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- [00:01]
Benjamin Wittes
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the aftermath.
- [00:32]
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- [01:14]
Eric Charamella
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Benjamin Wittes
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Eric Charamella
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- [01:47]
Anastasiya Lapatina
I'm Mary ford, intern at Lawfare with an episode for the Lawfare Archive for August 16, 2025. At the time of this recording, President Trump was set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss the war in Ukraine. When the Trump Putin meeting was announced, critics voiced concern that an American invitation to talk would not only elevate Putin to the realm of the respectable, but also lead to concessions that favored Russia. Notably, Trump did not extend an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to join the talks.
- [02:22]
Podcast Advertiser
For today's archive episode, I selected an.
- [02:25]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Episode from August 14, 2024, in which Benjamin Wittes sat down with Anastasia Laptania and Eric Charamella to discuss Ukraine's incursion into Russia proper, the political implications of Ukraine occupying Russian territory, Ukraine's strategic objectives foreign.
- [02:51]
Benjamin Wittes
It'S the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes with Anastasiya Lapatina and Eric Charamella.
- [02:59]
Eric Charamella
Definitely the Ukrainians achieved operational surprise on the attack. I mean, it's actually amazing reading some of the accounts, how much Ukraine managed to almost mimic the surprise that Russia thought it was achieving in the early days of the full scale invasion.
- [03:18]
Benjamin Wittes
Ukraine has invaded Russia In a bit of role reversal, we're talking about the major Ukrainian operation inside of Russian territory, 1,000 square kilometers of which are currently under Ukrainian control. Nastya, I want to start for the American listeners who think that Kursk is either a submarine that sank a couple decades ago or a battle in the Second World War that they read about in some history book, but that doesn't have any contemporary existence at all. What is Kursk, both the city and, and the oblast? And why are we talking about it?
- [04:11]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Well, you just kind of did my job for me. So Kursk is an actual city in Russia. It's near Ukraine, it's very close to Ukraine. And it is also the name of an oblast, which is a Russian and Ukrainian word for kind of like a region. So something like a state, I guess would be in the US So there's a Kursk city in the state of Kursk in Russia, let's put it that way for the American listener. And this oblast, this region, borders Ukraine. And we're talking about it because as people have probably seen in the media for the first time since the Second World War, another state, Ukraine, is invading Russian territory and going into this region of Kursk in the direction of Kursk. And it's extremely significant. And we're going to talk about it today.
- [05:01]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, Eric, what do we know about what has happened in Kursk over the last few days? There's still something of a media blackout in Ukraine about it. The Russians are tearing their hair out, but with their usual degree of factual accuracy. What do we actually know?
- [05:26]
Eric Charamella
So on August 6, Ukraine launched a surprise cross border attack, as Nastya was alluding to, with some somewhere around maybe a thousand troops and heavy armor and has captured a few dozen villages and localities on the border with the Ukrainian region of Sumy. And, you know, we don't know much, as Ben was saying, about the objectives of this operation because the Ukrainian political and military leadership has maintained a pretty strict regime of silence. And actually President Zelenskyy only publicly acknowledged the operation several days into it. So there's been very little about kind of the stated objectives. The Ukrainian leadership has said that there's no intention to, you know, occupy Russian territory for the long term or take, you know, annex Russian territory or anything like this. So as best we can surmise, there are some kind of political and military, you know, overall objectives to something like this. The military objective basically would seem to be to draw Russian forces away from other parts of the front. As listeners are aware and we've talked about on the podcast before, there's been this ongoing Russian offensive around Donetsk in the Donbass in the east, and over the past few months it has accelerated and the Russians are making gains in the direction of the city of Pokrovsk, which is a major rail hub, transport hub, that would allow the Russians to be in a much better position to seize the rest of Donetsk oblast. And defending that has been a key Ukrainian objective for the past couple of years. So what the Ukrainian military leadership probably wanted to do was to force Russia to make difficult decisions about force allocation and to pull some troops from the Donetsk direction in order to reinforce Kursk. We're not quite sure what's going on there in terms of, you know, the Russians moving around troops. So it's TBD on whether that operational objective has been met. The political objectives, I would argue, are more significant, and there are a couple. So the first big one is that for Ukraine, the last year has been a series of grim news updates. So first there was the failure of the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. Then there was the Russian winter offensive that culminated in the capture of Avdiivka, an industrial suburb of Donetsk. Then there was the massive Russian attack on the Ukrainian energy grid. There was the delay with the aid from the United States Congress, and now this offensive in the Donbass. So it's been a year of really difficult news for Ukraine. And so I would say one of the overarching political objectives was to change the narrative and to show that Ukraine still has agency and the ability to launch offensive operations, and both to show the domestic population, but, you know, Ukraine's partners as well, that Ukraine is not fully tapped out and still has this potential. The second objective was to send a shock into the Russian system and to show, you know, you fought this war on our territory the whole time. You brought the war to us, we didn't want it. And so now we're showing you what it's like to have war on your territory. And I know we'll talk a bit more about this, but, you know, the Russian response has been, I wouldn't say predictably bad, but it has been somewhat shockingly inept. And Putin and his top lieutenants appear to have been taken completely by surprise and are really struggling more than a week into this operation to get their hands around the response. So, again, I think those political objectives and we should dive in a little bit more are probably more significant and more likely to bear fruit than the military objectives, which this early into the operation, it's very hard to assess whether Ukraine is making any progress with respect to those specific military operational objectives.
- [09:49]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, Nastya, which parts of that do you agree with, and what else would you say about either military or political objectives of the operation, I think before.
- [10:04]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Well, first of all, I agree with everything that Eric said. I just think that it's also worth adding a little bit of context to the operation and how it's being conducted before discussing the objectives. Because there are several really important points about it. So one of them being what really differentiates this incursion to the incursions that happened in the past, of which there were several, is that in the past week Ukraine has been attacking Russia with its regular military. So its regular army formations instead of the small units of Russians and other foreigners and units like the Russian Volunteer Corps or Freedom of Russia Legion, which are these kind of interesting formations that Ukraine has had under the leadership of Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, which are comprised of Russians fighting on the side of Ukraine. And in the past when Ukraine has launched similar incursions into Russia, mainly into Belgorod Oblast, which is near Kursk Oblast, it all looked pretty much only like a PR stunt because there were photos and videos and commentary coming out like pretty much immediately after these incursions would begin. They would be very short lived, just several days. They wouldn't bring much, if anything other than just, I guess, a morale boost for Ukraine and some political clout. But they really didn't do much. Whereas right now it's very different. Right now it's regular Ukrainian military. And as Eric already said, the Ukrainian government and military for days have been completely silent. And the Ukrainian media also has had something of a blackout. There haven't been any leaks, any photos or videos or details about this brigade or that brigade doing anything in particular. Also, if you listen to various commentators on Ukrainian media or podcasts, or if you just listen to anything in the Ukrainian media on the topic of Kursk, all journalists keep saying that we can't say much because this is an ongoing serious operation.
- [12:06]
Benjamin Wittes
And Nastya, is this because they don't know stuff or because they're not saying what they know, or both?
- [12:12]
Anastasiya Lapatina
I would assume it's both because I think some of the journalists and many of the journalists I of course follow here in Ukraine are quite well connected. I'm sure they know details that aren't available in public. But again, because we're Ukrainians, we actually understand what's on the line. We're not a New York Times umbrella reporter who was just parachuted here and doesn't really have the same connection to what's happening here. So Ukrainian reporters really take it seriously, right? If there is a media blackout, they stick to that and that's what's been happening for days. So it was really interesting, like on August 8th, which is two days after the operation began, all that Zelenskyy said, and this was the first time he'd spoken about it. He said, Russia brought the war to our land and it should feel what it has done. The next day, he said that he discussed with the military officials the replenishment of Ukraine's exchange fund, meaning capturing Russian soldiers, so that Ukraine has more to bargain with during the exchanges of bows. And then on August 10, he said that he'd spoken to our top general Syrsky about Ukraine's actions to push the war into the aggressor's territory. And actually, up until today, at the time of us recording this podcast, this has been like, the only information available. So everything else was speculation.
- [13:35]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, speculation and reporting based on what's been released intentionally and unintentionally by the Russian side.
- [13:44]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Right, right. So most of the analysis, you know, things like reports done by the Institute for the Study of War or any other analysis for the last week, pretty much most of that, if not all of that, was based on what the Russians and military bloggers, as they're called, and the Russian side, what they've been releasing, because that has been the only side of the equation. So any kind of understanding of what village has been captured, what city has been captured, that's all coming from the Russian side. And very often it's been very contradictory, which is why there has been this. In addition to the regular kind of confusion in wartime, the fog of war, we're also having this additional layer of confusion because the Russians panicking, they don't know what to do. The Russian media reported. Meduza, the Russian somewhat independent media outlet, reported that apparently the Russian authorities had no idea what was coming. And for three days they couldn't figure out what the official narrative should be. So they were scrambling to give instructions to the Russian state media of how to communicate this. And they just said that, don't overdo it, just praise the Russian military for kicking the Ukrainians out and things like that. So basically, the important part is that Ukraine is using its regular military and there is a medium blackout. And those two really important things indicate that this is a very serious operation and it's not a PR stunt as has been in the past. There's also a few things that I haven't really seen discussed anywhere but in some Ukrainian outlets. And that's kind of the symbolism of the whole thing and the timing of it, because as we know, Putin has this kind of affinity to interesting historical dates and launching attacks on various days. And this time Ukrainian incursion happened on August 6, which is two days before the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008. And there was a photo of Ukrainian forces apparently entering Belgorod oblast and holding two flags. One of them was Georgia's flag. And this hasn't been communicated much, but people in Ukraine definitely took notice, kind of alluding that this isn't some sort of payback for what happened. And then also this incursion happened during the Olympics, just like Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008, just like Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and also almost just like the full scale invasion four days after the Beijing Olympics ended. So that's just a note on Ukrainian planning. It's quite interesting. And the third I'd say really important point about the operation that's definitely, I'd say the most discussed in Ukraine right now is actually the reaction of Ukraine's partners in the west and in the US because in the past there has been this constant conflict and kind of like tug of war between US and Ukraine about de escalating and long attacks into Russian territory and how that could lead to escalation with Russia. And Ukrainians have been really unhappy about it. And in the previous incursions as well, America wasn't happy about it, wasn't happy about Ukraine using Western weapons for it, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas now the Pentagon actually said that they don't see this incursion as escalatory at all. And they were totally on board with it if you look at what they've been saying about it. They said that apparently they weren't aware that this was happening. But you know, upon kind of figuring out what's actually going on, they said that Ukraine has the right to defend its territory and the territory that Ukraine is invading is being used by Russia to launch attacks into Ukraine, into Sumo Oblast. So it's totally within America's policy that Ukraine can basically keep on doing it.
- [17:29]
Benjamin Wittes
And that follows, notably a decision, I want to say about two or three months ago that the US Was relaxing the no attacks with US weapons in Russia rule to exclude this territory near Kharkiv, right around the border, for purposes of alleviating pressure on Kharkiv. And so it's an interesting, I think, dialogue between Ukrainian operators and American policymakers where the US Says okay, thinking about attack and rockets, I think fine for you to hit targets if they're, you know, attacking over the border. And the Ukrainians Respond. How about this?
- [18:20]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Right, right. You know, a thousand actual tanks with.
- [18:24]
Benjamin Wittes
Armored, like into exactly those areas. And it forces a US Contemplation of the limits of that policy. And we end up with a. Yeah, that's okay. And we had a similar, I think, dialogue over, over use of US Weapons to hit targets in Crimea where again, the Ukrainians were like, well, it's not Russian territory. And we were like, oh, yeah, that's right, that's okay. And there's a, I think it's a, like, it's an interesting question whether the dialogue actually takes place human to human before any of these attacks or whether they really do take place by the armed forces of Ukraine kind of experimenting with the boundaries of US Doctrine and then the US Kind of having to respond to that.
- [19:20]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Well, yeah, so the boundaries of the American doctrine have of course been extremely frustrating for Ukraine and this latest Ukrainian invasion of Russia, I can believe I'm saying this, but it kind of highlighted this debate and very much brought it to the surface because now Ukrainians are saying like, guys, you've been telling us that this is escalatory. That is escalatory. You can't hit this far. You can't hit that far. We are now using your Western provided heavy armored tanks to roll into Russian territory. Our top General Syrsky said that we are now in control of roughly 1,000 square kilometers of Russian land and Russia has no idea what to do with it. There is no nuclear war. There is nothing radical happening. They can't even evacuate their own people. How after this you're going to tell us that we still can't have long range strikes on Russian airfields somewhere? Some people have been speculating that this is also one of the potential, perhaps objectives of the attack is to show to the Western partners just how much their view of Russia as this, this really strong, really organized adversary that we should be very cautious and very careful with how much that image is overplayed and how much they're actually very disorganized in many ways and how we shouldn't be so scared of them because here is Ukraine, the underdog, rolling tanks into Russian territory and Russians having no idea how to respond. I think this is going to influence the future deliberations on just how far we can head into Russian territory. A lot.
- [20:58]
Benjamin Wittes
Okay, so you guys have set up beautifully my agenda for this conversation. We're going to talk about military objectives. We're going to talk through the two political objectives that Eric identified. We're going to talk Russian reaction and we're going to talk US Reaction, we're going to do it in that order. So let's start with the military objectives, which is the easiest to discuss because we really don't know. But I, I want to throw three possibilities out and have you both reflect on them. The first is goal is to get and hold some Russian territory, capture large numbers of people. People can be traded back for the rather large number of Ukrainian POWs, not to mention civilians being held by the Russians, including 20,000 children. The land becomes politically embarrassing enough for the Russians that they are willing to contemplate evacuation of some of the territories that they've occupied in order to get it back. That's ambitious. Possibility number one. Possibility number two is it's really a short term local incursion for purposes of maximally embarrassing the Russians destroying architecture and military hardware and encampments that are being used to attack Ukrainian forces and to destroy some supply lines. And possibility number three, which Eric alluded to earlier, is that the main goal here is to cause the Russian armed forces to have to bring forces away from the front lines by way of weakening the offensive that the Russians have been engaged in on which, you know, candidly, as Eric's parade of horribles at the beginning described, the Ukrainians have not been especially effective at repelling. So, Eric and then Nastya, which of those three or something else do you think are most plausible as what the Ukrainian military is trying to do here?
- [23:29]
Eric Charamella
I mean, honestly, I think it could be a combination of all of them and I would add to it a fourth, which is listeners will remember Russia's offensive around Kharkiv in May, and the Ukrainian army managed to stop that offensive pretty early. But Russia is still holding onto several villages on the border inside Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast that are pretty close to the city of Kharkiv, second largest city in Ukraine. And so one kind of tactical objective could be to create some sort of trade bait where Ukraine would give back this territory on the Russian side of the border in Kursk in exchange for Russia evacuating positions inside Kharkiv oblast. And then again, that's not any kind of major event that upends the course of the war and changed the trajectory, but it's more of a tactical move to get relief for Kharkiv city. So again, when these military operations are planned, one has to assume that there is a sort of hierarchy of different kinds of objectives and there's probably a primary one, but then there are different contingencies for, you know, if the operation goes well, if it goes poorly, there's a huge question, I think, about whether Ukraine has the capacity to reinforce its positions. I mean, it was largely entering unopposed for the first several days and the pace of the operation has definitely slowed down as Russia has started to counterattack. But I do think there is a huge question out there about whether Ukraine has the resources to be able to occupy this territory for a significant enough period of time to, you know, really change Russia's allocation of forces or to get one of these tactical deals like we were talking about, because that, you know, Ukraine does have limited manpower. We've talked about, about this before. And so if Ukraine has to start pulling guys from other parts of the front, I mean, already they did in order to do this operation, but it's a relatively small number. But an occupation force is going to be much larger than this kind of, you know, incursion force. But if Ukraine has to start pulling resources away in order to reinforce a long term position in Kursk, that's going to actually potentially weaken Ukraine's position on other parts of the front. So I think we aren't, you know, it's too early to say we're only a week and a day into this operation. I think in several weeks we'll have a better sense of whether, you know, the Ukrainian leadership wanted to use this, you know, for one of those kind of shock and awe objectives or if there was some sort of desire for a longer term or a medium term plan at least to force some kind of trade.
- [26:24]
Benjamin Wittes
Nastya?
- [26:25]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Yeah, so the Ukrainian government has only so far kind of clearly articulated two objectives. Zelensky has talked about thanking the Ukrainian military for taking a big number of Russian POWs because that could be used in exchanges. He didn't specifically mention Kursk or anything, but he did talk about this at the same kind of time when there were all of these videos and photos coming out from the Russian and both and Ukrainian side as well of dozens of Russian soldiers being taken hostage. There is a lot of material proving that that's taking place and we can assume that Zelenskyy was alluding to that and that possibly could have been one of the reasons why. Also the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign affairs has said at the press conference being held today, and I'm quoting Cuban independence journalists who are there right now, the spokesperson said that Ukraine does not have sufficient capabilities to carry out long range strikes with the weapons it has to defend itself, therefore it has to use these kinds of methods. Therefore there is a need to, as he said, liberate these border areas from the Russian military. Basically the spokesperson talked about the relentless attacks against the Sumo area, which is the oblast that's bordering Kursk oblast and Sumu 100% has been kind of like our listeners may remember. We talked about the horrific attacks against Kharkiv just like the everyday terrible attacks against civilian infrastructure. Sumy Oblast has been suffering from something similar to that. So basically the Foreign Ministry today said that this is why we're doing it. We're trying to create kind of like a buffer zone to push the Russians further away so they don't attack Sumy. So this and the POW's exchanges are the only two things that have been sort of clearly articulated. But I kind of am sure that there is a bunch of different goals here together that are working together. I've seen some reports in the media that the Russians already began to pull reserves from other areas to reinforce the Kursk situation, to reinforce their forces in Kursk at the same time. Also, the spokesperson for the 32nd separate mechanized brigade said that they and they're fighting in the Teretsk area in Donbas. He said that they haven't really seen any effect on the front line. I think he said something like there's been a slight drop in attacks, but nothing meaningful that could indicate that it's happening because of the Kursk incursion. So yeah, I think from a military point of view those are the main, the main kind of objectives. And I think the political ones are actually much more interesting.
- [29:23]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah. So let's move to the political ones about which we know more. And I want to start with the really fun political objective, which is the domestic morale boost matter that Eric raised at the beginning. You know, you have seen a kind of cheerful Ukrainian response on social media, a lot of memes, a lot of sort of just kind of excited reaction that is highly reminiscent of the early days of the full scale invasion when it became clear that Kiev was not going to fall in three days. And you know, there were tractors pulling tanks and, you know, lots of kind of fun. And that stuff has been really at a minimum over the last year for a lot of the reasons that Eric describes. But it kind of comes back in full force over the last week. So, Nastya, describe the kind of domestic pick me up that this has been.
- [30:33]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Well, so I think because Ukraine kind of has struggled with morale for a while and then also has struggled with morale and expectations that have been too high for what then turned out no apparent reason. And I'm thinking of the failed counter offensive Ukrainians, I think, have gotten much more cautious with, with how they perceive these things. Right. So when it all just kicked off, a bunch of people who would talk about it, they would also say, but don't forget that the situation in the east is really, really terrible because it is. So a lot of people would be like, okay, we can talk about Kursk, but also please donate to the direction. Please donate to the military units fighting in the east because it's really tough and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I've seen some colleagues of mine even being skeptical of the Ukrainian government's decision to and the military's decision to launch this incursion. Yeah, I've seen people just questioning like, why would you do this? Like the front is collapsing. What's the point of Ukraine doing this? But as this all kind of began to settle in and we started seeing that, it looks like Ukraine isn't taking that many casualties. It looks like Russia is just completely lost and has no idea what to do. There has definitely been a morale boost. Ukrainians have been pointing out the very interesting and not unexpected for us reactions from the Russian side. There was this video of a bunch of Russians standing and kind of talking to a camera, pleading for Putin to come and save them because the local authorities aren't doing anything.
- [32:16]
Benjamin Wittes
And yeah, Nastya, they said that you guys were behaving terribly and had destroyed their villages and that there was, it was, it sounded like they'd been invaded by, you know, the Mongols or something.
- [32:32]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Yeah, literally they just stood. It was such a weird video that's been circulating online. It's just like several dozen people and this grandma in the middle of it is complaining that NATO like foreign tanks have invaded their village and obliterated in a matter of hours or something. And I mean, it just again points out just how different Ukrainians and Russians are because not only has there been no adequate reaction from the Russian military, which, I mean, okay, that's worth its own analysis, but there hasn't been any adequate reaction to what's happening from the civilians. Right. Like your country is being invaded and we haven't seen any kind of the typical Ukrainian style kind of like horizontal organization where people get in groups, people.
- [33:19]
Benjamin Wittes
Try to civil society snapping into action.
- [33:23]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Right, right. Which is exactly what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine. Like everyone began helping everyone immediately. There is all of this self organization, like, screw you, the government, we don't care what you do. We're just going to help ourselves. And that's just not at all happening in Russia. They're just filming A video pleading to Putin, you know, to come and save them. And it just highlights again, the difference between Ukrainians and Russians. But the morale boost is definitely happening. Though I do think it's important to note that, like, at the same time, people are being cautious, people are talking about the situation in Donbass. People understand that, you know, what's happening in Kursk isn't going to magically solve the war. And, you know, it's kind of this balance that we're seeing.
- [34:06]
Benjamin Wittes
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Anastasiya Lapatina
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- [38:52]
Benjamin Wittes
So Eric, talk to me about this aspect of it because I, I have been surprised honestly at how big the, how excited the morale boost has been. I mean, you know, all of the threads that I'm on, on various text threads are all full of Kursk memes. They're full of jokes. Does this matter or is it, you know, this political aspect, does it matter or is it just, you know, a feel good thing I mean, I think.
- [39:31]
Eric Charamella
It matters for Ukrainians because one of the key elements to, you know, winning a war of attrition, which this war is, in an overall sense, is morale. And we had seen a steady increase in war fatigue. When you look at the opinion polls going back to the winter, and, you know, again, it's a complicated story, but there's been an increased openness to negotiations with Russia to end the war and potentially some sort of concessions. Now, again, those were the headlines of the opinion polls back in June and early July. And when you dig into the numbers, it's actually more nuanced about what Ukrainians are willing to consider giving up and not giving up. But definitely the Ukrainian leadership saw those trends in society and felt like, you know, if there's no end in sight to this war, then you need to find a way to change the narrative and get people to believe again in the possibility of Ukrainian successes. What I will say, though, and this is probably a more controversial point, boosting morale. You know, it could be part of this effort to, you know, sustain Ukraine in a long war, but it could also be part of an effort to prepare the ground for some sort of talks. And, you know, going into talks, first of all, from a position of weakness, as it would have been before, this offensive would certainly play to Ukraine's disadvantage. But the bigger part was that Ukrainian society, I think, still would have had a lot of trouble accepting the narrative around going into some sort of talks, because it would have looked like capitulation from a position of weakness. So both the negotiating leverage with Russia, but also the narrative that Zelensky and others could sort of spin to Ukrainian society. And now there's a possibility that, you know, Zelensky can say, okay, we really demonstrated our power and ability to bring the war to Russia, but still the front in the rest of the country is, you know, not necessarily collapsing, but at least Russia's making steady gains. And we still need to enter some sort of talks to either end the war or have some sort of ceasefire. And it's still very controversial in Ukraine. But now he can sort of make the case that, you know, we've demonstrated in principle that we can, you know, take the war to Russia, and so now we can get a more equitable peace. And again, just to be able to use that as the framing, because Zelensky, if talks do begin, is going to need the political space to sort of figure out what the terms of some deal are, and that's not going to happen overnight. And so I think he's Trying potentially to relieve some of the pressure that would come onto him immediately when some sort of talks are announced and give him some space to pursue different formulations of a deal. Everything from a no conditions ceasefire, which I think is, you know, more plausible, all the way to some of these more comprehensive deals, which I think are still pretty far away. So, again, that, you know, as Nastya said, that has not been articulated by Zelenskyy as an objective. I'm speculating here, but I do think given the trend lines and other parts of the front, this could be a way to get a big boost before a really, really tough period of going into some sort of talks, which would become much more likely, obviously, if Donald Trump wins the U.S. election.
- [43:25]
Benjamin Wittes
Right. So this brings us neatly to your second political objective, which you artic was, which was just bringing the war back home to Russia and putting political pressure on Russia in the context of, by humiliating Putin and showing that he is actually not capable, the strong man who's actually not capable of defending Russia's borders. You know, I hate to bring this up, but, you know, there is an example in American history of this, and it doesn't end well. Right. It's Gettysburg where Robert E. Lee decides, let's bring the war home to the north, sends a big force into Pennsylvania, and of course, it doesn't end well for the South. And I, you know, Nastya, you made the point earlier that there's some anxiety about this for this reason in Ukraine, like, you know, hey, we've got a front that's not doing so well, and now you're kind of opening up a new one with relatively small forces. I'm curious, and I want to reserve the Russian reaction for the next discussion. Like, this seems to me to be a very different picture. If, you know, they go in, they destroy a bunch of stuff and then they leave. So it's kind of like a Viking raiding party than it is if you have a, an effort to hold the territory for any substantial period of time. And it works much better if it works than if it doesn't. Right. So if the Russians, you know, beat their chests and for a few days and don't know what to do, but then, you know, come and effectively deal with the situation, then it's very different from if you cross the border, you take some villages in Kursk, you humiliate them, and then you leave. So how, how do the politics of this work from a, you know, from a Ukrainian, Russian relationship standpoint? What are the Ukrainian forces have to do in order to make this politically successful for the next two weeks rather than just the past week.
- [45:52]
Anastasiya Lapatina
I honestly don't think that this is so much about Ukrainian military making the Russians feel something or do something. I think we've given up on that. A very long time ago, in the very beginning of the war, Zelensky was trying to communicate directly with the Russian public and he was recording videos in Russia and appeals to common sense and things like that. And it hasn't worked. And I mean, if you guys have met any Ukrainian, they will tell you how Ukrainians feel about the Russian society. So I honestly don't think.
- [46:30]
Benjamin Wittes
No, I wasn't suggesting that this is an effort to communicate with Russian society. I was suggesting that it's an effort. You know, when. When Eric describes the political objective of bringing the war back home, there's a communicative aspect of that, right?
- [46:48]
Anastasiya Lapatina
It's about justice for Ukrainians. It's about us watching these videos of people fleeing their homes and being like, well, screw you guys, we've been doing this for three years.
- [46:59]
Benjamin Wittes
No, I'm sorry, you don't make war for content creation purposes.
- [47:07]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Which was actually what I was trying to say after what I've just communicated, that I don't think this is about Ukraine and Russia. I think this is about Ukraine and the U.S. i think the primary receiver of this show has been America and our Western allies. And again, I'm not in the head of Zelensky or Syrsky, but judging by the reaction of the civil society and what everyone in Ukraine is saying, I think this has been. One of the main goals of the whole operation is to show to America that, hey, you've been telling us that we can't destroy a Russian plane somewhere. We have literally invaded their territory using your armor. What other restrictions can you place on us? I think the major point of this operation has been to highlight just how weak and disorganized Russia can be so the west stops perceiving it as this boogeyman who's going to nuke everyone. And therefore we have to be so nice and polite with them and so on and so forth. I think that. Think like that the main audience. Yeah, I think because that's.
- [48:09]
Benjamin Wittes
You think the main audience is Washington?
- [48:11]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Yes, because that's what everyone is talking about these days.
- [48:15]
Benjamin Wittes
Do you agree with that, Eric? Is. Is. Is like. Because I've thought of it as like an effort to show the Russians we can still hit you where it hurts. Is it?
- [48:24]
Anastasiya Lapatina
But they don't care.
- [48:25]
Benjamin Wittes
No, no, I understood. Is Nastya right that the Real point is not showing the Russians we can still hit you where it hurts. It's showing us we can still hit them where it hurts and we can use your weapons and you're not going to do anything about it, so.
- [48:40]
Anastasiya Lapatina
And they aren't going to do anything.
- [48:41]
Benjamin Wittes
About it and they're not going to do anything. So screw the rest of the weapons restrictions.
- [48:46]
Eric Charamella
I mean, that's interesting. I'm thinking about it. It is remarkable. If we just kind of zoom out and think about how close the US Ukrainian relationship has become over the past two and a half years and how close United States government had no idea that this was being planned. So.
- [49:06]
Benjamin Wittes
And you're confident that we really had no idea it was being planned rather than that it.
- [49:11]
Anastasiya Lapatina
I've seen some reporting, I think by the Guardian that some of the Western allies supposedly helped Ukraine Planet. They didn't specify the country, but I.
- [49:21]
Eric Charamella
Would not be surprised if there were Brits involved. Yeah, they tend to do.
- [49:25]
Anastasiya Lapatina
I've heard that on their own.
- [49:26]
Eric Charamella
But in any case, it did surprise Washington. It put Washington on its back foot and it was in reactive mode. I wouldn't say that the reaction has been sort of full throated support. It has been more, you know, good luck and see what you can accomplish.
- [49:46]
Benjamin Wittes
It's been infinitely tolerant.
- [49:48]
Eric Charamella
It has.
- [49:49]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Which is a big switch.
- [49:51]
Eric Charamella
Yeah, it is a big switch. And I will, you know, just to go back to Nastya's hypothesis here, one of the major turning points in US policy on arming Ukraine happened after the Kharkiv and Kherson operations in fall 2022, when there was still a big question mark about how Russia would react to kind of humiliating defeats on the battlefield and the loss of Kherson. And there was that whole nuclear scare which I think was, you know, it was significant and real in the sense that US policymakers at the highest level had genuine, you know, well founded concerns that Russia might, you know, escalate into the nuclear domain and did a lot of signaling behind the scenes and in public that, you know, there would be categorically different consequences of Russia used to battlefield nuclear weapon, you know, to retaliate for the loss of Kherson or whatever. And in the end, what did Russia do? It didn't do nothing. It annexed the territories, the four Ukrainian oblasts, including territories that Russia didn't hold at the time and still doesn't hold. And it declared a major mobilization which did significantly alter the course of the war insofar as it got Russia much more committed, pot committed to some sort of victory by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of additional forces. But Russia did not retaliate or escalate in any kind of conventional definition of escalation. And what happened was that fundamentally changed the White House's perspective on how Russia would react to the loss of territory on the battlefield. And so that directly led to the decision to start arming Ukraine for the 2023 counteroffensive, the decision to provide Abrams tanks, the decisions eventually to provide F16s and all of that. So those operations were successful from a Ukrainian perspective because they liberated Kharkiv Oblast and Kherson City, but they were really successful on the US and partner messaging standpoint because it really led to this step change in US policy. So going back to Nastya's hypothesis that, that the US Might have been the primary audience, I do think it's possible, although again, going back to what I said in the beginning, there could be multiple audiences. And I would just say that certainly Washington was a big part of it. And the response so far, I think validates the idea that actually Ukraine, to prove its point, had to just take matters into its own hands.
- [52:36]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Yeah, I think, I mean, as I said earlier, the Foreign Affairs Ministry tied it right back to the long range strikes restrictions. In their statements today. They said that we are doing this because we do not have the ability to strike Russian targets deep enough into their territory. So they've articulated this and this is one of the reasons why I'm so confident that the US Was definitely one of the audiences.
- [53:05]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, so let's talk about the US Reaction because as you both mention, it's been interesting. It is not a full throated, you go girl. But it sure isn't a stop this right now and don't use our weapons for it. And it's not, at least in my view, anything that the Ukrainians would or should be concerned about in terms of their future relations with the United States. And if part of the point here was, let's see what happens if we push this policy to its absolute limit, the answer from the United States anyway is you get a pat on the back, or at least not anything harder than a pat on the back. So, Eric, I want to start with you on this. You know, the US has been extremely supportive of Ukraine from the beginning, but also quite conservative in its support in important ways, at least conservative compared to what the Ukrainians want. And this is part of a long standing push and pull in which the Ukrainians say we need X, Y and Z. And the US says you can have X but not Y and Z. Or you can have X and Y, but you can't use Y in the following way. And the Ukrainians kind of chomp at the particular bit. And then three months later, we accede to greater use of X and Y and maybe we'll give you Z three months from now. And I guess the question is, I know that Nastya would say, you know, we've shown proof of concept over and over again that the escalation will not happen and that you guys are being hyper conservative here. Just let us run with it. So what's the other side of that equation? Is there, is there an answer to that? That's like, hey, this is a nuclear power with a gazillion nukes and it has interests. We have interests in interacting with it all over the world and, you know, we can't be as hyper focused as you can. Or is this just showing that the Ukrainians are just right?
- [55:50]
Anastasiya Lapatina
FYI, I stand by everything Ben just put in my mouth. I would say that.
- [55:55]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, I'm not putting words in Nastya's mouth. This is stuff that she articulates to me in a hundred text messages a day. So it's like, I'm pretty confident.
- [56:06]
Eric Charamella
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a longer conversation. Maybe we can have this debate on a separate podcast. But, you know, I would say escalation management, which is an important aspect of any armed conflict, is an art and not a science. And there's no equation that you can plug numbers into and get some sort of, you know, hundred percent confident response. If I do X, then, you know, Y is going to happen, but Z won't happen. And, you know, I remember when I was in the U.S. intelligence community, you know, dating back to 2014 and the initial Russian seizure of Crimea. I mean, policymakers in three successive administrations, Obama, Trump, and Biden, would ask intelligence analysts, if we do X or Y on the policy side in terms of giving Ukraine this or whatever, how will Russia react? And none of us had a crystal ball, and we couldn't say with any certainty, but we had to use kind of context and historical examples and our knowledge of how the Russian system operates to make our best possible guess. And in some cases, assessments were right, and in some cases they were wrong. But, you know, like I said, this is a very. It's a very difficult thing. And as you get higher and higher up in the US Government, you have more responsibility for if things go wrong. And if you're the president and you launch headlong into some sort of policy and this was President Biden's thinking from, you know, the start of the invasion. If he'd authorized in his mind F16s to Ukraine in week two of the war and all of that before he had really tested what Russia's limits were, then you could have ended up in some sort of spiral. I mean, we won't know. It's an impossible counterfactual. But instead the policy, I would say was a reasonable, responsible, perhaps at times overly cautious guess and check and let's do this. Let's measure the Russian response and then we'll do a bit more and we'll measure the Russian response. Now obviously that's frustrating on the Ukrainian side because it draws things out. Ukraine doesn't get what it needs up.
- [58:30]
Benjamin Wittes
Front and people die in the meantime.
- [58:32]
Eric Charamella
People die in the meantime. But you know, if you're trying to manage this and you have other equities really, which is the security of Europe and, you know, the continued existence of.
- [58:46]
Benjamin Wittes
The planet and Evan Gershkovich, I mean, there's, there's, there's hostages, there's hostages, there's other borders.
- [58:53]
Eric Charamella
You know, I mean, Russia is arming the Houthis in Yemen potentially, and it has this relationship with Iran and North Korea. North Korea. And again, as the United States, you have different equities. And I'm not going to make excuses, but I'm trying to explain what the picture is at the national level. It's that you have to weigh the risks and benefits of different things. And I would say overall, you know, the United States has, has moved way farther than I think anyone predicted in its support for Ukraine's military, including offensive operations. Not as fast as probably everyone would have hoped. But we're in a way different place than I think anyone could have predicted in February 2022. But you know, again, getting back to the US reactions now, I think from this, you know, it is clear that the United States is not really as worried about this as maybe some would have expected. And whether or not that opens up the conversation to lift the remaining restrictions on the use of long range US Weapons in other parts of Russian territor territory, I'm not sure. And also, I mean, there's a big factor here which is our domestic politics and the amazing, incredible crazy things that have happened over the past couple of months in our election. And we're really distracted. And on the one hand, the president is less distracted because he's not running for reelection. On the other hand, the whole apparatus and our media and our system is completely focused on the fact that this election is now a completely different thing than it was in July or in June. So, you know, we've been distracted and I think, you know, it has maybe been opportunistically, you know, a good move on the Ukrainian side, frankly, to launch the incursion at this point when we're a bit focused on our own internal politics so that we wouldn't really have the bandwidth to spin up a kind of more negative response.
- [60:57]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, so I want to go to Nastya on her reaction to all this, but before I do, I want to just follow up with you on one thing, which is my impression is that the source of the American incrementalism here is twofold. One is a 70 year history of nuclear and relationship military relationship management with the Soviets and then the Russians. And just a sense that there are common law rules in the relationship between us. And one of them is that we, you know, don't fight each other directly. And so there's a real conservatism about anything that looks like the US being directly engaging Russian forces. The second, the institutional spot is that, you know, the US military, the Pentagon is a source of some degree of conservatism here in Ukraine world. And by that I mean not just Ukrainians, but hawks on behalf of Ukraine, Americans and Europeans. There's a lot of anger at Jake Sullivan. And I'm curious how much of this is, in your judgment, the incrementalism is, is that the Pentagon is a super big ship to turn and how much of it is the interagency as represented in the person of the national Security advisor.
- [62:38]
Eric Charamella
Yeah, I mean, I think that's not quite the right analysis. You know, good. Correct me, the National Security advisor is, when doing his or her job, a reflection of the President, a reflection of the President's policy priorities and thinking into the interagency. And I think that, you know, from, from what I know about how decisions were made, I believe that, you know, Jake Sullivan is representing what the President's thinking is. And the President's thinking on this war has been about helping Ukraine defend its sovereignty while keeping NATO allies together and while avoiding a direct war with Russia. Those three things. And sometimes they're in, you know, tension. And so you have to make decisions around that. And so I don't, I don't see any evidence that, you know, Jake Sullivan is kind of undercutting positions of other cabinet secretaries who if left to their own devices, would arm Ukraine to the teeth and all of that. I mean, Biden is somewhat of a cautious and conservative leader, all things consider, you know, small C conservative on foreign policy and doesn't want to drag the United States into an overt confrontation with Russia. And again, this escalation management thing, it's not just unique to Ukraine and Russia. We see it playing out with Israel right now and its multitude of conflicts that it's, you know, embroiled itself in. And you know, you have a partner management problem in every situation, particularly in situations where you have close partnerships that are not part of a treaty alliance, where there are kind of rules of the road and expectations that allies consult with each other completely. Although even in the case of treaty allies, you have a country like Turkey which has done all kinds of cross border operations in into Syria and Iraq without U.S. blessing. But in the case of again, Iran and Israel, you're seeing it play out now and Israel launched this operation to take out Haniya in Tehran and now is going to deal with a counterattack at some point in the next few days that is going to necessarily involve some sort of response by the US Military. And so partner countries can create dilemmas for Washington where we have to risk our own assets and we have to potentially get ourselves more and more involved in something in order to defend our credibility or our principles or whatever. And I think that is part of the caution on Biden's part. So I don't think it's unique to Jake Sullivan or anything like that.
- [65:12]
Benjamin Wittes
And you don't think it's institutional conservatism on the part of the Pentagon?
- [65:17]
Eric Charamella
I mean, I think the uniformed military tends to be conservative about these types of things. You know, you had General Milley when he was the chairman kind of stuff, say in late 2022 that Ukraine had reached the high water mark of its offensive operations and should go into some sort of talks. And you know, looking back in retrospect, one could actually say that maybe he had some sort of a point. I know it's a bit controversial, but seeing how 2023 and the beginning of 24 have played out from the war of attrition standpoint, the lines haven't moved much on the policy side. And the Secretary of Defense, I think, you know, from what I can tell, there may be a little bit more willing to take some sort of risk. But there is this relationship between, you know, the Joint Staff and the Secretary of Defense's office and there's kind of a push and pull. But you know, again, overall, I don't know that it's really institutional bargaining inside the U.S. government. I think it's Fundamentally, everyone knows that they're working for Joe Biden, and Biden really is strongly supportive of Ukraine, but also does not want to end up in a war with Russia. And getting that equation right is hard.
- [66:29]
Benjamin Wittes
As Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee in the House, said to me recently, the Biden administration has been perfectly clear about its objectives here. Help Ukraine win. Don't blow up the world. Nastya, you've heard Eric's remarkably clear articulation of US policy and its sources and development, and I have seen your head nearly explode three times during his talk. So your. Your thoughts in response?
- [67:07]
Anastasiya Lapatina
No, I think you're overreacting to my reactions. I've seen Eric give this speech several times now. I've gotten used to it. But, yeah, no, I mean, this just highlights just how different Ukraine's and US's approaches to Russia are. We are informed by completely different history. I mean, Ukraine is looking through a very particular prism on Russia, and America has its own very specific prism. And the depths of this history between the three of us is like hundreds of years old. Which is why everyone should tune in into the podcast that we're going to be making and publishing in many months about the relationship between US and Ukraine, which, of course involves Russia also. It's very unfortunate, but there is no way for us to see this in the same light. It's impossible. There is literally hundreds of years of precedent to it. So I think we just have to do the best that we can. I wanted to interrupt Eric earlier just to highlight that when he was talking about the fact that the US is paying attention to its elections and just kind of doesn't care about much else other than maybe Iran also not doing nuclear blackmail or something else like Russia, is that the Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory hasn't made it to the front page of the New York Times in the last week. It's not even there. You have to go to the Russia Ukraine war tab to see anything about it. I mean, just yesterday I've seen something about global warming on the front page of the New York Times, and not this incursion, which to our group probably is extremely significant. So, yeah, I just wanted to agree that, yes, Americans are not paying attention much to this, which is interesting, but.
- [68:58]
Eric Charamella
Yeah, and, you know, one coda, too, is we haven't talked much about the Europeans, but. But I've been actually much more surprised by the European response, not by the British and Polish and Scandinavian responses, which have been predictably supportive, but by the German, French, Italian, sort of Non response. And even the Germans said, at least the head of their defense committee in the Bundestag said go ahead and use.
- [69:25]
Anastasiya Lapatina
German weapons and we should send you more.
- [69:27]
Benjamin Wittes
The closest the Germans are ever going to come to a victory in Kursk.
- [69:31]
Eric Charamella
Well, perhaps. But you know, I think going back to Biden's kind of objectives of keeping the alliance together, I think this has also demonstrated that actually the Europeans are not really that squeamish either. And so really this is a big win for the Ukrainians on the, on the PR and partner messaging standpoint.
- [69:51]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah. So let's close with a discussion of the most fun subject in this entire area, which is the Russian reaction action. Putin described it as a major provocation, and the reaction only went downhill from there. Nastya, you described the sort of pathetic video side of the reaction, but looking at the full scope of the reaction, it is remarkably incoherent and kind of nuts. Give us your thoughts.
- [70:28]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Well, I particularly appreciated the reaction of actually the spokesperson, I think, to the State department in the U.S. matt Miller. Yeah, I think he said that Putin calling it a large provocation is, quote, a bit rich of him. I really like that, considering that who's provoking who is a great question. Apart from that, it's really been really hectic. I mean, as far as I know, for days there hasn't been any announced official evacuation, which is a problem because there have been all of these photos coming out of pretty destroyed cities, which again, we don't even know if that was destroyed by Ukrainian attacks or Russian counterattacks because there have been also reports of that happening. But just literally during the recording of this podcast, I saw on the news that apparently Russian authorities said that they're going to evacuate people from Kursk Oblast to occupied parts of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast, which is very interesting and also a typical move by Russia. If you look at Russia's history vis Ukraine, this imperial tactic of settling our territories and, and moving a bunch of people to the newly occupied territories. They've done this in Mariupol, they've done this in Crimea. They've done this in a bunch of territories they've occupied. They're making it harder and harder for us to retake the territory because what do you do with hundreds of thousands of Russians living there? It's a really tough question and looks like they're going to be doing this here right now as well. But also that's really far from Kursk, and if they're evacuating a bunch of people. So I'M now thinking, does that mean that they're preparing for that territory to be occupied or in control of Ukraine long term? Because they're not evacuating them, I don't know, to Belgorod oblast nearby. They're doing this whole swing across the Ukrainian territory, or at least they say they are, or at least they announced that they are. So that's interesting. But other than that, Putin has just been trying to cast blame to local regions, regional, regional authorities. There was this video released apparently of like a recording meeting between him and a bunch of, you know, governors and local authorities in charge of the situation in Kursk. And he was like scolding them and saying that, you know, it's not really working out and you guys should, you know, get your shit together. And, you know, he was probably signaling to other authorities in the region that, like, I'm not happy about this, do something about it. So he's just been trying to cast blame. And there has been chaos. And Russians in this video, in these videos that started appearing are now screaming at cameras saying that the government doesn't care about us, authorities are corrupt, they're lying, and they're lying so much. They don't care about us and they don't evacuate us and there has been no help. It's just really interesting to see them finally coming to their senses.
- [73:31]
Benjamin Wittes
So, Eric, what do you make of the Russians military reaction? It took a number of days for the Russian military to even get there. And Russia's big, it's not that big. You know, we have modern transportation architecture, right? Like you can. But it seemed like it was sparsely defended and, and then there was no second line, you know, keeping. The Canadians could not keep a thousand people in Montana with no matter how much armored armor you gave them. Why is there still, you know, a thousand square kilometers of Russia that is under Ukrainian occupation?
- [74:22]
Eric Charamella
I mean, definitely the Ukrainians achieved operational surprise on the attack. I mean, it's actually amazing reading some of the accounts, how much Ukraine managed to almost mimic the surprise that Russia thought it was achieving in the early days of the full scale invasion, where only the top leadership knew. And then, you know, 72 hours in advance, some of the officers found out. And then only 24 hours in advance did, you know, regular troops find out that this was not a training exercise and they indeed were going to go into Russia. And so it appears that, you know, the Russians had really no foresight or warning or if they did, then it didn't make it up the chain. So they were not prepared, you know, it's taken some time for them to, you know, reposition assets. There's also institutional kind of rivalries and a little bit of chaos where the FSB under Bortnikov was initially put in charge of what was called the counterterrorism operation to fight enemy combatants on domestic territory. And then just today, Putin named Alexei Dumin, who was his former bodyguard and the governor of Tula Oblast and deputy. He was deputy GRU head. He's held a lot of different positions, but now he's the overall kind of czar of this operation, which signals to me that Putin felt that the agencies and the regional governments were not up to the task on their own and needed some sort of high level intervention and someone who could speak with authority on Putin's behalf to be able to tell this agency, do this thing and this ministry, do the other thing. So again, that just reinforces the overall point of the dysfunction of the Russian system, that it's highly, highly centralized. And, you know, you get down to the ministry and agency and regional levels, and when confronted with some sort of crisis, they just panic and choke because they're used to getting all of their instructions from the Kremlin. So all that is to say it has been chaotic, it has been dysfunctional for the first eight days, but this chapter is not over yet. And eventually the Russians will get their ducks in a row and will respond and start to bring more forces and resources to confront the Ukrainian incursion force. And I think the big question now is when there's inevitably a Russian counterattack. I mean, already the Russians are stopping the Ukrainians in certain directions, but when there's a more concerted Russian counterattack over, I would say, the next one to two weeks, the question is, do the Ukrainians have the resources and the reinforcements to be able to blunt the counterattack and hold on to a certain amount of this territory, or are the Ukrainians forced to retreat and say, we made our point, we got our prisoner fund replenished and objective achieved and operation over, or are the Ukrainians able to, without taking significant casualties, hold the positions that they have taken? And we don't know the answer to that, but I think the answer to that will determine what this means in the medium to long term. Because if the Russian counterattack is not able to evict Ukrainian forces, then President Zelensky has a really big card to play and has a certain amount of leverage over Putin to sort of coerce, whether it's talks or, you know, some sort of tactical trade on Kharkiv that we were talking about earlier, but again, we'll have to see what happens.
- [78:12]
Benjamin Wittes
We are going to leave it there. Eric Charamella, Anastasia La Patina, thank you so much for joining us today. But wait, before we go, I have to advise everybody that Nastya has a new substack and at the risk of embarrassing her, I'm going to tell you all. It is called yours Ukrainian. And Nastya, tell us a little bit about it.
- [78:43]
Anastasiya Lapatina
You're embarrassing me just a little bit. But yes, I have launched a newsletter about Ukraine and the point of it is really to just broaden the scope of things that I read about because in my professional work for Lawfare, it's all very, you know, serious political, legal, military things. But in my substack I can write about culture, about what people on the streets in Ukraine are talking about, about things that are influencing everyday Ukrainian society. But then I also do of course cover things like what's happening in Kursk right now, because that's what anyone can talk about these days. So I do a weekly newsletter with the roundup of all of the big events of the week and then also some sort of deep dive into something Ukraine related, a phenomenon, an event, a piece of history. And I have some ideas of for how to broaden this as well and.
- [79:35]
Benjamin Wittes
Where can people find it so people.
- [79:37]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Can find my substack on of course yours ukrainian.substack.com thank you both.
- [79:45]
Benjamin Wittes
And I just have this feeling that we're going to be getting together again relatively soon soon.
- [79:50]
Eric Charamella
Thanks Ben.
- [79:51]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Thank you.
- [79:55]
Benjamin Wittes
The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a material supporter of Lawfare using our website lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Have you rated and reviewed the Lawfare podcast? If not, please do so wherever you get your podcasts and look out for our other podcast offerings. This podcast is edited by Jen Patya. Our theme music is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.
- [80:48]
Anastasiya Lapatina
What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker?
- [80:51]
Podcast Advertiser
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- [80:55]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Their designer quality frames start at $95.
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Podcast Advertiser
Including prescription lenses plus scratch resistant, smudge.
- [81:02]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Resistant and anti reflective coatings and UV.
- [81:05]
Podcast Advertiser
Protection and free adjustments for life.
- [81:08]
Benjamin Wittes
To find your next pair of glasses.
- [81:09]
Anastasiya Lapatina
Sunglasses or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com.