Ukraine's Kursk Offensive with Sam Bendett and Mick Ryan
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Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center in 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. I'm Max Bergman and I'm joined today by my co-host Maria Snegevaya. Good morning, Maria. Good morning, Max. Good to see you. And we're also joined by two very special guests to discuss the latest dramatic turn on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Ukrainian lightning offensive into Kursk Oblast inside of Russia. Our first guest today is Sam Bendet, a non-resident senior associate with us at the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program and an

advisor in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analysis. Sam, thanks so much for joining us. Good morning, everyone. Great to be back. Also joining us is General Mick Ryan. He's coming to us today from Vietnam. Mick, thanks so much for joining us. Hi, Max. Hi, Maria. Hi, Sam.

Mick is a retired major general in the Australian Army and also a non-resident adjunct fellow with the Australia Chair here at CSIS. Mick recently released a new book, and please go buy a copy, titled The War for Ukraine, Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. It's out now from Naval Institute Press.

Mick's book examines how both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have developed over recent decades, while also exploring the various ways that they have had to adapt their tactics, strategies and organizations to meet the challenges of the current war. So I can think of no two better guests to discuss the current state of play with the Ukrainian offensive. Mick and Sam, thank you both for joining us. Sam, maybe I'll start with you.

If you could sort of give us some background on the current Kursk offensive, what, in your view, is the overriding objective and what has Ukraine achieved thus far? Thanks, Max. The offensive is already in its second week, and it's incredible to think that on August 6th, this really started sort of as a cross-border incursion. We don't know a lot of information. Ukrainians are providing some data, but we still don't have a lot of details.

A lot of details to us are coming from some of the military reporters and Russian military bloggers on the ground in Kursk. And that comes to us in bits and pieces. But recently, Ukrainian government has issued essentially an official statement of why it did what it did. So number one, Ukrainian government wanted to create a buffer zone in Russia to prevent attacks.

Russian missile and drone attacks from hitting Ukraine. It wanted to have a better negotiating position with the Kremlin when it comes to exchanges or even discussions of territory. And I think the third purpose is to, as the president of Ukraine and as its military have said, replenish the exchange fund that is to capture Russian soldiers to exchange for

Ukrainian prisoners of war. So we do now have official government statements coming out, but again, they're relatively truncated and relatively short on details. Mick, militarily, Ukraine throwing a bunch of forces across the border,

at a time when they are really on the defensive in the Donbass and are losing territory, it seems pretty risky to stretch your forces at this critical moment. How do you see this offensive? Maybe if you could give kind of your military take on what you see happening right now.

Yeah, thanks. I agree with everything Sam said. Although to give a military take, you've got to give a political take because war is ultimately political. And I guess the political context for the military operation is that, and I'm projecting a bit here, but Zelensky and his advisors have probably looked at the status quo in the war, have assessed that they can't let that continue as it was going on.

because it's got a much lower chance of winning the war with what was going on. It didn't see NATO changing its strategy to shift from defending Ukraine to one where they'd help Ukraine actually beat Russia. It didn't see a prospect for any change in US policy. Putin has certainly not changed his strategy for the war, which is the total subjugation of Ukraine. So there's actually only one actor that can change the trajectory of the war, and that's Ukraine.

So to do that, they've taken what I'd call a very big swing

Yes, it's risky. It is very risky in the Donbass, but a lot of the forces they've used were already being held in reserve. Some of them were from the Donbass, but others have been deployed there. And I think a lot of people call this very risky because since the end of the Cold War, our countries actually haven't mastered doing big, hard, risky things. We just haven't done it. Have a look at Afghanistan. Every country that went there used special forces where possible, had caveats.

and took the minimum risk approach. So I don't think most countries really have a good sense of judgment of risk that Ukraine's actually taken in this offensive.

Mik, in your recent blog post about this situation in Ukraine, you cite Clausewitz saying that "War is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will." May I ask you to comment on that issue? To what extent do you think Ukrainians have been able to impose, like force Russians to fulfill their will in these offenses, like based on what we know so far?

That was great Carl von Clausewitz, who said it better than anyone about war ultimately being a battle of wills. I think this has changed the trajectory of the war, at least in the short and medium term. I think that Ukraine is now, as sees the initiative, setting the momentum for the war. But I think both Ukraine and Russia are in a place, neither of them have been in this war, which is

the concurrent execution of two major ground campaigns. Since the early days of the war, they've really both focused on one major campaign and lots of smaller operations. So they're both in new ground. I don't think either of them can sustain two major campaigns into the medium term. And really, it will be a race to see who blinks first. And that will be, I think, down to political considerations, not just military ones. It will be about who...

thinks Putin's regime is threatened and what action threatens it the most, pulling out of Donbass or not defending Kursk. So I think they're going to be the big determinants of the medium and long term and the war. Thank you very much. And Sam, would you add anything to this analysis?

Well, I completely agree with Mick. These are risky moves. This is quite unpredictable territory. We really don't know how this might unfold in the coming weeks or in the coming months. This entire incursion was unexpected. And so we just have to sort of see exactly how it's going to go. But we are the observers. We're not the ones doing the fighting. And again, we have a lot of imperfect data and imperfect information to piece this together.

I think I build on that. At the start of my book, I say this is part of a story about part of a war. We never have good visibility about what's going on during war, even in retrospect. So there are many, many things we're not seeing. And we kind of have to join a lot of dots in our conclusion and analysis of the war.

When the offensive first started, I guess my initial reaction was this was sort of akin to kind of some of the performative raids or acts that we saw that we've seen throughout military history. I think of sort of the Doolittle raid after Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. deciding it needed to kind of hit back at mainland Japan, did a really daring bombing that hit Japan and had a real psychological effect, both on the Japanese and the U.S. But this seems a little bit more

Ukraine went in with sizable forces. And in both, I think it's having a psychological effect both inside Ukraine and inside of Russia, which maybe we'll talk about more a little bit later. I want to get Maria's thoughts on how she sees events sort of unfolding in Russia. But from a military perspective, I mean, they deployed a lot of forces here. And I guess when we maybe talk about some of the downside risks for a second, which haven't yet materialized, but those risks

substantial forces are now, you know, on Russian territory and are exposed somewhat. What is some of the downside risks of Ukraine having, you know, sort of perhaps stretched itself? I mean, are we seeing the Russians mobilize mass forces against them? How do you guys potentially see some of the risks here of Ukraine's action? Then maybe we'll talk about some of the upside and some of the benefits. But Mick, maybe we'll start with you and then go to Sam.

Yeah, I think there's always risk in these kind of things. Firstly, because you could lose the whole force. I mean, the Russians could get their act together and cut them off. Now, I think that's extraordinarily unlikely at this point in time, mainly because the geography the Ukrainians seem to be wanting to seize is contiguous with their border. So they'll have a long contiguous stretch, maybe 20 or 30 kilometres deep. I think there'll be some bits they'll withdraw out of because it's just not worth trying to hold.

You've got to be concerned about the number of experienced brigades used in this compared to the experienced brigades in the Donbass, although it appears they've learned from 2023 where they used inexperienced brigades. They didn't do this this time. That shows good institutional learning.

But I think it's not just the combat frontline brigades and numbers of infantry, even though that matters. It's the arms and services that support combat operations, whether it's artillery, HIMARS, electronic warfare, air defence. These are scarce assets that you don't get a lot of in any army. And, you know, the Ukrainians need to apportion these between the Donbass army.

Kursk and protecting civil infrastructure. That's going to be a very difficult balancing act besides the number of brigades. I will just finish in saying we should recall the Ukrainians have probably used more brigades or elements of brigades in Kursk

than exist in most NATO armies. The Ukrainian army is a big organisation, nearly a million people, so it's got a lot of brigades. So if it uses half a dozen or so in this rate, that is not a big proportion of the force. So we should also keep that in perspective.

I completely agree with Mick, obviously. In an incursion like that, your biggest concern is your logistics. It's the protection of your rear, making sure that there's proper communication. And there's now evidence two weeks into this that Russians are pulling up electronic warfare systems. They are flying more drones now.

to try and see where Ukrainian forces are. So it was, in fact, a very risky move. We do know by now that this particular section of the border was rather thinly defended. It did not have battle-hardened troops. It had a lot of conscripts.

They were not well equipped as well. They had very light arms, apparently. In a repeat of multiple similar conflicts where one side completely underestimates the other, apparently there were warnings coming from the border that there was some kind of buildup happening. And those warnings were bumped up all the way to the MOD leadership in Russia and were completely ignored because Russians simply didn't think

that Iranians would launch this operation or were capable of launching their operation simply because of the Russian pressure on Ukrainian forces in eastern Donbas.

Yeah, I think just to build on that, there's certainly been a failure of humility here in the Russians, which unfortunately there's a lot of in modern war. I mean, if you have a look at Hamas last year, there was lots of indications and warning this was going to happen, yet still it was ignored. If you have a look at the first Kharkiv offensive in 2022, wasn't a boat from the blue. There were lots of indications that were ignored, even back to Pearl Harbor and World War I.

We see this a lot. There's very few bolts from the blue. Generally, these surprises are achieved when an organisation doesn't pick up on the right bits of information and doesn't utilise them in the right way or at the right speed to be able to prevent these kind of surprise attacks.

Yeah, just to follow up on that, I think Mike Hoffman, friend of the pod, has highlighted that the Ukrainian invasion kind of demonstrates Russia's continued inability to kind of react quickly to events. Is that how you see it? I mean, it seems like the Russian response has been totally disorganized and slow, and the Ukrainians really hit at kind of an organizational seam within the Russian kind of military and security apparatus. Mick, how do you see this? What does this tell you about the Russian military?

Well, it tells us we should never give them time to get their act together. And unfortunately, that's what Western governments have done consistently in this war, is we've had the Russians against the wall multiple times, several times where the Ukrainians have had their boot on their neck at the end of 2022. And through slow decision-making, risk-adverse escalation terror from Western governments, we've allowed the Russians to escape.

And we're seeing this all over again, this centralised control that the Russians have, their inability to accept failure and these kind of things mean they're very slow at getting their act together. We should be exploiting that, not giving the Russians time to get their act together. And I find it amazing that once again,

the FSB, who has failed not just in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, but in this one constantly, has been put in charge of the response to the incursion into Kursk. Just amazing. Maybe I'll add to that a little bit of the social dimension to address your question. We also see that Russians are actually quite happy with the

Kremlin unhappiness with the response of the Russian authorities is at the highest level since Prigozhin's adventures last year and the anxiety is also rising very dramatically which is quite typical for summer in general even if it's August and in August as the Russian saying goes you can always expect the worst things somehow they always happen in August for Russians and this year did not betray the expectations so

we definitely see that the lack of response play uncertainty and precisely as Mick described like the fact that the Kremlin has obviously been caught off guard definitely is contributing to the unhappiness spread within the Russian population

population. And if this continues, probably things will get even worse. We know, as a matter of fact, that those Russians who live in these regions by the front lines, even when they're not invaded by Ukrainians, but just because they experience all the problems associated to the war, they actually usually tend to have lower approval for Putin and the Kremlin over the long term. Quite notable

10 percentage points or even more. And hopefully this will not be an exception. So potentially this is something that could shift the tide if that continued over the long term. We will see though. And maybe I can ask Sam and Nick about these responses that the Kremlin has offered fluctuations. They even try to use domestic security forces instead of pulling away forces from Donbass. How is that going? Do you see any trends there? And why such procrastination on the side of the Kremlin?

Bob Stem, let's start with you. Well, from what we understand, Russia's main goal is still in eastern Donbass, and the Russian forces are grinding their way there. They're closing in on Pokrovsk. Ukrainians are saying that Russians are attacking around the clock, day and night. Russians are still losing soldiers, but they're grinding their way in. And so that is the main goal. The Kursk incursion is at best a distraction for Russia,

At worst, essentially something they'll have to deal with much later. That's why they've pulled up conscripts without a lot of experience. A lot of these conscripts have surrendered to the Ukrainians. They utilize Ahmad and other ethnic Chechen forces and battalions.

that had a very mixed result. In fact, there was a video of a Russian soldier issuing a mea culpa publicly on social media because he said that the Chechens ran away from the fight, and then he was forced to apologize and say how heroic they were, etc., etc., very much in a North Korean style. And so, again, the main goal for Russia is eastern Donbass,

This is where the bulk of the forces are concentrated. This is where a lot of experienced fighters are located. And for Putin, he can procrastinate as long as he can maintain pressure and keep pressure on eastern Donbass, because he knows that up to a certain point, Ukraine can advance inside Kursk. But then that advance, the longer it gets, is going to become quite precarious for the Ukrainian forces.

It's a distraction to them, right, as you mentioned, Sam, but it's the first time Russia's been invaded, I think, at this scale since the Second World War at the very least. I'm quite surprised, right, that that's actually not making more of a fuss. Nick, what about you? Would you add something to this?

I totally agree with what Sam said. If you actually graph the numbers of attacks on the Pokrovsk axis of advance over the last two months, they've gone up slightly in the last couple of weeks. So, you know, the Russians have not, you know, deployed forces from there for Kursk.

It's clearly still the main effort for Putin. He owns 18% of Ukraine. He wants to own more. Ultimately, this war is less about defending a very, very, very tiny proportion of Russia, and Kursk is a very, very tiny proportion of it, and it's about destroying all of Ukraine. So I think at the moment he's going to sustain his efforts in the Donbass because he knows that the Ukrainian operations will have a natural effect

because of logistics, because of just the friction of offensive operations, and that he doesn't need a large force to slow them down or even stop them. Now, pushing them out will be a different thing, but at this point in time, he probably doesn't have to do a lot in Kursk to slow the Ukrainians down, and not a lot to take a lot of ground in the Donbass. So I don't see a shift in

in his posture there. Where we do see shifts is they're moving some forces from the south and other areas of the east. And I think the Ukrainians will be watching this closely because when you conduct these kind of offensives...

You also look at other areas where the enemy might draw forces from to respond and see if they're creating weaknesses that you might want to exploit at some point, should you have the forces to do so. So I think the Ukrainians will be watching very closely in the south and in other parts of the east and even in the north to see how the Russians have changed their deployments to see where there might be other opportunities.

I want to sort of pick up on the point Sam made that the goal is still the Donbass. I mean, I get it. However, you just, you know, for the U.S., the goal might have been, you know, victory in Iraq and Ukraine. But if part of Montana was seized, I think we'd have to shift focus to some degree. Sam, what does this tell you about Putin's decision making? Where is Putin? It seems like he's another crisis and he's gone somewhat AWOL. Is the idea in Russia that, at least in the Kremlin, that they're going to sort of downplay this crisis

offensive and because they can control the press that they can sort of limit some of the outrage. I'm curious what this tells you about the kind of decision making inside of the Kremlin. Well, we know where Putin is. He actually went to Baku in Azerbaijan. Uh,

So he left the country and, you know, he's back. So we know where he is. He still maintains visibility. I think you hit upon a very important point. The decision making in the Kremlin has been a topic of discussion for the last quarter century. And we've written books, we've written analysis, and some of the smartest people in America are trying to figure out how Putin thinks, why he thinks the way he thinks, and what decision making is. And we still don't quite have a full understanding. So I will say I don't have a full understanding of

his decision making. But it is clear that he's downplaying this incursion. It is called a counterterrorism organization. The media isn't screaming about Russia being invaded. There are other events happening on Russian media. Once again, he just traveled to the Caucasus, where Russia seeks to expand its influence against what it sees a much weakened and

unfriendly Armenia, for example, and so on and so forth. So it's not exactly clear, but it is clear that this incursion is downplayed. And again, Putin thinks he may procrastinate as long as he can maintain enough pressure in eastern Donbass. Yeah, I think it's worth saying this highlights once again that Russia's different.

You know, you said if Montana got invaded, there'd be all kinds of hue and cry. Well, the US is a bit different to Russia. It has a free press. Russia doesn't. Russia can play this however it wants. And at the end of the day, you know, Russia, to the degree that the public will find out about this in Russia, Putin will be using that to say, listen, I've been telling you for years that NATO's a threat to us, that Ukraine's a threat to us. And look,

They've proven that that's the case. Now, how much he uses that kind of narrative, I'm not sure. But at the end of the day, he owns the media and he can portray this Ukrainian operation however he wants, which is just not the case in other liberal democracies.

I will add to that that it's also very clear there is no very straightforward signal the pro-Kremlin commentators could pick up on. And so that resulted in those sorts of different responses from various pro-Kremlin figures, from offering carpet bombings of the Kursk region, you know, all the way to other crazy ideas. It seems like they don't know what the official line is yet. But it's also not atypical for Putin to take time to kind of respond.

And so maybe in the broader sense, to what extent this whole situation is a big turnaround in this war? Can we say at this point, I do understand we have limited information for a good reason, but to what extent do you think it's a major change that will fundamentally affect how this war was going to develop?

Well, I think the Ukrainians have certainly seized the strategic initiative and there's potential for this to be a major turning point. But for that potential to be realised, it won't just be about the actions of Ukrainians. It will be about the actions of people in Brussels, Berlin and Washington DC. If they're able to seize the moment and say, now is the time

where we need to commit to not just defending Ukraine for the long term, but helping them win quickly because there's both a strategic and humanitarian imperative to do so. That's how the trajectory of the war changes. It's not clear to me yet that that's happening. Every time there's a war that involves Israel, you see this mass inflow of American aid. We're not seeing that for the Ukrainians at this point in time, unfortunately.

But boy, it would be nice to see a commitment by the West to actually winning this war with Ukraine rather than just this ad infinitum, we're with you for as long as it takes. That is not going to help Ukraine in the long term, I don't think. I agree with Mick. I think it's very important to gauge...

And to see how the United States responds. And yes, the longer this incursion is going to continue, the more it's going to percolate across the Russian society. We do have to acknowledge that a lot of information about what's happening in Kursk is coming from social media like telegram channels.

And there are lots and lots of very active channels which are broadcasting basically from the ground. And a lot of these Russian military bloggers have millions of subscribers, so they actually have quite the audience that they can reach. And so sometimes that information actually competes with the official narrative. It is certainly competing with the official narrative coming from the Kremlin on what is actually happening on the ground in Kursk.

So again, the longer this is going to continue, the greater our chances that there are other factors that are going to be considered, including possibly a response from Russian society, possibly from the elites or even someone in the military.

Thank you very much for that. And Max, to follow up on the answers that I just got from our participants, what do you think about the Western responses in this moment, right? We see yet again that democracies are doing something together, but it's not happening easily. In Berlin and Germany, for example, there's a sort of struggle about whether or not

to push forward assistance for Ukraine. And in general, there was always, as Nick pointed out, this self-containing tendencies on the side of the West. Do you think the Western capitals can seize momentum right now and push forward the assistance? Or maybe it's not the right moment, given everything that's going on. There is a change of president candidate in the United States and whatnot. I

I think we're sort of at an inflection point. And I think what's been interesting is that Ukraine didn't coordinate this offensive with any Western capitals. They were maintaining operational security. They didn't tell Washington. They didn't tell Paris, London, Berlin or any other capital that they were going to do this offensive. At least that's my understanding.

And I think in part because I think Washington would have said, this is nuts. Like, what are you doing? You're under the kosh in the Donbass. You're going to stretch your forces. So I think there would have been a military rationale. And I think a general sense of caution of maybe invading Russia isn't the best idea. And I think that gets to Mick's point of –

risk aversion on the side of the U.S. Well, for Ukraine, you know, they are going to have a different risk calculation. And so I think Ukrainians made a smart decision there. But when it comes to support, I think we're at an inflection point. Look, the German coalition with the German finance minister from the liberal FDP party, Christian Lindner,

just said that Germany was not going to do more aid for Ukraine. And why? Because Germany has this really crazy debt break that the FDP is very supportive of, which means that Germany can't run any debt or deficits despite having tremendous fiscal space to do so. And, you know, I think one of the...

downside effects of that has been if you look at the shares of some of the major German arms makers, they declined because all those long-term contracts that many industries have been demanding, well, you see the risk that they saw, which is that, well, what happens if two years into the war, suddenly spending is cut and we've opened up four new factories to produce

artillery. So, but I do think that, you know, that one thing that will really matter for this is that what happens with our election with, with, you know, Trump clearly signaling that he's not going to do another aid package for Ukraine. Harris, I think it's more likely. And I think in some ways more likely than if Biden had one reelection because Harris will want to demonstrate her continued support for Ukraine. But I'm curious, you know,

Mick and Sam for how you view that, but also for how you view the kind of morale in Ukraine. We've sort of talked about Russia, but my sense is that in Ukraine, you know, I had started to hear a lot more about negotiations. You know, a year ago, you weren't hearing anyone talk about what

well, we need to sit down and negotiate with Russia. Now I'm hearing a lot more exhaustion from Ukrainian society after being electrical infrastructure, been pummeled. And I think general war weariness of maybe having a ceasefire would make some sense. Now, I'm not saying that's universal, but I'm curious how you see this playing out in Ukraine's morale.

Well, I think we've definitely seen a bump in morale in Ukraine in the last couple of weeks. Napoleon said morale is to the physical as three as to one, and we should never underestimate morale of both soldiers or citizens in a war because that's what will is based on. But clearly there is a larger sense that negotiations might be necessary. Now, what the percentage of Ukrainian citizens are that believe that, I couldn't tell you because...

There's so many different polls and that would change from day to day. And I think even though there might be a temporary morale bump now, they're about to go into a cold winter. And even though Ukrainians are used to cold winters, the power infrastructure is worse now than it was the last two winters. So that's going to be very tough.

But I would say on the flip side of that is the Ukrainians understand what a Russian takeover or occupation of their country would mean as well. So for most Ukrainians, I'd say every Ukrainian doesn't want this war.

But the majority of them also understand that the war is the lesser of two evils. They know what the Russians do in the territories that they've occupied. And as terrible as the war is, I think a lot of people believe that they have to fight it to prevent something even worse, which is the Russian occupation.

I agree with Mick. We are getting indications in Western media and American media that are interviewing Ukrainian soldiers in the Ukrainian command that the morale is up. And that was a very important indicator for this incursion, that people are finally feeling more confident about this war. But I also agree with Mick that Ukraine wants to be in a much better position, meet and face, come what may, in a few weeks to a few months from now, or maybe even next year.

Maybe we could project ahead to 2025. You know, we have a number of months to go until we hit 2025. You know, U.S. presidential election. It's unclear what will happen on the ground in Kursk. What do you think is sort of Ukraine's sort of six-month strategy? You know, is it, you know, we're going to hold this territory together.

We're training new recruits. We're expanding the military. We're mobilizing forces. So we'll be in a better place in 2025. Hopefully, U.S. election goes a certain way and we'll get another aid package and we'll have equipment to be able to hold on and perhaps think about another offensive in 2025. Is that how Ukraine is thinking about this, Mikhail?

Maybe, Sam, Mick, you could take us down how you sort of see what is the kind of, you know, around the corner Ukraine strategy beyond the next, you know, week or two.

Well, I will speak to the unpredictability of this conflict in the first place. No one really anticipated this incursion. Probably very few people anticipated this war lasting this long. Certainly many in the Russian leadership and the military did not anticipate this war lasting this long. So there's a lot of factors to consider here. The resilience of Ukrainian society, the resilience of Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the ability of the Western forces and Western allies to aid Ukrainians with necessary weapons and systems.

the ability of Ukrainians to craft their own strategies, as well as utilize their absolutely incredible domestic defense industrial base that is now showing the world what is possible in the realm of new technology. So all of that taken together...

are essentially mounting to just a lot of unanswered questions. And obviously we have to consider the state of the Russian military and the Russian leadership and its ability to waste even more soldiers to accomplish its gains. What is going to happen in the Donbass in the coming months, let's say if the Pokrovsk is taken or if the Russia continues to advance.

So lots of questions here, but I think the U.S. elections, for example, and the European response are probably some of the bigger overarching topics for which we also do not have answers, Max, as you have indicated, the elections in U.S. can be quite unpredictable. And the response by the U.S. political leadership to what's happening in Ukraine could also be quite unpredictable as well.

Yeah, I think that's a great summary. It's actually hard to add to Sam's excellent summary. I just, I guess, make a couple of additional things. Firstly, I think Ukraine will be in a better position next year just because, you know, European defence industry is slowly improving and increasing capacity, not massively, but it is increasing capacity.

domestic defence industry, as Sam referred to in Ukraine, tripled in 2022, doubled again last year. It's now at the point where it can produce more than what it has money to produce. Drones, it's up to $2 million a year. So you're seeing all these industrial policies starting to bear dividends. Manpower obviously will get a bump up both through the morale from this

offensive and the mobilization laws so they'll be in a better position. How good they will be remains to be seen because it will depend on how many resources they've used in this offensive. On Russia, their defense industry is probably at maximum capacity at the moment. That's why they're importing on stuff from Iran and North Korea. And yes, they have a lot of manpower, but as someone once said, no tree grows to the sky.

No country has infinite

resources when it comes to manpower, except for maybe the Chinese. So I think we need to be very careful about projecting Russia being able to take the kinds of losses it has this year, every year, year in, year out. For the 700 square kilometers they've taken this year, they've suffered about 200,000 casualties. That's a very bad return on investment in anyone's book in any military era.

I just have a sense that I don't know how long Russia can continue doing that.

Yeah, I think that's a great point that we tend to see attritional wars as just being a stalemate forever. But the lesson of World War One is eventually the German army broke. You know, Russia is really going through a lot of its stockpiles of equipment, as Maria, Sam and I have have demonstrated in a recent report. Maybe my final question is, you know, Ukraine has now taken this war outside of its borders.

When the war started, Russia used Belarus as a venue to launch the attack on Kyiv. And, you know, I think there's been general sense that they would have some real advanced warning if Belarus was going to be used as a staging ground again.

But I have to think that this sort of puts Minsk on some notice, that Ukraine has now demonstrated a willingness to take the war outside of its borders. There's also a Russian base in Transnistria in Moldova. There was an election this year. Do you think this sort of...

in some ways, freezes the situation. It allows Ukraine some confidence and security that Belarus won't be a staging ground again and it won't be attacked from different directions. Is that one sort of maybe side benefit of this? Mick or Sam, I'm curious if you have any thoughts. I haven't seen that speculated, but I'm curious for your take on that. Yeah, I was speaking to a few analysts over the last couple of weeks on the Belarus issue

issue in particular. I mean, if I was Lukashenko, I'd be pretty worried. I mean, he doesn't have a big military, not big and not impressive, and it's given a lot of its munitions and equipment to the Russians. I'd be very nervous if I was him, and I would be even more nervous if Putin said, hey, can I put some more of my troops there to do another invasion? Whether that'll stop him from doing silly things, I don't know, but...

I have a sense that he'll probably not want to encourage cross-border incursions in either direction on the Ukraine-Belarus border. If I was one of those three battalions, Russian battalions in Transnistria at the moment, I'd be very, very nervous.

And I agree with Mick. I think as of this week, there was news that up to a third of the Belarusian military was now stationed on the Belarus-Ukraine border. So there is definitely a military concern.

But there's also a lot of unknowns. After all, Belarus and Russia have a military-to-military relationship. They have a lot of other ties that bind both of their militaries as part of agreements made earlier, as part of the union state between Russia and Belarus. But yes, I agree with me. Lukashenko is probably nervous, but he also doesn't know how the Kursk incursion is going to unfold going forward.

Unfortunately, we're going to have to end it there. Thank you again to Sam and Mick for what was a really fantastic and enlightening conversation. And be sure to order a copy of Mick's book, The War for Ukraine, Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire, which is out now. As usual, if you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast and give us a five-star rating. We always appreciate it. And also, please check out our sister podcast, The Europhile, wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.

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