The Reeducation of Russia’s Military

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The Foreign Affairs Interview – “The Reeducation of Russia’s Military”

Host: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Editor, Foreign Affairs
Guest: Dara Massicot, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Release Date: October 9, 2025

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1. Episode Overview

This episode delves into how Russia’s military, deeply underestimated after its initial failures in Ukraine, has become a surprisingly adaptive—though still deeply flawed—fighting force. Host Daniel Kurtz-Phelan interviews Dara Massicot about her latest Foreign Affairs essay, “How Russia Recovered,” tracing Moscow’s learning curve, battlefield innovations, and what both Ukraine and the West might be missing about how Russia now fights. The conversation also explores implications for NATO, future warfare, and Russia’s efforts to share its hard-won experience with partners like China, Iran, and North Korea.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. War Status – Current Battlefield Dynamics

[02:47]

• Russia’s counteroffensive centers on the Donbas (Donetsk), with little front-line movement.
• Momentum: Both Russia and Ukraine now focus on long-range strikes, especially targeting each other's energy infrastructure.
• Russia is attempting “envelopment” tactics in the Donbas, seeking to bypass strongholds rather than assault directly. Progress is slow, resulting in a grinding attritional conflict.

B. Stalemate and Evolving Tactics

[04:16]

• Heavy drone use and deep fortifications thwart large-scale assaults by either side.
• Russia’s progress comes from small infantry teams infiltrating lines, often countered by Ukrainian drones (FPVs) and artillery.
• “Russia has not yet found a solution to gathering large numbers of armored equipment…Ukraine can see them coming now… and they're able to target them.” (Massicot, [04:16])

C. The U.S. Policy Shift and Western Uncertainty

[05:43]

• Despite U.S. political volatility, actual flows of weapons and intelligence have remained relatively stable for Ukraine.
• The guest focuses on what is tangibly changing on the battlefield, rather than diplomatic drama.

D. Revisiting Russia’s Initial Blunders

[07:40]

• Two main blind spots at the onset:
  1. Russian troops weren’t informed of the invasion until <24 hours in advance.
  2. Western/NATO intelligence and advanced warning enabled Ukraine’s defense.
• “Ukraine alone vs. Russia alone is the war that I assumed would play out ... but the war that we got was Ukraine plus the support of Western intelligence services…” (Massicot, [07:40])

E. American Aid and Escalation Debates

[11:22]

• The slow U.S. ramp-up in aid resulted more from logistics and military stockpile challenges than fear of escalation alone.
• “You can't just hand over a jet, you can't just hand over a Patriot.” (Massicot, [11:22])

F. Russian Nuclear Threats: Real or Overblown?

[13:41]

• The fall 2022 nuclear fears were rooted in real battlefield setbacks for Russia, but structurally Russia was never close to using tactical nukes.
• Russian doctrine did not support escalation as predicted in the West.

G. Russia’s Unexpected Resilience

[16:38]

• After initial defeats, Russia adjusted, fortified, and reversed narratives of collapse.
• Public optimism about Ukrainian offensives ignored how prepared Russian defenses became.

H. Russian Military as a Learning Organization

[21:38]

• Russia’s response has gone beyond survival: it’s adapted at multiple institutional levels.
• Research, procurement plans, and field tactics have evolved—though adaptation is uneven and sometimes fails to reach front-line troops.
• “There is a really vibrant community of learning in Russia about this, and I was surprised at how complicated and complex... it has grown.” (Massicot, [21:38])

I. Examples of Battlefield Innovation

[23:58]

• Adaptation to drone-saturated fields: infantry teams infiltrate on motorcycles or on foot.
• Decentralized mission planning is emerging at lower levels, a break from rigid Soviet doctrine.
• “...they've taken that and they've disseminated that across the force. Okay. This is changing. It's mixed.” (Massicot, [23:58])

J. Enduring Culture of Indifference and Resilience

[34:07]

• Russian military “resilience” is about enduring misery and obeying orders, not positive adaptation.
• Abuse and indifference persist, yet these traits help Russia absorb losses and sustain long grinds.
• “This indifference, the cruelty, the hazing, the violence within the unit, that's still happening, and that hasn't changed … But again, there's this resilience—they just endure through, and they know not to expect any better.” (Massicot, [34:07])

K. Ukraine as a Learning Organization

[29:18]

• Remains highly adaptive, horizontal, and open to sharing information, but old-school attitudes among mobilized older officers may erode this.
• Technology and generational divides are affecting Ukrainian adaptability.

L. Balance of Technology

[32:23]

• Russia’s defense industry is catching up with Ukraine’s ad hoc innovations. Mass drone production, improved missile guidance, and ability to tinker quickly gives Russia new strengths.
• Willingness to take outsized losses for marginal gains gives it a grim edge.

M. Human Factors: Mobilization and Resolve

[42:36]

• Ukrainian front-line units are strained for manpower, and political difficulties in mobilizing more troops remain acute.
• Russian resolve is less about morale than about the ability to endure for the state, regardless of individual cost.

N. Western Resolve and Russian Hybrid Warfare

[44:00]

• Russian drone incursions into European airspace may backfire, stiffening Western resolve rather than eroding it.

O. Exporting Russian Doctrine: Global Risk

[45:35]

• Russia is openly sharing battlefield lessons with China, Iran, and North Korea—especially in drone warfare, logistics, and mass-casualty paradigms.
• “Russia's not the economic powerhouse. They are the powerhouse when it comes to combat experience.” (Massicot, [45:35])
• China has military observers in Russian command posts—not reciprocated by Western advisors in Ukraine.

P. Lessons for the U.S. and NATO

[48:24, 48:51]

• The U.S. lacks a unified mechanism to synthesize and distribute learnings from Ukraine.
• Host and guest agree: Dismissing Russia as incapable of institutional learning is dangerous.
• Many battlefield lessons—especially on drones, mass casualties, officer adaptation—are relevant to potential Asia-Pacific conflicts, not just Europe.

Q. The Analyst’s Dilemma: Understanding the Fog of War

[52:21]

• Massicot describes a process of humility—data is biased by what’s chosen to be shared, and analysts must be careful about generalizations.
• “You have to just be kind of humble about what you don’t know ... You can’t make blanket pronouncements that the Russians are uniformly trash…” (Massicot, [52:21])

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Russian adaptation:

  “There is a really vibrant community of learning in Russia about this, and I was surprised at how complicated and complex ... it has grown over the last 18 months.” (Massicot, [21:38])

• On Ukraine’s strength and vulnerabilities:

  “They are a very horizontal organization in terms of how they share and disseminate information ... There’s a generational split ... where the senior levels have a more traditional idea of what to do and the younger ones are more technically savvy.” (Massicot, [29:18])

• On Russian resilience and suffering:

  “They know not to expect good treatment. They know not to expect relief ... it's your ability to execute your mission.” (Massicot, [34:07])

• On misreading Russia as a military learning institution:

  “I think we have not fully grappled with what this means and what it means for NATO, what it means for Ukraine.” (Massicot, [23:48])

• On Western complacency:

  “To the extent I've heard arguments that none of this is applicable to a war with China and Taiwan, that's wrong. That's really wrong. I know it's not a land war, but there's a lot that actually is.” (Massicot, [48:51])

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4. Important Timestamps

• 00:36 – Setting up Russia’s shifting military fortunes and expectations
• 02:47 – Current front-line dynamics (attrition, long-range strikes)
• 04:16 – Effects of fortifications and drones on offensive tactics
• 07:40 – What Western analysts missed at the start of the war
• 11:22 – Why US arms deliveries ramped up slowly
• 13:41 – Debating the Russian nuclear threat (fall 2022)
• 16:38 – Russia’s pivot and adaptation after early setbacks
• 21:38 – Russian military learning as institutional change
• 23:58 – Concrete innovations (small team tactics, motorcycles)
• 29:18 – Ukraine as a learning institution and its generational divide
• 32:23 – Russia’s technological catch-up; mass drone attacks
• 34:07 – The culture of resilience and endurance in the Russian military
• 42:36 – Tension in Ukrainian mobilization and manpower
• 44:00 – Russian drone provocations in European airspace backfiring
• 45:35 – How Russia is sharing battlefield experience with adversaries
• 48:24/48:51 – The West’s learning gaps and call to action
• 52:21 – The problem of selection/confirmation bias in open-source analysis

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5. Conclusion: Key Takeaways

• The Russian military, deeply damaged but underestimated, remains capable of adaptation—despite persistent flaws.
• Ukraine and Russia are both locked in a cycle of adaptation, with Russia’s industrial capacity and cruel endurance offsetting Ukraine’s ingenuity and Western support.
• Western analysis often makes dangerous assumptions, both about Russian incompetence and about the limited applicability of these lessons.
• Russia’s learning—both technical and organizational—is already filtering to authoritarian partners.
• The future of warfare, from energy infrastructure to mass drones and hybrid tactics, is being written now, and policymakers ignore these lessons at their peril.

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For deeper context, readers are encouraged to see Dara Massicot’s essays in Foreign Affairs—especially “How Russia Recovered” (2025) and “What Russia Got Wrong” (2023).

Transcript

[A]

Dan I'm Dan Kurtzphelin, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.

[B]

There was this impression, certainly the Russians believed that they would roll over and invade Ukraine and it would play out the same way as Crimea in 2014, where there really wasn't any resistance. They assumed it would go that way, and it didn't. Catastrophically wrong for the Russians. And I think a lot of anchoring about the Russian military has been tied to that time, that initial catastrophic blunder. But a lot has changed in the past four years for the Russians, and I think we have to face what's happening here.

[A]

Ever since Russia started its war in Ukraine, our assessments of its military power have vacillated wildly. First, Russian forces were supposed to overrun Ukraine and crush any resistance in a matter of days. Then they were thought to be so weak that a Ukrainian counteroffensive or a new capability might cause them to collapse altogether. Now, with the war in its fourth year and Donald Trump's return to office bringing uncertainty about Western support, it has started to seem once again that time might be on Moscow's side. Dara Masco argues that none of these images reflects reality. Since the invasion began, Masiko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been writing in our pages analyzing the state of Russia's military, its failure, and its surprising resiliency. But what has struck Masico more recently, and what she thinks many observers are missing, is the extent to which Russia has managed to learn and adapt in Ukraine and beyond. She warns in a new piece for Foreign affairs that the Russian military will emerge from its invasion with extensive experience and a distinct vision of the future of combat experience it is already sharing with China, Iran and North Korea, America and Europe should pay close attention, because if they do not take it upon themselves to study Russia's studying, as Matsuko puts it, she worries that they risk not just losing Ukraine, but also falling behind in the next global crisis. Dara, it's great to talk to you today and great to have your new essay just out online and soon out in our next issue. It's called How Russia Recovered, and I think it can be read as a follow up to your piece from early 2023, after the first year of the war, which was called what Russia Got Wrong.

[B]

Thanks for having me back.

[A]

The title of those two pieces, I think, captures at a very high level the arc of the conflict and especially how it's defied expectations from a lot of observers outside of Russia and Ukraine, I think in American policymaking and intelligence and military circles. But before we get to that arc, I just want to get your sense of where things stand in the war now, to the extent momentum is a useful way of talking about it, where does momentum lie? Where is each side focused on offense or defense? What are kind of key capabilities in weapon system at the moment? Where are we as we talk on the afternoon of Monday, October 6th?

[B]

Well, great question and we'll hop right into it. So on the front line itself, Russia's counteroffensive continues. They are mostly concentrating in the Donbas, Donetsk area. There's not a lot of movement, there's not a lot of breakthroughs, so we're not seeing that on the front lines. But in terms of where the activity is, where the momentum is, right now both sides are engaged in long range strikes against each other, particularly on the energy infrastructure in Russia. There's been a lot of damage done to Russia's oil and gas refineries, and Russia is responding by also attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure as well. Oftentimes we see this in the cycle of the war when there's not a lot of forward movement or both sides are frustrated in what they're doing in terms of not frustrated emotionally, but just frustrated in the sense of not being able to break through. We see the conflict dial up in intensity with these long range strikes and we're at that point in the cycle right now through the rest of the summer, anticipating what might come next. Russia clearly is trying now to encircle the last remaining stronghold in the Donbass region. They're not trying to fight through a 10 year stronghold at Slovyansk in that area. They're trying to come up from the north and hook up from the south from the Pokrovsk area. But that objective is still nowhere near complete. And we'll see where they are as the month cools off in the next few weeks.

[A]

And that frustrating quality of movement on the ground has to do with density of drones with fortifications. What explains that?

[B]

Right? Russia is only able to make progress by infiltrating the front lines with small teams of three to five infantry. And Ukraine can then target them. When they're lucky, they Target them with FPVs and drones. Russia has not yet found a solution to gathering large numbers of armored equipment like tanks or armored personnel carriers and trying to seize large pieces of territory at a time. Ukraine can see them coming now from multiple kilometers away and they're able to target them with artillery and first person view munitions. So that problem for the Russians has not been resolved. And they speak about it openly. And that's in the essay as well, that they've identified their main problem. They just don't have a solution.

[A]

FPV or First Person View is one of these acronyms that I think very few of us knew a couple years ago and now is at the tip of our tongues. But it is very central to this. I mean, the last, I guess almost nine months since Donald Trump came back to office have been, to put it mildly, pretty volatile ones for US Policy. If we go back to that pretty astonishing verbal attack on President Zelensky and the Oval Office in February, and then the brief cutoff of intelligence and air defense support to Ukraine, which are two of the things as I understand it, that the US Uniquely provides. And then to the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin. And then of course, Trump statements at the UN General assembly recently saying that he thought Ukraine could take back all of its territory. How much has all of that instability in U.S. policy and U.S. support affected the war itself?

[B]

Well, so I think I'm lucky. As a military analyst, I've learned to naturally tune out a lot of the volatility from sort of the diplomatic circles and instead I concentrate on what's actually changing in the ground, what in terms of weapons flow has been cut off, what in terms of any intelligence support has been cut off. And although we are not re upping a very large package for Ukraine, I would say that between the European efforts and things that have already been pre programmed in or new capabilities that are being purchased by allies and then delivered to Ukraine, there hasn't been a major substantive shut off of supplies. So on the ground and in the air, I see more stability than what's in the political rhetoric. It's hard for me to forecast necessarily where this is all going because it is volatile from where the tenor of the conversation was in February, March versus now, the tenor is different. I think that the Russians have continued to be themselves and not shown really any interest in a diplomatic process and they continue on with their operations. The Ukrainians are as well. So again, a lot of stability from my perspective in terms of the key pieces moving around.

[A]

Let's with that go back to the beginning or at least the beginning of Russia's full scale invasion on February 24, 2022. You opened the new essay by noting, quote, the story of Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been one of upset expectations and wild swings in performance. I think it'd be useful to understand the, I suppose the phases of upset expectations before we get to the focus of the new Piece which is really about how Russia has learned and adapted. You write in the piece, at the start of the war, most saw Russia as an unstoppable behemoth poised to quickly defeat Ukraine. Instead, Russia's forces were halted in their tracks and pushed back. And this, of course, goes back to the analysis in your earlier essay, what Russia Got Wrong. And as you look back at our expectations of the beginning of the war, what was off about those? I mean, in what ways did Russia perform below expectations and why?

[B]

Well, we know a lot more now than we did then. I think about their preparation for this war. And taking what I know now about that period versus what I knew then about that period, I would say that the two big things that if I knew them, I think would have changed. You know, certainly my impression of how the first opening days would have gone. Two factors that were huge. Number one, the Russians didn't actually tell majority of the soldiers participating in the conflict that they were going to war until maybe 24 hours in advance. Sometimes we have elements that maybe some of the more elite groups had a suspicion maybe a month or two in advance, but nothing was actually communicated to them until the very end. So I thought that at that time, if they were going to commit the majority of the army to majority of the airborne forces, that somehow that knowledge would have been trickled down to the front line before they actually started fighting. And as we go into, in the what Russia got wrong piece, all these compounding errors, they just really got so much incredible damage from the first opening, two or three months from that, and they'd never been able to recover. The second thing that I didn't know then, and it would have changed my understanding of the dynamics with this whole war is the extent of the involvement of NATO, the United States, Ukraine's partners in preparing them for what was about to come, whether it was communicating with allies. And then last minute, I think with Ukraine about the invasion and the amount of details and knowledge that were shared in advance so that Ukraine could prepare very critical points of defense that really changed Russia's invasion plan. That was not known to us at the time. Ukraine alone versus Russia alone is the war that I assumed would play out. I was also having a baby at this exact time. So I was watching this from my tv, but the war that we got was Ukraine plus the support of Western intelligence services trying to help them. And that's a very powerful grouping. It throws off the dynamic completely. So those, those are, when I look back, those are things that I did not understand at the Time that I think would have changed where I was. I think there was this impression that certainly the Russians believed that they would roll over and invade Ukraine and it would play out the same way as Crimea in 2014, where there really wasn't any resistance. They assumed it would go that way and it didn't. Catastrophically wrong for the Russians. And I think a lot of anchoring about the Russian military has been tied to that time, that initial catastrophic blunder. But a lot has changed in the past four years for the Russians. And I think we have to face what's happening here.

[A]

If we go to the. The period after those first days, I suppose, kind of spring 2022 through fall 2022. And there was this sense after Russia's early failures that Ukraine could roll back Russia all the way to kind of pre2022 borders. And it did, of course, take back plenty of territory. But there's been lots of criticism of the Biden administration after those first months of Russian failure for being too slow to surge both kind of adequate amounts of assistance and certain kinds of assistance, certain capabilities. I think the public conversation tends to focus on fears of escalation and Russian response. Although my sense is that it was often about, you know, U.S. stockpiles, that we didn't really have enough of some kind of ammunition or whatever to send large amounts to Kyiv. But that wasn't something that US Militaries wanted to shout. But in any case, as you look at that critique of American support in that period, to what extent and in what ways is that true and in what ways not? And I suppose what's the, you know, kind of counterfactual if Washington had gone as all out as possible in 2022?

[B]

Well, it's hard to rewrite history, but if I was thinking about that time period, there was a lot of building the plane as it was flying through the air. The United States has not done something like this before in recent memory. And so I think the way it started out with Stingers, nlaws, Javelins, it started small. And then we've seen it incrementally ramp up in intensity and complexity. And I think that's the other big. I think a lot of the debate focuses on being afraid of escalation dynamics or something like that. And I think that may have been true in the beginning of the war because we hadn't. The United States hadn't really figured that out with the Russians yet. But over time, I think they did understand the red lines a little bit and did understand how to push the envelope in ways that wouldn't trigger a Russian heavy handed response against NATO. But the less understood side of it is the inventory problems with some of these capabilities and the complexity of transferring really complicated systems like F16s to Ukraine. Yes, I think there was a decision delay for some of those capabilities. But also you can't just hand over a jet, you can't just hand over a patriot. You have to train people, you have to have certain bureaucratic processes in place to transfer information and work with data. So is it flawless what they did? No, I just think that the explanations out there, I'm wanting more detail because the story behind the scenes is more complicated. I don't think that from the conversations that I have had with people, I don't think that there was this effort to deliberately slow down or meter the Ukrainians when they needed critical supplies. I just haven't found that in the conversations that I've had.

[A]

What about the fears of Russian nuclear use that I think really peaked in probably October or November of 2022 as I understand it, and quite senior US officials seem to take those seriously. They're reporting that the CIA judged that there was a 50% chance of Russian nuclear use or something like that. As someone who's studied Russian military doctrine and strategy for a long time, do you see those fears as credible? Can you imagine Russia using a tactical nuclear weapon if things were in fact going catastrophically badly on the battlefield from that time period?

[B]

There was a very specific concern that I had and I did not see it playing out. One could see why the system warned upwards of the possibility of a nuclear use. I don't believe that Russia was anywhere close to doing that. But at the time, we have to remember in the fall of 22, the Russian frontline was crumpling inwards in a couple different areas. Up in Kharkiv and in Kherson, they had to relocate on the other side of the Dnipro River. Those were two blows in succession. And I think that this was also at the nadir of Russian military strength in Ukraine before mobilization had come into play. So I think there was concern that if that crumpling cascaded and Russian forces just en masse got up and deserted and left and walked home or whatever the scenario was, the Kremlin feeling like it was out of control would be the time that would prompt that nuclear blow. But I can't, I can't find. There's nothing I can point to you and show you that that's a factor in Russian doctrine or Russian thinking. About nuclear use or what they define as a threat to the state. So I found that scenario, there was 10 steps that had to happen in that scenario. And I think at its core, I think it was a misunderstanding of Russian resilience, like Russian soldier resilience and their ability to endure really horrible conditions. That's my take on that time period.

[A]

And I know there are probably pieces of this you can't talk about in a non classified setting, but there are some of those steps. You were looking for them to start going through those steps and you weren't seeing the things you expected to see.

[B]

Right. And I'm not the intelligence community, but just in terms of getting it to a point where there is any kind of risk to Russian leadership, Russian nuclear forces, Russian society breaking down. None of that was happening on the front lines. The soldiers largely just stayed in their positions. I mean, other than that we talked about with Kharkiv and we talked about in Kherson, everything else stayed stable. And once you saw it stay stable, I thought there's just no. Why, why would they introduce this? When you introduce a nuclear weapon, you lose control. So you know, if you, if you fear like you're losing control, you introduce it to lose control. It doesn't like the logic doesn't make sense.

[A]

So just to take the story forward, I think the next phase of upset expectations came when Russia proved more resilient than imagined and Ukraine was not as capable of pushing Russian forces back, especially in eastern Ukraine. In the Donbas, you write in a new piece quote, then outside observers decided that the Russian military was rotten, perhaps one counterattack away from collapse that also proved incorrect. Ukrainian offensives failed and Moscow resumed its slow advance. So walk us through that phase and how Russia, after the initial underperformance of expectations, started to overperform.

[B]

Well, I think that time period came from a good place. Everyone who was supporting Ukraine wants and still wants them to succeed. After the first fall, when the Russians were pushed back, they did retreat in some places. There was this momentum that began to build for a large counteroffensive. And you know, the Ukrainian military at that time was not necessarily in a place to execute what it was being asked to do. And that information comes from people who directly interacted with Ukrainian brigades or just the status of where they were at with their capacity and their manpower and all these other factors that matter. And also the Russians were very busy building an entire network of defenses and minefields that are so complicated. And the Ukrainians are the first ones to tell us how complicated that they Were and are. There was a lot of emotion, I think, here in the west, about the Ukrainians can do it, they can push them out. And again, I think that came from a good place of wanting to support them and get Russia out, but it was overlooking what the reality on the ground was. And if you were out in the public space commenting on, I think this is going to be difficult. The Russians seem to be preparing a trap, specifically in this one particular sensitive area of the front. And that's right where the counteroffensive ended up being. It was not a popular message to say that publicly at the time, before the counteroffensive kicked off. But I get worried when the public perception of the Russian military and the Ukrainians, it's like at the extreme end of a seesaw, right? Like, one is so great, the other one's a paper tiger. And then the counteroffensive happened, and the Ukrainians ran into that really strong resistance right there. And then the narrative just kind of crumpled, and it kind of, if you remember that time period, it just kind of hung there from the summer through the fall until General Zaluzhny wrote his article that basically said this failed. So again, it was this massive reset of expectations.

[A]

I was struck to see in going back to the 2023 piece, which was, of course, about the Russian failures in the first year of war, that even then you were sounding, I think, a kind of note of caution that probably made you something of a kind of skunk at the garden party at the time, for reasons you say. I'll quote you at some length here. This is from the 2023 piece when you wrote. The story of Russia's military performance is far more nuanced than many early narratives about the war have suggested. The Russian armed forces are not wholly incompetent or incapable of learning. They can execute some types of complex operations. And it has learned. The Russian military has learned from its mistakes and made big adjustments. You pick up that story of learning and adjustment in the new piece. But what at the time were you seeing? This goes back more than two years now that made you think that Russia would be able to improve its performance and adapt in ways that most people do not expect?

[B]

A few different reasons, first of all, is their history. If you look at their conflicts Since World War II, they have a habit of just rolling in to either Afghanistan or Chechnya or Georgia, and they do it wrong and they get hit in the face really hard, and then they regroup and they do something different. This war was a much bigger bet it was a much bigger risk, a lot higher velocity. So the damage was really intense. But that cycle has played out a few times for them, and they do dust off and they do keep going forward. Secondly, when the Russians mobilized In September of 2022, it wasn't only just getting additional manpower in the force, which of course, they needed as quickly as. But it dumped a ton of money and resources and power and authority into the Russian defense industrial base, into Russian tech, into the Russian research R and D sector. All of these things that were going to have a result of operational benefit, time to play out. I think I maybe wrote in the piece that it would take them a year, at least it would take them a year from September 22 to September 23 before we saw results operationally on the ground. And that's more or less kind of how it played out. So at the time, was that information received? Well, no, but you have to say. You have to say it anyway. There was, I think, a belief that the Russians were only capable of rudimentary adaptations to survive. And that's certainly the first level of learning. But it's been a process that has expanded greatly over the past two and a half, three years that isn't really visible. And it's time that we talk about it, I think. So that's the genesis of the new piece.

[A]

The new piece is just. Is such a fascinating account of this kind of structure and approach to learning and adaptation. It's fascinating in this context, but also probably has broader lessons. But talk a bit more about what that endeavor was, what was the project, who was driving it, what was the Russian approach to this?

[B]

Sure. The genesis of this essay is previewing a longer research paper that I have coming out soon for Carnegie, and it is evaluating the Russian military as a learning organization. And by that I mean one that is not just making little adaptations on the fly, on the battlefield to stay alive. And then they. All these lessons get forgotten and lost, and the military gets no better. It learns nothing from this, but really one that is capable of ingesting combat experience, analyzing it, disseminating it for the purpose of becoming a better, more competent institution. And so what I did was look for various parts of a learning cycle. I looked for other signposts of learning, like changes to the research plan for the military and the defense industrial base, connectivity between those fighting the war and those back in Russia who were studying it, changes to procurement plans, just all of these really tangible things that show this organization is committed to learning from this war and not forgetting these things. And Taking it and growing and evolving from it. And I found a picture that's mixed, and that's one of the hard things to convey. But I tried my best in the essay and the research is that there is a really vibrant community of learning in Russia about this, And I was surprised at how complicated and complex that it has grown over the last 18 months. But I have to also simultaneously tell the story about the lived experience of the Russian soldier in the trench in the front. All of that learning is not making it down to them. And we're still seeing a lot of these really repetitive mistakes in some cases, as simultaneously to seeing, oh, wow, that's really new. Okay, all right. That they've taken that and they've disseminated that across the force. Okay. This is changing. It's mixed. And it's hard for me to describe both of those things. Like, I don't want to say that the Russian military is going to fundamentally break through, and it will be the most amazing military in the world because they do have a lot of problems. But on the whole, I think we have not fully grappled with what this means and what it means for NATO, what it means for Ukraine.

[A]

As you've watched some of those battlefield innovations or adaptations that have come out of that process, what's one or two that have struck you or surprised you as you've observed the war?

[B]

Well, I think the main one is how Russia is really grappling with what it means to fight on a battlefield that is saturated with drones of all types, reconnaissance drones, attack drones, those that can see in the dark because they have thermal imaging. They have responded to this through trial and error. A lot of. A lot of error and a lot of trial, a lot of casualties. But they are reorganizing how they're fighting a land war and their offensive doctrine, their offensive tactics, I should say in particular. And so that's why we are seeing these infantry teams constantly probing at Ukraine. They're just trying to get some tentacle or a foothold in, across the line and exhaust the front, because they can't fight the way that they were trained to, which is taking, you know, 10, 20 tanks to armored vehicles and just driving through and there's artillery involved and everything else. To see them wrestle with that on the front. And then they take it back to the research organizations in Russia and they wrestle with it, and they have this dialogue between them, and then they figured out a method to work around it, and now they're teaching it to the junior officers. Now they're Teaching it to the conscripts. You can see this cycle going through, and I remember seeing the reactions online that were like, oh, haha, the Russians are using motorcycles and donkeys. They're busted. No, that's actually not entirely what was going on here. Ukrainians will tell you they're trying to flood the zone with guys on motorcycles to get through. So it's a really fascinating experience to see an idea work for one unit and then within 10 months, it's across the force.

[A]

It's really striking the degree to which this cuts against the picture of kind of corrupt and incompetent leadership among Russian strategists and officers and policymakers. The kind of caricature, at least, is that it's all these sick events who are just telling Vladimir Putin what they want to hear and don't really care about what's happening on the ground. Is there a bigger lesson here about how power works in Moscow, or is this kind of operating aside from the kind of upper echelons of Kremlin leadership, in a way that allows it to be more effective in doing this?

[B]

Yeah, so this is another one of those examples where two things are happening at the same time, and it's super complicated to explain to our Western mindset of how this should work. So, yes, there is that, that learning that's going on. I would say that the phrase that we touch upon in the essay, and I think would surprise a lot of people, is at the lower levels on the Russian front, they're doing something that we call in the west as mission planning. And that means you give a battalion or a company commander an order, like, you have to take that village by, you know, five days from now, figure it out, and they have to come up with it themselves how to do it, and they have to plan and they. Then they execute. That's not usually how it works for the Russian Army. Usually you get your exact orders down to the minute of where you're supposed to be. It's centrally planned, very rigid. So that is a change. And we're seeing that in some materials that I have seen that are Russian materials from field research, that in Ukraine, I've been able to look and see how they celebrate units that do this successfully. And they tell other units, hey, this unit over here did this, this mission planning thing, and it worked. And so then I can read in all of these journals that they're talking about training units in this way to have accountability at the lower levels. They look at drones, they see how people are doing on the training field. And they say, nope, that right there was good and that right there was bad. Don't do that again. This is new for the Russian military. It's very new for them. So, like, that's something I can see. Like, oh, that's a change. But then again, simultaneously, there's so much variability on the Russian frontline. You have good commanders like that, like good in the sense of competent, who are willing to do that experimentation. And then you have bad commanders who are the same Soviet mold, punching their subordinates to get them to comply with orders, taking money, taking care packages that still exists. You know, my question as a researcher of this institution is what is the percentage of change versus what is the percentage of the old school, very abusive category right now? And then who stays in when the war is over? Is it the reformers or is it the old school method of doing things? And until I see who's left, it's hard for me to make a prediction on how much of this is going to stick. But right now I see almost two systems kind of fighting against each other. And they're fighting, to your point, within a political system that will allow certain types of adaptation but will not allow certain types of critique. So it's a tricky place.

[A]

We should not extrapolate from this, that Vladimir Putin must have gotten a really good therapist or executive coach or something and suddenly become open to feedback.

[B]

No, no. And we know this because he keeps General Grasimov in the job, who was the one that oversaw this invasion plan the way it was, and everybody was killed. You know, so he, he, he likes stability and he likes familiar faces. He doesn't necessarily prioritize results.

[A]

How is Ukraine as a learning organization, the Ukrainian military?

[B]

So that is their advantage that they had in the beginning. It's starting to erode a little bit now that we've seen the Russians switch into a slightly different gear. The Ukrainians are highly adaptive. They are a very horizontal organization in terms of how they share and disseminate information. They are really have access to better technology which allows them to share and disseminate. So having seen them, it is very impressive what they do. They are having a phenomenon over time where as they're having to pull in officers from the reserve or mobilize people who maybe had their military training in the 90s or even earlier, that they are bringing that like old school culture back into the military. And there, there's a generational split in the Ukrainian military. If you're Maybe in your mid-30s and below versus mid-30s and above, you were trained pretty differently and you have a different worldview that is playing out in the Ukrainian military right now, where the senior levels kind of have a more traditional idea of what to do and the younger ones are more technically savvy and have different life experiences.

[A]

We'll be back after a short break.

[C]

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[A]

And now back to my conversation with Dara Masiko. You write in the new piece that Russia started to close the technological edge with Ukraine. How do you see that balance now, whether it's in drones or other kinds of innovations?

[B]

Well, the Russians I think were slow in the beginning to understand where the Ukrainians were going and some of the tactics that they were using, but they were able to catch up. And they have a state controlled defense industrial base that is incredibly responsive to top down orders and they've really been able to dial up their production in terms of numbers, but they've also made a lot of very challenging technological upgrades, whether that's to the shahed drones. They call them Garan 1 Garon 2. There's you know, Garon 3s in the works. They're becoming very challenging to intercept the numbers alone and the decoys in the air is becoming challenging for Ukraine's teams. The way that they operate. It's adapting and counter adapting. Both sides are doing it where Russia I think has the advantage though, is that they can really just tinker around with their missile guidance packages, how they target Ukrainian sites. They're watching the west, and they're thinking, okay, we just need to keep the foot on the gas for a little bit longer, and the west will run out, retire out. To me, that's the advantage that Russia brings and the willingness to sustain huge casualties for very, very minimal gains on the ground. Ukraine just simply can't one, for one match that kind of loss? I mean, they shouldn't.

[A]

I went back and read a great piece you wrote, I think, in early 2022, not long after the war started for us, called the Russian military's People Problem. And in that piece, you described what you called the culture of indifference plaguing the Russian military and saw that as a. A weakness in some sense. Has that, in a grim and perverse way, turned out to be a certain kind of strength for the Russian military?

[B]

Yeah, it has. So I was motivated to write a piece on Russian resilience after the counteroffensive failed, because in the west, we think of the concept of resilience as a positive thing where you encounter a hardship and you get through it and you grow as a person. I'm paraphrasing and I'm being a little flip, but resilience is a positive thing for our military, for us, as you know, just our concept of it. Russian military is also very devoted to this idea of resilience, but it's not necessarily positive. It is defined as your ability to execute your combat task, no matter the difficulty of your situation. So they train them in this as officers or as conscripts. They know not to expect good treatment. They know not to expect relief. They don't get treated kindly. In Russian military service, the idea of trust up and down the chain is not a priority. It's your ability to execute your mission. And so this indifference, the cruelty, the hazing, the violence within the unit, that's still happening, and that hasn't changed. And so that's why we see the Russian military underperforming, given all the resources that they have as a state. Why that they perform the way that they do on the ground. But again, there's this resilience of they just endure through and they know not to expect any better. I will say, though, from looking across this organization, as we've seen critiques mounting, Russia is aware of the PTSD problem for these guys when they come home, more so than they have been in other conflicts. And I think they're genuinely concerned about it. I also Note some pretty as far as this system can be, direct critiques on why are we making so much progress with procurement and technical things, and none of you military psychologists are fixing this problem, or why aren't our political officers getting more involved in some of these rampant discipline problems? So there are some voices within the House that are calling out this problem, but I don't see actually any impetus to fix it at this time. Like, because they're so focused on enduring and remaining in the task, there's people that know it's a problem, they're just not tackling it. And this has been an area where the Russian military historically has not prioritized.

[A]

In the new piece, there is a pretty clear note of concern about what the coming months look like for Ukraine. You say that Ukraine is likely to face even greater destruction, whether that's from more numerous drone attacks or missiles getting through defenses. And the front lines can vary around the front lines becoming almost impenetrable. And this willingness of the Russians to trade as many soldiers lives as they need to for pretty incremental gains. If you're being pessimistic, what does that mean about where things will stand, say, six months from now in Ukraine?

[B]

I think what Russia's priority right now to do is to envelop the rest of Donetsk, to go around that stronghold and hope that that is basically going to deal a blow to Ukraine in terms of we can't really keep going like this. But Russia has been hammering at this objective for 18 months, and they haven't been able to get that decisive breakthrough. So my concern is always, as we enter the winter, the energy blackouts, the attacks on the cities, the infrastructure Russia has sought in the past to depopulate cities using this mechanism. You know, Kharkiv bears the brunt a lot because it's so close. I worry about that aspect. The Ukrainians, they pull through it, but I just, I hate it that they have to keep pulling through living like this through the winter, because it's almost like a frustration, right? Like Russia can't get what it wants on the ground, so it slings a bunch of missiles at hospitals and other targets they're not supposed to. I do think that as Ukraine continues to hit the oil and gas infrastructure in Russia, which is causing problems inside Russia for them, that we're going to see that energy retaliation again against the Ukrainian grid. So that's my big concern for Ukrainian civilians this winter.

[A]

And if this piece proves too pessimistic, I mean, keeping in mind the cautions that you have offered since the beginning of the war about not being too certain. If this piece proves wrong and things don't go so badly, what might that look like? What's an optimistic scenario that's still plausible?

[B]

Well, is that Russia doesn't get what they want in the Donbass. They still cannot chip away at this. I think that's entirely likely that they just can't. And then they have nothing to show for 80,000 combat deaths this year. They have nothing to show for it. You know, the Russian population is incredibly apathetic about this, but they're also like, you know, just really, what's the plan to end this? I think that's the best case scenario is that the Kremlin is looking stupid because it doesn't even have the Donbass, which has been its main objective for a year and a half. It can't get there. And they'll try to compensate for it with images of attacks on Ukrainian cities. That's how typically they've done things when they stall out on the ground.

[A]

Can you imagine some kind of serious willingness on Putin's part to negotiate an end to the war in that scenario?

[B]

I think if both sides are frustrated and the Donbass is out of his reach, I can't get inside his head. I think that the response will probably be to cause harm and devastation across Ukrainian cities with missile strikes, because again, he can't get what he wants on the ground, so he'll ruin the rest of it. I say this because I've seen the strikes in Kyiv pick up usually, typically he has not. Russia has not gone for the center of Kyiv. Kyiv is like an emotional historical city. I don't think he wants to see it destroyed. But lately we've been seeing a lot more attacks. Lviv, out in the west, a historical city as well, just got severely attacked a couple nights ago. So I think there's a possibility of lash out more than possibility for peace.

[A]

There's been talk of Ukraine developing or receiving from the US Ability to strike greater distance into Russia, whether that's with Tomahawk missiles or some kind of capability that the Ukrainians themselves are developing. Would that make a major difference in the war?

[B]

To your mind, long range strike will, yes, make a difference. The Tomahawk debate, though, has been a puzzling one to me because Tomahawks are fired from surface ships and submarines mostly, Almost entirely. Ukraine doesn't have a lot of those. It can be launched from the ground with a very large system that looks like a semi truck. We don't have A lot of those. And I don't know that if it went to Ukraine that it would survive very long. So the Tomahawk debate, to me it's not making a lot of sense from a launcher perspective. What would have made more sense to me is a argument about the Jassm missile. These are air launched missiles that can be mounted on F16s. They also have a pretty decent range. That direction would make more sense to me just because they have an ability to launch it. The SM6 missile is another one. That's our air defense missile, but it can also be used, it can be modified in the MK70 in a land attack kind of way. That also makes sense because you can dual purpose it. Right. So air defense, land attack. The Ukrainian indigenous capability I think is really useful for them to have because they. It's theirs, right? It's theirs, they develop it, they don't have to ask for permission. They can use it.

[A]

And that's technically plausible from a Ukrainian perspective.

[B]

Well, they're working on it with the Flamingo and other things they've got in the pipeline. You know, it takes time to develop. So I don't, you know, is it anything that they can use for the rest of this year? Probably not. But they've been really successful I think with some of their long range drone strikes and you know, with the bomber base attack and what we're seeing on the electrical grid and some of their big strikes on, on the air bases or ammunition dep. These things do. They do add up for Russia, but it's not a game changer right now.

[A]

One of the lessons you focused on in the 2023 essay, what Russia got wrong was the underestimation of both Ukrainian resolve and Western resolve. The notion that Ukraine would kind of fold quickly, it wouldn't put up much resistance after a kind of early show of force by the Russians. Where do you think Ukrainian resolve is? Do you have concerns about the kind of political center holding about, you know, mobilization concerns creating dissension among the populace? Where do you see it?

[B]

For me the biggest concern is this continuing tension between the units at the front that are holding the line. They need manpower and they are not getting what they need. They're holding the best they can with drones, but drones can't do everything for them. I understand the sensitivity about not wanting to mobilize 18 to 25 year olds in Ukraine and now they're relaxing the borders so that some may be able to actually like leave Ukraine. So this, to me, this is a real point of tension it's not being resolved. It's not dramatically worsening months on month, but it's not getting better. And it hasn't been getting better since the previous essay two years ago. So Ukrainians are incredibly resilient people, but Russia is actively on the ground every day trying to like water, trying to get through cracks and break stone. So it's. It is challenging.

[A]

How about Western resolve? I mean, obviously, the Trump piece of this is extremely hard to predict or impossible to predict, but we've seen over the last several weeks these escalating Russian hybrid attacks, I suppose you would call them, whether it's drones in Poland or fighter jets appearing in various places, or now drones in Denmark and elsewhere. Do you read that as an attempt by the Kremlin to further erode Western support in, you know, perhaps undercut some of the renewed European willingness to really stand by Ukraine?

[B]

Well, actually, I think that by doing this, whether it's in Poland or Finland or Sweden, Denmark, now Norway, Germany, Poland, I mean, just pick, pick your country. They're activating all of these antibodies against them. And, you know, now you have several European countries talking about, you know, we really need to accelerate a drone wall or ew. You've now got Polish representatives in Ukraine learning from Ukrainian ANT teams that shoot down drones. One could ask why that wasn't done three years ago, but it's better late than never. So whatever satisfaction that the Kremlin is getting from these drone incursions, I think ultimately they're going to pay a price for it, because now they're just irritating everyone. And the more countries you get on the same page, that's when changes are made. If they hadn't irritated all of these, you know, seven or eight growing countries, then would they be coming together right now to develop these things? Maybe not. So, I mean, you don't want to ever see Russian drones in your airspace, but now they're going to develop countermeasures.

[A]

One of the really fascinating elements in the new essay is your discussion of what this means beyond Ukraine, either for other governments, especially those that are supporting Russia, but also for warfare in the future. You write, quote, the same Russian adaptations that threaten Ukraine should be of concern to policymakers elsewhere. The Russian military will emerge from its evasion with extensive experience and a distinct vision of the future of combat, and it is sharing its experience with China, Iran, and North Korea. What is that vision and what exactly is happening to share it at this point?

[B]

Well, they consider themselves right now a leader in drone warfare. I think they begrudgingly admit that Ukraine is up there with them now. But that is something that they are fully bringing on board to how they execute offensive operations in the future. They understand that the future is going to be heavily flooded with information of low quality, fake to good quality because there's sensors everywhere. And they understand that humans are going to be increasingly overwhelmed as commanders trying to process this in real time. So they're trying to figure out how to use their limited means or tapping into what China's doing to bring AI into their force. When you look at this partnership between China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Russia's not the economic powerhouse. They are the powerhouse when it comes to combat experience. And we're seeing them through my research on this project here. This learning and others have written about this community of learning. They're not just sending equipment to China or purchasing equipment from China. They're bringing people over and they're teaching them how to do tactical medicine for mass casualty events. Now that should, you know, if you're a China watcher, that should get your attention. Why is China trying to figure out how to treat mass casualty events? They have no experience in this. Russia has a lot. Now, is it the best experience? No, but they're, they're still teaching it nevertheless. They're teaching distributed logistics to Iran, North Korea so that they can ride out future airstrikes if they ever get into a conflict with the United States. I mean, these, this learning is not just staying channelized in the war with Ukraine. It's disseminating to partners across the globe. It's going to be a huge factor if there's any conflict, even a limited one between Russia and NATO. And we're learning, NATO's learning. But I think where we are is not where we need to be. I think the learning needs to accelerate.

[A]

How might those lessons be applied in a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula? Is that, is it possible to imagine that at this point?

[B]

Yeah, I think the unmanned, you know, there's naval drones, the unmanned surface drones that we see Ukraine use effectively against Russia, you could easily see that being a factor. There's robotic mines, there's all sorts of the unmanned story here and how to integrate them with manned forces I think is a really interesting angle and one that China is keenly interested in. And I did actually find in the course of my research that China has observers not in occupied Ukraine, but they're right on the other side of the border in Russian command posts, just sitting there observing and learning. And I note with sadness that we are not in Ukrainian command posts doing the same thing.

[A]

You do make very clear in this piece that you believe that, that American and European policymakers and analysts and others should be studying the Russian. Studying or learning from the Russian learning. I think we would probably, most of us tend to dismiss the Russian military as a learning organization, but you caution us against that. What is the state of that kind of learning in the US military and US strategic circles at this point? And what should we take from the Russian endeavor here?

[B]

There are little pockets of excellence, I think, either whether it's in Poland under a NATO umbrella, or whether it's going on within the US military services or within the intelligence community. People are learning some things in accordance to their mission set. But there's not a consolidated program, which I really think that we need at a central level in the Pentagon to unite all of these things together. My colleagues who go to Ukraine have a completely different understanding. I was there only once myself to see it. But there's a complete world of learning. And the way that they see the Russians, that we are not getting here because we are physically not there and we're not having that data exchange with them in the way that I think we need to. So that would be my advice. And also to the extent I've heard arguments that none of this is applicable to a war with China and Taiwan, that's wrong. That's really wrong. I know it's not a land war, but there's a lot that actually is.

[A]

Directly applicable beyond the unmanned systems dimensions you were talking about. Are there other lessons that you'd focus on?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, you know, everything from how do you handle mass casualty events, how do you prepare your officers for going into this kind of environment, how do you prepare people mentally for being on a drone saturated environment where you're being watched as you're trying to, you know, survive. You know, there's across all the major war fighting functions, really a lot to learn here.

[A]

As you watch what's happening in American military and intelligence institutions. Do you worry about both the kind of culture and just institutions, the mechanisms of learning and analysis and self criticism being eroded to the point that we're just not able to do this effectively? I mean, you see what's happening to analytic bodies, but it's obviously much deeper than that.

[B]

We actually are pretty good at, I think, at learning now if just speaking about the US military, I think that we have a lot of good things going for us in terms of, of accountability to one another or transparency to one another. When things go right, when they go wrong after action reports. We're good at the mechanisms of learning. That I don't think is the issue. The issue is what I see the most, just as a Russian military expert and having interacted with Ukrainians and hearing their stories and interacting with our military and our defense policymakers, is we don't know what we don't know because we're not there. And I think if they were there, they would realize concepts are entirely out of date. The way that we train people to just move through a battlefield is completely out of date. We're working on improving drone programs, counter drone techniques, but we're doing that kind of in a, not a total vacuum from Ukraine's experience, but not enough partnership in my perspective. So I would just advocate for a lot more lash up when Ukraine is in a position to do that.

[A]

Before we close, I want to ask you more of a kind of process or perhaps epistemological question. It's been so hard, I think, for people to really understand what's going on on the battlefield and how to assess different developments. Sometimes it's harder because we can watch in real time drone strikes and Russian tanks blowing up and see this kind of incredible battlefield footage. But it's easy to kind of lose a sense of what's really happening. How do you do this work? How do you know what you know? You've talked about going to Ukraine and reading Russian military documents, but I'm fascinated to know what that process looks like.

[B]

Well, you have to understand when you see these materials that everything that you're seeing from the Russians or from the Ukrainians, someone has made the decision to upload it to the Internet, something that they want you to see. And so you're looking at something with a lot of selection bias. And you're also staring at a problem through the end of a straw. And that's the mentality that you have to have. Just because you see one Russian unit with the commanders punching his subordinates in the face, you can't say, oh, the Russian military is rotten top to bottom. You can say, okay, that's problematic here. And we can extrapolate a little bit from it. But, you know, you can't make this like blanket pronouncement that the Russians are uniformly trash. I can't, as a analyst tell you how each unit is affected by the personnel rot situation. I have my suspicions, but you have to just be kind of humble about what you don't know. And the same for the Ukrainian side as well. I see it on the opposite side that The Ukrainians are amazing, and they are amazing, but they face a lot of the same problems that any military would face in a complicated environment like, like this, too. So it's, it's really challenging and you have to constantly question your confidence level and what you know and then most importantly, what's the negative space of what you don't.

[A]

Tara, thank you so much for joining me today. And thank you for the fantastic essay. It's in our new issue, which is on the way to mailboxes and newsstands, and it's also online right now so listeners can go read it on our website and we will look forward to more as these dynamics continue.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Elise Burr, and Kanish Khlour. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the 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 Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.