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- [00:00]
A
Dan I'm Dan Kurtzphelin, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
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B
At this point in the war, this is like survival mode. You know, this is existential. And we're going to grab bodies off the street. We're going to give them a few weeks of training, maybe a few months in some cases, and then we're going to throw them in.
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A
In Ukraine, as war with Russia grinds on, one question has become decisive. Which side will outlast the other, especially as both face another grueling winter. One thing Russia has in ample supply is men. But how Russia treats its soldiers is having an impact on the battlefield, argues Dara Masiko. Dara has studied the Russian military for years, first for the U.S. defense Department and later at RAND in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My colleague Kate Brannan sat down with her to discuss how the human dimension of this war provides clues about where it might be headed next.
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C
Dara, thank you so much for joining us today.
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B
Thanks for having me.
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C
As we head into winter, the central question driving the war in Ukraine seems to be how long can each side sustain this war, or does one side have the ability to outlast the other? And to dig into this, I thought we should start with what's going on today on the battlefield. What can you tell us about the Ukrainian counter offensive? After about four months, we know the front lines haven't changed much, but what effect has the counteroffensive had on the Russian military?
- [01:31]
B
You're right. October marks the fourth month of Ukraine's counteroffensive, and they have made some limited gains in the south, in Zaporizhzhia, it's been slowed by complex and active Russian defenses that have been set up since the fall of last year. So they have not probably made as much progress as they hoped, but they are still taking active cuts at the Russian military in very precise ways. So there's the frontline engagement. There's also the deep battle or deep strikes on Russian sites behind the lines in Crimea, in occupied Ukraine, with a mixture of counter battery fire and precision strike. So even though there's not much changing lately on the ground, there are still damage being done in terms of what's going on with the Russians. For the last two or three weeks, they have launched several localized offensives in Donetsk and Luhansk. They are making slow progress in their attempts to encircle the town of Avdiivka near Donetsk. Now, in this process, they have lost several battalions of equipment and personnel while fighting for this town, which doesn't hold a Lot of strategic significance. I think it's mostly to even out their front line. It's to try to provide some additional fire control over a few specific routes in the area. But again, they are paying a very high price for this. Ukrainian brigades defending Avdiivka are at risk of being encircled, and they're paying a price, too.
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C
If they take the city, how do you think the Russians will portray it? Will they claim it a bigger victory than maybe it is?
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B
There's any number of ways that they could try to spin this. It's not an accomplishment given what they've paid for it. I mean, there's losses in war, but it just seems like they're throwing capital resources and human resources at this that they don't actually have. Like, they cannot sustain this for every 30 kilometers of Ukrainian territory that they want to reclaim.
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C
You know, it's clear. And you've talked about the casualty numbers are extremely high. How can listeners kind of wrap their heads around this level of casualties? Can you compare it to what the US Military has sustained in the recent wars it's fought?
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B
It's hard to verify the exact numbers. So the Ukrainians have said somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 casualties and 400 pieces of equipment, as far as I know. The last update today on commercial imagery puts that number somewhere between 100 and 150 confirmed vehicle losses. Going from that as a floor, just those. That's anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 casualties, either killed or severely wounded. So to sustain that amount of casualties in two or three weeks, we don't have recent experience with this. I mean, these are like World War II levels of fatalities.
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C
Let's switch gears just a little bit as we think about how Russia is sustaining its side of the war. And tell us a little bit about its military industrial capacity and what steps it's taking to make sure it continues to have the equipment and weapons it needs as it burns through them so fast on the battlefield.
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B
Yes. So Russia has been ramping up its defense industrial base for the past year. Once they declared mobilization is when we really saw that change. They are now producing more on a few different metrics. So if we're talking about artillery shells, they are estimated to bring their production up anywhere from one one and a half million to upwards of 2 million artillery shells per year, potentially by 2024, end of 2024, they are repairing armored vehicles at a faster rate than expected. And they are also producing missiles at around a triple the rate that they were in 2022. And what that allows Them to do is to produce a few dozen intermediate long range PGMs or precision guided munitions. And they've been launching them at Ukraine, basically rolling out of the factory and loading them and launching them in terms of what else they're doing. They have also recently received ammunition from the North Koreans. This was a byproduct of the big push from Defense Minister Shoigu and Putin earlier this summer to either visit North Korea or host Kim Jong Un. They think that depending on who you ask, whether it's NATO or whether it's United States, the estimate that they may be getting from the North Koreans is around 350,000 artillery shells for now. And to put that number into context, at the rate of fire that the Russians are at, which is very high rate of fire, about 10,000 rounds a day, that's a month, a month and a half. But to put that number into context, in terms of the United States, 350,000 shells is slightly higher than what we can produce in one year, assuming a rate of 24,000 shells a month. So it's not good from an artillery production perspective.
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C
I've seen some coverage of the role that North Korea is now playing. As some people say it's a sign of Russian weakness that they have to turn to the North Koreans, while others say, well, Ukraine is also having to turn to partners to get what it needs. How do you view that move on Russia's part? Is it a source of strength or sort of a sign of its weakness?
- [06:49]
B
Well, yeah, I think that's exactly right. You know, Ukraine is dependent in most respects on being supplied from its partners right now, particularly with reference to artillery shells. Is this a sign of Russian weakness? I would say it would be if they didn't have a functioning defense industrial base that can produce for them at a rate that outpaces Ukraine's and also outpaces the West.
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C
When you step back, is it possible to say one side has an edge over the other in terms of its ability to replenish weapons and equipment just
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B
from a numbers game? Russia is at an advantage here with sustainment and production capacity. Now, some of the sanctions are hurting their more advanced components, but they're not giving up. They're creating shell companies. They're getting sub components from China and other places so they can continue to do this. They are able to domestically produce a significant number of artillery rounds and make repairs. So that sets them at the edge. How does Ukraine mitigate this? Well, several different ways. So Ukrainian counter battery fire is enabled by really successful drone usage. Ukraine is being supported by the west with intelligence and other information provided to them. They are using their PGMs in a very methodical way that is very damaging to Russian logistics and Russian command posts. So Ukraine can undercut some of that numerical advantage, but it can't compensate, you know, just from the sheer volume, from that quantitative perspective.
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C
You wrote for us last spring, I believe, a wonderful piece called what Russia Got Wrong that looks closely at decision making and the problems that went into the start of the war. But also a really great piece that I return to a lot that you wrote early on in the war in May 2022, called the Russian Military's People Problem, which really looks closely at how the government treats its military and treats the people who serve in the military. Just to start here, what's so toxic about the culture within the Russian military?
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B
I'm always making sure, as much as I can, to not judge from my perspective as an American, because it's like apples and oranges, but to understand them in the context of themselves. And what is really striking to me and other people who have followed the Russian military for 20 years now is that they did spend about 15 years, a lot of money, a lot of policies to try to eradicate some of the brutality that is a holdover from the Soviet or even czarist military, to reduce corruption, to reduce hazing, to reduce this brutal command style. And there was progress that was made. I mean, they knew it is not compatible for us to have a professional enlisted military and treat people this way. People will not sign up. So there was that recognition. It was early in the process, you know, 10 years into it, 15 years into it, max, really, where there was progress. And then they went to Ukraine and they defaulted to their old patterns. I mean, just the same old stuff, not telling the force what they were going to do, that they were going to war until in many cases the day in advance. So just really cannot overstate the mistake that this was for them strategically. The other thing that I'm thinking about in real time here is how much of that was predicated on Russian intelligence assessments that, you know, they had hundreds of people who were willing to be this stand up, you know, puppet government for them, or they had all this intelligence that, you know, the Ukrainians would not fight back or were not prepared to fight back and that the west wouldn't get involved. I mean, Russian intelligence, even within the Russian power ministry community in Moscow, is not viewed as always communicating accurate results, accurate accounts. So, you know, for them to assume that that all checked out and all that intelligence work was locked tight was another huge mistake on their part.
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C
So they were lying to themselves about themselves, but also lying to themselves about Ukraine and how it would react.
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B
Yes. And, you know, if we're taking this back to February 22nd, they could probably look at, you know, the government in Kyiv at the time who really didn't start preparing for an invasion until right before February 22nd. So they, you know, could look at their sources, they could look at what some of the military units were doing and conclude that they weren't prepared, they weren't ready. This is a story that they could plausibly tell themselves. And they're already anchoring on their belief that the Ukrainians wouldn't fight back. So you can see how these things started rapidly compounding to where they felt like they had properly assessed the situation because they saw what they wanted to see.
- [11:44]
C
When we think about both sides being able to sustain what they need to for this war, part of that is morale. And on the Ukrainian side, we know morale has been from the start quite high and continues to be. And it's cloudier on the Russian side for me. But how important is morale to a military's performance? And how do you judge Russian morale right now?
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B
Morale is really important, and we know that. I mean, the Ukrainians have no other choice. I mean, look at the alternative to how Ukrainians are treated under Russian occupation. You know, whether it's torture centers or being, you know, sent through filtration camps back into Russia or, you know, stealing children, all of these things. I mean, they're on death ground like they're fighting. They're committed to this. And you compare that with what's going on in Russian units right now. And here I want to talk about the complicated issue about Russian morale. Yes, Russian morale is poor. You know, their commanders are abusive or absent or extorting them for money for, you know, entitled leave that they are entitled to have. But that being said, their baseline for what is acceptable treatment is far lower than what Western militaries would tolerate. And by that, I mean, you know, they have not experienced a whole lot of positive treatment, and they don't expect a lot of positive treatment even with their morale the way that it is. They're still able to attack the Ukrainian forces. They're still able to launch artillery shells on them. They're still able to conduct operations. What this means, though, is that they're not doing it at a very effective level or what they could be capable of if their command was different. I mean, we're getting into multiple layers of hypotheticals at this point. But I think it's important to know that yes, Russian desertions are up. Yes, there are instances where people are not following orders and they're just kind of ignoring them. But there's not this massive groundswell everybody's going to pick up and just start walking back to the east from Moscow. I mean, that's not happening. It's not happening because there's blocking battalions. And for those of you who know your Soviet history, these are units with the express purpose of, of shooting deserters and preventing them from leaving. I think it's important not to wish caste, to wish that they would just crack and break and this whole thing would be over when they're resilient in their own way to this kind of poor treatment.
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C
I was curious how the culture of the Russian military has evolved over the course of the war. And what indicators do you look at to determine sort of where it stands, the health of it?
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B
Sure, I think that's a really important question too. And sometimes I talk with my colleagues about this where I'm trying to find what part of the Russian army or Russian Airborne or Russian SOF that still exists in the way that I understood it before the war in terms of personnel, because the losses have been so significant. And they have replenished them with mobilized Russian civilians, they have raided jails. So you have a lot of felons, you have violent criminals, you have people with substance abuse issues now in the military too. And it is changing the character of the Russian army. And I think this is a really significant issue that's going to come back and bite them. It's already starting. But once the active phase of this war is over, whenever and however that is like, this will be a social crisis. How it's changing. There are a few different ways to think about answering that question. There is a caste system. There's always been a caste system in the Russian army, but now it's becoming more multi layered. So you know, you have your pre war group where they consider themselves professionals like we signed up, you know, and they think that they're sort of at the top. And then you have volunteers who are signing up for money. And then you have this group from prisons, inmates. This was a Wagner tactic and the Ministry of Defense adopted it as well. And those second two groups, they're bringing in with them some of the problems that they had in the Russian prison system or, you know, in their life before being mobilized. So there are now reports coming from different sources, but it Paints a very similar picture that these other groups have substance abuse problems, in particular synthetic amphetamines. And it gives them energy. It's kind of almost like a sort of an ecstasy kind of a thing. So like it improves their morale temporarily, but then there's a crash that comes afterwards and they get violent. This is happening on the front lines. I don't know in what percentage, but I know that the Contractniki complain about these storm Z units, they complain about these inmates as being junkies. There is a self medicating that involves drinking alcohol and that seems to be like culturally, like acceptable. But there is the drug abuse issue that's happening. I don't want to overstate it because I don't know the percentage. But even doctors in Russia are saying that these veterans are coming home and they're addicted to uppers, they're addicted to speed, and it makes them agitated and violent.
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C
As Russia launched its invasion, I know you and others couldn't believe what you were seeing. You weren't surprised so much that Putin decided to invade, but the way the military went about doing it went against Russian military doctrine and really common sense in a lot of ways. What did they do or not do that was so surprising to you?
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B
In their doctrine, you lead with airstrikes, you lead with air power, and once your enemy is degraded to a certain percentage or certain capability, then you commit your army. But that's not what they did on day one. They committed everything at one time. So that was an indicator that things went wrong, but an interesting indicator since we're just chatting about that time period. And this is one of the first that I knew something was wrong. This was about a month before the war started and they were loading up all the soldiers onto trains to reunite them with their equipment that was parked near Ukraine at that point. The soldiers actually were in many cases back in Siberia or wherever. And I was watching them say goodbye to their families and it was just like normal, hey, I'm just gonna go for like a training thing, like I'll see you later, like really casual. And I remember seeing that and thinking, oh my God, they didn't tell them, like what? And you know, I'm not surprised that they didn't tell them because that's been their pattern before. But to make this kind of bet with all of the army, all of the airborne, and to not have informed them, I mean, it's just, it's so wildly irresponsible even for them. But you know, how have they learned and recovered from that? They are capable of learning. And I'd say that the most experimentation is happening at the tactical level, maybe the operational level. Strategically, back in Russia, I still see lags. And by that I mean with the command in Rostov with Shoigu and Gerasimov and his immediate deputies. I think that Gerasimov in particular is committed to the idea of going on offensives. And this is as soon as he feels like he has artillery shells, as soon as he feels like he has a few thousand, you know, mobilized people, he immediately commits them into some kind of offensive that goes poorly. We saw this earlier this year, we're seeing it again now.
- [19:16]
C
And this is what's going on in Avdiivka?
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B
Yes, this is what's going on in Avdiivka right now. So there has always been a bit of a distortion in Ukrainian performance and Russian performance in the media. So, you know where the Russians are, you know, these hapless clowns and everything they do is stupid. And, you know, Ukrainians get it right all the time. The reality is a bit different on both sides. So it's hard to cut through the curated information that we're being shown by both parties to try to determine where reality here is. You know, the Russians are adapting many tactics. They've seen the Ukrainians used against them. They've integrated that. They're making advancements in their drone use, and that's having an impact as well. Are they capable at this point of turning a huge corner and being capable of really sophisticated combined arms operations? No, but they are capable of throwing a lot of weapons at Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are the first ones to say this is really concerning. They're going to throw missiles at us this winter and they're going to try to grind down our air defenses. They keep stockpiling people in occupied Ukraine, and this is going to be hard for us to deal with. So the Ukrainians who are experiencing them up close are saying this organization is very dangerous. And, you know, I think we should all listen to their voices.
- [20:40]
C
What would you say right now is the current Russian military objective?
- [20:44]
B
This is a working theory of mine, but I think Rasimov is still fixated on acquiring all of Luhansk and Donetsk. I'm trying to make sense of why he keeps pushing forward in these areas, despite the fact that his forces have lost that kind of offensive capacity. I think that's what he feels like he owes Putin, or maybe he promised him. This is just a working theory based on what I can see their other goal this winter. And this is a concern of mine is that they haven't been firing a lot of missiles at the same rate at Ukraine for the last couple months, even though they're producing them. So I'm worried that now they have triple digit missiles sitting somewhere that they're going to start launching in a pretty large way. And the Ukrainians have voiced their concerns about this too. They think it could happen starting in November where they're launching at cities or launching again at the power to make life horrible. So that is stressful. That is a strain on Ukrainian air defenses.
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A
We'll be back after a short break.
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B
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- [22:40]
C
forces shaping our world? The Council on Foreign Relations has you covered. For those who like to look ahead, dive the into into the World Next week, Hosted by Bob McMahon and Carla Ann Robins.
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B
We were not forecasting anything about Russian domestic upheaval, and yet that has been the story of the week.
- [22:57]
C
These are scorpions going after each other in a bottle. And for those who want to go beyond the headlines, join Jim Lindsay as he opens up the President's inbox.
- [23:06]
B
What should US Policy do? The approach towards China. It's enough to make me question bipartisanship.
- [23:13]
C
And finally, join me, Gabrielle Sierra, on why it matters as my guests and I bring some of the world's most compelling stories home to you.
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B
Do you feel good about where we're heading with AI?
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C
Maybe we need to invent a new
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B
word here which kind of is a combination of frightened and excited. I'm frascited.
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C
So what are you waiting for for the World next week? The President's inbox and why it matters. We'll see you soon. Let's talk a little bit about the possibilities of Another Russian mobilization, which is the other thing that Russia really has the ability to throw at this, which is just men. Are you expecting another one? Is it a matter of when and not if? And what do you think the timeframe is? If you have any sense of that?
- [24:02]
B
I think if it was up to Putin, and it is, he would not want to conduct another mobilization before his own election in March. And it's not like he's not going to, quote, win, but I don't think he wants to introduce any more question marks before that process.
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C
There is some political cost to him to doing this. While it doesn't mean risking the election, it does introduce risk.
- [24:27]
B
It does. And so their preference is to just keep what remain of those 300,000 from last year and just keep them indefinitely. You know, they notionally get two weeks off every six months, but that is not really being consistently applied. Sometimes they actually have to bribe their commander to allow them to go home for their two weeks. I mean, so it's a lot of inconsistencies going on in that regard in terms of do they need to. There's a few different signals that are coming out designed to confuse people like me who try to make sense of all this madness. Defense Minister Shoigu has said that 300,000 or close to 400,000 are going to sign contracts with the Russian military this year. I have a lot of questions about how he's counting that number. I think it's entirely possible that those mobilized folks are on the ledger as that, and any of those mercenaries that he forced to sign up with the mod could also be on that ledger. So, long story short, I think they're going to take stock of where they are after this offensive near Abdiivka and other places comes to a close, see what their new requirements are. And if that number is low, I think they'll keep trying to do it through volunteer means, trying to entice people. If the numbers are extremely high and they feel exposed next year, I think that they could be potentially needing to do another round. For right now, I don't see the same type of, I guess, on their lines, critical situation that would force them to do another 300,000. Like right now, the way that it was last year was pretty critical for them.
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C
Were there any lessons from the last mobilization about how you integrate brand new people into the force this quickly? Things they did wrong, things they did right, that will change how they do it this time?
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B
Yes. So they did learn from that experience. One of the first things they did was tighten up the intake process, they made a lot of that process digital now so they can more easily grab people that they need in terms of how they train and integrate them. Yes, there are multiple training grounds that are devoted to training these individuals. The problem is that these individuals, some of them again are coming from the prisons where they come with violence. We're talking like rapists and murderers and drug dealers, like this is who they're getting in and whoever else off the street who signs up. So the discipline from some reports at these training facilities is bad. Those in charge of training them are either recently discharged from the front in Ukraine and they have untreated mental combat trauma, or, you know, they're trainers and they don't know how to maintain discipline over these guys. They're not 18 year olds, they can be easily scared. These are middle aged hardened criminals and it's hard for them to get discipline over them. And there are a few cases from defector accounts verified by commercial imagery. It was work that was done by I think the Conflict Intelligence Team that they've dug pits into the ground on these training facilities inside Russia. You know, I can see them, and they just put people in the pits because they don't know what to do to like maintain discipline. So it's not going well. They're also doing that inside occupied Ukraine where they're just, they're digging pits and they're putting people in pits until they can get them back to Russia and put them through some kind of court martial process. So there's discipline, but it's like old style brutal discipline.
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C
If they do another mobilization, does that give them access to the younger recruits that you can shape and mold in a more traditional fashion? Is it this reliance on the voluntary and the prison recruitment that is leading to these problems?
- [28:14]
B
It is. But you know, I think about how they're using these recruits. So from the prisons and a lot of them mobilized, they're using them as part of these Storm Z units and those are infantry units that they use to draw fire. I mean, this is sort of the definition of cannon fodder. I mean this is very cynical, but this is how they, I presume, view this. If I'm going to launch these kind of Storm Z battalions, it is less of a liability to me. The Kremlin, if I do this with prison labor, than 19 year old men, 20 year old men who could still go on and have careers and have children is the height of cynicism. But I have to assume that these kind of calculations are taking place based on the pattern of what we're seeing play out.
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C
Right. And I realize I have my own American military bias, which is the amount that we invest in our new recruits. You're trying to develop your human capacity, and that's not what this is really
- [29:10]
B
about at this point. No. Pre war, there was money and policy and training programs available to try to develop the human capital and make it professional. I mean, from a policy perspective, they did legitimately want that. Where it fell apart, of course, was the execution and some intractable elements of Russian military culture that they could not overcome at this point in the war. This is like survival mode. You know, this is existential, and we're going to grab bodies off the street. We're going to give them a few weeks of training, maybe a few months in some cases, and then we're going to throw them in. Where I notice it playing out is Russia is able to do unit rotations, and I don't think that we should downplay that. Like, they were in the south, near Zaporizhzhia, were able to do a few thousand personnel rotations along the front line where the UAF is attacking them. So there's capacity there. There is capacity in Donetsk and Luhansk for them to allocate, I think by my count, like single digit brigade or regiment elements against these offenses. So there's padding on the manpower issue from just raw numbers. If they wanted to do more mobilization, they have millions that they can pull from. So, you know, this is an ambient and serious concern to close.
- [30:31]
C
I wanted to step back and, and think a little bit about how we know what we know about an adversary's military. Seeing that a lot of people misunderstood or were misled about what the Russian military was going to be able to accomplish when it invaded Ukraine. Are there things you can't know about an armed force until you actually see it in combat? And thinking about that and the lessons from Ukraine, how should that realization play into how the United States is thinking about the Chinese military?
- [31:01]
B
You know, we had seen the Russians in multiple conflicts in the previous decade, and they were very different in their character and in their size, who they were fighting. But nevertheless, there were some core capabilities that they demonstrated the ability to do, which in Ukraine, based on how they decided to launch this war, and based on how secrecy was more important than actual preparations, you know, a lot of that went out the window. I'd say that, you know, in terms of how we judge military power, whether it's from China or whether it's Hamas or, you know, the Taliban or Whoever, North Korea, especially if we're looking at authoritarian regimes, what is that military's relationship with the truth? How are they able to communicate unexpectedly bad news up the chain? Do they have the freedom to speak the truth to power so that they can make the best operational choices? In Russia, we knew before the war that they did not have that capacity. And I would suspect that it's very similar in a system like North Korea or China that has a direct negative impact when they come into contact with the real world on the battlefield. I would say that, you know, in terms of other aspects of military power, you have to look at the surrounding architecture around the force, look at the logistics, look at the C4ISR, look at what they can sustain with their targeting, with their satellite imagery processing, look at their intelligence. For me as a military analyst, and I think this is just based on how things work with information available publicly, some information that's available privately. There's a tendency to over focus on what's happening in the capitals, but the real story is what's happening in the military units, what's happening within the squadron, what's happening within the division, what's happening within the fleet headquarters. That's where the details are, that's where you can get a sense of training, capacity, cohesion, morale, corruption, grafting. That's where all of those secrets hide and live. And so I would say like, that's really important. And then you know, finally, just from a broader perspective, avoiding the perils of wishcasting, and that's been really important in this war, is that there's a certain amount of wish casting or wishing things would happen like oh, the Russians are so corrupt or inept that this will all fall apart and this is a house of cards, they can't sustain this. The military is going to crack and they're going to go home. I mean that's wishing for something but that's not actually the case. That's not what's happening on the ground. So whether that's overestimating your enemy or underestimating their sophistication, the goal always has to be checking yourself, making sure that you're not using your opinion or what you hope to be true, but just really clear eyed, hard nose, take a neutral stance and evaluate it for what it is.
- [33:53]
C
Dara, thank you so much for joining us for doing this and for your invaluable analysis. I can't wait to see what you write next for us.
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B
Thank you so much.
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A
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on Today's show@foreign affairs.com the Foreign affairs interview is produced by Kate Brannan, Julia Fleming dresser and Molly McEnany. Special thanks also to Grace Finlayson, Caitlin Joseph, Nora Revenaugh, Asher Ross, Gabrielle Sierra and Marcus Zacharia. Our theme music was written and performed by Robin Hilton. Make sure you subscribe to the show show wherever you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every other Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.