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O-N-E-B-R-I-E-F to learn more. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. And in this episode, I sat down with Michael Kaufman to get an update on the war in Ukraine. Mike, let's start with everyone's transfixed, understandably, by what's happening in Kursk. But let's start further south. What's happening around Kyrgyzstan and parts sort of southeast of there?
The front line has been relatively stable down south, although there's been intermittent fighting over islands in the Dnieper River. There have been raids by Ukrainian forces on the Kinburn Spit. Russian military, I think, largely considers Zaporizhia and Kherson, those areas to be secondary areas at this point that are fairly stable. And most recently, they pulled some forces from there.
to reinforce Kursk, 810th Naval Infantry Brigade, some of the units from them, a couple other elements from Zaporizhia. It's clear that they're pulling a bit from that area while maintaining focus on their offensive operations on other parts of the front. And further to the east, it looks like Ukraine has been losing a
Yeah. So Russian military has been steadily advancing and including over the last two weeks along a couple axes. First, we have Taratsk. Russian force have captured the town of New York and are now advancing on Taratsk, which is a small city. They've been making steady gains towards Prokrosk and are now within artillery range of the city. It looks like they're not rushing to it. They're slowly getting through to Dostoevsk.
two defensive lines outside Prokhorovsk and wrapping a bit south. More at issue is that they're starting to make gains by Vuklodar and other parts of southern Donetsk. So what's setting up essentially is that their advance to Prokhorovsk is in effect trying to steadily envelop and threaten the left flank of Ukrainian forces in this part of Donetsk and perhaps looking to push them out into a larger retreat from that area before moving on the city of Prokhorovsk itself. Ukrainian
Leadership has ordered an evacuation of Prokofievsk and some of these cities already, realizing that they're in danger. So this is setting us up potentially for a steady set of Russian advances over the coming weeks and months.
What's the significance of Prokhorovsk if it falls, the operational strategic significance? So the main significance of Prokhorovsk first and foremost is a transit hub. A lot of the major roads intersect there that then go on further northeast to Kramatorsk, Slaviansk, and Konstantinovka. The eastern road's already been severed months ago. The northern road is still active.
Prokrosk is not an insignificant city. It's a major junction in Donetsk. If Russian forces take it, then they could advance further north, coming up behind Kramatorsk, or they can advance west and there's absolutely nothing really stopping them per se from pushing into different regions, into Dnieper regions, so that essentially the loss of Prokrosk would be fairly significant to Ukraine's ability to maintain defenses overall in
in Donetsk. That is, the sloss wouldn't be disastrous, but it would have downstream effects for the overall organization of defense. What have we seen in terms of Ukraine's ability to build effective secondary and tertiary fortification lines behind where we're talking about? I'd say it's been pretty mixed, right? On the one hand,
We have seen defenses being erected everywhere. In fact, most recent travels in Ukraine in June, I saw many defenses being built behind Turetsk and these other areas. On the other hand, Ukraine has big issues with manning, and they've thinned out the lines even further in order to conduct this offensive in Kursk. And manpower is just a leading problem, on top of the fact that Russian forces have advantage with drones and persistent sort of ISR behind Ukrainian lines.
So secondarily, many of the defenses that are built around cities are often contracted. And it's not that they're necessarily poorly built, but they're often built by folks that don't necessarily have a great understanding of how to organize a defense or where to put it or what defenses should look like in 2024 compared to what they were built like in 2022, right? What do you mean by that? So what I mean by that is,
A good example of that were defenses in Kharkiv. When Ukrainian units showed up in Kharkiv to reinforce the line, right, and basically went into meeting engagements against Russian forces, they showed up. And I saw a bunch of defenses that were prepared by folks that clearly hadn't been involved much in the fighting over the last two years. You had major trench works and bunkers out completely in the open in the field.
That is a very easy target for Russian glide bomb strikes, right? Because they're completely observed. They're not in tree lines. They're not covered anyway. There were many bunkers and fortifications set up with poor visibility, there's poor line of sight, down the wrong slopes, what have you. But most importantly, you had defenses that simply weren't set up around the concept of 360 defense. So there's defenses facing forward without building into them, understanding that at
FPV drones, other types of munitions can easily fly in from the side of the defense. It can fly in from behind the bunker, right? You have to build under the assumption that a guided munition can show up to any part of the defensive line or the fortification point you've built, right? Imagine how these things might have looked in the latter part of 20th century. You build them facing out forward,
And in this case, you have to make assumptions about different types of vulnerabilities. You have to build entrances differently, L-shaped entrances, let's say, to prevent munitions from flying in. And so in essence, you can easily build a whole bunch of defenses that troops will not want to occupy, or they show up to these defenses and they say, who built this, right? And most importantly, they also have to be camouflage. Defenses that are out in the open that you can easily see, let's say, from any satellite or from any drone are also problematic. Typically, defenses now are built
When units make them, they use their own drones to look back on their defenses to make sure that they're concealed from observation, that they're properly masked. Defenses built kind of unmasked are easy targets. Where else on the front do we see the most risk? I would also say by Kupyansk, which is right on the Oskil River. Russian forces are clearly trying to get to the river and have steadily been advancing there. This is on the eastern edge of the Kharkiv region. Russian military had also tried to
attack most recently in around Kharkov by Lipsy. I don't think they had much success, but by Kruppiansk and by that river is the other, the other access. If they're successful there, is Kharkov at serious risk? I don't think so. Still too big of a target for Russia to take down. I don't think so. I think it's far too big of a target, but it does even out the line for Russia. And then it can use the Oskil river as a defensive barrier, potentially if it gets there. And that can once again, reduce the troops that needs to cover that frontage rather
Russian forces have been pulling some units out of Kharkiv, which has been a stable front since June, to Kursk, and so has Ukraine. If you look at the Ukrainian units involved in the offensive, some of them I even sat down with and was spending time with late June. So I actually know exactly where they came from. How many Ukrainian forces do you think approximately are currently in Kursk right now? My best guess is somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 overall involved in the operation. Now, they've been adding some more troops recently after the first week.
And so it's become larger than how it began, but it's still not that large of an operation. I think you can't even speak really of a core size formation. And do you think that that is a serious drain on Ukrainian efforts to defend on the front elsewhere? So they pulled some of their better units if you look at the brigades involved. Now, these are not whole brigades. These are elements, parts of brigades. But Ukraine is quite short on available combat power right now.
And the extent to which this series drain will reveal itself in the coming weeks, I think they have definitely taken on risk. And of course, a lot depends on how long they intend to keep them there and how big of a frontage they plan to hold, right? They're still expanding the pocket and they're anchoring out.
to try to widen the territory that they're taking in Kursk. Right now, it's hard for me to tell how big of a salient they intend to make and how many forces they'll have to keep to defend it. Why has Russia had such difficulty moving forces to sort of stave or to stop the bleeding? So there's a couple possible explanations. The initial Ukrainian advance definitely caught them by surprise. And the first Russian response was chaotic.
Unsurprising, Russian leadership does not do well in dynamic situations, right? When they're not stably holding a part of the front, they have to react to something. Crisis management is far from their forte. Then they first responded with some reinforcements that
They got basically destroyed, some of these columns, by HIMAR strikes. So these units were not very smart or cautious in how they were deploying. Since then, they've redeployed a whole bunch of conscripts that they're moving there from within Russia, as I think kind of a secondary reserve force, and several units from different fronts in Ukraine, other than the main ones where they're trying to prosecute the fencists.
Is there an interior lines problem or is there a transport issue or is this just like they're caught off guard and they're disorganized? There is an organization issue as to who's in charge because there are a lot of overlapping authorities in this area and they've been trying to get their act together. But the first and foremost is a command and control issue. Second, there's an operational reserve issue. They didn't have one, right? They had border guards there. They had a regiment of conscript troops and not much else. The
Those folks were very quickly overrun, bypassed, and encircled, taken prisoner. And beyond that, they didn't have much else. Although I would say that by day four and five, they started stymieing Ukraine's advance. But nonetheless, they didn't have much present. Lastly, yeah, it is an issue of moving units around, right? Very clearly, it's taking them quite a bit of time to move units both from Ukraine and from deep within Russia and to organize this defense. That said...
It's two big caveats. First, they don't seem to be kneeling that big of a rush as you would expect them to be. And that may be because they're underestimating the risk, or maybe because they see that this is bait that Ukraine is trying to embarrass and enrage them into attacking this salient and understand that Ukraine's objective is to get Russia to divert its forces from Ukraine in order to halt their advances. Plus,
They're likely, or at least I would be, and here I'm probably projecting, but nonetheless, it's worth saying, concerned that Ukraine has another offensive that they're going to develop because Ukraine typically tries to attack on at least two axes. Yeah, like a one-two punch. That's right. It's been kind of their go-to. And until they're certain that there isn't some other axis that Ukraine plans to attack on, I think they're wary about taking the bait, right? And that might be one of the reasons. Well, and they could also soak it up in a way. I think...
One mistake we see in the West, at least, is this idea that the Kursk attack, which I do think is a great success in a political way. We have this mistaken belief among many people in the West that this is such an embarrassment for Putin that this threatens his regime or political legitimacy, which I just don't think that that's the case at all. And it's sort of a misunderstanding about how the Russian government
political system and information system works. So in a way, I think Putin's obviously embarrassed, but he's sort of willing to take the hit for now. Although I do think it was an important shot in the arm for Ukrainian morale. No, absolutely. It's done wonders for motivation. It's only changed narratives and perceptions. But those tend not to last. Narratives shift back and forth, right? The question is not quite how this begins, but how does it end? And Putin, I agree. I can tell that he's furious from the way he appears in discussions on the one hand, but
But on the other hand, he's been embarrassed so many times already in this war, I think I've lost count as to which embarrassment this is for Russia. I'm going to hit pause on this conversation with Mike to hear more from Grant Demery, the CEO of OneBrief, on the challenges of building a product from scratch and winning over users across the armed services. Early on in the company, it's hard for a lot of these defense tech startups to get a first contract. And what we did is we started this exercise program.
And I would cold LinkedIn recruit a bunch of planners, two teams of six. And I'd say, come to my all day Saturday exercise. We'll have a realistic joint task force level scenario. I'll get a retired general to service the JTF commander. And you six, you'll be an OPT and you'll plan in Word and PowerPoint and the old tools. You six, you're an OPT and you'll plan in this shitty proto version of OneBreath.
And we ended up doing 19 exercises. And every exercise, we all watch the engineering team watches. We make the product better. And the idea is that this is the key to making a product that every planner wants to use before you can get it into their headquarters and go on Sipper and JWix. And now back to the conversation with Michael Kaufman. If you want to learn more about OneBrief, check out warontherocks.com slash OneBrief.
We've seen some amazing coverage on some of the planning behind this conversation, especially from The Economist. And it really talked about the environment of secrecy in which this plan was developed by General Sierski, and also how Zelensky has pushed this operation to do more once they got in there. Do you think there's risks to pushing it to be more than it already is?
Or do you think it should have been a raid and then pulled back more quickly? Or what is your judgment on what success looks like going forward for this operation? Right. It's a great question. Or I guess how more, how should we think about it? I think these are great questions. I think, of course, it depends on what Ukraine hopes to get out of it. If Ukraine hopes to hold us long enough for it to be a bargaining chip, then it needs to entrench and it's going to have to hold us for a very long time because it doesn't have a visible way of compelling Russia to negotiating along its preferred timelines, right? Right.
If Ukraine is using this as bait to try to get Russia to attack them and divert a much larger force, which is more than likely, then so far it doesn't look like this has happened, although it's still pretty early in the operation to judge. If that's the case, then they need to hold a defensible buffer that won't require them to commit too many forces because they were already pretty badly stretched along the front. And adding more frontage here while holding all the other fronts
is going to be even harder and it's going to come with some real opportunity costs for 2025 in terms of rebuilding Ukraine's combat power. Now, do I think this could have been a raid? Yeah, potentially it would have been very successful as a raid, but it wouldn't have achieved those objectives, right? It could have done all these sort of informational and political things for Ukraine, but those effects would not have lasted, meaning it would have been exciting for a month or two. And then I don't know, I don't know whether it would have affected real change. As a
prolonged operation that is one intended to try to create some kind of leverage for Ukraine in this war. I see the upshot, but Ryan, it comes with very significant risks, especially the longer this operation goes on. First, if Russia does not immediately throw forces in to counter it and they focus on containing it and then treating Ukrainian forces in that pocket over time while still pushing these offensives in Ukraine's eastern regions, then it probably won't pan out that well in Ukraine's favor.
Second, if Ukraine overextends, and in this war, typically one side has seized the advantage when the other side had significantly overextended, right? And overextension is just a big issue in any strategy. If Ukraine overextends and tries to develop that pocket to something much larger that requires a lot of forces and- And sustainment. That's right. That's right. And things are harder to sustain in Russia than they are in Ukraine. And air defense and-
Yeah, so there's a lot that will come into play. Then I think it could prove quite costly and burdensome. And it comes with significant risk, which is prior to this offensive, it was reasonable to say that while Ukraine was likely to lose territory in some cities in Donetsk, that it would likely exhaust the Russian offensive potential and it could stabilize the front line come winter.
Now, with this offensive operation, it's not clear what's going to happen in the coming months, meaning that could all be true, or Ukraine could lose some percentage of its combat power and vehicles in Kursk, or alternatively, it could hold Kursk, but then it could be at risk of much larger Russian gains in Donetsk, depending on how thin that line is. So essentially, it's certainly reintroduced dynamism to this war, and it's given Ukraine options.
But strategy is about choices and it comes with risks. Let's shift gears a little bit. We've seen the F-16 introduced into Ukraine. What difference do you expect this will make? Let's say not in the immediate future, but going into the winter and next year. I mean, my own view right now is not much. Ukraine's got a ways to go to assimilate this platform, learn to use it, maintain it. I think right now primarily it's going to be used for air defense.
Maybe standoff strike. Ukraine's been pretty successful using glide bombs, for example, which have pretty long standoff range. Not with F-16s, with Su-27s, but still. The point being is that with F-16, it also depends a lot on the capabilities they're provided. Let's say... It does have a wide array of missions. Right. And integrates much better with Western systems. So if it's provided much longer range air-to-air missiles, then the F-16 could start to push closer in and try to...
deter Russian tactical aviation from conducting glide bomb strikes, but it would require fairly long-range air-to-air missiles to do that. On the other hand, there was recent news that Biden's administration is considering providing JASM, which is an air-launched cruise missile. With some modifications, I think the F-16 should be able to employ that. That could give advantages to Ukraine. So a lot depends on the capabilities that the F-16 is provided with and also level of training. I
I think right now one of Ukraine's main constraints will be the pilots relative to the platforms that they're fielding and certainly also maintenance and operational rates because it's going to be a big adjustment period to switch to the F-16 from legacy Soviet platforms. And as with anything, air power and Ukraine pay close attention to what Justin Bronk has to say on the matter as well. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Justin. And one of the reasons I'm a big fan of Justin is, although he is a huge fan of the Saab Gripen, they gave him a ride in it once and I think he just got sold on it.
Justin is both sanguine on the F-16, but also in his public commentary, I think he's been quite clear that if it was possible, there was a large availability of grip ends overall that might make for a better platform. I think...
The Ukrainian military, of course, wants to acquire F-16s first. It's a political commitment, I think, as much as it is anything else. It's also practical. I mean, it's the aircraft available in the largest number amongst Western militaries with the most parts and munitions and other things available for it. It's, you know, it's like a Ford Taurus or a Toyota Corolla or something like that. Sorry, F-16 fans are going to hear this and get very mad I made that comparison.
But, you know, beyond that, of course, I think they might also be interested in the French Mirage that the French offered and also in the Saab Gripen once they get through the F-16 acquisition. Have we seen much happen in the maritime picture over the last few weeks? You know, to be honest, not that much. I've seen mostly minor USV attacks and then sustained strikes by attackings missiles against air defense on Crimea.
Although, like I said, it's not clear to me what that campaign is really setting up. And seeing the Kursk offensive, I'm increasingly wondering whether the Ukrainian military leadership really intends to take advantage of it, given that the offensive operation they've launched is in a completely opposite part of the map. Let's talk about the manpower situation, because that undergirds a lot of this. How much more successful has...
Ukraine's mobilization and training pipeline effort's been. So here's my view of it. And I personally don't have great numbers because I haven't been there now for over a month. But my sense of it is that on the one hand, they got far more folks in the first month and a half or so of mobilization. But
The quality is a question mark because the age of people immobilizing is creeping up. And they've been splitting those recruits between replacing losses on the front line, right? Generating new units, these new brigades that they've been talking about throughout the year that they're trying to establish. Some of them have been formed. And, you know, probably filling out the units that they were potentially going to use for this offensive operation.
And so by splitting these mobilized personnel, of course, it means that they're not able to replenish the manpower hold that they dug themselves over the course of the past year. Yes, units on the front line report that they are now getting more replacements than they did before, but they have a ways to go given the pressure as being steadily applied. And the big question is, can they sustain it? Meaning, can they sustain this recruitment rate?
And there's pluses and minuses from the standpoint of what this offensive will mean for mobilization. It might motivate a lot more people to join up. It might motivate a lot more people to join up. Assuming the losses are not significant and offensive because you don't want to lose your best folks, right? And then replace them with people you just mobilized. I'd say
I'd say the only challenge in the offensive that I really saw in the early days is that it was incredibly successful. Ukrainian forces blasted through fairly quickly, and it showed that they had really taken on board some lessons from the failure of 2023 in how they were using different combat arms, you know, enablers, mine cleaning, air defense, electronic warfare systems. But what
One of the things you look for in an offensive is whether or not it has enveloped and destroyed a significant percentage of the opponent's combat power. What was successful about the Kharkov offensive, right, is the Kharkov offensive led to a Russian rout. It captured a lot of Russian equipment that then entered service in the Ukrainian military. It destroyed what was left of the Western military district, de facto, in Ukraine. And so the offensive wasn't just effective because of how fast it was and how much territory it captured. It did substantial damage to Russian combat power in this war.
This offensive has not done that, right? And there wasn't much to capture there. There wasn't much there. Right. There are a couple, there's some hundreds of POWs, but they're basically some conscripts and border guards. Yes, they're valuable for replenishing Ukraine's, you know, POW exchange fund, but it's not like entire brigades and divisions were destroyed in the course of it or that they captured parks upon parks of tanks and artillery. And the reason I say that isn't to basically say, well, this offensive isn't good because it wasn't great. I don't like those arguments.
It's just to make clear that Russia's basically responding to it fairly slowly and maybe judging that they can contain the situation because they haven't lost that much in terms of military capability resulting from this offensive. Well, let's talk about the manpower situation on the Russian side. Yeah, so that's an interesting picture too. I'm increasingly of the mind that the limiting factor for Russia next year won't just be equipment.
Although that story tends to be a bit oversold in how people discuss available reserves and what's in storage, but also manpower. Because at the rate at which they've been sustaining offensive operations, their losses are quite high. They appear to be recruiting at a rate lower than they were last year, maybe $20,000 to $25,000 per month. That's not terrible, but not good relative to the losses.
And that's why in recent months, they substantially increased both federal and regional payout bonuses. They are clearly not meeting their quotas and looking for more MET. The extent to which they're able to do that will determine how long they can sustain pressure on Ukraine. Now, I think my theory or assumption was that they'd hold the initiative along most of the front heading into the winter.
but that after the winter they'd start bottoming out and that Ukraine could stabilize the front line around that time. And then looking at reduced ability to recruit, limitations in equipment, and assuming Ukraine could stabilize the force that they have, their manpower issues, which they were potentially on track to do this summer, then Ukraine could assess its options in 2025. But most importantly, the prospect of Russia making significant gains following this year
would be fairly low, would be significantly reduced, right? That this year was really kind of Russia's window of opportunity. Bottom line, I think manpower is an issue for them. It's not a critical issue yet, but it's going to be one of the limiting factors alongside equipment as we look out over the next six to 12 months. Thanks for joining the show, Mike. Thanks for having me back. Thank you for listening to this episode of War on the Rocks. Thanks to our sponsors at OneBrief. Check out warontherocks.com slash OneBrief. Stay safe and stay healthy.
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