Russia's War in Ukraine at One Year: Military Analysis

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, part two of our two-part look at the war in Ukraine as it hits the one-year mark next Friday of the day Russia began the invasion. Yesterday, we talked about the state of the humanitarian crisis sparked by the war with an estimated 14 million people displaced from their homes according to our guests from the International Rescue Committee, and the incredible hardships, including shortages of food, power, and medical care for those who remain in their homes, not to mention those being killed all because Russia is targeting civilian targets so much.

Today, for this part two, we'll discuss the military state of the war, including whether either side can actually win or break the relative stalemate they've been in for basically the whole year, whether anything can move the two sides to compromises for the sake of peace, is it getting time for some Ukrainians to give Russia something that it doesn't deserve, plus the politics and finances of the United States and European military aid, how politically or economically sustainable are they and how do they affect the military strategies on both sides.

With us for this is Fred Kaplan, who writes the military affairs column for Slate called War Stories. He knows Russian affairs from having been a Boston Globe Moscow correspondent, and he is the author of books, including his latest, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Fred's been extremely productive recently, by the way, so if we have time, we might also touch on his take on how the Chinese spy balloon incident was, in a way, a big misunderstanding, though in a way not, his debate on US policy with Foreign Affairs journalist Robert Wright on foreign policy.

Maybe even his recent article on why jazz versions of songs by the Beatles are always bad, except for a new album by the piano player Brad Mehldau. Fred, thanks for taking some time from your well-worn writing keyboard for us today, and welcome back to WNYC.

Fred: Sure. Always a pleasure.

Brian: Is either side winning this war?

Fred: No, not really. An outfit called the Institute for the Study of War published a very interesting graph the other day, measuring how much land each side has taken over time. If you look at the map, a few months ago, Russia had a big spurt and then a few weeks ago, Ukraine had a big spurt, but basically, it's flat. In other words, neither side has taken any territory despite-- the fighting is fierce. There was a battle recently where Russia lost an entire brigade, that's about 1,000 soldiers in two days. Russia has lost, the estimates have it, about a half of their tanks.

Ukraine has lost about a third of its tanks. Putin's strategy right now, he's preparing for an offensive everybody says, but what this offensive has amounted to so far is just throwing ill-trained troops into battle as just cannon fodder, just to keep the Ukrainians from regrouping for their offensive, from having to remain on the defensive, but it's just fighting that really harkens back to the early years of World War I. Everybody is dug in, occasionally somebody will mount this wild-eyed mad rush toward the front only to get plowed down. It's a kind of warfare that really nobody ever thought we would ever see in the heart of Europe again.

Brian: You mentioned those 1,000 troops in a two-day offensive and all those tanks both sides are losing, do you have a rough human casualty count for either side for the year, like numbers of soldiers or civilians killed or wounded on either side? I've seen US officials quoted saying 200,000 Russians dead or wounded and 100,000 Ukrainian so far. Do you have any numbers?

Fred: Those are the same numbers I've read. On the Russian side between 150,000 and 200,000, maybe on the Ukrainian side 80,000 to a 100,000. It's wounded and dead. We don't know how many are wounded, how many dead. This is based on things like satellite photography of things like abandoned armored vehicles and then inferences of how many people were attached to those vehicles and their support units before and they're no longer there, so you assume that they're gone. In other words, nobody's doing an on-the-ground survey of people in hospitals.

These are all very rough estimates. In some ways, in terms of data gathered, it's the most real-time transparent war maybe that we've ever seen. On the other hand, there is also still a lot of uncertainties about the precise numbers of what's happening.

Brian: For a little historical context, just to reflect on how many people are being killed or wounded in such a short, concentrated period of time. The total US death toll for the entire Vietnam War, which was a decade is around 58,000. That's the number of names that are etched in the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. That took 10 years.

Fred: Well, and the number of total Russian deaths in Afghanistan, which was also about 10 years was 15,000.

Brian: If I bring up Vietnam, I should acknowledge that it's generally believed that millions of Vietnamese were killed.

Fred: Yes, we don't know. Yes, exactly.

Brian: I assume the Russian casualties are all soldiers. Any idea the percentage of the Ukrainian casualties who would be civilians?

Fred: I think the casualty numbers that they're talking about are just soldiers. Obviously, civilians, it's much fewer. Let's say a bomb hits a school. Now, I don't mean to sound callous about this, but if a dozen people died, that would be a large number of people. If there's some fighting on the field, a dozen people isn't so many. The vast majority of these deaths are military.

Brian: When I said in the intro that it's become increasingly part of the Russian strategy to target civilian targets, to wear down the population if they can't win on the battlefield, is that accurate?

Fred: Yes, it's completely accurate. This is really warfare at its crudest, not just for civilians, but also the military. When the Russians have mounted an offensive, again, it's just rushing troops into the fray. Let's say they had a breakthrough, they broke through a defensive line. The whole idea of these kinds of offenses, theoretically, is you break through a line and then you surround the troops, you envelop them, and then you make the hole in the defense even bigger.

Russian's army and its militia allies have shown no ability to exploit, to capitalize on any breakthroughs that they have. A lot of the troops they're using, this group of private militias, they'd been recruiting people from prisons saying, "Here, come with us. Come to the line, and then you'll be free when you're done." They're just being thrown into battle. The assumption is that they're going to die. They're just being thrown in there just to be killed to absorb Ukrainian bullets and missiles. Both sides are using about a million artillery shells a month.

The carnage is just incredible. Yes, Russia has no plan for strategic victory, so they're just blasting electrical power plants, cities, and yes, the whole idea is to try to wear out the patience of the Ukrainian population and of the Ukrainian army before a huge influx of new weapons and supplies will come in from the west, mainly from the United States. The whole point of Ukrainian strategy right now, which can't mount a tremendous offensive until it gets more of these weapons is just to hold on, to keep the Russian army contained.

Luckily, this Russian offensive is so incompetent, so crude, that as long as the Ukrainians can remain dug in and have enough weapons just to hold off their offensive, this isn't so difficult.

Brian: I want to ask you about the public opinion aspects of this on both sides of the conflict, but I also want to invite our listeners in, so let me do that first. Listeners, your comments and questions about the military state of the war in Ukraine, or US involvement in the war, which we will get to with Fred Kaplan from Slate, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Anyone from Ukraine or in Ukraine or with connections to Ukraine, especially invited to call in, but anyone can, 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Fred, I know someone personally here in New York who is from Ukraine and is in regular touch with people back there. This person said to me recently that the Ukrainian people are starting to sour on Zelenskyy and his insistence on continuing this war with the humanitarian disaster at springing, and that there's a growing sense there will be better to live under Russian control than keep living with this awful as everything about Putin in this war is. I have no idea if this person I know is in a tiny bubble or if there's really a souring on Zelenskyy and the war in any broad sense.

I can find nothing suggesting that in the media that I've scoured, but I figured it at least is worth a question. Have you heard anything other than Ukrainians remain in a staunch no-surrender mode in public opinion?

Fred: That's what the public opinion polls got. It's kind of funny. I was thinking when you said this friend of yours who's been in touch with the Ukrainian people, I mean, imagine if there is--

Brian: Well, with individual's thing.

Fred: Well, right, but I mean it would be like somebody who's in touch with American friends back home and well, other question, are these Americans in Manhattan or are they in Little Rock, Arkansas? About any issue? Where are they? What kind of people are we talking about? The polls indicate that the massive majorities on both sides are in favor of the war. Now, are these polls reliable? I don't know. I think the Russian polls are probably not. I mean, if somebody, if you're in Moscow and you know that it's against the law, you can be thrown in jail for a long time to even criticize the war or to criticize Putin.

Somebody calls you on the phone and say, "I'm with Public Opinion Institute. What do you think of the war?" Are you going to say, "No, I really don't like it at all"? The guy has your phone number, probably your name. On the Ukrainian side, there's a lot of punishment for collaborators. Let's say you really are tired of the war. Are you going to say that? You might even think if I say that, it's going to be bad for morale, which indeed it would be. I don't know if we know much at all about what the-- and then you have a million Ukrainians out of the country.

You have more than a million Russians who have gone into exile because it's not the kind of country they want to live in anymore. Popular opinion is a fuzzy ill-defined thing in this conflict. I do think though that, I've said this before, I think that if back in February of last year, if Putin had amassed all of these troops, 150,000 troops, and then if all he had done was just to occupy those Eastern territories Donetsk, Luhansk which he has always claimed were more Russian. The polls at the time showed were more pro-Russia, and that's all he had done and done no more, and said, "Okay, this is part of Russia now."

I think he probably would've gotten away with it, both in Ukraine and in the international community. I can't see the United States sending 20 billion in weapons to Ukraine. I'm not saying it would've been right, I just don't see it would've happened. The fact that he mounted an invasion of all of Ukraine and that he has occupied these Easternmost territories and hasn't made much progress since February in those areas and has bombed and just murdered so many civilians. It has turned opinion even in the Eastern parks of Ukraine against Russia.

If there was a peace talks tomorrow, and Zelenskyy just said, "Okay, yes, you can have those two districts," I think that would be seen by a lot of Ukrainians as a horrible betrayal.

Brian: Here's a question for you on Twitter, which I don't know if the listener knows, relates to your most recent book. Fred's most recent book is called The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Fred, this listener Tweets, "Given the lousy state of the Russian Army, what should we think about the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal? Are there nukes in good shape and ready to work, or have they been poorly managed and does that matter?"

Fred: Well, that's a good question. It doesn't matter is also a very interesting question. If you think that your arsenal is effective, and the main purpose of it is to deter the other side from doing anything that might set you off to launch them, it doesn't matter. I suspect based on what I know, but this is dated, the Russians kept their nuclear arsenal in pretty good condition. They test their missiles fairly regularly. They seem to go off without blowing up on the launch pad, that kind of thing.

Let's put it this way, I think it would be very dangerous to say, "Let's not worry about the Russian nukes because they probably don't work." I think that would be a very dangerous premise to go into any subsequent analysis with.

Brian: With Fred Kaplan from Slate. As we have a little while to go here in part two of our two-part look at the state of the war in Ukraine at one year. Yesterday, it was on the humanitarian crisis sparked by the war today on the military state of the conflict. Jerome hanging there, we're going to take you second. Acacia in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hello, Acacia.

Acacia: Hi, I just wanted to hear Kaplan's opinion on Seymour Hersh's recent piece and the impact that could have both from military standpoint and also collateral damage and the environmental impact that Mr. Hersh didn't even mention in his piece at all.

Brian: Bombing the Nord Stream pipeline.

Fred: This is a very long conversation, but I'll say very briefly. That story was based on one anonymous source. I've read subsequent analysis, which indicates that some of the premises of that story where certain US ships, planes, and certain Norwegian ships were at the time turns out to be incorrect. It's been thoroughly denied. I assume that the reason why you haven't read follow-ups in any other newspaper or magazine is not because people, reporters, and editors have said, "Oh, this is too dangerous to go into," but that they've looked into it and haven't found anything.

Now, I would just say this, could it be true that it was the US that blew up the pipeline? Yes, it could be, and I say this with regret since Seymour Hersh is an old friend and one-time mentor of mine, and one time was one of the great investigative reporters, but there's no solid evidence in this article to prove that.

Brian: Jerome in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jerome.

Jerome: Hi, I'm calling about a recent op-ed page in the op-ed article in the New York Times. I don't remember the office name, but I think it was titled something like this is Biden's War with Russia. The premise was that we are ascending increasingly more sophisticated weapons, more powerful weapons to the war. These require all kinds of backup intelligence on the part of the United States to make them effective. It's going to require American sophisticated people trained to maintain these weapons and then not necessarily going to be Ukrainians.

Here's pointing to a mission creep that if things go the way they are going, it will lead to a direct conflict with Russia.

Brian: Fred, your thoughts?

Fred: Yes, I would say two things. One, it is true that that US has been providing intelligence information to Ukraine from the very beginning, and this has been crucial. Ukraine has been able to mount ambush operations, for example, against Russian troops because our intelligence agencies have been informing their commanders, where the Russian troops are, where they have been, where they're going. The communications that are going back and forth between Russian troops and their officers and so forth.

This has been vital. This has been absolutely crucial to the Ukrainian warfare. It is also true that we're sending increasingly sophisticated weapons which require maintenance and so forth. Although Ukrainians are being trained to do this on basis either in Germany or Poland. I do not think that US Armed Forces are actually on Ukrainian soil. As for the mission creep, one thing to say is that, President Biden and really every other leader of the other NATO countries involved has been very careful to avoid crossing that line.

Biden has said that we've drawn, we've respected many of Putin's so-called red lines to even when they turn out not to be red lines. However, one red line that I don't think we're going to cross is not putting US troops on the ground or in the sky over Ukraine, not allowing Ukraine to have weapons that could strike deep within Russian territory. I think Biden has said this many times, we do not want to start World War III. I think that the war, it's popularity here, is declining a bit, it is still overall quite popular and the reason for that is that no American soldiers have been killed.

I think the minute that an American soldier is killed in the war or a German soldier or a French soldier or whatever, I think that is when support really goes south. I'm pretty sure that all the western leaders realize this. They spend a fair amount of time reminding Zelenskyy of this while providing him with really anybody who says that we're really being very skim patience in providing Ukraine with military support, really ought to take a look at the list of stuff that we've been sending them. It's really extraordinary.

Brian: To what all that costs, I think we have our next caller. Janice in Austin, Texas. Janice, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Janice: Hello. Thank you. Ever since I can remember there has been, it seems to me anyway an unlimited budget for military expenses. I was wondering if the US government ever negotiates the price of weapons the way they do negotiate the price of drugs.

Brian: Of course, they weren't allowed to do that until it just passed in the last Congress negotiate the price of drugs for Medicare. What about the negotiations with the defense contractors? They're making out bandits with US support for the Ukraine war?

Fred: First, unlike pharmaceutical drugs, nobody else but governments are buying F-16 aircraft, for example, so that's all that it is. There are negotiators. How diligent or disciplined they are is another question. Most of these weapons are coming out of US stockpiles. The stockpiles are being replenished by paying the defense manufacturers to build more of them. Are they making out like bandits? No, a lot of this stuff is not really high-cost stuff. A lot of what we're doing is ammunition, artillery shells. This is not the stuff of billions of dollars of profits for Lockheed Martin. We have sex twofold.

Brian: They were asking for F-16 fighter jets. Are we sending those?

Fred: No. There are two reasons for that, or maybe three reasons. One, they are quite expensive. Two, it takes a lot of maintenance. Three, an airplane-- Zelenskyy might say, "Don't worry, we're not going to fly. Our pilots are not going to fly over Moscow," but they could with an airplane of that range. Fourth, neither side is using many airplanes right now because they are getting shot down by a dense network of air defense weapons on both sides. Even Russia which has air superiority over Ukraine. They're not sending their planes too far out in front of the front lines because once they do, they get shot down instantly.

Brian: I hear all that many reasons for not sending them F-16 fighter jets. We have two minutes left. Two things briefly. One, while we're on the corporate profit side, did you see the Times article today, New York Times about multinational companies already jockeying for position on contracts to rebuild Ukraine after the war? I wonder if that means the end of the war is in sight or just that companies are taking the long economic view of their interests.

Fred: I don't think the companies have any special insight into when the war is going to be over. I think they're planning for the long-term.

Brian: How does this end?

Fred: I think it ends like most wars end with one of two things, one of two ways. Somebody on the inside kills Putin and a more conciliatory leader comes to the fore. Neither of those things, by the way, are necessarily going to happen and the one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. The other way is some kind of diplomatic solution after both sides are completely exhausted and people say, "Let's have a diplomatic solution now." The problem with that is, it would be a surrender only by Ukraine.

There is nobody we have no leverage over Russia and nobody else is applying pressure on Russia. If, say, the United States had perfectly copacetic relations with China right now, one could envision the possibility where we team up together, Washington and Beijing. We pressure Ukraine, Beijing pressures Russia, and they both go to the peace table but that isn't the case right now. Both sides each side thinks that they might win, and therefore, they're going to hold out hoping the other side caves in first. As long as that is the case, the war is going to continue.

Brian: Fred Kaplan writes the column called, War Stories for Slate. He's the author of books including his latest, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, and if you want to know about his take on why jazz albums that cover Beatles songs are always bad, except a new one by the piano player, Brad Mehldau. You'll just have to read it for yourself on Slate. Fred, thank you very much for coming on.

Fred: Sure.

Brian: That's our two-part look yesterday at today at the humanitarian crisis yesterday the state of the military conflict today as the Ukraine War hits one year.

 

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