The Dispatch Podcast - One Month of War in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Steve talks with Taras Byk, a political consultant now working with the Territorial Defense Forces in Kyiv, to get a sense of what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine. What’s changed since the last time they talked? Steve then has a conversation with Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Why has Russia not been able to establish air superiority? What do we need to know about those hypersonic missiles that Russia launched? Tom has those answers and more.   Show Notes: -The Dispatch: “Just How Many Russian Soldiers Have Died in Ukraine?” -French Press: “Questions and Answers After One Month of War” -New York Times: “How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets” -CSIS report: “Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat” -Bayraktar song Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. Today we have a conversation with Taras Bik, Ukrainian on the front lines in Kiev, who we've talked to before. We'll talk to Taras about what he's seeing on the ground today in the capital and his trip to Lviv, along with other elements of the war as it's unfolding on the ground in Ukraine. In our second conversation, we talked to Tom Carico, a missile defense expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the war taking place above the ground in Ukraine. Taras, thanks for joining us again. We just see you. Since we spoke last, which was about two weeks ago, I have had many, many dispatch members and friends and relatives ask how you've been. So tell us, how have you been in the last two weeks? In the last two weeks, well, you know, it's difficult for us to call something weeks, dates, days, because we do not count those anymore.

It's just 24th, 25th, 26th day of the war. on. And the difference, I would say there is still a difference because, you know, we have passed this feeling of shock, of despair because of the war. And we know that we have to mobilize all our efforts to win. And I would say it's more, our work has become much more systematic. Whether it's army fighting from the foreign plants or volunteers organizing support for the army or just companies that are working. working, it has become much more systemic, and I would say kind of, you know, new normality, which is obviously not the normality that used to exist, but something that we have adjusted

to new realities. You just used the phrase, what we have to do to win, or something close to that. If we had had a conversation on the first day of the war, when Russia's invasion first started and the shelling and the destruction was first evident. Can you imagine yourself having talked seriously about winning the war back then, or is this something that you believed all the way through? Even more, I believed in winning the war before it had begun. The Russians had made just serious failure

that they did not analyze situation in Ukraine properly. They did not analyze minds of people, what's happy, attitudes of people, all over Ukraine and the one simple assumption is that from what we had seen from 2014 is that Russians could have gone as far as local population basically allowed to do it and you know that in by 2014 there was huge Russian propaganda in eastern and southern Ukraine and that's why when they came it was relatively easy for them to move forward because well local population supported them they did not accept the Ukrainian soldiers in position and that's why the advance of Russians in 2014 was, well, relatively successful.

Now the situation has changed completely. Since 2014, we had great progress in development, and Ukrainians all over Ukraine, whether it's west, east, south, north, they saw what's happening on the occupied by Russia territories. They saw how sharp contrast was the situation in like the rest of, in the free Ukraine. and obviously they did not want their cities, towns or villages to become part of those territories. Whatever language they speak, whether it's Ukrainian, Russian or any other language,

whatever religion they believe in, like they just wanted to be part of independent Ukraine. And this was, I would say, the major miscalculation of Russia. When they invaded, yes, like first, I would say first two days, there was this sense of fear of what if we lose and what if Russians do invade Kiev let's say I mean invasion of Kiev I believe it was possible but I cannot imagine what they would do in Kiev they would stay here just I don't know for a week

because local population just totally would not accept this occupation but after this you know first two or three days of doubts it was clear that we have strong enough army to win and it is clear that Ukrainian society is mobilizing themselves behind the army to win this war. I mean, it has to have been interesting for you to read Western media, to look at the reaction of the world to what's happened over this past month, over these past few weeks, because if you had confidence that Ukrainians could defeat the Russian army, it certainly was the case that most Western analysts did not think that.

You know, there was talk in those first few days of Keev falling within two or three days. And, you know, here we are a month later. It hasn't yet happened. There are reports still today that the Russian army is stalled or stuck, some 25 kilometers outside of Kiv, and seeming to have real problems. You know, I think early reports about the difficulties of the Russian army. army. Some people chalked up to wishful thinking, maybe other people chalked up to very successful Ukrainian propaganda, but they're having real trouble, the Russian army. Is that, is it, are you,

are you aware of where they are and exactly the kinds of trouble? And when you read those reports in the Ukrainian press, the European press, Western press, do they ring true to what you're seeing and hearing on the ground. Well, I mean, there is, you know, that there is never so much lies as during the war, any war. So obviously, each site is not given as genuine picture as it is. But from what I see, from what I communicate with my friends on the front line, from the army, from the patrol defense, the picture is, I would describe it as more moderately optimistic. We should not be overhelmed with the fact that we are going to win. because it's still a long road to victory it will not be easy we realize this but in general

we are moving i would say in the right direction and this is based on all the reports i read on information i analyze and personal conversation with conversations with my friends what is day-to-day life like in kiv for you these days kiev is today typically a kind of city under war well we we hear all the time explosions especially, for example, in the western part of Kiev, where my houses. There are very few people on the streets, many checkpoints, many obstacles. So it's like a typical city under war. And actually, you know, last week we had a long curfew, which was like for up to 40 hours.

And so I used this opportunity to travel to Lviv, Western Ukrainian city, for the first time since the beginning of the war. And I was, frankly speaking, a bit shocked because when I went out of the train, it was, you know, life was normal. And after 20 days in Kiev, real city in war, and I looked at Lviv, so people walking around, businesses are functioning, traffic jams, like normal ordinary life. So first I was shocked, but then I had several meetings with people who organize humanitarian support for people, who accept ideas. So I saw that actually, despite this, you know, the general picture that it's like normal life, Entire Lviv is mobilized as well to help IDPs, to help army, to organize different types of support. So entire Ukraine is working on helping the army. And actually, going back to Kiev, I would say that there are some, I would say, some signs of normality that are appearing in the last several days.

Because, you know, the first several days, I would say two weeks were really dangerous. And now it's becoming, I would say, a bit more safe in the city. We see that more people are coming back to Kyiv. It's like very few, but still there are some restaurants and cafes which were opened. So like some, some signs of normality are turning to the city, but it's still a typical city in a state of war. And just for our listeners, Leviv is in western Ukraine. about how long did it take you to get there on the train from Kiev? Usually the train ride is, I mean, in normal times between five and eight hours.

It's normal time for the train. This time it was over 13 hours, so it was the longest trip. I have ever traveled between Kiev and Lviv, because when we were about to leave, the air syren rank, and we had to stay to wait because the train cannot move during the air syringe. the signal. Oh, the sirens, sure, sure. And then you just have to hold in place when that happens?

Yes, basically we were about to depart from the railway station, but the sirens were like really loud, and we had to stay for over two hours until there was another siren that it's safe to travel now. Let me ask you about the sirens. When I was covering the war in Iraq, this is back in 2003, and I was staying for most of the war in Kuwait in Kuwait city, and we would venture up into Iraq.

We, you know, at the very beginning, when I first arrived, you heard those air raid sirens, and they were alarming. They were worrisome. You paid very careful attention to them, and anytime you heard them, you scrambled to get to shelter. Or in our case, we put on chemical and biological weapons suits and gas masks and these things because we were so concerned about weapons of mass destruction being used. And then as the war went on, you heard these sirens, these air raid warnings, and you didn't

react that way. You almost got used to it. Is that happening now or not? Yes, absolutely. This is happening. And, yeah, this is a problem because, you know, after 26 days, people just got tired of running all the time under shelters. And quite often you just see when the siren is ringing,

you just see that people are continue walking as if nothing is happening. So unfortunately, yes, this is the case and it's happening. Yeah, I mean, it's a hard thing to fight off because you just grow somewhat accustomed to it. I also have to imagine that because it seems as if the Russians are, I think in some cases, targeting these shelters, places where people are sheltering, going to the shelters may not give you the sense of security that now that you might have assumed they would at the beginning of the war. Is that fair?

Yes, absolutely. Even though Russia claims it is targeting only military objects, we have seen that this is absolutely not true. One of the most brutal attacks by Russian was carried out in the southern Ukrainian city, Mariupol, which is heroically fighting the seas around the city and so there is local drama theater where hundreds of women children just hundreds of local residents were hiding and moreover owners of this or like administration of this theater wrote in a big letters on two sides of the theater very big for letters geti which is children in Russian. So, I mean, any plane flying over this theater, they could, they obviously saw it. Still, there was a direct attack by a jet and the theater was totally destroyed.

Fortunately, almost all of the people there somehow survived. It's kind of miracle that almost nobody was hurt because the fear was like up to 1,000 people could have died. But since they were in the basement, they managed to survive. This is absolutely, we see the tactics of Russia. They are not fighting the army. They are fighting the civilians, children, just brutally killing them. What they want to achieve, since they have realized they cannot beat Ukrainian army in a fair struggle, they have decided to scare the Ukrainian people, scare the Ukrainian authorities,

so that we agree to some peace treaty, let's put it this way, which would be very unbeneficial for us. And obviously, this is like very brutal tactics, but still they use it, and thousands of civilians have died as a result of the tactics. I want to go back to your trip to Lviv, when you eventually got to Lviv after your 13-hour train ride. What did you do there?

Why did you make the trip? Well, I came to see my family because they moved to Lviv, I moved them to Lviv before the war. So my first target was to see my family. And then I'm kind of doing this volunteering, organizing a lot of support for the army, for territorial defense units. And in Lviv, there are a huge number of people, including foreigners, who are helping as well. And we had several meetings on how to systemize those activities, how to create some additional flows of support to Kiev. and actually basically when I returned by a mini van we had huge van of different stuff for the army

and we went back to Kiev by car once again it was the longest trip to Kiev because usually we have a good road between Kiev had had good road between Kiev and Lviv but at one point it was destroyed and so now we had to bypass which took quite a while for us so like the second so the first The first aim was to see my family, and the second aim was to organize additional support for the army, which is now fortunately working well. And how was it seeing your family? Well, I made a surprise for them. I didn't tell them, so they were really happy to see me. They must have been.

Yes. The only thing I just was trying to convince for quite a while my wife and my son to move to Poland. they refused for quite a while but well I talked to my son I just explained to him it's not forever it's I just tried to convince him this is a kind of you know a trip like touristic trip so that he will see Poland and you know just relax a bit and so they were still refusing but I have almost convinced them and the day after I left a missile strike was carried out on Lviv actually on the city of Ville it was the first attack not only in this war, but the first attack from since the Second World War.

So in 80 years, it was Calm City, and then the first missile attack in the city. Even though it was on the suburbs of city, on industrial object, but still, you know, psychologically, it was, well, let's put it this way. It was, this missile, it was like a final push to make them, to make them decide to move to Poland. So they moved to Poland now, and, well, I feel a bit safer. When they moved to Poland, do you know people there? Do they know people there? Do they have a place to go? Or where are they, you don't have to be specific, of course.

But where are they going and how are they going to find housing and accommodations? Yes, of course, I have organized everything. Actually, I'm happy enough to have many great friends all around Europe. And when the war began, I had some like 15 offers of housing all over Europe. And, yeah, so they went to Poland because, you know, they speak some Polish. They, my friend offered their old apartment because my friend moved to house outside of the city and your apartment was free. So they moved to this apartment. And yeah, so there was, and now I talk to them every day and they say there is huge support from the Polish people.

Everyone is supporting different centers of support. In Poland, there are some two million. Ukrainians who have fled to Poland, what have you heard from them about how, is Poland overwhelmed? Is Eastern Poland having difficulty with food, with supplies, with water? How does that look from the Polish side of the border? You know, I have heard from several of my friends in Poland, Lithuania, that they are impressed by Ukrainians who come to Poland and from like first or second week. They ask not for some social assistance, but they ask for job.

So they are really trying to do something. They don't want to hang around and rely on social assistance. And this is actually really the case. I see this is actually the trend, because even today I have received from my Polish friends information and kind of job opportunities for Ukrainians coming to Poland. So I think the fact that we are very mentally close between Polish and Ukrainians gives them.

this opportunity for Ukrainians to adapt quickly to the Polish society, to adapt to the business environment, and not to be a burden for the Polish community, but actually to do some activities, to do some work there. Going back to to Kiev, when you returned from your trip to Leviv and reestablished yourself in Kiev, can you, are there problems with food and water and supplies in Kyiv. I read a report just a few days ago that supermarkets are still open and that you can go to the supermarket. The hours might not be normal hours and they might not be as well stocked as non-war time,

but you are able to go to a supermarket and pharmacies? Yes, in general, the situation is okay. I mean, obviously we do not have a choice of products that we used to have before the war, but in general it's all enough. Sometimes you can see big lines in front of pharmacies and shops, but usually this happens when, for example, just yesterday, there was announcement that instead of only overnight curfew, we are going to have like 40-hour curfew, and that's why many people rush to the shops and supermarkets. But besides this situation is like more or less okay, I mean, we have sufficient amount of products, water. well, because most importantly, Russians have failed to encircle Kiev, and there are enough routes for supplies from all over Ukraine. Actually, when you come to Kiev, you have to stay

for quite a long time, up to one hour, sometimes two hours, on the checkpoints, because, well, police and territorial defense, they have to check all cars. And, yes, like, possibility to get supplies are rather limited, but in general, we have enough of those supplies. And the checkpoints are very interesting. In and around Kyiv, it's mostly Ukrainian-run checkpoints. Is that correct? And then as you travel further outside the country, there are Russian-run checkpoints, particularly in rural areas and smaller towns where Russians have taken over. Do I have that right, or is there something that you'd correct there? well nobody travels to the russia occupied territories because i mean there are so many cases

that russians simply killed civilians just you know even those who will obviously civilian cars that nobody just travels in that direction it's only well military can can travel there to fight only some special humanitarian corridors are created and even even if there is an agreement with Russians to have this special corridor to provide either supplies to the blocked cities or to get to evacuate people. We had really many cases where Russians attacked those buses, civilians, vehicles. So this is on regular basis. So besides those like humanitarian corridors or military, well, nobody is traveling through

Russian checkpoints. Yeah, I was, I heard a story the other day about a journalist who was traveling through a Russian checkpoint with some Ukrainians and described a situation where the Russians were taking seizing the phones of the Ukrainians of Ukrainian civilians looking at the phones to see if they'd been in touch with the Ukrainian army with the intelligence services with territorial defense units so I think it makes a lot of sense that people would be trying to avoid avoid those areas yes even Ukrainians who were leaving in those humanitarian corridors for example from the city of Mariupol not only usually Russians just confiscated their phones when they were living.

And in Mariupol, we had even more crazy scenario when Russians made Ukrainian men who were leaving Mariupol take off their clothes to see if they do not have pro-Ukrainian tattoos, like different symbols of Ukraine. And this is what happening on the Russian checkpoints. If you were mentioning journalists, well, I don't think that many, journalists are still going in those areas because as you know two journalists have been killed including an american one and one girl was kidnapped by russians fortunately today she was freed

and for the last 10 days one week one very famous Ukrainian photographer journalist he disappeared in one of the hotspots of near kiev so i mean i i don't think that there are many journalists who well courageous enough to go to those places. Right, right. A little bit about the information war. I think Putin apologists would insist that the real propaganda effort is in favor of Ukraine. And certainly Ukraine has gotten a lot of favorable press here in the West. I would argue that that's because Russians are clearly the invaders.

And this is one of those situations where there are good guys and bad guys to use the parlance of the old. American Western movies. It is true that Ukraine has been very, very adept at fighting the information war. You and I talked a couple weeks ago about your president and his ability to shape the information environment. I wonder if you think that what difference that has made. And as sort of a second question, how important has the Internet been as a tool for Ukrainians to use to resist the Russian occupation?

Indeed, we live in an era of information. So the parallel to conventional war, we have informational war with Russia. Well, we are winning this war because of one simple reason, the truth is on our side. So it's much easier for us to communicate this, what's happening. But on the other hand, yes, Russians, it's easy to communicate lies as well. but only for the Russian society. I mean, I don't think there is anyone in sound mind who would believe, in sound mind, I mean, from the civilized world, who would believe what Putin is saying. Internet had played just, I would say, decisive role in this war, because thanks to Internet, we are still able to communicate with an another.

We are still able to use our networks of friends, companies, businesses to organize support for the army, for territorial defense, and so on. Because what we see actually today is, you know, a struggle between the 21st century army technologies society and, well, savages from, I would say, 18th century. President Biden is headed to Brussels this week for an emergency meeting with NATO and EU leaders. He seems, I think at this point, pretty determined not to provide the kind of no-fly zone that President Zelensky has requested. or even the MIG fighter jets that Zelensky is requested. In your mind, what more could the U.S. and NATO and Europe do to help the war effort? And do you have, are you following things like President Biden's trip to Brussels? Or doesn't that really matter from where you say?

No, absolutely. You are following this. I mean, during the night time when I'm not driving around helping the army, I'm just, I communicate with my friends who are in Warsaw, who are meeting all those different people. We work on our messages, on our campaigns, what we have to deliver. And we are actually, we are, we were preparing for this visit by the US president. We actually, we expect a lot of support from the US. from the West. Because what we try to deliver is very simple message. Ukraine is not fighting

only for Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting for Europe for entire Western world. And so our message is simple for Joe Biden, help Ukraine save Europe. Because Putin will not stop on Ukraine. You probably have heard that now they are sending the messages to Poland quite open threats of nuclear attack. if Poland is too active in helping Ukraine, if the West is to act in helping Ukraine. It's never the, you know, it's not the resistance that provokes Putin. It's not our counteroffensive that provokes Putin.

It's only weakness that provokes Putin. And the West has to understand this. If the West demonstrate more weakness, we are certain to see further attacks by Vladimir Putin. It doesn't seem that the West does understand that, I would say, if you look at the leadership. I mean, obviously, in many ways, the West and NATO has been as united as NATO has been united for decades. On the other hand, there is a lot of talk, particularly from the Biden administration, about avoiding escalation, avoiding taking steps that would seem escalatory, that Vladimir Putin might read as escalatory. It sounds like you think that's precisely backwards.

Am I understanding you correctly? I understand that, well, the approach they use is like, well, Ukraine is going to win this war without additional threats. So why would we threat with nuclear war if Ukraine is going to win anyway? In my opinion, it doesn't work this way. I mean, Ukraine is going to win this war. I'm sure about it, but the price that we are already paying and the price we will pay, if you do not have sufficient support, which will be just catastrophic. We see the tragedies of those people.

We see that Russia is not going to stop. And I think, you know, now we have this, for the first time, this huge opportunity to stop Russia once and for all. So that we do not see attacks of Russia, let's say, in 30, 40 years. Now this is the time to stop it. And the entire world has to unite and to act very actively in this. direction. I listened today to an interview with the Latvian defense minister, Latvia is a NATO member country, and he was asked about peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, which are taking place sort of on and off over the past couple weeks. And his most emphatic piece of advice

was that the West should avoid pushing Ukraine to accept a peace. deal that is not in Ukraine's best interests. Is that something that you think about, that you talk about with your friends that's a common concern in Ukraine, or is that something that's sort of broad and distant as you sort of think about how to win the war on a day-to-day basis? Yes, we should be extremely careful with signing any piece of paper with Russia, because you know, sometimes, well, there's this old formula that quite often the paper, the price of the paper, sheet of paper, is not worse even aside with Russia.

And because it will be nothing. I mean, we understand that Vladimir Putin needs some kind of excuse for losing the war to tell his society that he actually won this war. But the price for Ukraine can be too high. That's why, well, we do have professional diplomats in Ukraine. We do have professional Minister of Foreign Affairs and all diplomats. who are working on this. So we kind of trust

in their negotiation skills, but still we have much higher trust to Ukrainian armed forces. We believe that they will continue the struggle until final victory. And it's Ukraine

who should dictate the conditions of this treaty, not Russia, because Russia is the aggressor, the Russia is the invader, And most importantly, what we should care about is that if we sign some kind of peace treaty, which will not allow proper reparations paid later by Russia. This is something that we should definitely avoid. President Zelensky banned Russian back to Russian-affiliated political parties this week.

How popular were those parties? Do you expect that that kind of a ban will have much of an effect, either on the prosecution of the war and the resistance or on a post-war politics in Ukraine? Well, in my opinion, those parties should have been banned since 2014, because, well, I mean, Russia has started the war not today, not this year. Russia has begun the war in 2014. And still, we had parties which were not openly, but even sometimes openly, they were justifying this war and were clearly allies of Vladimir Putin and allies of Russia. So

it's good that they were bent today. But I would say this is rather a symbolic gesture because after the war, I don't think they would have that high support. Well, let me ask there, and this could be my last question. We want to be mindful of your time. Let's assume, and we certainly hope that Russia withdraws from Ukraine, that the struggles that we're seeing with the Russian army in around Kyiv and elsewhere in the country grow and Russia withdraws one way or another. The Putin regime obviously will never be forgiven. And I agree with you entirely on the need for reparations.

What do you think the future of Russia-Ukrainian relations will be like at the ground level? There are, you know, we see interviews, we see protests in Russia, we see Russians, prominent Russians, in some cases who say that they're embarrassed for what their country is doing. What do you expect in post-war Russia-Ukrainian relations? You know, when I talk to my friends all over Ukraine, relatives, friends, we have so much sincere hatred towards Russians that, well, at least our generation

and maybe next generation will not be able to forgive them ever for what's happened. It was not Vladimir Putin alone who came with the war. It was the entire army of hundreds of thousands of people. It was not Vladimir Putin who, well, somehow established him in power. Well, Russia had elections not free, not fair, but those were Russians who elected him. Obviously, yes, we can claim that Putin elected himself, but, well, Russians did not protest this fact. And most importantly, Russians have kept silence, and even today, well, absolute majority of Russia, keep silence on the war on Ukraine.

So what's happening today in Ukraine, it's not only Vladimir Putin doing this. It's entire Russia doing this. Okay, maybe except for some exceptions like those who are most of them are abroad, trying to protect them. Yes, but besides them, it's the Russian society doing this. And I'm sure it will take, well, generations

of Ukrainians and Russians to get a long, and to start to communicate with one another and generations of Ukrainians when we will be able to forgive Russians for what they did. Well, Taras, thank you again for the time you've taken to speak with us today. We wish you the best, and we will check in with you again. Thank you, you, you're welcome. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss,

and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions.

You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day cover. and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ethoos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Tom, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. Well, Steve, happy to be here, a long-time listener, first-time caller.

Well, we followed your work for a long time as well, and I'm excited to have you on here to share some thoughts about what's going on in Ukraine these days. Why don't we start sort of big picture, and let's get, we're a month in. Let's get your general assessment of two primary things. one, how significant is this war in terms of geopolitics of the modern world? And two, what do you make of what's happened over the first month and Russia's progress or lack of progress, as the case may be? Well, look, I think in a very broad sense, this is obviously one of the most significant,

both geopolitical and military events the past three decades. witness the degree to which it's shifted German foreign policy and lots of other folks defense policy dramatically almost overnight. This is something that the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, and just about everybody else are going to be studying and learning from. And maybe we can talk about some of the lessons that they may take or hopefully the right lessons, perhaps the wrong lessons from all this. But obviously for Russia too, this is a massive Massive miscalculation. You know, as you say, we're at this point a month in.

They've done a whole lot, and yet they haven't taken that much territory. Just massive miscalculation on the part of Putin. And you know with the sanctions and the internal politics and all this stuff, massive pressure on the Russian economy. And amazing deaths on the part of the Russian military. I think the Ukrainians released a figure of like 15,000 Russians killed. And the Russians came out and said, oh, no, no, it's not that bad. Only 9,800 plus 16,000 wounded. Astonishing, astonishing.

I think it's hard at this point to overstate the significance of this. And something I think, some in the United States was a little late to come to that conclusion. But now that it's clear that Putin is not interested in a quote unquote minor incursion as the president. said a few weeks before the war, I think its import has become more evident. A common theme in the speeches of President, Ukrainian President, Voldemir Zelensky, from the very beginning is that he wants to be able to close the skies, quote unquote, close the skies over Ukraine. Is that possible? Well, let me just, let me take the two things you said. First of all, the not doing enough early enough, not being taken seriously.

I think that's an important point. The Biden administration didn't do enough early enough. And then once the intel reports started rolling in to their credit, they started doing it. But of course, it was too little too late. Of course, this is also something that the Trump administration had been dealing with back from 2014 onward. And the Trump administration, to its credit, sent a small number, I would say a token number of javelins. admittedly with the requirement that they be kept in the barn. And I have to say, after President Trump tried to essentially extort the Ukrainians to do his domestic political dirty work.

Yeah, so the domestic side here at home, in terms of not taking it seriously enough and not doing enough early on, plenty of blame to go all around. But likewise, now here we are today, bringing up the can you close the skies thing. because, and we saw this in the New York Times article this morning, really had a remarkable interview with an unnamed Ukrainian pilot. They've got like 50, 55 jets left or something like that. And he says, look, I'm going up every day. I know that I'm going to run into trouble up there. And, of course, he doesn't know if he's coming back.

An amazing thing that the Russians have not, a month in, achieved what the kids in the Pentagon call air superiority. that there's still Ukrainian jets flying, that there's still Ukrainian air defenses that are operational to some extent, and there's this push to give MIGs, Meg 29s from Poland to the Ukrainians. I don't think that's going to happen, I would say, unfortunately.

But it's amazing. Everybody expected from the U.S. and otherwise that the Russians would take the place in 72, 96 hours, something like that. And it's been a huge failure of their ability to close the sky, of Ukrainian jets and Ukrainian air defenses. And so that's one of those lessons that will be studied for a long time.

Why have the Russians been unable to do this? This was baked in. Every analysis you read of this war in the days before the war, in the early days of the war, the working assumption of virtually everybody was that the Russians would be able to do this and do this almost immediately and they have failed. Why have they failed?

But of course, in no small part, the fact that they went so quickly into Crimea in 2014 was a reason for that kind of assessment. I'll say there's a handful of explanations for that. And I don't think we're going to know for some time which of them is the most compelling. But sometimes it's bad planning. It's the reliance upon conscripts. It's the morale issue that's being reported among Soviet troops. The fact that they don't have enough food or kids.

and all this kind of stuff is kind of compounding. You know, there's other folks that are talking about, you know, whether it was the mud and the cold and, you know, again, reports today about the some large percentage of Russian troops suffering from hypothermia. So I think all these kinds of factors are going in. But at some level, it certainly looks like some really bad planning on the part of the Russian military. And I guess I worry a little bit that that can make us overconfident.

This is going to get worse and it's going to get uglier. more and more people are comparing it to the Grosny type of situation or Syria. I mean, the pictures of the rubble and the burned out apartment buildings, we're going to see more of those as they continue to fire lots and stuff in there. So it's going to get worse before it gets better. But it's astonishing the degree of prolonged agonies at this point. But particularly or specifically on air superiority, I think the working assumption, again, both from people who really know this well and from people who don't, like me, to use a very sophisticated military parlance that I was using at the beginning of this.

My assumption was that they would bomb the shit out of Ukraine and immediately establish dominance. And they just didn't do it. Why, speaking specifically about air superiority, why have they been unable to do it? do that. It may have been, again, lots of speculation here. It's hard to get inside the mind of the Russian general staff here, but it may have been that they were overconfident about their ground forces. It is surprising. You know, with the United States, the American way of war, what's the first thing we do? We go in there and we try to establish air superiority, so we own the skies. We take out everybody's air defenses, and perhaps the Ukrainians were successful at hiding and moving things

around, in which case is going to be an important lesson for distributed operations. It's a big place, after all. Maybe they kept off sufficient of their air defenses. They weren't radiating energy so you couldn't lock on to them, things like that. Again, I don't think we know just yet, but it certainly appears to have been a critical ingredient of the problems and the losses they've had so far. Yep, that New York Times article you mentioned, we'll put that in the show notes. fascinating and in some ways inspiring article. The reporter wrote one of the biggest surprises of the war in Ukraine is the Russia's failure to defeat the Ukrainian Air Force. And the rough

data that they provided was that the Ukrainian Air Force was flying 10 sorties, five to 10 sorties to every 200 by the Russians. Do you expect that at some point Russia will be able to, in effect, snuff out the Ukrainian Air Force. I mean, that I will say, again, my amateur read was that that's what I'm sort of anticipating. This guy's very courageous. What he's doing is unbelievably admirable fighting for his country, but that if we take a realistic look at this, it's not likely to last. Right.

I mean, that's just a function of basic mathematics, that this will be attritted. And probably, I mean, nobody would accuse me of having a firm grip on basic mathematics. Likewise. But, yeah, when you're only talking about 50, 55 plus all, so much overwhelming force, potential overwhelming force on the part of the Russians, it certainly doesn't look that great. But this is why, of course, the Ukrainians are begging,

begging for those mig 29s. And unfortunately, it's kind of gotten snagged, I would say, in this thing between. the polls and big NATO and the United States. But it also, I think you can kind of both understand why they're begging for NATO to come in and do a no-fly zone. It's impractical. The United States is not going to pick a fight directly with Russia.

We're already kind of walking up to the line by sending in all this, you know, arms and belligerent kind of stuff. So we're not going to do that, I don't believe. But you do understand why they're begging because they see this problem. coming. It's also, by the way, and this is remarkable. Slovakia is going to be sending over some of its S-300, which is an older Russian-made air defense system. And they're basically looking for any ex-Soviet or ex-Russian kit in Eastern Europe to send over. Why? Because it's what the Ukrainians are trained on. That's why they're asking for MiG-29s. It's what they

have and are trained on. You can't send them patriots and expect them to learn overnight. That doesn't work. So even the United States is pulling out some Soviet air defense kit that we didn't admit that we had, bought it or stole it from somewhere, and sending it over to them. Amazing stuff. And this brings to mind a quote from then Army Chief of Staff, General Millie, now chairman of the Chief of Staff, General Miller, he says, this was back in 2017 rolling out the Army's modernization strategy. And he says, none of this matters if you're dead. And that's why you need air defense. And that's, you know, why the army started recapitalizing its air defense efforts. And lo and behold, this episode has shown the value of that in spades. Yeah, absolutely.

What, what, how would you assess the state of Ukrainian air defense today? Well, again, this was another Air Force general the other day who was asked that question at the Macalese conference here in D.C. and asked how are the, uh, the, the, the Russian air defenses? And his answer was, Well, they seem to be doing pretty well as long as they're operated by Ukrainians. It's a little bit triumphant. And, again, they have the challenge of numbers that you highlighted before in terms of the aircraft and also these things. It's going to be great if we can get the S-300s from our warehouse and from the Slovakians and these other things. That's going to be great.

But again, the numbers are still going to be limited. I will say it's also hopeful that the Russian troop morale, seems to be leading them to literally abandon some of their, I'll just say, lower tier air defenses, Pansier and some other things that they have. They're just walking away from it. And the other news story today is that they just abandoned like a high-end, Primo, Russian electromagnetic warfare truck. Without getting into details, that's going to be an extreme prize for being able to weaken their efforts in the future. What would the expectations be, given what we knew about Ukrainian air defense systems before the war,

that they would be able to do this for a month and then continuing? And I'm thinking here, particularly of their anti-missile systems. I think the expectations were pretty low. As of right now, the Russians, as of yesterday, have fired like over. 1,100 missiles into Ukraine, right? It's a standoff capability. You don't have to fly over top of them. Now, whether they're actually taking out the Russian cruise missiles that are coming in or ballistic and these kind of things, I'm perhaps skeptical about that. So far, the air defenses are probably more targeted, as are the Stinger missiles against aircraft, whether it's helicopters

or fixed-wing aircraft. But they're certainly doing better than I think everybody expected. It's the proliferation of the javelins, the anti-tank, weapons of various kinds, and then also the stingers, the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft things that are getting out there in numbers. Those seem to be the well-sung hero so far. But even the bigger stuff, there's not a whole lot of it, but it seems to be playing a role. How does what you call the bigger stuff, quote-unquote, how does that work? I mean, just on the most basic terms, I mean, is it really the Russians fire a missile and the Ukrainians have systems that intercept it, take it out of the air, and render it, you know,

effectively useless, but for the detritus that falls on the ground? How does it actually work? Yeah. So, and again, I'm a missile defense guy, but I'll say I'm skeptical that there's a large numbers of missiles that are actually being taken out here. So let's just, at the most simple level, it's going to be a couple trucks. One of them's going to have a missile launcher on it. One of them's going to have a big radar on it.

And that radar, S-300, is looking in every direction. It's spinning around. It's omnidirectional. And that's looking in the sky for something flying by. And it's also kind of looking up. And so that's why it tends to be easier to see a high-flying aircraft than a really low-flying cruise missile. You've seen these videos of a caliber cruise missiles. They're pretty low.

And so why does that matter? Because that ground-based radar, it might be on a very modestly sized tower, but it's still constrained by the curvature of the earth and by any hills and terrain and buildings and this kind of stuff. So the low-flying cruise missiles are going to be really hard to even be seen, let alone, you know, once you see them to say, okay, launch some interceptors in that direction. So it's a challenge. Tom, we've heard a lot about hypersonic missiles in the news. and it seems to be a pretty big deal. Is it a pretty big deal? I would say, broadly speaking, the full suite of hypersonic gliders and scram jets is a big deal. What we're seeing in Russia so far is actually fairly modest. The so-called hypersonic missile, the dagger, the Kinsel that they fired the other days,

is basically just an air-launched ballistic missile. For all the press that it's gotten over the past couple days, It's actually essentially a variant of what's called the Ascander, which is a Russian missile. It's the Persian for Alexander as Alexander the Great, by the way. And it's basically a somewhat maneuverable ballistic missile. So what they've done so far is not nearly so sophisticated as the headlines and the clickbait would lead you to believe. But I would say that, putting that in context, 1,100 plus missiles. So the more that they abandon their ground vehicles and the more that they abandon their ground vehicles,

And the more that they have trouble taking the skies, they seem to have been leaning more on their standoff missile capability, be it bombs, but especially the standoff missiles. So lots and lots of those, and it's not just the fancy hypersonic or alleged hypersonic stuff, it's the cruise missiles and the ballistic missiles. Some of those things are not so accurate, and that's why you see some of the devastation going on. But since this is a political show, Steve, I'll quote,

or paraphrase James Carville. It's about the missiles, stupid. You know, that's what you're seeing so much of, and that's what you're kind of seeing folks recognize that without air defense, without missile defense, you're going to have a bigger problem. What, when you talk about sort of the higher end hypersonic missiles, if they do what they're supposed to do,

how do they differ from what we've known as traditional missiles? What are the main functional differences? Right. So, look, I'll just say hypersonic literally just means a speed, Mach 5, and just about any ICBM or really any ballistic missile worth its salt is going to be screaming back in when it reenters the atmosphere. Mach 5 are quite a bit faster. But when people talk about that, what they really mean is sustained hypersonic flight. That's really at the high, relatively high atmosphere. And so you use the really high speed of a ballistic rocket booster of some kind. it's a lift to drag ratio. At that very high altitude, there's just enough air to keep you aloft. The space shuttle was a hypersonic glider. That's how it came back in. The X-15 of old was a hypersonic aircraft. So it's been around for forever. The higher-end proper

hypersonic missiles that the Russians have fielded, that the Chinese have developing and fielding, and that the United States will be fielding beginning in 2023, significant range. And they're going to be really mixing the maneuver. maneuverability of cruise missiles with the speed of ballistic missiles, but without that high lofted, predictable trajectory. Right, right. Which makes them, it makes it easier for them to evade these air defense systems. Bingo. Although, again, I have to, I have to drop a plug. We just put out a report a couple weeks ago called complex air defense, which is specifically on hypersonic defense. It can be done. We're just going to have to adapt to it. I actually looked at the report, and amazingly,

I could understand some of it. We will link the report in our show notes so that folks can take a look for themselves. Another thing we've heard quite a bit about in the last month is the use of drones. How are they being used and what effect do they have? Yeah, so really, and this is why you have to take a look at the whole air and missile spectrum. It's not just about the bright, shiny object of this data, the other thing. It's everything from mud to space, from the low and small and slow drones to the slightly bigger ones to the cruise missiles. It's a spectrum, right?

And they blur. These categories blur. The drones that the Iranians used to attack that oil facility in September 2019, you know, they were kind of the poor man's cruise missile. The stars of this conflict besides the calibers and the Kinsels, And the Ascanders, the other stars on the Ukrainian side have been the Bay Ractor, this big Turkish-made drone, think an American predator or Reaper, but from Turkey. I mean, they've actually come up with the fascinating songs and ballads to the Bay Ractor, which you should also put in your show notes. And then on the Russian side, I think it's called the Orion. And so there's lots of those that basically unmanned aircraft, right, that are dropping, you know, coming over top that convoy, if they can get to it. it or whatever else it is and dropping some stuff. But of course, like aircraft, you can shoot them down. They fly in that altitude. But nonetheless, this is something we're going to see a lot more of, not just in Ukraine, but everywhere else. We've also heard quite a bit about the possibility

that Vladimir Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons, particularly as he feels more and more cornered. And if his ground troops are not having the success, that I think he and his generals thought that they might. If he were to use tactical nuclear weapons, a couple questions. One, how would those likely be deployed? And two, what does that mean? What would they do if he used tactical news? Yeah. There's a whole spectrum of possibilities here. First of all, you know, as I'd like to say, every nuclear weapon is strategic. The tactical versus non-strategic is really a function of whether They're not governed by the START treaty. If that sounds like a tautology, it's because it is.

But basically, they have about 2,000 and some nuclear weapons that are not governed by that treaty. The United States has a much, much smaller number. And so let's just take a step back and think about how that might happen. If they get embarrassed, if they feel like the NATO countries are pushing a little too hard, they've kind of been warning that for forever. that they could go first, just as NATO had a first use policy in the Cold War because we were conventionally inferior. Well, guess what? They're definitely conventionally inferior. And so it makes sense to lean more heavily on your nuclear side. That would be a very bad day. But I would say

it's a very bad day, even if Putin just did the following. All he really has to do is an underground nuclear test. He doesn't have to even necessarily release a bunch of radiation in the atmosphere or even kill people. It could be a demonstration somewhere. It could even be underground. And that will get everybody's attention and it will invite a response of some kind from the United States.

Look, Putin has done more to galvanize NATO and reinforce the purposes of NATO in a 72-hour period when this thing started than the past 30 years post-Soviet Union have. But you do something like that and that will certainly have a major response as well. But you know what? This is why the United States has its nuclear.

deterrent. This is why we have a flexible set of options, and I'm not talking about popping something off just for the heck of it. I'm saying this is something that he could do, but that it would not be taken lightly. Right, right. Well, let's move to that to close our discussion. Again, only a month in. The lessons that we think we'll learn today could look very different in a month or three months or six months. But if you had to say today the lessons that the U.S. and Europe have learned, what would those be? The lessons that the Russians have learned. And then looking a bit further, what would be the lessons for China and for Taiwan? Right. So look, the Russians are already learning that they had some internal problems. I worry

the near-term lesson that they'll take away from this is they have to be increasingly barbaric and truly inhumane in terms of how they crush the Ukrainians. That could very well happen in the near term. In the longer term, as the Russians, or medium term, as the Russians lose a significant piece of their military and their kit, they're going to have to reassess. Who knows, maybe that means they do put even greater reliance upon their nuclear force. Moving to the Europeans, I mean, I hope that the Europeans will, that their resolve will be durable. And so, for instance, you know, there's some news stories out there about how not all the, I think like a fifth of the equipment that the Germans promised to Ukrainians has been

delivered. And I really worry about the, the German durability of the sanctions, right? They've just got so many financial incentives to this, to push the oops button and open things up again. So the Poles and the Romanians, they're going to be strong. Don't worry about that. But the Western Europe, we'll see how durable that is. And then you mentioned Taiwan. You know, going back to the air defense thing, you know, what are the javelins and what are the stingers and what are the S-300s? What are the analogs to those that Taiwan or Japan, and I would say Guam, needs to be the porcupine?

You know, if the Trump administration and the Biden administration hadn't dithered so much, if they had, instead of doing too little too late, had done more earlier, could have deterred this conflict, as we're seeing it today. What are the things we need to do now to make Taiwan such a porcupine that China doesn't want to wrestle it? In the next couple of weeks, we're going to see the Biden administration release its new missile defense review. I expect Guam will have a place there because it's so important for U.S. power projection

in the Pacific. And again, none of this matters if you're dead. And that's why you need air defense. And that's going to be a lesson for Guam, for Taiwan, for everybody else. Well, Tom, thanks for providing a lesson for us today. We appreciate your time. We learned a lot. And look forward to having you back.

Hope so. Thanks, Steve. Appreciate. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision?

No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts a secure VPN for a private connection and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more.

Conditions apply.