The Team House - Ukraine War Update, Prigozhin Housecleaning w/ Geopolitical Analyst | Aaron Schwartzbaum | Ep. 230

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Today we're going to do a deep dive on the Ukraine conflict with Russia analyst Aaron Schwartzbaum. Aaron Schwartzbaum is a Fellow in the FPRI Eurasia Program, and is founder of the FPRI’s BMB Russia. He now works with the BMB team as an advisor and columnist. Aaron received an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with concentrations in International Political Economy and International Economics. Prior to starting at SAIS, he worked at Eurasia Group as a researcher for the Eurasia and Global Macro practices. Aaron holds a BA in International Relations and Russian from Haverford College, and has completed the Overseas Language Flagship program in Saint Petersburg, Russia. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: Ree Medical ⬇️  https://reemedical.referralrock.com/l/TEAMHOUSE04/  Need accurate medical evidence that can maximize your VA benefits? REE Medical and their team of specialists are passionate and experienced about helping Veterans. Find out how they can help you at   https://reemedical.referralrock.com/l/TEAMHOUSE04 The AARP Veteran Report⬇️ https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Free, Twice Monthly email newsletter that salutes military service & provides a mixture of inspirational human stories and practical info for vets. https://aarp.org/VETREPORT 4Patriots⬇️ You can go to https://4Patriots.com and use code TEAMHOUSE to get 10% off your first purchase on anything in the store, including the amazing Solar Go-Fridge. Don't let a power outage catch you off guard. Just go to https://4Patriots.com and use the code "TEAMHOUSE" to get 10% off.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #ukraine #russiaukrainewar #wagnerBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream as well as get access to our team house. and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page, and you can actually support the stream as well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review,

why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park Welcome to episode 230 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park and we're really happy tonight to have in studio our guest Aaron Schwartzbaum

who is a Russia expert. We had him on about a year and a half ago like really a week or two after the war kicked off to really do kind of a deep dive on the war in Ukraine and I'm going to catch back up. We got a lot to talk about tonight. But first... First, we want to say thanks to our first sponsor

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Get professionals on your side. Reach out to Remedical. So, Aaron, can you give us like a brief recap on, you know, your background and where you're coming from. I know we talked about it probably in depth on the last one. The origin story, right? Yeah, just for people who haven't heard it yet. Well, first of all, thanks for having me back.

Good to be here. So, yeah, by background, I'm a Russia analyst, but I've also bounced around the political risk and startup space federal facing for the last couple of years. So kind of a tech risk and subjects matter regional hat I wear. So currently, and just want to emphasize speaking for myself tonight,

so my Russia-Eurasia affiliation is with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, FPRI, which is a nonpartisan think tank in Philadelphia, where I live. It's a great city, folks. That's the one. I'm working with a startup called Altana, actually here in Brooklyn, that does supply-tint analysis, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to global trade, some really cool analytics there.

I'm also working on a DOD grant project about great power influence and seeking to measure and quantify and visualize how the U.S. China and Russia exert. influence globally. So a lot of hats, but I think this Russia stuff is the technical term is my first love. So yeah, it's been a pretty wild year and a half. Crazy to think how much has happened since last I was on. There's a lot of grounds to cover today, I think. Do you have any thoughts about where you'd like to start that conversation? I mean, we can start big picture and go small picture or that's probably the right way to go about this. So since the invasion kicked off, I mean, I think we talked in the last episode a lot about the drivers for the conflict and sort of where it stood at the time.

Big picture, how have you seen things unfold over the last year and a half? Yeah. So a couple of, I guess you could say, like the big themes we've seen. So, I mean, for one, the tenacity of the Ukrainian people. We saw that at the very get-go. That was true. True, the first time we did this, then that's true now. And that hasn't really flagged or wavered over this whole thing.

I think I guess last time we talked the Russian military forces are probably what a weekend still parked fairly close to Kiev in the suburbs. So we've seen the war swing back towards Ukraine's favor largely. It's, I don't want to say stalemated, right? We don't want to use two loaded terminology here, but kind of taken on more stable contours. I guess less maneuver, more of a slog of late. I think we can talk a lot more, a lot more about that. The battlefield has matured a lot. Yeah.

So there's that. I think those are the two big trends. I think the other thing worth mentioning is some of the lessons that we've kind of learned time and time again about the nature of warfare and the extent to which we're seeing some new technology and new developments. But what is the line about how like the character of war changes, the nature of war doesn't? And seeing like the, what, proliferation of drones and new stealth. cruise missiles being tested from Western countries, X, Y, Z, but ultimately there's a lot of math

problems that, you know, relate to fighting a large interstate war. And I think, okay, another lesson, big takeaway is how nasty near-peer competition is. And there's just, there's no ifs, ands or butts about it. It's, it's bloody and it's brutal and it's horrible. And that's just, that's just the nature of it. There's no, it's not a desert storm thing. It's not how that works when you're fighting an opponent who's at your kind of weight class. Right. This is more of a war of attrition where there are front lines. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, profoundly. I mean, there was, the New York Times did a report. I want to say it was around Bachmutt talking to a medic, a Ukrainian medic who just, I mean, it still sticks with me, just the real like thousand yards stare in his eyes. He wasn't even on the front, but, I mean, was, I mean, almost like hollow as a person from, like, the stuff he had seen. Right, right. Basically, he said, like, I don't know if any of you would understand.

Like, it's not even worth sharing what I've seen. I just, you won't get it. And, yeah, it's still, like, that face has, like, stuck with me. Hope he's doing okay. Yeah, that's, that was a tough ones watch. And I think it was you that pointed out to me that, you know, one of the big lessons that come out of all of this is that for all of our talk about cyber warfare and stealth technology and, you know,

in American side, We talk about all these things that are over the horizon, directed energy weapons and all this sort of far-flung, almost Buck Rogers-sounding technologies. Here we are in a modern battle space, but it still comes down to at some point you've got to go and clear the trench line. You need to clear through the breach. You need to send soldiers out there lob and hand grenades into the trench. Yeah, there was Russia's push in the east when that started. So after Russian military forces withdrew from kind of central north Ukraine from around. Kyiv, Sumi, that area, and then concentrated on Donbass.

And they're offensive, there was an episode where they lost, apparently, and it's hard to know the specific numbers here, about like maybe 500 people, multiple units of, like, material and tanks trying to cross a river. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Trying to cross a river is hard. That is... With armored vehicles.

With armored, yeah, that's just tough. It doesn't matter if there's cyber or what. That's just like that remains true of warfare. You can tell like a Roman general of that. They'd be like, yeah, like, that's hard to get across the river. When the Germans tried to push into Russia, they encountered all of this. So, yeah, not new to anyone. That's kind of like a reminder of some of the kind of the rules, the rules and laws that

govern how this sort of thing tends to happen. So, I mean, if I'm remembering quickly, correctly and so much stuff has happened. But, I mean, yeah, they successfully defended Kiev. assault the offensive from Belarus is pretty much done with. But then we saw, you know, I guess at the halfway point, we saw a very successful Ukrainian offensive to recapture some of these areas and these like stunning images of Ukrainians rolling in these little villages and like old ladies coming out and hugging them and giving them oranges.

I mean, did that surprise you how effective they were at that time? I think that caught everybody by surprise. And I think it's interesting to see how that set expectations, for what's happening now down south of Parisia around what Nesopo-Tal-Tukamak. We can talk about some of the geography and the counter-offensive now. But yeah, what was happening at the time was Ukraine pushing on Kerson, which was the only major city to fall to Russian military forces. And it was, in a certain respect, kind of similar to what we're seeing now in southern Ukraine, where it became kind of like a bloody, protracted slog through defensive line after defensive line,

albeit not as well dug in as the Russians are in the places they're defending now. And that wound up being a successful offensive, but actually a bit of sleight of hand on the part of Ukrainians who really broadcast, and I think in international media too, like this is the thrust where we're really aiming for and actually know the secretly on the side gathering forces up north to move, clear out the rest of Kharkiv Oblast. So up north, and yet had a tremendous success pushing back the Russians there. And I mean, that's, I think, really the example of maneuver warfare, kind of in the quintessential form, just moving around strong points.

And, I mean, you have to think there was some older gentlemen in the U.S. somewhere who helped build the who must have been delighted watching them zooming around the flat plains of Eastern Europe as they were, you know, designs. And, like, that's what they were built for. And they were good at it. But, yeah, that's given way to, as we'll get into kind of a different kinds of combat here. But, yeah, that was a real bloody nose for Russia. And it kind of shocked the world that Ukraine was able to pull that off. Right, right.

I want to ask you real quick, in retrospect, you know, you talk about a bloody nose. In retrospect, like, there was a video of Jack and I and I, and I think, Andy Milburn and all prior to the war saying we didn't think it was going to happen. It's not going to happen, right? We were wrong. A lot of people were wrong. We were wrong. I was wrong. Yeah. Then I think for most people in the United States, for most analysts, for most, you know, people interested in military stuff, they thought the Russian army would like, it would, you know, three days, five days, it'll be done. And we were wrong. through the course of this war what are some other things aside from those two big ones have you seen people kind of go out there on the

not just on the limb whether it's popular you know a popular theory or not have you seen people just really fall short looking in retrospect in their assessment of what was happening whether with Ukraine or Russia or anything else like that I think one of the we can talk about the larger kind of trends we've seen with the war. I call it the boom-bust cycle. And it describes a lot of the coverage of Russia,

domestic politics, too, where coverage of the war tends to vacillate. It's never, hey, this is like a brutal near-peer slog. It's extremely bloody and Ukraine is slowly advancing. That'd be a pretty nuanced, I think, fair take. It's either Ukraine is about to collapse, their forces are falling apart or you know hey ukraine is gathered for this counteroffensive and there's absolutely nothing russia could do right a nuclear armed state like there's nothing russia could do this is the end and it's like that's it's never really either of those extremes and it still is the tone of coverage oh like ukrainians are demoralized it's like well no they're like still advancing in the south like they're they're making progress and there's other reports that they're actually feel pretty good to be making progress

despite the heavy costs thereof. So, yeah, I think that's one of the things to be on the lookout for, where it's these complete swing. So after the Kharkiv offensive, oh, like Ukraine, they've got it in the bag now, and then Russia pushed into Bahmoud. Absolutely bloodbath, urban slog fest. And, oh, no, Russia, Ukraine's broken out.

They got pushed out of Bahmoud. And then they gather for the counter-offensive, oh, now Ukraine's going to win. And it's like, no. So it keeps doing that. again and again, and it's a good habit to kind of be aware of that pattern in coverage because the truth remains somewhere in the middle. There's the classic line about Russia, what, never as strong as you fear, never as weak as you hope. And I think that is true, A, for Russia now,

but I think, yeah, good things to keep in mind about the coverage. Right, yeah, you're right, that it's often portrayed as being hopeless for one side or the other. One of their big trends, I just want to drill down on, I had hopeful. to mention it and forgotten now re-remembered. Making peace with the fog of war, I feel like with a lot of military coverage, I don't know if this is unique to Ukraine, but the over-ocentification,

where we can know everything happening exactly, like the motivations, what's going on in each village and each mile of dirt, and like we can't. And making peace with, yeah, not really knowing exactly what may be happening at any given moment. And that's easy to spit out like hot takes. Like this is what happened here.

Especially with a counteroffensive now, we don't really know like a super granular level. There are people who do. They're not going to tell us what's actually happening. But yeah, it's acknowledging that there's a lot happening that we just fundamentally don't know. Yeah, no, you're right. And I mean, I was thinking that this week and we'll talk about it more. But with progosion, I mean, right away, everyone's like, this is how it happens. It's like, hey, you don't know that.

down. Take a step back. But no, that's true. That's a very, that's a reoccurring theme throughout the conflict. And, you know, I think modern technology has kind of brainwashed us. We like self-delude ourselves that we know more than we actually do. Any technology for that. Some of these big battles, Cresson, Bachmout, Muriapol,

I want to talk to us a little bit about the geography of Ukraine, and there's always a lot of talk about, is this, you know, the cities are often the centers of gravity. Are they strategic? Are they not strategic? Should they, should the Ukrainians be fighting, you know, pulling the resources into this conflict or not? I mean, what is the significance of these various centers of gravity in the conflict? Yeah, so I think we can talk about maybe more helpful to talk about the front lines now. We can talk about Kerson. and Marupol. I think one of the things, when we're talking about strategic, it's important to talk about strategic how. Right. Because there can be strategically importance, let's talk about the city

in the South Turkmach is not a large city, more of a town, really. That's just an importance transit hub. So, like, that's one way of measuring strategic importance. From the other hand, a city like Bachmoot, yeah, there's some rail junctions that's like important-ish,

But there's symbolic importance, there's political importance. And not to get to Klaus Witsian here, but people say, oh, there's the politics side and that's just all one big spectrum. So, like, Ukraine choosing to fight for Bachmout wasn't a lot of the experts in the field, and there's a lot of people who know this stuff way better than I do, but would say it wasn't militarily necessary to defend that particular city, but politically became kind of this point of resistance. they shall not pass.

They're done the style. Like we will stop them here. And as it were, Russia kind of exhausted itself by going after that. Russia too, like, no, like we will take this place that was not strictly necessary to take. So when they did, they ended up taking like a ghost town, just a hollowed out skeleton of what it was. Ghost town is maybe even generous. I mean, it kind of flattens the hall place. So it's not really much of a place anymore, unfortunately.

As far as that the geography. So at the beginning of the war, last time we spoke, it was around Kiev. This was like an attempted decapitation. They were going to try to encircle Ukraine's capital, forced political concessions, Bing, bang, boom, done. Three days have a big parade through the city and leave. And I think that's one of the things we learned maybe around the time we were talking or maybe soon after that a lot of the Russians who rolled in up north had their like parade gear with them.

I didn't know that. And yeah, like in their tanks. And I was listening to a podcast actually by a colleague at FPRI who explains they like for like tankers. There's no extra space in there. I haven't served. I wouldn't know that offhand. But like to bring parade equipment that takes up these are cramped places. And yeah, they just tried this thunder run into Kiev and got completely shredded to bits and didn't work.

So we can talk about that geography. The geography that matters, I think, particularly. So two pieces, two focuses here. So there's the land bridge. So if you think of Ukraine, Russia is now in control of this strip of land that connects Russia proper to occupied Crimea. And Russia built a bridge over the Kerch Strait, which connects the mainland to Crimea. They did that, but that's one pretty key vulnerability, right? If there's one bridge, that one bridge can be attacked and destroyed as Ukraine has attempted.

And some success kind of knocked the bridge out of action. So the land bridge is land. You can drive over it. So that's really the focal point. Ukraine's hall counteroffensive now is really predicated on severing the land bridge. And we can talk about what severing means. It doesn't have to take all the territory to effectively sever the land bridge. That's one.

Part two is Donbass. So eastern Ukraine. So before the war, these People's Republics, which were nominally controlled by Russia with some local players who had their own agenda too, controlled a chunk of these two oblasts, these two regions, the equivalent of a state. Large chunks of it, but Russia's stated aim at the beginning of the war

before Kerson and Zaporizia was to seize the entirety of Danyetsk and Luhansk. Russia has most of Luhansk now, but Danyetsk is, there's a large chunk of, the oblast that Ukraine has held, and has been really strongly fortified since 2014. And there's places where the front lines basically haven't changed since the seizure of Crimea, that have just been so dug in and fortified. Avdivka is a city that comes to mind is one example,

where Russia's strategic aim ultimately is to seize this territory, hasn't been able to yet and is on the defensive right now. so unclear whether Russia has the ability to generate forces to achieve another offensive. So the current offensive, do we want to talk about a little bit about the run-up to it? Because there was an extended period of arming and supplying Ukraine for this offensive, bringing over the Bradley's and everything else. I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about the run-up to the offensive before we get into it? Yeah, so the story here is Ukraine kind of plays.

playing defensive in the East over time, all the while, in some cases, trading, trading space and land for time to kind of wind up its fist to basically generate more forces. And this was one of the things we saw early in the war, where Ukraine underwent national mobilization at the start of the war. Russia didn't. Russia did around. As I think back on this, we came up with a list of key events that happened. I keep thinking of more of them as we have this conversation. Russia declaring partial mobilization in 2022. That was a pretty watershed event.

That has led Putin, I think, scared is not the right word, but certainly put him off of declaring more formal mobilization. Because of the internal strife. But, yeah, Ukraine basically built up a lot of new forces to try to launch this counterattack and sever Russia's land bridge. so make this Kirch straight bridge the only place that Russia could resupply Crimea. Ostensibly go after Crimea too. I don't know if Ukrainian leaders themselves actually think that's going to happen or should happen,

but they certainly talk about it. They want to demonstrate a will to be able to attack everywhere and keep Russia and military forces off balance. We saw the Ukrainians kind of like probing the wire for quite a bit in the run-up to this, and then there's the whole incursion into Belgarod by some sort of a proxious. sea force. Yeah, so that was one of these like weird episodes where these are Russian nationalists

who you would think would also have imperial views towards towards Ukraine. Interesting. But yeah, they launched this incursion into Russia proper and took over a couple of towns for a while and they're like a little fascist ostensibly.

A little fash, just a pinch. A bit of fash as a treat. Yeah, but they kind of haven't been heard from since. So I don't know what happened. I think the Western leaders, I think, maybe fairly kind of slap on their wrist. They don't associate with those people. But they're effective. And it's the same reason Ukraine in 2014 has relied on this Azov Battalion.

We can talk about them. Like, they're willing to fight. And Azov, as it were, has become more professionalized and isn't really the same organization it was with the same problematic insignia. I still have some of that too. Yeah, no, we should get into that a little bit. But then over the summer, we saw the offensive start to kick off in earnest. I mean, there are high hopes for that.

I mean, we had conversations with it on this show with Andy and some other folks. How is it kind of played out from your perspective? Do we got to do this? Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you, Aaron. Go ahead, Dave. which one did you want to do go ahead and jump on this yeah um January marked the third time a power station North Carolina was damaged by gunfire recently authorities are saying the attack

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Kind of blissful, but not for the economy, not for the rest of life. That's specific piece of it. Right. Right. So when the offensive did kick off, what was your perception of how it played out? It didn't work as plans.

And that's, I feel like, speaking of the boom bust cycle, that like, oh, this is, Ukraine is doomed, this is the end. A, Western military equipment doesn't work as advertised. The Leopard 2 German main battle tank turns out can be destroyed, which is like, yeah, like, it's a tank. If you blow up the tank, it will blow up. But I think what became clear is that Western leadership had been, and Ukrainian leadership had just been accounting that it would just break on straight through this very well-prepared defensive line in a similar fashion to what happened in Kharkiv up north, but what was the case is that really with the geography of Ukraine, and one of these like fundamental laws of gravity of war, like geography is king, it matters. And to the, I guess we'll say to the west of where this is happening, there's the Nipur River,

which was another critical incident, the explosion of the Kahulka Dam, likely by Russia, we think. We can talk about that later. But that kind of makes a river crossing very, very difficult, or at least a large-scale river crossing. Russia kind of has this front running up the rest of Ukraine. So it was pretty clear where Ukraine would have to. launch its counteroffensive. So Russia was dug in, prepared, like, really dug in. There's kind of the parallel you can see with, like, the German trenches in World War I, where they were, like, there's nothing nice about trench warfare. But compared to the allied

trenches at the time, were, like, considerably nicer and, like, prepared for the long haul. Some of these Russian trenches you see are, like, they're fancy as far as trenches, as far as trenches go. So became clear that these armored assaults into minefields were just not working. Now, I've heard good things about the survivability of this Western hardware. It's like the Bradley would get blown to bits, but, I mean, people would still get hurt or killed, but like there would be a higher survival rate than would be expected with like a Soviet BMP, other infantry fighting vehicle. But yeah, it wasn't leading to success.

And so what appears to have happened is Ukraine's military pivoted strategy a little bit. uses a lot of these armored vehicles to bring troops closer to the front and then very, very piecemeal, bite by bite, the nail clipper, salami tactics approach, trench by trench. It's bloody, but it's on balance saving lives they're trying to preserve their forces. And it's had some success. Now, there's a town that's been in the news these last two weeks, maybe three weeks, Rabotina, has been like the center of fighting, and people say, oh, is this Ukraine's been fighting two months to take this tiny little town

wasn't a major population center. But on the other hand, Russia fought really, really hard to keep it. So clearly that's Russia signaling the importance of this town. Kind of a fun language fact of a giant language nerd, so wanted to bring this up. There's another town north of Rabotenea called Neskutskutn, in Ukrainian, which literally means not more. And there was like a massive fight for that town too, which is I think aptly named, if you will.

So yeah, the counteroffensive has been a slog. There's been a lot of coverage. I think this week, a lot of the negative Western coverage. It's hard. It's bloody. It's brutal. But Ukraine is continuing to advance. And you don't have to take territory to command's territory.

Every bit Ukraine advances, it can bring its artillery first. further and further kind of down towards the coast and then shell and attack more infrastructure. And that makes it harder and harder for Russian military forces to do their job of defending. The last offensive seems like they're sweeping right through these villages. This time they're creeping forward. I think I was reading today, sometimes they're taking 500 meters a day, sometimes they're taking a kilometer. But there's also some give and take with the Russians there.

And to point out the goal of the offensive, you were talking about the land bridge. And so their goal, correct me if I'm wrong, is to punch through Zapranesia and sever that land bridge. Zaparizia is the name of the oblast. Yeah, so there's two critical places that you really need to pay attention to. There's also Mardi Uppel. You know, some people talk about Ukraine breaking through and making a run at the sea, which would be a spectacular victory. But Tokmak is a town that's kind of south of, maybe not directly south,

probably more southwest of this, Robotenya. And folks at home, you can look at a math. We'll make this make a lot more sense. I can talk with my hands with a fighter pilot here. Oh, they're going this way. But, no, so Tokmuck is a major, like, rail and road junction on the land bridge, right? It's a land bridge. It's land, but there's a couple of main roads.

So they can sever that artery. That's important. And then Melitopal would probably be the largest intact city that Russia continues to hold in Ukraine. So that would be a pretty symbolic victory to take that back. The other piece to keep an eye on, so we have the Nipur River running to the west of Crimea and down into the Black Sea through Kersa. And they have gotten to the other side in a few cases. Yeah, so there's been some probing special forces action. I'm sure you'll hear some great stories after the war from people who were part of that.

There's this kind of lingering possibility that very difficult for Ukraine to get across the river because the main bridge is out. and the destruction of the dam kind of turned this into a flat, marshy plane that's just like a lot of pontoons you need. It's very muddy. You can't really get across that easily. But it's the least defended part of Russia's fronts, the hardest to dig into.

So there's a kind of ever-lingering possibility that Ukraine could somehow get across. But regardless of whether a mass attack is possible, it's certainly been able to provide pressure. I mean, one of the one of the kind of the pieces of pieces of like fundamental military laws. If you defend everything, you defend nothing.

Like because Russia can, or sorry, because Ukraine can poke and probe, Russia has to keep some amount of forces there. So it's... But that works in reverse, too, right? That wherever Russia decides to focus their forces, or I'm sorry, wherever Ukraine decides to focus their forces, Russia can just kind of roll in a, you know, sort of like a stress ball in a way,

which leads me to the... question and how how do we see an end to this conflict when when everything is right when when it's very hard to create such a decisive victory you that nobody unless they march into Kiev or into Moscow like how does how is victory one where Ukraine maintains its stability as a country. Russia you know, gets out,

you know, that idea. So you had a war, Zed, so I actually did an episode about this on the podcast I do

for FPRI, bear market brief, had a conflict resolution specialist come by. And she described this condition called a mutually hurting stalemate

where both sides have kind of become cognizant to the fact that they can't achieve further gains and they're kind of just trading,

trading blows. The frozen conflicts. to know, well, no, but not a frozen conflict, like an active conflict where they're just hurting each other. But they're not making gains. With no gains at all. And I, that's the, one of my like pet peeves about coverage, coverage of the war, not coverage, some of the arguments made about the war, like, why don't they just talk?

Why don't they just make peace? Like, peace is good. I hope the conflict ends. This is a bloodbath. It's terrible for all concerns. But wars don't end because peace is. good. Wars ends because of the status quo on the ground. One side has completely won, or both sides are tired out and don't think they can go any further and they declare an arm status.

So I still think the most likely scenario here is probably some kind of stalemate. I don't know where that's going to be, right? You could have a stalemate where Ukraine is threatening Crimea again and has made a breakthrough. You could have a stalemate along the line as it exists now. seems less likely Russia is going to generate enough forces to launch an attack, although Russia, speaking of like Russia being a stress ball, has up north in this near, not near Kharki of the city, but near Kharkiv Oblast has been trying to attack. We think to make Ukraine defend that territory

and take away forces from the offensive. So this whole theory, yeah, if you're defending everything, you're defending nothing. Right. Ukraine hasn't really taken the bait and has evacuated people from these places. this has liberated, I think, understanding we can actually not give back this land, but let Russia take it because it's more important for prioritizing the counteroffensive right now. But yeah, how does it end? There'll be a time where yet neither side's really able to make further gains, and I think that leads to discussion. But there's not really a military situation

that would suggest that that's likely right now because Ukraine is advancing. The force has utility. Right. There's domestic politics of it. Zelensky is dead in the water if he gives up Ukrainian territory. And there's, I think the polling has shown, I was checking today just to be up to date. So I think it's something where like 30% of Ukrainians, which is still a minority, say like, oh, like, we really like peace, like we're willing to make concessions. But then you ask Ukrainians about like, here are the concessions Ukraine could offer. And they're just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

so peace is nice but if you ask about like the mechanics of it that's the one Putin probably could turn on the diamond say hey we we're ending the war and we're just taking the territory we had when the war began

and Crimea were leaving for another day we did it victory and like he controls the information environment so like he probably pulled that off decently right but do you do you think at this point though do you think that Ukraine because

I mean let's face it like Putin took Crimea in like 2014. And we didn't really do shit about it. Like the U.S. government, like, it was kind of a non-issue for us, right? Now it's now this invasion is an issue. But also now it's sort of, it's political talk. So if Putin were to pull out and just say, look, no harm from no foul, we still got Crimea.

I don't think Ukraine's going to stand for that. And I don't think that U.S. or Europe will allow that to stand. or do you think they will. So like will Ukraine likely ever say like Crimea is Russia now? I doubt that. Is there a situation where the war has kind of not frozen, they're still fighting, but like stalemated. Right. And it's this is, there's an armistice or like this is the status quo like Russia gets to have X, Y, and Z. Crimea, we will revisit in 10 years. And we're not admitting anything, but we're not going to fight over it now. Like that's a possibility. But the other problem is that we can get it to some of the same. of the international relations.

Absolutely, yeah. Theory here. Hell yeah. So there's the credibility issue that Russia, this war seems, and one of the lessons we've learned is that seems to really have been planned in Putin's head. It was not, I don't know, Biden's not the right word, but like Russia's military wasn't deeply involved in planning logistics. A fever dream invasion.

Ready for this. Yes, it was planned. It was kind of a fever dream based on his belief that Ukraine is not a real country. They're just Russians anywhere. and they're just going to welcome us, like we're liberators, did not happen. Turns out when you bomb people doesn't endear them to you. Go figure. But, yeah, he doesn't have, like, a way to signal credibility because he decided to go to war.

If he says, oh, no, like, this is done now, like, how would he signal that it's not going to happen again? So you need to have other powers involved. Would China say, like, no, I'm like, we're going to sanction them if they go back to war. So now you can trust that it's not going to happen. So, yeah, he has limited credibility. And there's theories about, like, negotiations and how, like, having a democracy actually is a really helpful signaling tool. If you have a House in the Senate who vote for what the president says about foreign policy,

that shows there's buy-in among the whole political system. That commitment is likely to be upheld. Right. Do you feel in any way that Ukraine... that Zelensky, that Ukraine, that his military advisors feel they need to push into Russia, take parts of Russia in order to go, okay, you give us this, we'll give you that. I don't think, I think it would, when Russia is occupying pieces of Ukraine, that's kind of an afterthought. Now, attacking in Russia to change perceptions in Russia or the situation on the battlefield

is one thing. So these drone strikes against Moscow happening at night, they're not really intending, it seems, like, to kill civilians en masse and instill terror, but they are maybe hoping to demonstrate to Russia, we can touch you back, like, we can make it hurt too. They're hoping to maybe make Russia move air defense assets away from Ukraine, just have more to defend, spread its forces out. So, like, attacks in Russia against militarily important targets, sure, but taking territory, like, that's distraction from freeing Ukrainians who are living. under occupation. And I mean, another thing we've learned,

I guess we hadn't heard about what happened in, like, Bucha when we last talk. Like, torture center is basically every major town Ukraine liberates. Like, there is a desire to free these people from probably very oppressive conditions, not least due to supply issues, but human rights abuses, outright murder. And, yeah, part of the reason Ukraine can't just, like, leave its people behind. because it's already known what is probably happening to that. Right, right. It's interesting.

You know, it's interesting because you think of how a war ends, especially a war like this, without a drive straight to the capital, without nuclear weapons, hopefully, you know, and what Ukraine would be willing to tolerate, you know, will they be willing to, like, okay you can have Russia or you can have Crimea or now is is is their hair up you know are their hackles up it's like no you don't get shit and not until you're completely out so to use a technical term pardon my French but I was at a company before my my current job that did a lot of polling including in Ukraine and the consistent theme we saw across the polling some deviation like

hey we could float the most popular concession that's been afloated to Ukrainians is is maybe saying, okay, we're not going to join NATO after all. By the way, that has 18% support. That's the most, the highest level of approval for a concession. When you ask Ukrainians, we'd ask them about free text. Like, just like say, like, what are you, what are you thinking now? What's your thought on the war? And it's pain, it's tragedy, and it's fuck Russia.

I mean, that's, yeah. No, but that really is like the fundamental, like, single unifying factor in Ukrainian politics right now. And it's, I don't know if average Russians have tried. truly grasp the extent, like, this is going to be generational hatred. Yeah, I mean, it comes up again and again. You live like pre-2014 Ukraine, and I'm not saying this to like dehumanize anyone or anything, but I mean, Ukraine had a reputation for being kind of a basket case state.

And the invasion of Russia, you know, the saying goes, you know, war makes states. Like the invasion of Russia unified these people. And you can see they want to make it work. So I mean one of the things we've seen during the war, talk about politics and Ukraine. politics in Russia too. The more we talk, the more it's like, oh, that's an important thing. That's an important thing we've seen. But yeah, in Ukraine. So people have said, Ukraine wasn't a nation before. And that's overblown bullshit. But this I, Ukrainian nationalism was, if you think about a Ukrainian nationalist, it's a Western Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian.

There wasn't, I would say, a healthy civic nationalism. And you can say that the pro-Western, pro-Eastern, pro-Western, pro-Western, pro-in. Politics vacillated. election or so between these two camps and it's kind of incredible to see the language politics were central in Ukraine should we speak more Russians that okay should we all learn Ukrainian how that's kind of become I don't want to say a non-issue but kind of a non-issue you see videos early in the war with Ukrainian speaking Russian and Ukrainian firing a javelin at a Russian tank blowing it to Kingdom come and screeing dreaming together in two languages.

That's totally well and good. We've seen the video of Ukrainian special forces and a firefight talking in Russian with each other, not even to like prisoners of war, just with each other. That's like totally fine. And then yeah, on the language note, a lot of Ukrainians who grew up speaking Russian, their whole life now refusing to utter a word of it. I met one at a wedding recently. I've actually been learning some Ukrainian too.

it, like, fascinating to, like, hear that shift. One of the other really interesting things is there's that views about the war, but from a fundamental kind of identity perspective here, a polling question about, like, whether you thought the fall of the Soviet Union was a good thing, asking that to Ukrainians. And from 2020 to 2023, 20% more Ukrainians now think it was a good thing. It has nothing to do with anything that's happened in the war, but, like, no, Union is Russia bad. So like, really... Didn't they just move away from some of the Soviet era iconography and adopt that the Ukrainian? Yeah, the statue in Kiev with the shield and the sword. Mother Ukraine, they

removed the hammer and sickle and added the trident instead. You know, I was thinking of all the all the private consulting groups that stood up like the Trident groups and whatnot that aren't seals that are actually like Ukrainian military advisors and whatnot. But what do you think, and we may have talked about this on the last show and I don't I don't recall, but how do you think Russia, whether it's Putin or somebody else, Russia will deal with this idea of NATO being open to Ukraine? You know, because there have been arguments for years. Like this isn't something that just popped up after the Russian invasion, but there have been arguments for years that NATO was pushing Russia towards war, right?

It's been a talking point. Now, whether that is factual, whether that played a part in Putin's decision, I don't know what's in Putin said, but there have been those discussions. Do you think that NATO can be a calming effort in this? Do you think they can be an incendiary sort of effort? It seems at present like maybe the most likely reasonable concession to be offered because Ukraine has proven it's able to, I mean, not maybe necessarily take back all its territory, but defend itself.

If you had told someone at the outset of the war, Russia tanks are rolling in, hey, Ukraine is going to fight Russia to a stalemate. They'd be like, get out of here. Like, that's ridiculous and that's what's happened. So hasn't needed an Article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance to defend itself effectively. So it's certainly possible. Now, the extent to which NATO was or wasn't a factor is, I mean, that's going to be debated for years. It's certainly talked about by Russian elites.

We don't have an interesting counterfactual with Finland joining NATO, which is also very close to Russia. And Russia removed forces from its border with Finland to send to Ukraine. and that's all well and good. So it's probably part of the equation, to some extent, but I think one of my pet peeves with some of the arguments, so like Russia was provoked because of NATO expansion, but has never really, it's never articulated and then what?

NATO expanded and then, like, what did Russia lose by that? Right. And it seems to be Russia's, the gripe is that losing the ability to freely invade any country in its periphery. it so chooses, right? Right, right. Different fundamentally than the U.S. or NATO putting nuclear missiles in Turkey or the Soviet Union putting missiles in Cuba, that's an offensive capability.

That does change things. Sure. But if you look at NATO forces in Eastern Europe before Russia's latest invasion, not a whole lot there. What are they going to conquer Russia with 10,000 troops and some strikers? Like, that's kind of hard to believe. I saw an argument. Oh, like, NATO was pumping Ukraine full of weapons before the war. Yeah, like, actually, incidentally, Trump was the one who started arming Ukraine more seriously than Obama had.

Sending javelin missiles, which are useful, but, like, you're not going to take turf with that. That actually got approved on the very tail end of the Obama administration. Okay. The javelins. But, I mean, yes, it continued through the Trump administration. Yeah, I mean, it seems like, you know, Putin accidentally, you know, fought against his own cause and that he proved like, yeah, you join NATO, you don't get invaded. And, yeah, Finland and what is, Sweden is on track.

Yeah. So it's hard to imagine Ukraine wanting to give up that. I mean, this was a pretty great strategic blunder for Russia, I think, is the takeaway. They turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake, essentially. that's happened, have weakened their position in the world. They talk about, oh, bricks and the global south, but Russia has become very highly dependent on China. We can talk about Russian politics and its economy.

We can talk about Fregosia. And, I mean, there's a lot to cover. Yeah, before we turn to that, I do want to talk about that. Before we totally leave Ukraine, though, you mentioned Azov Battalion. Let's roll into that a little bit, That's one of the main arguments that the, or counter arguments people make. Some of it is Russian propaganda. Some of it is Americans maybe who have legitimate concerns like, hey, these people are Nazis.

Why are we supporting them? Are they neo-Nazis? You want to jump into Oswald Battalion? Yeah. So look, a lot of shades here. So like the origins of this battalion and group, Ukraine in 2014, desperately needed folks who were willing to fight and motivated. And yes, these folks were neo-Nazis.

That is not good. I knew people, foreign fighters who joined up with Oswald back in 2014. And yes, I can confirm as well that there was a neo-Nazi presence in Oswald Battalion. That was no bullshit. They were brought then under military commands, rolled up into formal, like state control,

governance, civilian control. And the last I've heard is that these views are, they're still maybe there less prominence than they used to or they used to be look fundamentally I have on one hand understanding

like I don't want to make any sweeping generalizations which of course means I'm about to but there's been this trend of like Eastern European countries pointing the finger like yearful of anti-Semites yearful and it's because it's Eastern Europe I'm a Jew of Polish descent by the way so like I my folks know

know this well. Like, there are, there's anti-Semitism in, well, not just Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and a lot of places. But the question is like, okay, like, is, has Ukrainian state been co-opted by neo-Nazis? If you look at, like, percentage representation in parliament, how much the far right has, well, Ukrainian politics are kind of on ice now, but that wasn't a factor before the war. Less than in places like, you know, Finland and France and other countries, mind you. So, That's one. You talk about attitudes towards sexual minorities, gay folks, members of that community. Jews in Ukraine weren't really getting harassed by these folks either. So that's kind of in defense of Ukraine. On the other hand, you've also had these kind of far-right symbology kind of laundered into the public. You see like soldiers who have like death's head and they're fighting for independence. It's not good. And I think it should be mentioned that's like not a great thing. The flag of the Ukraine people's army, you'll see it common red and black flag, which were Ukrainian nationalists,

for independence before and after during World War II and sided with Nazi Germany. For partially understandable, the grievance is understandable, didn't like what Russia had done in Ukraine and, you know, potentially genocidal famine, but did side with the SS and Stepan Bandera. held a lot of Jews in Poland. So, like, not a good guy here. Reasonable grievance, but not a... So, like, you're seeing that symbology, and I... And you're seeing, you know, it's not...

I'm not saying it's mass and throughout there, but you are seeing troops with Bandera, with a Bandera patch, you know, with... You know, and, you know, like, it's there. It was written about in 2018. We stopped funding them because of, of that. It's important to contextualize, though, because, like, it is a war. It is complicated. There are shades. And Ukraine, not even by and large, almost entire, it's a country fighting for its survival as a nation and state.

The morals are with shades, and that's true in any war, but the morals are pretty clear here. So I don't want that to be used or taken out of context to dilute. It will be. Don't worry about it. Sure. Don't worry about it. It will be. to dilute the kind of morally just cause of Ukraine broadly. Right. Yeah, to color it as a, as a, some sort of neo-Nazi forces. No, not sure.

Drawing it way out of proportion. And I, maybe some people don't want to hear this, but I was told that, you know, when NATO started getting involved in Ukraine after 2014, now we're talking like 2015, 16, 17, that actually did start to professionalize Ozlov and start to push some of those more extremist elements out. is what I've heard in the coverage, do you? Okay. So jumping over to Russia, I think that there's an interesting conversation that comes up about this war potentially pushing Russia closer to cooperation, military, or otherwise with China.

You brought up bricks. Let's talk about that a little bit, about the effects that this war is having internally on China, or I'm sorry, on Russia, and Russia's foreign policy in regards to some of its other neighbors. Yeah, I mean, a lot of places we could start. If I could talk, kind of get back to my old stomping grounds, Russia's economy has been really interesting. Oh, the sanctions don't work. The sanctions are crushing Russia's economy.

The rubles stable. The rubles devaluing. And I think what we're seeing is Russia muddling through doing all right because the state is fundamentally, I mean, think in rough comparison if you're not in the economy. So like what happened with like the US and World War II? We're ramping up for a war effort created tremendous economic growth. It's also creating some tension, inflation. There's a lot of young men who've been sent to the front that's not enough people to work.

So that's leading to price increases, government spending, leading to price increases, inflation is not popular anywhere you go. The Russian economy is doing fine for now. The question is you have this rubber band that's been stretched and is no signs of breaking. I think it's one of these other metaphors that applies where like Russia's defensive lines in southern Ukraine are have been unbreakable, but like a defensive line doesn't break until it does. It holds and then all at once. That's that's it. So Russia's economy is pulled back. It's doing fine.

But what happens in the long term when the war ostensibly eventually ends? Hundreds of thousands of people come home. There's dislocation. There's price pressures. These are soldiers who are going to have political demands. eventually, the Decemberist rebellion in the Russian Empire was folks coming back from fighting against Napoleon. So that has dislocated, is that even a word, probably, effects on Russian society. The economy is now being essentially held up by state spending. What happens when there is no more

war? What happens then? Part of the incentive for Putin to not make peace is that right now, that is what is keeping his engine and one of his fundamental sources of legitimacy afloat is that government spending is up what happens if russia starts running out of money to spend it probably have a couple more years but like there's some much bigger questions and i think the sanctions if you're wondering like are they working demonstrated resolve they've hurt russia in the long term it doesn't mean that that's going to be immediately visible what else is there i Russia and China. Has that changed the dynamics between those two countries? I mean, there's a whole history there that you can go back to the ideological split between them. But I mean, we can focus. Yeah, we focus more on the contemporary aspects of it. You know, these are two countries that have global aspirations. Has the war in Ukraine pushed them closer together and further away from the West? It certainly made Russia more dependent on China. I mean, that's for sure. China has helped here and there to arm Russia, although it's also something, we're selling weapons

Ukraine. You can see that continuing to happen. I think, and that is, I think, indicative that China has, I want to say played both sides, but I think is very content with whatever the outcome is. If Russia merges strong and victorious, that's great. They have a partner in there. Fight with the U.S. may be too strong a word, but competition with the U.S. That's great. If Russia's weak, the Russians have a term would be like a resource appendage,

just like this extra little, what is it, like angler fish where the mail is just a tiny little thing that clips on. That's what Russia will be for China, just like sends China oil but has no real power anymore. So those are both good outcomes. And by the way, China has repeatedly, not just during this war, taking advantage in places or situations where it can set prices. Oh, like, you need to sell us your gas. We're, like, we're getting 50% discount. There's nothing you can do about it. So tough cookies.

So that's been a factor too. Now, Russia and China have a common enemy. It's not the right word. But, like, a common foe, common competitor. So that's brought them together. Traditionally, land powers that are next to each other don't get along. So, like, that ought to structurally push them apart. but I think right now their common interest has made them closer.

Is it possible for Russia fully pivot away from Western markets towards purely eastern or Eurasian markets? Eventually, but there's nuance there. There's Gulf money, which certainly is willing to play nice with Russia. These things take time, though. You can't snap and make supply chains turn on a dime. So let's talk about hydrocarbons, for example, your oil and gas. Gas specifically.

Russia's gas infrastructure pipelines were built in the Soviet Union to carry gas from Russia to Europe. And they can say all they want, we're going to sell gas to China. But again, China can dictate prices. And you have to build pipelines and infrastructure to China. That takes years. Even if you're rushing it, like that takes time. Right. So you can pivot.

It's possible, but not immediately. The other issue is that. with Russia's currency situation and inflation, there's technical term capital control. So limitations on how Russian companies and individuals can move money in and out of Russia. Russia wants to prop up the ruble, rather, so they want companies and folks abroad

to sell their foreign assets and purchase rubles to keep in Russia. Well, if you need to be flexible with supply chains and dealing with international players and all of your monies in Russia, that makes that harder. So there's competition. competing interests here on short-term economic, keep the war effort, but long-term economic,

we need to invest. And that's been, you know, Russia's economy has been starved of investment for decades now. It hasn't really grown meaningfully since 2012. I think real disposable income since 2010 has grown like 5% in, what, like 13 years? That's not good. People are, inflation no matter where you are, that like makes people angry. It's true in the states, too, true in the West. And if this war does go on for another couple years, I mean, what does that do to the Russian economy? So again, as long as the state is continuing to spend,

they should be able to stay afloat. But the pressures, they grow and they grow and they grow. And this is one of these situations where people saying, oh, like, Russia is going to fragments, Russia is going to remain. Like, I think my prior here, and the base assumption, I think, for folks watching, should be that, like, Russia will muddle through. It tends to do that.

but the pressures will grow. Look, Ukraine isn't an existential fight. So while there's poverty and the economy has been largely wrecks, they have a really strong impetus to fight. And if Russia is fighting a war of aggression entirely outside of its own territory, like those contradictions, maybe not morally,

with the controlled media environments, but certainly difficult in the economy start to get felt more and more and more. And that is one of the things that may push towards a stalemate. It's Germany's economy in World War I that finally gave out. That was what led to the end of the war. If you were, you know, this is an impossible question. So I'm just going to ask you to make wild-ass guesses.

But what are the tertiary effects of this that we don't even see now that may be beneficial for us, that may bite us in the ass? you know, what would a strong, after years of building these pipelines, what would a strong Russia-China, you know, alliance look like? If Russia fragments, what would that look like if there's a power vacuum? Like, what are some of the pros and cons of the tertiary effects that could result from this? Okay, so if good for us, we're talking about like good for the United States? And bad for us, like both.

Like, and again, I know these are just guesses, but, you know, being a student of history, I wouldn't count on Russia fragmenting. We can talk about that. Like that is a like some of all fear situation. It's a nuclear arms country where folks who have the most guns are going to call the shots and various chunks of it. That's not good. We don't want that. Because we saw that with the Soviet Union.

But that was with Bush 1. That was like well managed. That was relatively, relatively peaceful as far as empire is collapsing. Uh-huh. Goes civil war. Nazarbayev handed over the nukes. As did Ukraine, one of the, maybe historically, maybe they're regretting that. Yeah.

To say the least. Not a situation I think the U.S. should encourage. I mean, I wish I would probably be helpful. One of the things I'd love to see from Biden to clearly state, like, what does the U.S. want out of this? It might be beneficial to say, like, we don't have pretenses towards Russia here. You can't invade and try to destroy. neighboring nations. Like, that's really the line here. Like, be Putin. Like, do your thing, but

we didn't, we didn't get a what would be nice to happen in 20 years of war in Afghanistan, Iraq. I doubt we're going to get it from any administration. I think, you know, I mean, the thing is no one in Russia is going to believe it anyway. That's true. I think it's good to part of the issue here. Now, whether or not NATO actually caused this, but there was this sort of footsie with Ukraine over the course of years. Like, there's a possibility. And I think it would the West in hindsight would have been better served saying, like, yes, this is happening, no, it's not happening, here's our policy, and being just a little more upfront about that. And I think that's not a particularly controversial thing to say.

As far as like knock on effect, so there's what, this is, we're starting to see very, very slowly, like the re-militarization, Europe reemerge as a geopolitical power. Interesting. And it's going to take time. A, because it takes time to restart supply chains to build one of these fundamental math problems we talk about, oh, should Ukraine get the F-16 or not? No, can we build enough, produce enough artillery shells every month to supply the gears of war here? Europe's starting that process, starting to be geopolitical again.

This European project can't just be purely idealistic. Like there must be military power and force, not used to conquer, but like that has to have that backing. And you see this moment, again, it's slow. But Germany, like Olaf Schultz, a political rally is like, we can like resist Russian aggression. And he's kind of like, as he's saying, like, wait, like we can resist Russian aggression. Like, yeah, like this realization he can be, he can be like political in that way and talk about like national security interests. And there's a real impetus. That's always fun when Germany does.

Yeah, yeah. there's a real impetus against talking like that in Germany, isn't there? Well, yes. And so this is, it's going to take a while to change. I've had very funny conversations with German friends who were like hesitant about rearming. It's this weird, like the Jew arguing like Germany should be like a robust geopolitical power. They've learned historical. And the German being like, no, we should not rearm.

It's not ideal. Because there's such a, kind of irony to it. There's such a belief that they can't achieve. their political aims through military force. And I don't think it has to do that, but like, I think it's safe to say had Ukraine been like a credible military actor, not Ukraine, sorry, had Europe been a credible European, had Europe been a credible military actor, what happened Ukraine might not have happened because Europe would be able to...

I mean, when you say Europe is a credible military actor, I mean, are you talking about the formation of a European military... It doesn't have to be, there's so many, there's so many, like, political economy, complicated questions there. Who's doing what? I mean, we're seeing trends accelerate. The Netherlands has focused. It doesn't really need tanks anymore. It's kind of put its tank units into Germany's military. So we're seeing that, this gradual ramp up. It's slow. What Germany was talking about at the beginning of the war, we're going to have the Titan Venda, this political moment change in errors we're going to spend on our military again. That's kind of gone slowly.

I mean, one of these, the U.S. is going to have to decide about what we're going to do. do with Europe that ultimately what will make Europe start actually taking security seriously as the US saying, okay, like here's the date, like we've done enough. We'll be here to help if anything happens, but like you got to take the lead. And as long as the U.S. is taking the lead, the Europe doesn't have that incentive to really gear up. And for the longest time, I don't think we wanted them to. No, but like I think with some of the political difficulties we're having in the states,

like there's increasing consensus that has to happen. As far as other kind of geopolitical trends, we talk about BRICS. De-dollarization, I think, are certainly compared to the amount they're talked about, very overblown. That's my two cents. People may disagree. It may become something someday, but like BRICS as an organization, I think it was, was it Goldman Sachs?

It was an economic designation. It was a investment report. Like here are the countries that are going to be growing fast as of 2010. But that's not like a political unit. The organization certainly is like in opposition to continued U.S. global hegemony. You know, for all the pluses and minuses of that. But it's never, they've never come to a collective decision about something. It's two main powerhouses are China and India who have like a border disagreement and like could go to war at

some points. Argentina's was just invited. There are two presidential candidates that, like, absolutely not. We're not joining Brick. So like, hard to see like what the, they just had this like big summit. Yeah. Like, what did they have in common? What are they really, what are they really doing?

And it's unclear, like, if they can actually like act as a cohesive. Oh, they're competing with the G7. Yeah, but the G7 as a group like can create sanctions together and coordinate economic policy and COVID policy and financial regulation. Like that's something a lot more serious to that. That may change going forward. But yeah, the other dynamic is like the global South Africa, South America being maybe cozier with Russia.

And I think a lot of this stems from skepticism of U.S. leadership. And people, it's almost funny when people see like Lula in Brazil talk about, oh, we should make peace, like not being a fan of the U.S. but he's a Latin American leftist. Like, that's not a particularly surprising. Of course they're skeptical of the U.S. Like, that's, there's a lot of history there. So, like, I don't think it's because they're attracted to Russia as a,

necessarily as like a geopolitical leader, see that Russia is a country that can offer them something in a way China can. But, you know. They're also smaller countries that have to balance their, you know, calibrate their foreign policy between these other great powers, right? Yep. one of the things in this project I mentioned is where we're thinking about and looking at. But yeah, I think a lot of it is maybe more about the U.S. than Russia per se, and it's using the opportunity to agitate, shuffle, create change.

How about the subject of Putin himself? As, you know, in America, I think we have this sort of, I don't want to say infatuation, but certainly a fascination with dictators at times. and there's this continued fascination on the character and the personality of Vladimir Putin. From your observations, have you seen any changes in him from the beginning of the war to where we are today? Over the course of the war, not particularly. Yeah, our boy Vova. Fun fact for audience, people say, look, he's Vlad. Vlad is not the short form of Vladimir in Russia as Bova is the nickname.

So, yeah, I sometimes refer to him by that. nickname is Bova over here. But I think the change started before the war, where he kind of found religion. Like his foreign policy and hall approach was like reputation was like very like neolists before where like whatever situationally can be advantageous. But there's not really like a strong belief. And seems to have kind of, yeah, found this religion that Russia has a great country, the heir to this former empire. These lands are ours and the eyes glaze over. I mean, he wrote this treatise in, what, summer 2021 about how, like, Ukraine is not a real country.

Well, the sidebar, we were talking about this a little bit before the show. I wanted to ask you about some of the things I had read that I think are controversial maybe about Russia, but that there's this sort of, some people would say a neo-fascist ideology in Russia about the Third Rome and this idea that the, of the unique character of the Russian people as being the leader. of the Slavic people worldwide and that they're going to lead the world through their authenticity and all these kind of like ideas that as Americans seem very strange and maybe are kind of overhyped, you know, as, you know, we have this tendency to like see the entirety of Russian character through, you know, a couple literature figures.

But I'd like to hear your thoughts as a Russian expert. I would strongly advise against like, I don't want to say it's necessarily racial, but like, kind of like the Russian, the inscrutable Russian mind. Like how can we truly understand? Like that, like, people have suggested Putin is not like a rational actor. Like, no, he has interest. Russia has interest. They're acting on their interest. Russia, my only editorial angle in my coverage of Russia over the years, it's like a real country that like maps onto other things that like real countries. With recognizable human beings with the same sort of drives that anyone has. With unique characteristics and nuances, there's any other country.

would have. But like Russia being a kind of this having this like messianic approach that has this clear purpose, I mean like clear purpose manifest destiny. Like oh actually that kind of maps on to some elements in U.S. history too. So it's not this like outlier per se. I saw we were talking about this before recording and a piece of WAPO coverage, Washington Post quote a quote about the potential for continued Ukrainian military offensive. I said like, oh, like in the winter, like, ground conditions may be tough. And also, like, Russians are you, like, uniquely good at fighting in the winter? And it's just like, oh, my God, you've got to be.

The Russian people are the Arctic variant of human beings. You've got to be kidding me. Like, no, like, if they have cold weather gear, they'll do fine. And if they don't, they'll freeze. Like, anybody else. Like, yeah. So I wouldn't lean too hard into that kind of. Russia is uniquely able to take casualty.

But you think Putin himself has bought into this idea of sort of religious mysticism? I don't know if it's necessarily religious mysticism per se, but finding religion and there's like a clear purpose for Russia. Not all policy is fungible depending on the moment in time. It makes him a little more dangerous, I think, less harder than deal with because he has this Fever to his belief that Ukraine is part of Russia. That arguments that Ukraine's a made-up country is frustrating because every country is made-up country. Yes, yes.

Every people. We had the, what was it during, not the, it was a couple presidential elections, a little conversation that the Palestinian people aren't invented people. So offensive. And you hear that, it's like, well, we're all invented people. I mean, the notion of Western, what is West? And frequently, and frequently when you have actors, Russia and the Palestinian and Israel in this case, acting under the notion that people are made up,

they tend to do things that make nations. So like, yeah, go figure. Yeah. So what can Putin find acceptance on the world staging in, do you think? Um, that's a tough question. Like, we'll have to deal with, with Russia one way or another. It's, I don't think it's going away for all the talk of decolonization and collapse. Like, I think it's going to be. how much sticking power Putin has is a question. He will drop dead eventually as we all will. That's going to happen. How old is he 70?

Yeah, I think older than that now. Getting on in years and he's been unable to figure out how to hands power away. One of the sources of the war, how this bubbled up is his belief that, like, Ukraine was his final unanswered thing before he can step off the stage. But like, will he be welcomed back? I don't know in the same way. I mean, he's not able even now, even among the global South or like the bricks of it, he couldn't appear in person. Right.

Right. He's afraid of getting arrested, sent Lavrov. He had a recent speech where they had like someone dub over his remarks. It wasn't his voice. So like, well, it's interesting to see, although it's a very different situation, Assad being, oh, so slowly ingratiated back into the international community. Well, I think there's degrees and I think, you know, if and well, this ends, like he will be dealt with it.

Certainly because for like a durable peace, like he is party to it. He'll have to need guarantees or guarantors potentially, but is going to have to be talked to in some capacity. And then what about Zelensky? Because, I mean, prior to the invasion, right, he had already sort of, he had already tried to infringe a bit on the media in Ukraine and then successfully did that once the war started. banned unions, you know, banned pro-Russian politicians, you know, things like that.

And I know that in Ukraine, like, they can't have, you know, under their constitution, there can't be an election while there's, you know, military law. To just note, like, for, historically speaking, for countries in existential wars, this is not an outlier. No, no, and I'm not, like, I'm not saying that, that's in their constitution. like that's not an issue. The challenge, I think, is that there was a lot of talk about, you know, corruption. There was a lot, there were a lot of issues surrounding Ukraine prior to the invasion. Do you think that Zelensky will get away with more post-invasion because people want to justify having sent?

Do you think that he'll, like, jump in line? Because, again, like I said, there were things he was working on against freedom of the press and things like that. even prior to the war. Now with military law, like he's been able to pass that stuff saying it's an existential threat, you know, unions and things like that. And it very much is to wit. Like I think that's safe, safe argument.

But yeah, what happens in Ukrainian politics after the war is really interesting. Yeah. I was talking to a Ukrainian professor at a recent event on the sidelines. the takeaway from that is really that Ukrainian politics are largely on pause. And I think for understandable reasons there's consolidation around the war. But I mean, are there questions about how Zelensky prepared the country for war? Like could he have mobilized earlier? Could he have moved forces?

Should he have taken U.S. warnings more seriously? Had a really interesting point there that part of the reason, and maybe is that Zelensky's formative experience as a politician was being jerked around by the US. The Trump administration is like looking for, not concessions, but like what Biden's or X, Y, Z and was kind of skeptical of American political system. So when, you know, Burns or whoever it was said,

like, hey, like, you're going to get attacked, maybe thought there was an angle there, which is interesting, interesting read on it. But there will be kind of a reckoning for that. And I think there will be political. Haymeid. Zolensky is certainly emerges kind of a national hero figure. The irony here is that he was not popular before the war. His popularity was in the 20s and there were corruption concerns. There are still corruption concerns. One of the poll numbers I found today for some homework is that

77% of Ukrainians think that Zelensky is responsible for corruption, not in the sense that he's done it himself, but that he as president owns that outcome. It's something that Zolensky has been sensitive to even during the war. So recently fired all of the regional heads of recruitment because of perception they were not operating cleanly, cleaned house in the defense ministry. Resnikov, Ukraine's defense minister, was nearly fired, according to reports, because of corruption concerns and people ingratiating themselves. So that's still going to be a factor. Basically, Zelensky will have, depending on how the war ends, accumulated a ton of political capital for himself and the question is how he's going to spend it.

Now, some of the media questions, Ukraine still has a very, very vibrant free media scene. So the question is bouncing between, we have this, I think, fairly liberal democracy, largely because it was a state that was too weak to be more authoritarian. How do we maintain freedoms while also like eliminating the influence of this oligarch class who has not exerted a good influence in the Ukrainian political system while respecting property rights and interesting questions. Yeah. And I don't have a good answer to you yet.

And it's interesting whether America or the Europeans, you know, the allied nations will take him to task like, okay, now this is done, clean up Ukraine, get rid of all, you know, handle these issues. Or if it'll be we supported them, you know, these years and sent all. this money. Let's not give anybody any reason to doubt what we did and just treat them with kid gloves. Well, if he wants to join NATO in the European Union, there will like some pretty specific things they'll have. Yeah, and that's the European Union. A Europe should. That's something they can handle and deal with. But look, I think it's not that people, you say like,

Ukraine's like fundamentally corrupt. It's again, like Ukraine like Russia is a real country too. and this has been an issue in post-Soviet states with like weak central authority. Like this is not out of the realm of the norm. It's something that like it's not like something Ukrainians are happy with either, mind's you. Like part of the issue why Zelensky was unpopular before the war was a perception he wasn't cracking down on corruption enough. I mean, there were rumors about him being owned by Kalamoyski and some of these oligarchs and, you know, you can't say like the extent of the extent of that. But there is going to be a social demand in a country that's going to be, I think, for a window after the war, depending on how it ends, right? If there's a painful piece, that may change things. But uniquely,

united, I think more united than it's been its entire history where there's now a common experience, like every Ukrainian who was born at the time will be able to answer, like, where were you in February 2022? And that hasn't been the case before. So there's going to be a common purpose and the country will have an opportunity to basically be whatever it wants to be. And there would be a lot of political capital to make changes. Yeah. It'll be interesting. Ukraine has been able to govern and manage itself shockingly effectively.

Their train system runs better than Amtrak and it's being bombed regularly. Yeah. Can we talk about pre-gosje? Yeah, I was just going to ask. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Let's first start with the coup. How did we get to that point?

I mean, Progoshin, of course, running the Wagner group. Russian mercenaries deployed into Ukraine, emptying out prisons and sending convicts up to the front lines. I mean, pick up wherever you'd like to pick up. Why Progoshin felt motivated to do this coup, what was going on with him? Well, let's talk about Prigosion, Putin's chef. We'll talk about some language. As I mentioned, I'm a language nerd. I was trying to think of like the good punny title for this episode

as like free Goshen is now post-Gosian That's the that's the ends of him But yeah so how did he like why was he around Putin's inner circle So he was one of these very wily clever folks who in the 90s Was able to kind of get his hands into the state budget And was catering Catering events for Putin's inner circle The chef that was literally catering

That's not a literally catering It's not like a a mom A euphemous. With food. Hey, go cater this guy. With food. Now, the language fact here, so prigosin is

language-wise related to the Russian verb brigadica, which means to come in handy, to be useful. Now, the word Gojin god-gadza is the same place that we get our word good from. So, like, it's useful.

It's a good thing to have around. And so his role in in Russian foreign policy was kind of to be this offhand actor Wagner group can take casualties and do things that the Russian state doesn't want to be directly affiliated with it. Syria. Yeah, like Syria, like the incident trying to attack U.S. Special Forces and getting B-52ed. You know, the Russian regular didn't want none of that. Of course, of course not. apparently have conducted themselves fairly professionally.

They're not the ones going on murder sprees in Syria. Ukraine may be a different story. But, yeah, so he was used to be useful. And so, Bachmoud, he was able to actually achieve some degree of military success because he had just tolerance for casualties, they're prisoners. There's Russia's worst who they were freed from prison And then we're able to, the tactics that I've read about were kind of interesting where they would basically just run at Ukrainian positions. And the goal wasn't necessarily to take them, it was just to get folks alive close enough to call an artillery.

And then dislodge the Ukrainians, then attack again, human wave. Just you need one or two people to survive. That's all you need just to say, here's where the Ukrainians are. Attack them. It's very morbid. Yeah. But it was working, it was working well. Now, so the issue politically with this fellow is that he was kind of a rival of Russia's defense

ministry. He thought he was being more effective. Sergei Shogu, Russia's defense minister, never actually was a military guy. He worked in Russia's, basically Russia's FEMA, but does firefighting and emergency response, too. kind of became this rival figure and wanted more of a bigger piece of the pie. The other piece started to mention is his role in Africa, too, is like offhand foreign policy, being places where Russia doesn't have the resources or time to conduct foreign policy.

Like Mali, some of these coups we've seen providing support to these regimes after they take power. Interesting implications with pregoes out of the picture now what's going to happen in Africa. But anyway, so what happened? happened is, I guess, earlier this summer, Putin gave basically an order that all these private military companies, which by the way have been traditionally illegal in Russia. So like unclear how this was even operating. There's a great quote, one of these like Russian nuggets from the, I think 1800s, that the strictness of Russian law is mitigated by the fact that it's optional. So this is one of these, like it was not technically legal, but still there and doing work.

So anyway, Putin gave this order down that all of these private military contractors were to be rolled up into the army. And that was kind of the end of the road for pre-gozsche. They were going to take his forces away. He's done unclear what would happen with Africa and his kind of his fiefdom. Does that change kind of fundamentally changed his logic where, marching on Moscow is an insane thing to do. It's like a 100% certainty of death, which, as it were, seems to have led there. But if you're going to lose everything and there's a 1% chance you might succeed by doing this thing,

it's actually kind of a logical step to take. If the choice is you're going to lose everything or have a 1% chance of success, you go for the... There's a whole theory about human decision-making and risk-taking where prospects, theory. Humans are very, very risk averse. Do you think he was legit marching on Moscow for a coup? Or was he marching on Moscow as a statement? That's a great question.

And one, I think we'll hear about in a couple decades when those archives are potentially open. Part of like making peace with the fog of war, difficult to know with that episode. Like I don't think he was trying to overthrow Putin. Right. he may have done damage to Putin's reputation anyway. It was more about overthrowing Russia's defense ministry, getting a bigger slice of the pie, piece of the action,

maybe more forces, more commands, more influence. But I mean, when he marched into Rastov-Andan, which is the city in the south of Russia, he was like trying to capture the generals, like, you guys, like, you're under arrest, I'm talking to you folks. So I don't think it was necessarily about Putin, more of like an appeal to Putin. And for whatever reason, he kind of chickened out before Moscow may have been told off, bought off, didn't want it to avoid bloodshed.

That part's a little unclear. Where did he exist in the larger, like, Russian political consciousness? Because I just remember all these, like, pictures of, like, people taking selfies with them and all this kind of stuff. That was one of the most, aside from the people who got killed on that hard day. Russia, they shot down a Russian, like, intelligence aircraft. They killed, I think it was, like, 13 people. Yeah. It was wild.

but what a fun day on Twitter in the Russia community, where, I mean, normally it's a lot of takes, this is what happening, that's what's happening, and everyone would just like, hell, I don't know what's going. We're just going to take out the popcorn and see how this plays out. And it was a bit of fun camaraderie in that.

But, so sorry, restate the question? I mean, where did Pergogian exist, like, within the Russian, like, social context? Right, great question. So where he existed, and I think, Interesting in light of recent events and his elimination is kind of became like a folk hero of more nationalist Russians. Oh, really? Yeah.

And this is so Putin has been more wary over the war in Ukraine, less concerned with the liberals against the war and more concerned with the Rara nationalists. The ultra-nationalists. Let's mobilize everybody. Like World War II. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it again. There's a Russian phrase, Mosjumpfteri. like we can do it again um yeah it's like kind of bad that was not a good episode in russia

so when progosian did like his like selfie uh video from the front lines these are my dead boys like we we need resources like all the ultra nationalists like yeah this is our dude yeah yeah but that's also Putin's fault for selling it as we are invading a Nazi country because those ultra nationalists i mean i'm sure that like they're tracing their lineage probably even further they're back. But a lot of it goes back to war, too, and a lot of it goes back to... But the ultra-nationalists, they can be all-to-right national socialists who, but Nazis has a very fungible meaning in Russia, depending on the enemy of the day. So they're Russian Nazis. I mean, it's fungible everywhere these days.

That's true, yes. Fascist is like not even a helpful term anymore. But yeah, who are, like, Russia doing very Nazi-like fascist things, but it's the Ukrainians and the West who are actually, the fascists and not. Right. It's like a meaningless term. Right, right. It's been warped by history. I did a great episode on my podcast again,

Bear Market Brief, if you want to get really into the weeds on the Russia stuff, about like memory in Russia and World War II and this. Yeah, I'll check it out. It's really... Everybody check out Bear Market Brief. And in particular, you probably don't remember the episode,

but do you remember the title of it? It was some wordplay, but the guest was Jade McGlynn, who's a great expert. She just wrote a book, actually, about memory in Russia. I think memory, makers is the title.

So yeah, worth checking out if you're interested in this kind of historical memory angle. Everybody check it out. You love it. World War II is a lot of meaning to Russian. It's kind of an important time for. Yes. I mean,

it's, look, I mean, it, when you look at their losses, both civilian and military, you know, it was immense. Like,

they fought some major battles with virtually nothing. I mean. Alongside Ukrainians, who, who the percentage-wise took even more casualties. There you go. So, Progogian gets a little cooey over there. Yeah.

And, I mean, what was the outcome from that? So, yeah, we had this weird moment where Belarus's president, Lukashenko, kind of came riding in on his white horse and was like, actually, and his lot of. We'll take him to Belarus. Unclear, like, what was, did, like, he, was he instructed by Putin to mediate? I mean, Putin's big thing as a leader, just as far as the defense ministry versus Fri Ghosian, he's kind of the referee. Everyone thinks that he's, like, making the decisions personally.

But he tends to, like, mediate between factions as kind of his superpower. So, yeah, unclear where Lukashenko came from. So, yeah, basically, Prigodian moved to Belarus with some of his dudes who decided to go with him. Some were, like, rolled into the military after all. There's an interesting, I think, dichotomy worth noting in Wagner. So you have a lot of these like prisoners, cannon fighter, but also like former like Spetsnaz, like very serious people who were like good, good at fighting. And the Ukrainians, there's reports.

Like they learned very quickly when they were fighting against Wagner. Like these are real deal troops, not Mobic is like a Russian mobilized troop. These are their real deal professionals. Move to Belarus. We're evidently like stirring shit with Poland just to. poke, hey, like, we can cause problems. Nothing too, too serious. And then, yeah, kind of went to quiet and then was flying over Moscow and seems to have been.

And then Putin, I don't know if you caught this today, gave his, like, comments, like eulogy, kind of like a mob boss. Like, oh, like, he did well for himself and for Russia when. He was a man of a complex fate. Yeah. Something like that. It's a very, yes. Yes. Yes.

The solution that's sultba is... Weird. Yeah. And the plane very clearly was not, like, a mechanical issue. Like, they had, like, the flight radar, the altitude recording, like, cruising, cruising, cruising, cruising, cruising, and it wasn't just, like, descending, yeah. Is speculation, intelligence, early intelligence, is appointing at Ukraine, is appointing at Putin, is appointing at Belarus? Pointing at Putin? I think it's honestly the simplest explanation, which is kind of a crazy thing to say that, like, yeah, like he crossed Putin.

He made him look completely impotent. They panced him in a way that Putin has not looked weak. Right. Basically since the beginning of his administration. Open to Pandora's box. Now, people said, like, oh, this is, like, Putin's going to collapse. I said it's the beginning of the ends, but, like, that period of the end could take, you know, another 15 years. But it made it possible that, you know, that.

there's a world in which Putin could be challenged and made to look weak. Similarly, in the example I give is when Trump floated the possibility of the U.S. not defending NATO, like he lost the election, his new administration, even the military, you know, made it clear that that was, you'd honor the treaty obligations. But like, the fact that was uttered became possible. I think, like, that you can't put that back in the box now. Like, that is a possibility. So this is, he made Putin look weak.

and you can't do that. I mean, the other thing that just like, I mean, maybe this is like an asinine, I mean, tactical thing, but, I mean, the fact that, like, him and ten of his, like, boys got into this little plane and flew to Moscow. Yeah, this Udkin fellow who founded Wagner. Is it of itself a very odd thing?

Well, this Udkin guy, this weird-looking bald dude, had SS tattoos. So, like, it's like, oh, Ukrainian Nazi. There's, like, it's not, like, It's not a uniquely, there's plenty of Russian ones too, including this high ranking. But yeah, like it was a decapitation strike against like Russia's own warlord is kind of wild. And there's a lot we don't know and we have to make peace with that.

Yeah. And I mean from an American or Ukrainian perspective, I mean, when they start cannibalizing their own people, that's a pretty good sign. Napoleon is by never interrupt your enemy where he's making a mistake. Yeah, exactly. What do you think, you know, we've seen on a little bit of action, at least with like the U.S. Embassy and the Lithuanians, the Poles and everything with Belarus lately. Do you see Belarus at all, like, ramping up? Or do you think they're just going to kind of give tacit support to Putin?

Lukashenko is a very, very interesting person. The traditional, like, question, who would you want to have, like, a drink with? Like, I'd be fascinated to have a conversation. He's very clever. He's, I mean, managed to hold onto power for a long, a long, long time, longer than Putin, mind you, has really done everything possible to not get involved while looking like he's on the Russian side of it.

Belarus is a belligerent in this war. There has been combat action launched from Belarus, the invasion itself, but air strikes, missile strikes. Like, Ukraine would have justification to invade and attack Belarus. It doesn't make sense they're not going to, but he's a belligerent. There are Russian forces there, He's, yeah, been very demonstrative about, like, yeah, we're going to put Russian forces here, XYZ, we'll take in Wagner, but, like, hasn't really done anything.

Yeah. There's been reports and hard to know that, like, Belarus's military basically made it clear that, like, we're not getting involved. They'd be, they've been poorly funded, poorly trained that get torn to bits by trains motivated Ukrainians. Hey, speaking of World War II casualties, Belarus is actually not allowed. to use its military constitutionally outside of the country.

Really? They suffered the highest casualties as a country during World War II. Yeah. Devastated. I think the movie Come and See, which is one of the most fucked up movies.

I haven't seen it. What's a set? Come and See, Dismatri, is about Belarus in World War II. It is if you want to ruin your day and like have a lot like a drink like, oh my God, yeah, that's a powerful World War II movie. oh yeah yeah it's fascinating so so when you say they're a belligerent and missile strikes is

has it been them hasn't been the russians how they just it's russians using velourous as a launch pad but that's kind of right right yeah same same difference yeah yeah yeah i just didn't know if you know if you know belarus is kind of like or if they were like oh you guys you guys yeah defend the border but we're not going to pay attention to what ukraine has lobbed some missiles into Belarus, but like at Russian facilities. Right. So like that's, and like Belarus, Lukashenko just, I guess it was yesterday, like, congratulated Ukraine with, like, or congratulated, sorry, I'm thinking in Russian,

congratulated on Independence Day. Hey, like, Belarus and Ukraine are, are close peoples. And we, like, it's just this. Yeah. And they trolled each other over the border. They have, like, radio broadcast. They put, like, signs up, hey, you're under a dictatorship. Hey, you're under, like, but they don't shoot at each other.

Yeah. I feel like if Putin falls tomorrow from Russia's in chaos Lucas Hekel be like I was the only one keeping this from like really blowing up like it was all me really interesting dude and also a brutal dictator who has done

grievous harm to men and eight other Russians I don't just want to Belarusians rather so before we get into questions for Aaron I guess like the last question I would have is at this stage in the conflict do you see any limitations of American power, limitations of American military assistance,

are we running up against a wall? I think there's still more political will to send goods. There's still more Cold War stockpile we could unleash. There's still more current stockpile we could unleash that just, there's been pretty clear political signal. That's not going to happen. There's supply, there's again, supply chain. There's the math, the fundamental, the gears of war here.

like actually we can't make enough artillery rounds to supply ukraim we have to wrap that up there was a story um i think about a month or so ago that like rathion had to invite a bunch of like 60 60 70 somethings to like restart their sting or missile line because it had been dormant so long and we're just kind of out of them so we're going to need to build more and then need to optimize start building those again like that's a that's a factor of play so there's some part that just have to be like ramped up again. As far as good supplied, there's been talk of what Abrams tanks eventually. The export model, I think, has been kind of the older, older variants. The F-16 has been kind of kicked around a while. There are pilots that are going to be pilots that are going to be trains,

but like, what, that'll come online in maybe next year, and I don't think we'll play a huge difference in the war. So we've enabled Ukraine to keep fighting, but I don't think have provided any like one-off game changer wounderwaffe, you know, weapons that would like, like single-handedly. Everyone talks about like precision cruise missiles XYZ and the, um, the ground launched small diameter bomb XYZ, but it's really like artillery shells and APCs that are like the main bullets and mass that, you know, allows Ukraine to keep fighting. Do you think that the numbers in this conflict are now ticking down towards some sort of negotiated settlement? Like we're moving towards an endgame.

I think war just inherently, like, is going to lead to some negotiated settlement. I don't see it happening. There's nothing, I guess, would say nothing that suggests to me that there's going to happen anytime soon. But I think will wars end in negotiated settlements, whether it's the complete capitulation or otherwise. And I don't think it's going to be a, don't think there's going to be a desk and a paper in Kiev or Moscow, but there will be some agreement sometime or an armistice, like Korea

style. Right. Like, where we're like, the war is on pause and that will just be okay because it has to be. With, you know, you mentioned that, you know, we're emptying, that we're giving Ukraine our stockpile. And we've talked about this on the show before with like Andy Milburn and maybe some other people about this idea that the U.S. isn't in this as much to help Ukraine as it is to bleed Russia.

And, you know, when you live... look at some of our arms deals with other countries, like F-16s to Jordan, you know, you know, weapons of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, you know, Turkey, you know, these other countries that maybe we have, that aren't even actively involved in an engagement, where here we're sending, you know, a billion, two billion worth of, or, I mean, 100 billion, 200 billion worth of weapons and cash. Do you think that... I'll just ask what's your opinion on the idea of slow rolling?

Are we giving the Ukrainians the weapons they need to actually win the war in a timely fashion? Or are they... Yeah, are we just slow rolling it? I would say that I don't believe that harming Russia is like the principal guiding factor here. Now, we're getting a very good return on investment for... for providing weapons. I mean, it's like it's an externality, I think, of the core reason of the policy.

Yeah, there's a lot of opinions on this. I think certainly Ukraine's military would say like we haven't been given, especially for the counteroffensive. They're trying to take on a very, very tough military challenge with no air superiority. Like that's hard. I think they'd be very grateful to have a lot of F-16s.

Yeah, military commanders are always going to want more resources. even ours. Yeah. Yeah. So I think Biden and the administration broadly have slow rolling is maybe not the word I use, but would have tried to manage escalation. And they've talked about like attackums and like long range missiles to gradually ratchet up, to demonstrate, continue to resolve, but not in a way that would lead to like a fundamental break in like Russia to completely collapse,

which could become dangerous for Russian. Now, Russia has also demonstrated its, the credibility of its deterrent is not very serious. So, like, if the U.S. gives tanks, it's nuclear war. The U.S. gives tanks, nothing. If Ukraine attacks Russian territory, it's war, nuclear war, and Ukraine does nothing. So certainly hasn't done itself any favors there. But I think, yeah, there's, Biden has tried to, like, put limits on what these weapons can be used for realistically. and yet signal some degree of moderation to leave,

maybe leave open the possibility of talks without completely showing that this is a fight to the bloody finish and there's no way this could be negotiated. Well, we talked about, like, on one of the past shows, we talked about, like, the Biden administration blocking Wallace's, you know, bid for NATO, UN? Was it UN or NATO? Over the F-16.

It was maybe NATO? I think it was NATO. I'm pretty sure. Yes, NATO Secretary. Yes, NATO Secretary General. He's like well-loved, you know, and everything else like that over just, I think, wanting to train, you know, Ukrainians and F-16s. Do you have any insight in that, like where that might come from or what that was about?

That gets a little more into some of the military politics that they really focus on day in and day out. But yeah, I think the hope here, I think that we can talk about what the U.S. wants out of this. And I think maybe the main motivation is this is kind of the, we use the term like order defining, where Russia is basically proposition that it is okay on the global. I mean, they wouldn't say this broadly, but demonstrating in Ukraine, it is okay to invade countries and conquer territory, which is very, very problematic if you're the leading global power. I mean, U.S. has an eye on Taiwan as it's watching what happens in Ukraine. Hey, if we don't demonstrate the credibility of defense commitments in our interests, Taiwan is next, and that's not good. China's scarier than Russia is.

Right, right. Do we have questions for Aaron? Hit me. We do, and we have some on Patreon. Let me get the ones on YouTube real quick. If I could have it on my hobby horse for a second here, one of the things we. We talked about the arguments that the U.S. isn't spending money domestically because it's funding Ukraine. I just want to whack that with a hammer.

The reason that we can continue to fund Ukraine is because there's maybe frayed a little bit, but there's a political consensus in the states that that's a doable thing. And there isn't about other domestic spending. If there was a consensus about domestic spending, we could do that too. So it's not because there's no money left because we gave it all to Ukraine. We talked about that on our Patreon special, you know, our Patreon viewer special that, yeah, we're giving a lot of money to Ukraine, but the idea that we're taking that away from people in Hawaii or, you know, people in, you know, who live below, you know, the poverty level, whatever, like, our government wasn't doing that anyway. Right. You know, and they could give, they could help out Hawaii.

They could help out, you know. There's a coherence isolation. world view that would say we shouldn't support Ukraine. But like the number part of it, the like fiscal policy, that's not, that's not the reason. You can make that argument without saying, oh, because we need the money for domestic reasons. Now, the fiscal policy is interesting because I think right now most people who are in support of supporting, who support Ukraine or support our efforts in Ukraine, say, yes, keep sending the money. it'll be interesting to see if this goes on another five years, another 10 years, you know,

what if that's, if that changes. Because we're blissfully, like we are blissfully removed from the horrors of what's going on. So all it is to us is a is a budgetary number, right? And a drop in the bucket at that for budgetary numbers. But we're blissfully removed from the actual toll that this war. is taking on the Ukrainians and the Russian you know the Russians who are being pushing this war too I mean obviously they could another hobby horse item that like we're making the Ukrainians fight when they don't want to like yeah I don't I don't

proxy thing is like yeah well so I think people say like the war is like oh it's because of the counteroffensive like the war is getting less popular there was the recent poll like 55% of Americans say enough and I think that's probably getting way over our ski is to suggest that most Americans are following the ebb and flow of the war very closely. I think it's more about inflation and the economy and the amounts to which the war is in the news. And the trend I've tended to see when we had the Hartkev counter-offensive and Ukraine made this smash-and-grab, amazing offensive. America started noticing Ukraine was in the news. They did something good.

Oh, yeah, like right-rah Ukraine. Like, let's give them more money. And then there's been kind of added the news, the kind of same malaise with the economy here. there's still inflation that's bad. Oh, Ukraine, what's even going on? If Ukraine breaks through again, they'll be like, oh, wait, like, way to go Ukraine, rah, rah. So like.

Right. So Doc Point, thank you very much. Did experts correctly assess the improvements Ukraine made to its defense capability since 2014? What did they get right and wrong about the beginning? So I think the entire field, most of the entire field, there's a couple of people. When I would shout out Mike Kaufman, who does a lot of podcasting on War on the Rocks, is like him and Rob Lee, who does work with FPRI, too, are like the preeminent, if he wants, tactical updates

and like real nitty-gritty military in a way I be above my pay grade. Great follows. So, yeah, what changed since 2014 about Ukraine's military? So we've seen the adoption of Western-style delegated warfare, like the emergence of a strong NCO Corps. we've seen that kind of take hold in the military. We saw that particularly in the chaos of the first days of the war where there was kind of just chaos going on.

In so many cases, just civilians picking up guns and fighting. I mean, the initiative, amazing. But smaller units are able to do that, and I think one of the things that we're now budding into with the counteroffensive, and I've heard, and again on podcasts like in War on the Rocks from Mike and Rob, that smaller units have been able to adopt this, but division level coordinated.

When you have generals involved, they tend to be of a more Soviet mindset. And that's complicated things. They are very, you know, like, objective. You go here and then you go here, and casualties be darned. We're going to do what we have to do there. I think Ukrainians have demonstrated a lot of ingenuity

adopting new hardware and technology. They have this real, like, patchwork of different military equipment, tanks and vehicles. They've strapped like what like J-dam's to like Suhoi aircraft. They're not built to attach to each other. They figured that out. So a lot of technical ingenuity which is not surprising.

I mean pursuing like drone warfare. That's been crazy to see. Sinking there's a great article in the Economist magazine about how the Moscow was sunk and Ukraine had they built a lot of missile rocket motors for Russia before things. Yeah, back to the Soviet Union, they're like their main supplier of ballistic missiles, I believe.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the war drags, unlike Ukraine will build nuclear otherwise, but will build ballistic missile capabilities because they can. Right. They have the know-how on hand. Right. Yeah, as a deterrent. Do you see them at all attempting to restart their nuclear program? It's interesting.

So the politics would potentially favor it. it would be a way to extract concessions from the West. That they have nuclear power plants indicates that they have the capability to produce. So they have the technical know-how, certainly. As far as to do that stealthily, like, break out and what is mechanically required to do, I would defer. There's a lot that goes in. I would refer to experts.

But as far as the policies, yeah, you could say, like, Russia, this is our final line of defense to ensure the existence of our state. Hey, West, like, we would hate to do this. So why don't you keep sending us stuff and we'll agree that we're not going to build a new... Like the politics, the politics are there. I mean, one of the agreements we made with them when they denuclearized. The Budapest and Miranda. We defend them.

Territorial integrity. Yeah. Territorial integrity. DeNuclidate. Yeah. A couple of glasses. The whiskey, yeah. Yeah. And dog point, thanks again, did you work with other Tier 1 units or FBI, H-R-T? What did you think of them? Just kidding.

Grats. on the 100K emails. Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it, ma'am. And then, Osir Roberto, how would you adjust sanctions? Go after transshipments countries like Kyrgyzstan?

Yeah, so it's a great, great question. That's something in my job now that we need transshipments. Figuring out how we still see U.S. dual use and chips winding up in Russian military components. So adjusting sanctions, there's kind of a theory with sanctions.

they're either getting stronger or getting weaker. You can't have consistent sanctions because people start finding loopholes. Now, it's much easier to adjust sanctions than to find new loopholes. The sanction, what? OFAC is the Office of Foreign Asset Control at Treasury. They just write a sentence on a piece of paper that's implemented, but to build a supply chain to get around sanctions takes time and money. But, yeah, there's certain transitment issues.

its enforcement of existing sanctions. There are certain limitations. Sanctions against Kyrgyzstan would land a lot better than sanctions against Turkey because we need Turkey as a NATO ally. And they could be realistically an honest broker for peace deal. So there may be limitations there. The part with sanctions about Russia, as far as Russia goes,

is that this is a delayed fuse damage. Russia is basically mortgaging its future right now. And the impact of sanctions will be felt a lot more going forward as deferred investments that really starts to bite. So we may see the true impact of sanctions later. To say they haven't worked against Russia is wrong. They haven't stopped the war. Certainly not by any means. But they have done damage and made it harder for Russia to operate.

And then a couple questions from Patreon. How do you assess the state of European support for Ukraine? If you have support waivers as the 24 election cycle approaches, can Europe provide enough of a backstop to avoid a stale? Yeah, so it will take time. Europe is kind of remilitarizing, ramping up production. I've seen certainly European political will do okay. There's Orban and Hungary is kind of the counter example there for his own political reasons.

Turkey came around after the election because it was really seen. It seems like it was mostly domestic politics and this long-term geopolitical agenda, but now it's fine. But yeah, this Schultz moment of like, yes, we actually can, hey, we can resist Russia. Look, there's the kind of ever-presence threat of populism in Russia, like Le Pen in France. I still think, my view, and this may be proven wrong, it's more about inflation in the economy than Russia per se. I don't think anybody among European populists or even in the, even the United States, like, gets points for being for Russia anymore because it now means something it didn't used to mean. You know, for Trump or the pen to be like, oh, like we can do business with Russia. Or who's the New Year in the Republican debate, Vivek, I don't want to pronounce his last name wrong.

I certainly will. But he was talking about like he'd doing business with Russia. I don't think if he became president would actually come to any meaningful agreement, but I think it's differentiation versus... Yeah. In a debate, you get to say all kinds of stupid stuff, like, we're going to bomb Mexico. You would never do if you were actually elected. But I think it's more about inflation and domestic political factors than it is actually about Russia or Ukraine, per se.

Yeah. Now, in Europe, what's happening, like the decoupling from Russia has a much greater political and economic impact than it does in the States, because Europe and Russia were much more tightly integrated. One of the things we saw between last time I spoke with you and now is that Europe got really lucky because it was an extremely warm winter last year and it spared the worst of Russia turning off the gas spigate. Right. Well, not just them turning off, but Nordstrom 2. Getting blown up. Another mystery along the way.

Isaac, thanks. How do you think Chinese PMCs are reacting to everything widely related in the day? to the assassination, or does the PRC even have their Wagner? I'm less familiar. I'm not a China specialist, so I don't want to get out of my lane here. As far as I understand, Chinese PMCs have been largely around like resource plays in Africa, as best I understand. I think it's different politics around that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is, in my opinion, I think there's going to be a certain amount of like social learning or military learning that like they see what's possible um you know did russia see what was possible with private

military uh companies from what we did in iraq i mean the chinese tried to bring eric prince into the fold i mean literally at one so it's not the end of p mc's in russia mind you so there's gasprum gaspram as we would say oil company english um has has like an affiliated fakil is uh like a like a like a torch is i guess the say that in English, like a PMC. And I mean, these local military formations and private military companies, it's a way of distributing rents, like these excess economic profits,

keeping the system in line. So like, that need is still there for Russia. Just that Wagner got like a little out over at skis by marching on Moscow. Yeah. Right. Don't do that, yeah. And then who were the people on the plane,

who were the other people on the plane, where they just clobner? If so, this is the Kremlin killing their own citizens so they can raise the tensions among the Russian people against their government? Not to raise tensions among people. Yeah, there was collateral damage, but what the casualty report is the 140,000 Russians have died in this war. So, like, what's another for?

So it was, the key players, so was, it was Pregojon and then Utkin, where the two primary leaders of Wagner who were who were oft. They're the ones who were yeah and then flight attendance which is you know sad. Yeah another unfortunate aviation mishap. Yeah and so has Wagner group been completely like absorbed by the military at this? So they're apparently leaving Belarus last I read I think we'll see kind of what happens but I think that's likely the the outcome. That's it for questions. All right. I mean, any final thoughts as we wrap up here about... We covered a lot of grounds today. That was a lot to bring back up to speed. I would just float. It was really sexy at the beginning of the war to donate to Ukraine to hang flags and there's a lot

of humanitarian need still. I mean, especially the destruction of the Novoyakovka Dam, like the huge ecological catastrophe. It's not talked about it anymore. Rasm for Ukraine, R-A-Z-O-M, if you feel generous, want to chuck them a buck, would still recommend it. It's still very, very much needed. Yeah, seven of a buck, folks. I mean, humanitarian aid is always cool. And you mentioned that you do this podcast, you work with this think tank.

I mean, where can people find you and find your work? Yeah, so if you look up at Twitter, at the handle at Bear Market Brief, bear, you can find it there. B-A-R-E-A-R, like Russia, but also bear market. It was a plan words at the time. I thought it was a naked market. You can find it there. If you look up Chain Reaction podcast, anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can find stuff there.

So I do a couple. I do bear market brief, which is about get Russian, Eurasian, Ukrainian politics. I do another series called The Continent where each episode I visit, quote, I wish I could visit in person, but I visit a country in Europe as a non-expert to learn about, hey, war in Ukraine, has it impacted Germany, Poland. I did a Serbia-Kosovo one recently. So I'm going to do one in September about Moldova. So like learning on the ground about what's actually happening as a non-expert, so very accessible. So another way you can learn with me.

It's been kind of fun to do. Anywhere else? Yeah, that's, I think. Oh, yeah. So as far as countries. Or I mean, places where people can find. your worker. And then on Twitter, though I try to stay off of it

as much as I can, sorry, on X. I've seen your dad jokes on there. Yeah, a lot of dumb wordplay, sometimes analysis, but I think the podcast is really where I do most of the work. And then on Twitter some remarks as we have interesting weeks like this one. Now, I guess

the kind of final fun Russia subject matter fact is that August is traditionally an inauspicious month for Russia. And there's a few days left of August. So we'll see we'll see what happens. Well, hopefully we'll have you

in here next year, but we will be discussing how the war ended. Let's hope for the people involved. Yeah, absolutely. And next Friday, we will be back with Chris Whitcomb. Chris served on the FBI hostage rescue team, and we'll have him here in studio,

so we're really excited to talk to him. Aaron, thanks for coming by tonight. Thanks be back. Thank you. Yeah, we'll do it again. You know, sometime, you know, like Dave said, maybe in next year, have you back for another update. And we really appreciate having, you know, your expertise on the show. Great to be back.

All right, guys. So we will see you next Friday. Take care out there. Oh, and thank you.