially, right? There's more than 60 Patriot air defense batteries, but at least only one that has been sent to Ukraine. How would you explain that? So I understand that there might be differences in the ways, say, the different military planners envision this campaign. But once a decision has been made to offer something,

Why so little is offered as opposed to, as it appears, how much the U.S. has in stocks? Is it different priorities or is it being cautious about, as been flagged by our colleagues, about how Ukraine is going to use it? I've seen some analysis mentioning corruption in Ukraine and maybe those are the concerns, but I think Ukraine has from itself been quite capable of using those, right? In any case, it would be really interesting to get a perspective. Rob, maybe we'll start with you.

Sure. I don't think corruption is the concern. I don't think we have any indications that there's been any corruption issues with Western-provided weapons to Ukraine. We always see examples of Ukraine using them quite successfully, including the ones you mentioned, right? The Patriots have performed very well. Ukrainian air defense crews have performed very well with Patriots. They've shot down Kinzhal's and other systems in very complex attacks.

I think actually Patriots have, their reputation has gone up quite a bit in this war. And I think there'll be a long kind of lasting effect of the war. Bratleys have performed very well too. And everyone we talk in Ukraine, every brigade wants Bratleys. And the guys, the 47 Mechanized Brigade who were seen first, they only have a great thing to say about them because they're very survivable. The weapon systems are very effective and they operate them very well. So,

I think some of these systems of HIMARS, the limiting factor with HIMARS is not the number of launchers. It's the number of missiles. It's the number of gimwars we have to provide because Ukraine has lost some HIMARS. I think we've replaced them. I'm sure we could provide more, but I think it's more a question of how many missiles can we provide them that they can fire each day.

And so I think that's the greater limiting factor there. With Patriots, they need more Patriots. I think they want several more than they have. And one of the key issues is that their ballistic missile defenses are not that strong in many places. So in Kyiv, they have obviously a strong Patriot capability there. In many other cities, they don't have it. They have very little ability to shoot down Iskanders, to shoot down different ballistic missiles. If RON provides ballistic missiles, that would be another issue.

So they can shoot down cruise missiles more effectively. They can shoot down head drones pretty effectively. Ballistic missiles are much more difficult. Cool.

So that's providing Patriots is a key capability that they need. And Patriots also can engage bombers at longer range. So if you have more of them, you can bring up Patriot batteries to try and engage Russian Su-34s that drop these glide bombs, right? But of course, it's a scarcity issue. So Ukraine has pushed up some. One Patriot battery was damaged when it was operating near Pokrovsk doing this kind of mission. And of course, it's a trade-off between

defending cities from these missiles and being able to try and knock down glide bomber carriers at the front, right? So again, the more Patriots they have, the more ability they can pursue these different things. But in large part, Patriots is also an issue of how many interceptors they have, right? It's a missile issue. And so they are still constrained in that regard.

So yes, more systems will be useful because then you can defend more kind of targets, more cities. But it's also just a question of, you know, do they have enough missiles to engage all the Russian missiles? And I think there's always going to be a negative balance there. With other systems, look, Ukraine is more armored vehicles. That's been a concern and issue for a long time. Whether they're forming new brigades, new brigades do not have enough armored vehicles, even existing brigades, right? They have a very limited number. And the types they have are kind of more like armored cars, not always...

infantry fighting vehicles. Ukraine loves M113s, the armored personnel carrier that we have in the U.S. that we've mostly pushed out. They're very simple to operate. They're very simple to maintain. Ukrainians really like them. I'm a big fan of providing as many M113s as possible. They also use them as a casualty evacuation vehicle, which often when they don't have an armored vehicle for casualty evacuation, they sometimes don't evacuate soldiers who are wounded, right? They have to wait. And so it's really important for a variety of things. So M113s are great. Rallys are great. My understanding is that we are providing a lot more of these

So that kind of information has gotten through. We're ramping up our deliveries of this. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think we understand it's important.

One thing Ukraine is doing with Bratwys now is that instead of having them all in one brigade, they're now sending these kind of separate battalions. And what that means is there's a couple of assault battalions that they deliver them to. And that means is you can move these battalions around the front line to maybe plug gaps with their problems, right? So instead of having one brigade that has all of these vehicles, which really needs to stay in the front line at all times as a result, now you have these different battalions that can do this. And that might be a way of maintaining this force more effectively, right?

But for other systems, we also provide a good number of 155 howitzers. It's a little difficult to say because I know we have constraints and I know there are factors in U.S. offensive plans where we want to have a certain number of things. And of course, if we get into a war of attrition and a war we fight and does not end very quickly, we need to have large reserves of weapons too. That's been a key lesson in this war. Russia's lost a huge number of tanks, lost a huge number of vehicles. They're still fighting because they had massive stockpiles of this.

And we are struggling in some ways to make up for it because Ukraine ran through a lot of their initial capabilities until NATO started really filling in in 2022. So I think the message has been heard. I think our people understand this. In some cases, I think these are constraints that we just can't simply wish away fast enough. In other cases, look, you know, in 2022, if we had known this was going to be a two and a half plus year war, there were investments that should have been made.

Mostly that's in ammunition production capacity, but also in equipment. It would have been great if we started producing more of certain equipment. So these are some of the hindsight issues that didn't go the right way. But certainly Western aid is still critical for Ukraine. And it is still a key determinant when we talk about what is the worst trajectory.

It is looking at Russian stockpiles, looking at Russian production of vehicles every month, and looking at what Western countries can provide. And there is a question, I think you guys may know this better than I do, of we pass a large aid package this year. Will there be another equally large aid package next year or the year after that going forward? I've heard people that are pessimistic. They don't think we're going to be able to continue doing that.

And if that's the case, then that's going to affect the war for Ukraine. And obviously, hopefully we can sustain providing this kind of aid for as long as Ukraine needs it. But I think that's a concern that I have. Yeah, Mike, I want to turn to you on that. But I think part of the issue, at least from my perspective, is that one, you have folks in the Pentagon that are focused on U.S. warfighting above all else. And so I think sometimes

Ukrainians want us to be on equal war fighting with them. And that's just simply not the case. Our folks in the Pentagon are focused on the Indo-Pacific. They're focused on China, on ROK, on the Middle East. And looking at our stockpiles and being like, okay,

We're now hitting thresholds where we don't want to go below. But the other issue is, I think, a funding one. And I'm curious for your take on this, is that we've passed an aid package, but that's not a blank check. I mean, it's really huge what we've done, $60 billion. It's sort of unprecedented what we've done, I think, in post-World War II in providing this much conventional military aid to a country that were not at war with the combatant

But there's real restrictions or limitations on what we can do, just given how much funding there is. And I'm curious from your perspective, am I overstating that?

And do you think the aid that we're providing is being spent wisely? I mean, I know Colin Cullen, he was undersecretary of defense, even pointed to, well, you want F-16s, but if we're going to provide F-16s, then what aren't we going to provide? Because then that's going to eat into other money that we would provide, maybe ammo or Bradleys or whatever it is.

How do you see USAID? Is it foundational for Ukraine? Are we doing as much as we can? Is there more juice we can squeeze out of this lemon? What's your sort of broader take on that and anything that Rob said as well? Thanks. A great question. But I have to say here right up front that I'm not a Pentagon person, so this is very much an outsider's perspective. And somebody listening to this from DOD might shudder at what I'm about to say next.

And that's okay. DoD folks hide behind readiness and spreadsheets and things they say they can't show you and they were terribly sorry, we can't do it. We just don't have enough. And so we have so many, not enough. So we can have a go at them anyway without them here. So first, the aid package is large in numbers, but it's funding that will mostly never leave the United States, right? Only a small percentage of that's really going to go to Ukraine, if you look at how that money is actually spent. Second, there's a lot of bureaucratic politics involved. So

DOD is quite adept at getting reimbursed for equipment they are providing at far above the actual value of that equipment. And you see a lot of services taking used equipment from the global war on terror. You remember this time period of our history? Some of it that's probably been written hard and put away wet or what have you. And

Sliding it into presidential drawdown authority and then giving it to Ukraine. Because you see Ukrainians running offensives in NAXPROs, various types of MRAPs, up-armored Humvees, right? Like M113, sort of the latest and greatest of what the United States had during both the Cold War and during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do you think the Kelley Blue Book value of these items is? Yeah.

Right now, if if we kind of imagine, though, what the Pentagon is probably charging for them as the replacement value, why the Pentagon regularly comes up with sudden accounting errors. They've discovered an extra two billion dollars that they didn't have because somebody looked at the Excel spreadsheet and just started deleting zeros off the valuation to come up with more funding.

- Just on this, there was, you know, the previous supplemental, they were running out of money and suddenly the Pentagon found 6 billion. What happened was they just like one branch, I forget which one, wasn't depreciating the actual value of the stuff that they were providing, so they squeezed more juice out of that supplemental. And it works both ways when they're then buying stuff too.

It's an amazing oversight that they suddenly rectified. And the point I'm going with us is that not that it's all sort of magical numbers, but that Pentagon accounting for things that don't have an actual market value gets pretty great.

Okay, so one reason is that I think services are definitely looking for ways in which they can give away the soldier equipment while still getting money as reimbursement well above the value of what they're giving. And I see that bureaucratic politics. I also see that the Defense Department, like other departments,

Defense departments in Western countries, they don't want to give away high end low availability weapons and systems right. And part of the reason for that, particularly for us is a real world example to folks to say you can just give security guarantees to everyone and those commitments won't impose constraints.

They will because the US has operational plans that come with requirements. And so you end up suddenly getting pinned down by requirements for all sorts of operational plans you have for real world commitments and other people who you promise to defend. And those, and you can,

You can counter argue and say these requirements are too high. But as you know, in the world of COCOMS, combatant commands, that's where the real fight is. Those folks are going to argue for their requirements and things allocated to their operational plans. And so anything you want to take when it comes to high-end systems like Patriots, you are taking them from someone.

Folks on falls, they imagine that they kind of live, they live on some base. There's a Patriot base full of Patriots, but that's not the case. Right? What's actually happening is they're either deployed or they're allocated to be deployed to a COCOM in the event they have a contingency and the plan, and they're assigned to that plan. And those people are depending on that system to be there. And even though the United States may have 60, I assure you all 60 or however many there are, are spoken for by somebody.

And so you have to make a call to pull them from somebody and say, okay, well, that's just a political decision to be made. Sure, yes, but there's a lot of knife fighting involved in these things. And for these kind of capabilities, including the munitions, which Rob touched on, there's a big production backlog. The production backlog for Patriot missiles is something like seven years. That's why this year they suspended exports to divert supplies to Ukraine until we're able to fulfill Ukrainian needs, because there's no other way.

That's going to come with the expense of orders for other countries. Somebody's in that seven-year purchase order pipeline, and so they're going to get theirs later.

Yeah, the last part I was going to say is that when we turn to NATO, so our European allies are good at many things, but buying ammunition has never been one of them. And having large capacities in defense capabilities has also not been one of them either. And having given away a whole bunch of these things to Ukraine in the last two and a half years to support Ukraine,

rightfully, they're also focusing on rearmament. But now they're concerned about how much they have left versus what they've given. That's issue one. Issue two, looking at the US election, particularly this year, Max, they're a bit unsure about US future commitments and what they can count on. And that has a suppressing effect. If you're not sure who's going to win the election,

and you don't know what the future of the US role in Europe is going to be, you might be a bit hesitant about how much more you're going to give until you have a sense of what your security environment looks like moving forward. And I think people will not necessarily say that, but I get the sense that that's out there as a background context for some of the discussions and decisions being made.

And in general, I observe a pretty large rhetoric to investment gap in this war, particularly in the third year of it amongst Western countries. I think that's the fairest way to summarize it. Stavros Niikovic: Fascinating discussion. Thank you so much. I wanted one quick follow-up question, which always puzzles me. Wouldn't a war in some ways be beneficial for the US military industrial production, the same way that it is beneficial for Russia?

Meaning that there's an opportunity to now boost all this money and ideally also back up perhaps social and political issues because, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe some of the defense industries are based in Rust Belt regions, so maybe a few more people get employed. Is that a naive way of looking at things?

Why is there so much resistance domestically, it essentially offering more aid to Ukraine while it seems on surface to be good potentially for the US economy? But that's not at all what's happening. Rob or Michael, whoever would like to comment. Yeah, without going down the sort of standard trope of wars, defense, industrial policy and all of that and all there.

Yeah, in general, this war had led the United States to issue multi-year contracts to increase ammunition production, to build new plants, which we should have done anyway. What it did is it actually revealed something that many folks had seen

But the political will had not been there to actually drive change, which is we are not prepared for a great power war. We are not prepared for a prolonged conventional war of attrition against a principal competitor like China. We've been talking about it. We've been planning for it. But if you look at our stocks, if you look at our ammunition production rate, if you look at where we are in terms of defense industrial capacity, we're not there. Why?

Michael Piazza: we reap the peace dividend and the benefit of being a dominant superpower for many decades. Right. And so we're both short on mobilization capacity. The production capacity matches the need right, because it's efficient, and meaning there's not a lot of slack in the system, and

not to be good about it, but modern weapons are complex. You can't ramp them up that fast. Hell, we struggled to ramp up production of artillery shells. Can you imagine what it takes to ramp up production of interceptors for Patriot batteries, right? So some of these things, you can no longer whittle them out that quickly compared to the way you might have been able to ramp up production of weapon systems 50, 70 years ago. So yeah, I mean, of course, politically,

It should be one of the easiest things to sell, which is most of the money stays in the United States. It never leaves the U.S. It doesn't go to Ukraine. The corruption concerns are grossly overblown, not only because they are, but also because we're actually not giving Ukraine much money at all. People, unfortunately, have the wrong impression after many years or decades of seeing the United States giving suitcases of cash to people in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't blame the public and I don't blame folks in Congress for asking these questions, given how certain wars were run. Yeah. Yeah.

and how then those people just left with those suitcases of cash at the end. That's like a fair, you know, it's still fresh in the memory of some people, but this is not that war. Yeah, it would be beneficial for that. I'll be naughty and even say, Maria, could even be beneficial for think tanks who receive significant levels of funding from U.S. defense contractors. We don't,

I mean, I think one thing that has been a big surprise in this conflict is this, I think, especially to folks in the White House, is how unprepared our defense industry has been to ramp up production for a great power war and how our stocks aren't as deep as we had perceived and then how slow we are in actually producing things and shortages of things like gunpowder and other things like that. Maybe to final question,

Looking forward with the Kursk offensive, also the state of the Russian defense industry, which is ramping up but also experiencing some problems,

How do you see the balance of this war playing out over maybe the next year? Just assuming a steady state and U.S. support, nothing really changes in terms of, you know, maybe there's another supplemental. But basically, we're doing what we've been doing. Europe's been doing what it's been doing, maybe doing a little bit more. Is the tide running against Ukraine? How do you kind of see the direction of travel right now?

Should I jump on that one? It's funny because this podcast is supposed to be about Kursk and we didn't really talk about Kursk that much. We got you on the sidetrack. We'll bring it back now, Rob. Yeah. I mean, so look, the overall situation, Mike and I were there in June. We came back. We were more optimistic because ultimately Russia had a number of advantages this year. And if we go back, Ukraine's summer offensive last summer failed.

It ended when they ran out of infantry. They suffered too much attrition. That was the principal reason why it ended. And ever since, the Ukraine has had a deficit of manpower. And it's been the biggest issue, right? It also was an issue when the U.S. did not pass the aid package, but that became a problem too. But manpower is really the more significant issue. And Ukraine has addressed these things. They also addressed fortifications.

And when they passed the new mobilization bill in April, it went into effect in mid-May, and they significantly increased the number of soldiers. They were mobilizing for volunteers every month. So since mid-May, the numbers have increased dramatically. And what that meant was Russia had this manpower advantage the last year where they've been getting 25,000, 30,000 guys a month. Ukraine is now getting 30,000 people a month.

And so that was a way of ideally over time, if you sustain these recruitment rate, then every month your Ukrainian brigades will get filled up, they'll be better off. And so our argument was basically, we thought Russia's offensive potential would start to degrade this fall into winter. And then of course, it created a lot of unpredictability here because it's a risky operation. It may pay off, but it may not. And if it doesn't pay off, Russia might've made more gains than it would have otherwise. Right.

So our view before this is that this fall, this winter, Russian offensive potential will degrade. They're running through armored vehicles at an unsustainable rate. That manpower issues will grow. And then if Ukraine continues to just attrit Russian forces, maintain a favorable attrition ratio, things would get better because we know that our ammunition production capacity is increasing. We're not going to achieve parity with Russia in our total ammunition. But if we reduce that rate, right, that can have a significant effect on battlefields. And so if on one hand,

our defense industry catches up and Ukraine is able to sustain a higher rate of mobilization and manpower, the situation should improve. And that would give Ukraine options in 2025 to do offensive, to do other kinds of things. There's greater unpredictability now with Kursk because Kursk, instead of

Sending all these new soldiers to brigades on the front line in Pokrovsk or elsewhere, many of them went to Kursk instead, many of them went to these kind of new brigades, and it's a question of kind of resource allocation. So it's a little more unpredictable about exactly how things will play out. I think that Russia's offensive will probably last a little longer now, right, this summer and going into the fall, just because if Ukraine holds this area in Kursk, then other areas are going to be more exposed for a little longer.

So that creates kind of a question here. And of course, look, if they hold Kursk long term, then if it gets to the point where there's negotiations, maybe it's a good negotiating chip. It also kind of makes it more difficult for anyone to force negotiations on Ukraine, whether it's allies or anyone else, because you can't just end the war with the current front line because Ukraine holds Russian territory, right? So it gives Ukraine greater leverage.

Overall, though, I think we thought the situation would likely improve in 2025. And I think it still will, right? I think it will probably improve this fall. But again, that also depends on how does Ukraine make it through this winter with its energy infrastructure, right? How does that go? And that's a bit of an open question.

And of course, it depends on both sides, how well they can mobilize resources, how well they use resources. One thing we've seen throughout this war is I think we've seen both sides, a lot of times military operations are dictated by political considerations, including short-term political considerations that are not always helpful militarily. And that sometimes creates

problems, and it also kind of influences how the war goes. So, you know, we'll have to wait and see. The Kursk operation was surprising, right? So it's certainly possible we'll see other surprising events going forward that could significantly affect the outcome of the war. I think the resource situation, it looks better for Ukraine in 2025 than it did in 2024. But how that exactly plays out is an open question. Mike, over to you, closing thoughts. I mean, I think Rob pretty much nailed it. He and I, I wouldn't say are of one mind, but we have shared similar experiences.

Where I'm at right now is I think we really have to see how the next several weeks play out. One of the big questions I have is both Russia and Ukraine at this point face, to some extent, a dilemma, right? Ukraine can try to expand the Kerr salient and see if it can divert a much larger share of Russian forces to get the reaction they wanted and maybe use that to set up something else, some other operation. However, to do that, Ukraine risks overextension.

and undermining parts of the front in Donetsk and takes on greater risk, right? The more territory they try to hold, the more resources they have to commit to it, the greater the potential trade-off with defending in Donetsk, and the greater the potential risk that they will be stuck there holding this larger piece of terrain and still not get the kind of Russian response they want. Russia also, to some extent, faces a dilemma, which is,

that they can continue focusing on the current offensives from Bogdanovsk to Pokrovsk and Pokrovsk to Turetsk and Chastityar and so on and so forth, as Rob discussed.

But if they focus on that and they choose not to counter in any significant way the Ukrainian-Persian curse, then first, they take the risk that Ukraine will widen the salient, take over more territory and will become worse and more embarrassing. And second, the Ukraine will have time to further dig in and entrench, right? So if they don't mount a counterattack, it will be harder to displace Ukraine out of Kursk. And Ukraine could be holding this cursed salient well into next year, which is clearly what they intend to do. So both sides face to some extent a dilemma and choices that they have to make.

And they often harp on the fact that at the end of the day, military strategy is about choices and trade-offs, usually most relative in what you choose not to do. And so we're seeing a degree of decision points for both Ukraine and Russia as to how they want to move forward. I think Rob and I together were...

We're probably a bit skeptical that Kursk can really change things on the one hand. On the other hand, it's sort of worth a shot. And it's quite interesting to see what it can do for Ukraine and where it can go. I think a lot also depends in our judgment as to how the facts, Ukraine's ability to defend the Prokrosk and how that plays out. And I think that would be the judgment of most other folks. If there is...

operational significant breakthrough by Russian forces if the front in Donetsk isn't stabilized in the coming months, right? Folks may make a logical linkage, which I think does exist to some extent. It may be enough for one, but there is a causal connection between Kursk and the potential trade-off with Kursk, right?

So that's why I said it just depends on how those things play out. Unfortunately, we don't know the details of what's happening at the front, and we haven't been there in almost two months, I would say. Yeah, two months or so. So that's hard to say. And lastly, Ukrainian planning remains, for lack of a better word, emergent, right? And that's kind of where Ukraine tends to operate in terms of planning. I've noticed a lot that tends to be border space planning.

And so you can't really necessarily predict what they will do next, just as we did not predict the Kursk offensive to begin with on August 6th. Max, when you ask us, how do you think the war is going to go in the next six months? My answer is, it's not that easy to necessarily predict what the next action is that Ukraine will take or that Russia will take. And that's why I hedge a bit. I hedge a bit seeing the Kursk offensive, understanding that we don't necessarily know what's going to follow even next month.

War is contingent, and there's a podcast for that. Rob, thanks so much for joining Maria and I on Russian Road. It's been a real pleasure. But unfortunately, we're going to have to end it there. Massive thanks to both of you. And of course, our listeners for tuning in. As usual, if you haven't already, please subscribe to our show and give us a five-star rating. Additionally, please be sure to check out our sister podcast, The Europhile, wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next time.

You've been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon. Russian Roulette releases new episodes every two weeks on Thursdays and is available wherever you get your podcasts. So please subscribe and share our episodes online. And be sure to check out all the latest analysis by the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at csis.org.