Rational Security: The “Midnight Train to Ukraine” Edition

Summary

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The Lawfare Podcast: Rational Security – The “Midnight Train to Ukraine” Edition

Air Date: February 12, 2026
Host: Scott R. Anderson
Guests: Benjamin Wittes (Editor in Chief, Lawfare; recent visitor to Ukraine), Nastya Lapatan (Lawfare Ukraine fellow, Kyiv-based journalist)

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Episode Overview

This special edition of Rational Security departs from the show’s usual round-up of national security stories to feature a deep, firsthand debrief from Benjamin Wittes, who has just returned from a two-week trip through Ukraine with Nastya Lapatan. Using their experiences on the ground, the hosts focus on three major topics: Russia’s winter attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the stalled state of negotiations over the war, and the rapid development—and future implications—of drone warfare in Ukraine.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humanitarian Crisis: Russia’s Winter Offensive on Energy Infrastructure

[08:15 – 18:15]

• Russia’s Renewed Targeting of Energy: As in previous years, Russia is deliberately attacking Ukrainian power and heating infrastructure during winter, but this year the tactics are more sophisticated—with better drones, larger payloads, and more targeted strikes by both drones and ballistic missiles.
• Severity of Winter: A harsher, abnormal winter, with temperatures dropping below -25° C (-13° F), has left cities like Kyiv extremely vulnerable, as millions rely on centralized, Soviet-era heating systems.
• Kyiv’s Precarious Position: The complete destruction of one of Kyiv’s three centralized power plants has left large parts of the city—particularly the Left Bank—without heat or electricity, with the city and national government under criticism for failing to diversify energy generation or adequately fortify existing facilities.
• Insufficient Countermeasures: Ukrainian air defenses are strained, especially due to frequent shortages of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors. Promised protective structures over power stations remain unbuilt or ineffective. Calls for energy “mini power plants” have gone largely unheeded by local authorities.
• Everyday Hardship: Residents endure days without heat, water, or electricity, affecting mental health, productivity, and even basic hygiene. Nastya shares:

  “My family had to stay at a hotel because we had no heating and no water, and we have a toddler and literally could not bathe her.” – Nastya Lapatan [23:07]

Notable Quotes:

• “It’s hard to overstate just how much all this really gets under your skin on a day-to-day basis.” – Nastya Lapatan [23:07]
• “It’s actually much worse than anything you expected. There are places you can stand and look out over a landscape of hundreds of apartment buildings, and they’re all dark with just occasional lights in windows.” – Benjamin Wittes [18:54]
• “People have a lot of confidence in Ukrainian resilience… but people are not okay.” – Benjamin Wittes [24:06]

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2. The Negotiating Table: Stalemate and Strategic Pressures

[25:22 – 56:07]

• War of Attrition—But Asymmetric: While some frame the conflict as a war of attrition, Russia’s pain tolerance skews toward conscript casualties and economic malaise (felt less by elites), whereas Ukraine’s democratic government faces direct public pressure from across society.
• Negotiations’ Stalled Progress: U.S.-backed talks in Abu Dhabi achieved only a prisoner swap for 157 Ukrainians. The central deadlock remains Russia’s demand for full Ukrainian withdrawal from the remaining Donbas territories—a political and strategic non-starter for Kyiv.
• Both Sides Unwilling to “Cry Uncle”: Neither Russia nor Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. As long as neither feels existential urgency, meaningful breakthroughs remain elusive.
• U.S. Pressure and the Trump Administration: The Trump administration’s push for a peace deal by summer 2026 likely links to U.S. midterm elections, aiming to leverage both sides into a compromise. Yet actual American leverage—especially before the elections—is limited, as cutting off Ukraine would come with domestic political costs.

Notable Quotes:

• “The Russian goal is for Ukraine to be crushed and not be a sovereign nation, and Ukraine wants the exact opposite of that. How you reconcile that is an impossible task.” – Nastya Lapatan [55:16]
• “I think the best way to understand their position is they are assuming they do not have a single major patron… They have to play for time, both with respect to the war of attrition and with respect to the domestic politics of every country.” – Benjamin Wittes [61:11]
• “It is amazing how often you hear the term ‘midterm elections’ in Kyiv.” – Benjamin Wittes [58:38]

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3. Drones: The Front Line of Technological Warfare

[66:42 – 79:29]

• Ubiquity of Drones: Ukraine is witnessing the first major conflict where drones—both aerial and ground-based—are integral for combat, logistics, and reconnaissance. Ben and Nastya visited a civilian-accessible drone school, underscoring Ukraine’s philosophy that “they’re not going to be civilians forever.”
• Rapid Iteration and Innovation: The development cycle for drones and countermeasures is lightning-fast, often a matter of weeks. Innovations emerge directly from the battlefield, requiring constant dialogue between troops and technical developers.
• Beyond Flying Drones: Unmanned ground vehicles are now used for logistics, supply runs, and evacuations. Ground and aerial drones have, in some cases, replaced traditional artillery with greater accuracy.
• Countermeasures & The Move Toward Autonomy: Counter-drone tactics range from high-tech (jamming, electronic warfare, detection systems) to low-tech (netting strung across roads). There is consensus that autonomous, “program-and-release” drones are inevitable:

  “Autonomy is coming. The human-in-the-loop crowd is going to lose this debate and we should just be frank about that.” – Benjamin Wittes [76:22]

Memorable Description:

• “Drone school is part escape room, part video game, part war.” – Benjamin Wittes [67:48]

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Memorable Moments & Lighter Points

• Opening Banter: Wittes jokingly challenges Vladimir Putin to an “Ultimate Fighting” match for America’s 250th.
• The “Midnight Train”: Ben and Nastya recount sharing a Ukrainian train cabin, with Ben giving a “two-hour lecture on the Founding Fathers” [03:22]. Nastya jokes, “How you’re even a country is kind of crazy.” [03:44]
• Kyiv Street Life: Ben notes the irony of severe wartime living conditions—fully dark apartment blocks and icy roads—immediately visible after stepping outside.
• Object Lessons:
  • Ukrainian Hipster T-Shirts: Nastya takes Ben shopping for streetwear with sardonic anti-Russian slogans (“Ukrainsky slid,” “Kyiv regime,” and “Western curator”).

    “Anytime anything goes boom in Russia…the Russian propagandists are like, ‘Well, there is a Ukrainian trace in here.’” – Nastya Lapatan [81:10]

  • Ongoing Fundraiser: Nastya and Ben discuss their grassroots campaign to buy batteries and generators for Kyiv families suffering from power outages. [82:44]

    “If you want to help people in Ukraine and in Kyiv specifically suffering from the energy crisis—yes, give us your money. We need a lot of it.” – Nastya Lapatan [83:55]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [08:15]: Nastya details Russia’s winter assault on energy infrastructure and humanitarian fallout
• [18:54]: Ben describes the “shocking” darkness of Kyiv at night
• [25:22]: Transition to negotiation stalemate and strategy
• [36:55]: Update from the frontlines: mood, attrition, and geography
• [48:56]: Nastya on current negotiation status and territory red lines
• [61:11]: Ben analyzes Ukraine’s multi-pronged diplomatic strategy
• [66:42]: Deep dive into drone warfare innovations
• [76:22]: Ben on the inevitability of autonomous drones
• [79:41]: “Object lessons” segment—cultural and humanitarian recommendations

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Overall Tone & Final Thoughts

The discussion is serious, richly informed, and at times darkly humorous—balancing firsthand on-the-ground testimony with strategic analysis and frank personal opinion. The recurring theme is resilience under adversity: Ukraine’s people endure a “perfect storm” of hardship, its government faces unrelenting strategic and diplomatic pressure, and its armed forces are pioneering the future of high-tech war.

The guests urge Western audiences not to overlook crisis “just because Ukrainians are plucky” and to recognize that both military and social resilience are under severe ongoing strain. The episode wraps with encouragement to stay informed and support relief efforts—while always keeping an eye on both the resilience and the needs of Ukraine’s civilian population.

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Links to further information, donation methods, and referenced reports (e.g., CSIS report on Ukraine) are promised in the show notes.

Transcript

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[Nastya Lapatan]

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[Scott R. Anderson]

So, Nasia, you just got the full witness for two full weeks. What is, what is that experience like?

[Nastya Lapatan]

Well, I don't know. If you're expecting some sort of spicy tea about Ben being horrible, you're not gonna get it, you know, because I treat Ben like family. So it was really happy two weeks for me. So that was. It was actually.

[Scott R. Anderson]

I envision Ben sleeping in an old style one piece pajamas with like one of the butt fats. Am I wrong about that?

[Nastya Lapatan]

I have no idea. I have not been privy to his sleeping arrangements.

[Benjamin Wittes]

The only time Nastya and I slept in the same area was on a train in a train compartment.

[Scott R. Anderson]

But you've done weirder things on trains than put one of those on. I feel like you've recorded a whole podcast from trains. So that would not be a huge departure for Ben with us.

[Benjamin Wittes]

I mean, look, I am very eccentric, but my sleeping habits remain mysterious to the world.

[Nastya Lapatan]

The best part about that train ride was that Ben gave me like a two hour long lecture on the Founding Fathers. And so I am now totally bought in, into the whole, you know, American exceptionalism, the great experiment of American democracy. I'm like, it's going great. Yeah. Y' all are a crazy country. How you are even a country to begin with. It's kind of crazy. Yeah.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So we're doing great.

[Benjamin Wittes]

We're. The Founding Fathers are really proud of their progeny right now.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Yep.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And who could have think of a better way to celebrate them than with a car race and Ultimate Fighting championship bout on the grounds of the White House, as we will be doing in a few short months.

[Benjamin Wittes]

And I just want to say, if Vladimir Putin wants to take up the 250th as an opportunity to accept my fight challenge, I will fight him at the White House as part of the Ultimate Fighting. It could be a car race. Ultimate Fighting and the Putin v. Wittis fight the dream.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, well, maybe we'll have to see what dark secret Funder will provide the backing, the financial backing for that particular action.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Estonia has already agreed to host the Fund.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Foreign.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And welcome back to Rational Security, the podcast where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories. That's not exactly what we're doing this week, at least not quite as directly. Instead, we are doing a little bit of a debrief Benjamin Wittis has just come back from two weeks in Ukraine. It is a topic, a conflict, a very important one. We spent a lot of time on here on the podcast, but we haven't gotten to revisit the last couple of weeks amidst all the developments in Venezuela and other parts of the world. So we thought we would commit this episode to digging into some of the lessons that Ben learned on his trip. So joining me here today, unsurprisingly is in fact the man himself, Benjamin Wittes, co host emeritus and editor in chief of Lawfare. Thank you for joining us, Ben.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to be back.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And also joining us is Ben's, I think, adding the title of Ben Sherpa to her list of titles, but also Law Fair Ukraine fellow. Joining us from Kyiv is Nastya Lapatan. Nastya, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Been a little while. It's good to have you back on.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Always happy to come on. Thanks, Scott.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Wonderful. Well, you guys had it sounds like a really informative, fascinating trip. And we just have not had the opportunity to revisit the state of the negotiations where exactly the conflicts sets what's happening on the ground in Ukraine in the past few weeks. So we're going to take an opportunity to do that with this episode through the lens of three kind of focuses or areas of focus. Our first one, Cold War Russia's ongoing winter campaign against Ukraine's energy infrastructure has created a humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country. In Kiev, at least one major power plant has been completely destroyed. Many more energy sites have been damaged. Numerous other parts of the country are without power and heating during a season when temperatures regularly dip below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. What do these attacks show about the dynamics of the conflict and what can be done to curb their effects? Topic 2 Stuck in a sand trap. US backed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which continued in Abu Dhabi this past week, remain at an impasse without tangible progress other than a prisoner of war exchange that led to the release of 157 Ukrainians from Russian captivity. Russia continues to demand that Ukraine surrender a large swath of territory, particularly in its eastern Donbas region, which Keef says is a red line. And and meanwhile, President Zelensky has suggested the United States is pushing his sides to end the war by summer 2026, perhaps because of the US midterm election set to take place shortly thereafter. What is the state of the negotiations at this point? Is this a reasonable expectation? Administration and are there areas for potential agreement in the short or medium term that might meet the Trump administration's timeline. Topic 3 Eye in the sky or pie in the sky? The war in Ukraine is arguably the first to be fought in substantial part through drones. Not only has the conflict helped showcase the capabilities of drone warfare, but it spur rapid development into technology, driving them and methods that might be used to defeat them. What did you all learn about these technologies on Ben's recent trip? And what can it tell us about the future of warfare? So for our first topic, I am perhaps entirely appropriately going to turn to you now because you are living through the effects of this humanitarian crisis in Kiev. I think we've been reading the media accounts, folks who follow the conflict. We know that infrastructure has been a target of Russia the last few months, as it has been in the past few winters that this conflict has been. Although in some ways this feels a little bit different or concentrated or maybe it's because other aspects of the conflict have been in a kind of state of attrition that this has become such a more of a focus. Talk to us about what Russia is doing and the actual effects it's having in Kyiv and other parts of the country.

[Nastya Lapatan]

So the Russians have been attacking Ukrainian energy sites every single winter since the beginning of the fiscal invasion. So in a sense there is nothing fundamentally new happening this time around. Much of what is happening right now has been predicted entirely. It was totally foreseen. But some things are different and some new factors are at play this winter. So first of all, the Russians have a lot more and better weapons at hand than previous winters. Their drones have gotten a lot harder to jam and they carry larger payloads and just a lot harder to deal with. And also they're a lot more strategic with their attacks this winter. So sort of the sites they're hitting and the manner in which they're hitting them is just a lot more sophisticated than previously and again, a lot harder to deal with. And then the third perhaps most important factor making this winter extremely, extremely difficult is the weather. It's something that neither Ukraine nor Russia can impact and have any effect on. The weather has been really, really, really in Ukraine. And you know, I, I hear a lot of, a lot of myths that, you know, Ukraine always has cold winters and eastern, you know, sort of the myth of the Eastern European Russian winter that we're all, you know, used to freezing temperatures here. It's really not entirely true. Like the, the temperatures here right now and in the past month have been as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius. One of you should. Should tell me what that is in Fahrenheit. I don't understand Fahrenheit, but it's really, really.

[Scott R. Anderson]

I don't know. But very cold.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Yeah, just.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah, below zero.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Below zero Fahrenheit. Okay. Yeah. And it's very unusual for Ukraine. Like, none of us. None of us here in Ukraine are used to dealing with these temperatures, you know, in basic ways, like what our heating arrangements are at home, what clothing we have. Like, this is just abnormal. Combine that with Russia's strategic aerosols and also with the fact that the Ukrainian energy infrastructure appears to have been really badly prepared for this scenario, the scenario that, again, as I've said, could have been foreseen. Exactly. And so you end up basically in a humanitarian crisis where at a time when temperatures are below zero Fahrenheit, hundreds of thousands of people don't have any heating in their homes. At various times over the past month, many residents in Kyiv haven't had either heating or water or electricity or very often a combination of all of those. So you have basically no utilities available at your apartment. And so the Russian attacks have been very regular, very strategic. Around once a month, around once a week. Excuse me. Because a week is roughly how long they need to sort of recharge and get ready for the next one. And so, yeah, they've been hitting around every week, and things are just gradually getting worse. As a result of the latest Russian attack, one of the major power plants in Kyiv has basically been completely destroyed. And the Ukrainian government is a little, you know, is a little shy and not maybe not putting it in such drastic terms, because, of course, you know, no. No official and no president wants to come out and say that, yeah, we screwed this up and one of the plants is gone. But it's. That's basically what happened. And it's a big deal because Ukraine has a highly centralized heating system, you know, sort of from the Soviet times. A very small number of energy sites supply really large swaths of territory. So if we're talking about Kyiv, where the situation is the worst in the country. Kyiv relies on just three big power plants that provide heat and electricity. That's mainly what Kyiv relies on. And so one of them is basically completely shut down and is not generating neither heat nor electricity. The destruction of that plant has left a large chunk of Kyiv on the Left bank without any heat. And the authorities have already said that it's going to take at least two months for that plant to become operational in any manner if there are no future Russian attacks. Which of course is not a bet that anyone should be making because this is exactly what the Russians have been trying to do for years. Right? Like this is exactly what they wanted and they're going to continue attacking and they're going to continue striking these large, very obvious targets that are Kyiv's and other cities, power plants. So the situation is very complicated. Yeah, it's definitely the worst winter we've ever had.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So what is the method the Russians are using to target these plants and facilities? Is it airstrikes or is it a combination of drones and airstrikes? Is a variety of measures. Sabotage. And what are the countermeasures that folks want to see from Zelenskyy government? Like where have they fallen short? Is it simply about how they deploy air defense measures? Is it about the redundancy of infrastructure? Although obviously a lot of this infrastructure was set up a long time ago. What would you hope to see different if the status quo continues through next winter, how would you hope to see the Zelinsky government or whatever government be in place at that time? What measures you want them to see to help curb some of this or at least the effects of it for the broader population?

[Nastya Lapatan]

There are a lot of different factors at play here. One, to answer your very first question, sort of the strategy that the Russians are using, they're just sending a bunch of drones and a bunch of ballistic missiles at the same targets. And of course we all know that ballistics are very hard to intercept in general, but in Ukraine specifically, Ukraine relies on mainly on the American made Patriot interceptors. And pretty much almost always we're on low on them because they're very expensive, they're hard to produce. Very often there are shortages both abroad and in Ukraine. And so it's a sort of, usually the morning after the attack when you see the Ukrainian air force publish statistics about how many aerial targets they were engaging and how many were shoot down, you'd see, you basically never see all of the drones and all of the missiles being shut down. Very often you see that, you know, 5, 6, 7, 10 ballistic missiles get through and those wreak really significant damage. And there is, I mean, I guess nothing you can really do to protect a site from. You know, if you've got five ballistic missiles targeting the same location, it's hard for me to imagine what kind of protective structure you can build over that site. Right. The best, the best thing you can do there is just engage air defense to the best of your capability. But speaking of the protective structures, the government has been allegedly trying since 2023 to build protective structures over various energy sites all across the country, not just in Kyiv. Because again, Russia's war against Ukraine's energy has been happening since the very first winter of the Fosco invasion. These are obvious targets. Everybody knew that this was going to happen. And so the logic was that, okay, we're going to build these sort of several tier protective structures. Some are just sand, some are full concrete and a bunch of other materials. And so according to an array of Ukrainian reporting on this issue, this program and this effort to build protective structures has really fallen short. And a lot of sites have either had only the first sort of the lowest tier of protection done, or many sites have had no protection structures built over them at all. And again, remember that when it comes to many ballistic missiles, there is really nothing you can do there apart from intercepting the missiles themselves. So that's one thing, another thing. The question of what could have the Ukrainian government done and the Kyiv authorities specifically to alleviate the problem is it is not okay that the entire capital city of Kyiv relies on three huge, very old Soviet era, basically falling apart power plants. It's just not a clever way to power a city. And again, this is not rocket science. It's just kind of very obvious, especially during the Fulsca invasion. And many people have been pointing out that this is a huge vulnerability. Everybody knows where these plants are. You can look them up on Google Maps. And so energy experts and energy executives have been calling on the government to sort of diversify the energy generation capacity at large in the whole country, but also specifically in Kyiv, install more generation capacity, install these little people, call them mini power plants, these co generation plants that by the way, a lot have been supplied to us by the west, but we had just failed to install them. But that's a whole different conversation that we don't have the time for. But essentially the main criticism of the Kyiv Authority specifically here is that Kyiv is the capital and it has the biggest city like city budget in the country. And it really does have the money to address this issue of installing more generation capacity and diversifying generation capacity. And it just failed to do that. And that is an issue that sort of coexists alongside the issue of air defense, protecting energy sites and all the various corruption that can go on in the energy sphere when it comes to that. So yeah, there's just really no easy answer here. All factors came together. Ukrainian corruption and incompetence, Russian attacks, the horrible weather, and it's a perfect storm for the humanitarian crisis that's ongoing here.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Ben, let me pull you in on this a little bit, because obviously you just spent two weeks in Kyiv. In other parts of the country. Talk to us about what you observed and contextualize it for us. Like, what is the role? Obviously, this is an effort by Russia to put pressure on Zelensky, Ukrainians generally, to get some leverage in negotiations. In theory, every additional pressure point could be a concession at the end, whatever negotiated outcome you get. Talk to us about what the actual dynamics are around. That's how urgent a crisis this is and to what extent you're seeing governments and other groups engaged around Ukraine that care about Ukraine engaging on it adequately.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah. So I have been surprised at how little attention it has gotten relative to the severity of it. And I think that's partly because, you know, how do you cover power shortages? How do you cover heating shortages? Right. They're not flashy. They're not troops moving along borders. They're not breakouts. They're not even mostly things going boom, although there are some power plants that are going boom. The magnitude of the suffering is pretty extreme. But again, it isn't like, you know, Aleppo, right, where you're, you know, large numbers of people aren't dying, large numbers of people are just cold and, you know, and so I think it's like it's a little bit of a perfect storm of a thing that gets undercovered, which is that it's just under control enough that when Nastya says humanitarian crisis, she doesn't mean people starving to death. She means lots of people being cold every night, lots of people not having running water, lots of people not having electricity and making do and getting by. So that's the first thing that you know when you go there. It's actually much worse than anything you expected. And there are these places that you can stand. We were in the Left bank, one of the neighborhoods there, and just looking out over a landscape of literally hundreds of apartment buildings, and they're all dark with occasional lights in windows. And it's a shocking thing to see. It reminded me of those, you know, pictures of North Korea and South Korea at night, right, where one's lit up as a, you know, bright electrified city and the other is just dark. And, you know, those satellite images and there's a little bit of, like, you've taken a modern society and you've just, you know, de electrified it. There are also, you know, there are some collateral consequences that Nastya didn't mention that are some of which affected her. So if you knock out power and heating to large numbers of buildings. One of the things that happens is that pipes freeze very quickly in that weather. And so then you end up in situations where people don't have running water either, not because the water's been knocked out, but because the heating that would keep the pipes from freezing has been knocked out. And it's really. Nastya mentioned in passing that a lot of heating is delivered centralized in a centralized fashion in Ukraine. I just want to pinpoint that. That means that individual buildings don't have their own boiler systems, they don't have their own forced air systems. They're all getting piped steam and hot water piped in from centralized heating facilities. And that means when you take out one of those centralized heating facilities, you've knocked out heat to, you know, 5,000 buildings, right? Each of which has thousands of people living in it. So it's sort of a legacy of Soviet era central planning, you know. And so the result is, you know, you can, with the right combination, you know, of attacks on energy infrastructure, you can amp up the suffering a lot in a way that would be very hard to do if that heating infrastructure were more distributed. For example, you know, it's unthinkable to build a building in the United States that doesn't have its own heat. Right. But it is still the norm in Ukraine to build buildings that are getting heat from central places. So there's a, you know, I think one of the things just is, is it is shocking to see and it's.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Hard to overstate just how much all of this really gets under your skin on a day to day basis. Like, and which is another reason why I've just, like Ben has been, I've been surprised that this issue has been really underreported because like, you know, if somebody studied this on a psychological level, you know, going out, going about your business for days on end, just almost constantly being cold, you know, and what that does to you and your mental health and your body and your productivity and, you know, like not having water. You know, people don't think that when you have no running water, that means you literally cannot use the bathroom in your apartment. You know, you can't shower. Like, you can't do anything. Like, my family has had to stay at a hotel because we had no heating and no water. And we have a toddler and we could literally, we literally could not bathe her. Anyway, I can talk. I can complain about this for a long time because it is a very difficult situation. And I'm just, I'm just Surprised? Yeah, that it's not getting more. More coverage.

[Benjamin Wittes]

And I think one of the reasons that it doesn't get more coverage is that people have a lot of confidence in Ukrainian resilience and, you know, capacity to get by. And, you know, the Ukrainians, very annoying.

[MIDI Health Host]

To be.

[Benjamin Wittes]

To be fair, it's an image that Ukraine cultivated about itself. But I. I do think there's a lot of people who at this point just kind of say, oh, they'll be okay. They're. They're a plucky bunch, you know, and people are not okay, you know, and a lot of people won't tell you that themselves. But, you know, if you say, how are you doing? They'll say, oh, we're fine. But if you say, how's. Like, how are your friends? How are your family doing? Then they'll say, oh, they're having a lot of trouble. And there's a propensity to sort of stiff upper lip it yourself and kind of deflect all of the suffering onto the people around you because you don't want to complain. But yeah, it's a very rough situation, and it's one that, you know, I think the world should be paying more attention to than it is, you know, taking opportunity.

[Scott R. Anderson]

In a way, I guess this is kind of pivoting to our second topic, but there's a clear intersection here. You know, what does this mean in the broader strategy picture between Russia and Ukraine and the United States as the inevitable kind of third. One of. One of the third major points out there, Europe being another one, you know, in one point, this is essentially, as I think I've described before, like the closest, I think, you know, game model, theoretic game model, you think of the conflict at this stage is a war of attrition, right? Which is this classic thing where you have two sides and they're outweighing the other. And the real question is, what is the pain tolerance and who has the lower pain tolerance? And then they cave first. And that's what ends the war of attrition, right? The ends the game.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Although it's really important that the attrition is different communities by the different sides, right? This is not a situation in which both sides are pounding each other's civilian infrastructure and who cries uncle first or both are, you know, attriting the other side's military capacity. One is attacking the other side's military capacity, and the other is doing the same and attacking its civilian life. And so the game is a little bit asymmetric in that respect.

[Scott R. Anderson]

That's exactly the point I was going to make is that you're in this disadvantageous situation. The main, like source of attrition, of pain for Russia really seems to still be casualty rates. Right. And defense spending probably, and then economic damage from continued Western sanctions. Although frankly at this point it's not clear that's getting worse. It's kind of like a status quo that's sustained, but there's opportunity costs there, at least in terms of if they were to get sanctions alleviated by ending the conflict or something else along those lines. Those are all real, but they are effects that are felt outside of the mostly the elite cadre that is making the key decisions there. And the mechanisms responsiveness are much more.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Limited, especially, especially because of the racial politics of Russia where, you know, the Moscow and St. Petersburg elites, they are really being insulated from conscription and the overwhelming amount of conscription is happening with, you know, let's just be blunt about it, Central Asian Muslims. And so you have a real disparity between the group of people who are making decisions and the group of people who are dying.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Yeah. One of the great ways to visualize this for yourself is just going on Instagram and you know, where you can put in a specific location and see all the content from that location. So if you just go and put in some sort of street in central Moscow and see what is being posted from there and the stories and the photos and like it just fills me with rage every time because the photos you see from there is just life completely as normal, you know, all like a bunch of rich people enjoying central Moscow in cafes, etc. Anyway, it's a separate subject matter. But yes to agreeing with Ben's point, the elites in many ways have been very much insulated from the rest of the, of the, from the war.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And it's not, it's the same in Ukraine because you do have flawed in a variety of dimensions, but still fundamentally democratic government that has a degree of accountability. And where Zelenskyy is under political pressure, like they know to some extent this is a potential pressure point for him, I would guess.

[Benjamin Wittes]

And also that the society is frankly more egalitarian. There isn't a racial undercast in the same way that there is in Russia. And it's not, you know, that you don't have whole swaths of society that are insulated from conscription. And so there's a much more even distribution of pain. Which isn't to say there's an even distribution of pain. There never is, but it's much more Egalitarian in that respect, broadly felt.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So does this tell us something about how we have to think of this conflict to the extent it doesn't get wound up in the summer, as the Trump administration seems to be desiring? I mean, in my mind, this kind of comes to a, you know, I think about it in the context of also like Taiwan, right, where Taiwan we're so familiar with the idea of the porcupine strategy, which is, I think, what people have described, that whatever, if this conflict comes to a close, that's what Ukraine's going to have to have, because no one believes Russia will actually stop being a threat anytime soon. So that even if there's a nominal peace, Ukraine's going to have to take the wind opportunity to insulate itself against effects. But it kind of suggests maybe that there's another side of it. You need the porcupine, you need the sharp points on the outside. There's also an internal resiliency element that really doesn't get featured as prominently in conversations about U.S. assistance, Western assistance, or frankly, the broader effort. In some ways, it even goes back to the spring offensive from a few years ago, where the trade off there is we're going to focus on moving offensively and making this offensive action against Russia as opposed to fortifying our existing lines of control and digging in a little bit more. This is a slightly meta society, wide version of that, saying maybe our resources, assuming there are finite resources here, whether it's what governments can give to Ukraine or other ones, defense is obviously highly important. But there also needs to be this element of building resiliency for the broader public if they're going to be able to, you know, hold out long enough to win or come out on top of whatever this conflict is or the next conflict Russia may be involved in. Does that make some sense? Like, is that, is that a shift we need to see in regards to how Western governments or Ukraine government itself are approaching this conflict? Do we need to think more about the internal resiliency, the generators, resources, infrastructure, than the extreme focus on defense tech that's been kind of the dominant part of particularly the US Conversation the last few years? Or is it, well, we need both.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Look, you have to do both. This is a long front, and the Russian army is not 10ft tall, but it is 400 miles long along this front. And if you leave a significant gap in that front, they will come through it. And so the defense tech is actually part of the resiliency in the sense that if you don't cover that with high Tech drones, you're going to cover it with bodies. And you know, they're, they're very serious about. They have a major, major manpower shortage, as do the Russians, actually. But they care about their, the lives much more than the Russians do. And so there's a, you know, you cannot ignore the offensive, defensive side of the simple front. That said, look, if you look around Ukraine and you say, what are the, the governance problems that are affecting the lives of people? They're very real. Right? And you know, the fact that, the fact that there is not distributed power generation other than the generators that communities and people buy for themselves, which are, you know, every third of a block there's another loud generator. You know, the fact that there has not been a substantial rethinking of this infrastructure, it's very hard to do during a war. If you start building it, the Russians will blow it up. Right. I'm not. But, you know, it's not, you know, you have these heroic efforts by these engineers to keep these power plants up and running. But, you know, eventually that is a losing battle and they need to think about what their energy infrastructure is going to look like. And there's a hundred examples of that. I suspect more people were injured in Kyiv and Washingtonians will immediately understand this point by slipping on sidewalks that were glazed in ice over the last few weeks. I myself went down very hard once and actually crushed my poor computer and destroyed it.

[Scott R. Anderson]

I didn't know that, Ben. I'm sorry.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah, no, no, I literally folded it in half. In fact, maybe that'll be my object lesson. You know, the, the conditions of the streets are extremely dangerous. You know, driving between Kharkiv and Kyiv, I did not see, you know, any, any missile strikes, but the number of traffic accidents and, you know, cars folded in half and, you know, turned upside down was crazy. And that is war related in the sense that the conditions of the roads are awful. And it's war related in the sense that when you have a marginal municipal dollar to spend, you're upgrading a bomb shelter, you're not repairing a road. And by the way, that when it's snowing and it was snowing when we were driving, you're not clearing streets. And so there is a, there is a real, like, what are the internal governance priorities to make the society function maximally, including maximally for like, the protection of human life. And they're really good at it in some ways. And the winter has really exposed certain ways in which, you know, I'm not faulting them. It's impossible job, but in which you really wish that people were doing. Were prioritizing certain things differently. I don't know, Nastya, what did I get wrong?

[MIDI Health Host]

Well.

[Nastya Lapatan]

I think you're mostly right, but I just. As a resident of Kyiv, I hold a lot more anger than you are for the failure of the Kyiv authorities to get this shit together and figure it out. So yeah, I may be a little less forgiving than you are, but that's okay because my job is to keep my government accountable and your job is to keep your government accountable. This. This is just different, Terps. Anyway, should we move to discussing another thing that makes me very angry and that is the peace negotiations?

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, Leah, I definitely do. Before we do that, let me introduce one thought as I think is a necessary background information for understanding the state of negotiations right now, which you've already touched on. And at this point we're halfway into the second topic anyway, so we're kind of running them together. And that's the state of the front right now. Now, because I will say I think western coverage of Ukraine of all dimensions has really dropped precipitously in part because we are now pseudo running Venezuela. And a bunch of weird stuff has happened the last few months, to say the least in regards to the United States and its foreign policy. But I think global attention has increasedly as the front has become fairly the state of attrition for the last couple months or frankly years almost at this point it's gotten less attention. But you all have the opportunity to get, maybe not visit the front, get closer to it in Kharkiv and other parts of the country. So Ben, talk to me a little bit about what you all saw on your trip about what the nature of the front is at this point. Nastya, obviously I think you probably have better perspective even than that I'll pull you into. But let me start with Ben, just because you. To build off of your guys trip, talk to us a little bit about what the state of the hot war is right now. Because you need to know that to understand in part the context of the negotiations, I think.

[Benjamin Wittes]

All right, so two preliminary things. One is Kharkiv seems like the front. If you're in Washington, it's not really. Yes, but Kharkiv is about 50 km from the front and it is close enough that you can sometimes hear the front. You hear a sort of rumbling of artillery if you're on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes the front comes to Kharkiv sometimes and has even come to downtown Kharkiv or in the early stages of the war. And missile strikes happen just all the time. But it is not the front. It is the largest city near the front. And I'm not sure what the best way to describe that is, but you definitely feel like the war is there, but you are not at the war. The second thing is that Kharkiv is interesting because it is an area that the Russians really tried to take in 2022 and failed. And so there was a time when the front line of the war was right inside the city or right on the outskirts of the city. And it has really been pushed back in that 2023 period. It was really, you know, shoved a good ways back. And so the city is a little bit. A little bit relieved from the real pressure of the war. The second preliminary thing I just want to say is I am not a military analyst. And the. The people who are in a position to talk about this authoritatively are a refined bunch. Some of them we have on the podcast the Francis Farrells of the world. Some of them are Jimmy Rushton, who's sitting in the background in Nastya's shot. I mean, there are people who are really well positioned to talk about this in detail. I am not, and I don't want to hold myself out as one. I think it's fair to describe the general state of the front as first of all, this is the first long term high intensity conflict fought between modern militaries that the world has seen. I mean, leave aside the Iran Iraq war, neither of which was a modern military, but that had a long hot front for a long time. You really have to go back to Korea before you've seen anything like this. And no military in the world, including either the Ukrainian military or the Russian military, was remotely prepared to fight a four year high intensity conflict. So what happens when you have that dynamic is what you might call the World War I effect, which is eventually the two sides dig in and confront each other over a long front. And that is what's happened here. Both sides have very substantial manpower shortages, and the Russians are, generally speaking, playing offense right now. That is, they are trying to push the line deeper into the Donetsk territory to take as much of it as they can. They are making very slow, very incremental progress, which is not to be confused with the way the Trump administration constantly refers to it, which is, you know, the Ukrainian lines are collapsing. You know, they're. These are measured in, you know, feet at a time, meters, you know, and they are expending just enormous numbers of People to get this done. There is very little sign of breakthroughs on either side, except in the most minimal sense. And both sides have moved very decisively to roboticize as much of the conflict as they can. So that you have this very dramatic developments in, you know, in both ground and aerial drone use, which I'm take it we'll talk about separately. And so that is, I think the state of things and the, and the background to these negotiations which is, you know, both sides feel a little bit, or maybe more than a little bit demoralized. The Ukrainian side because their territory, they are losing slowly a certain amount of territory. And the Russian side because they're spending tens and tens of thousands of people to get relatively small gains. And I think that's the best background I can give you, the sort of high level background I can give you for the Abu Dhabi talks.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Just my five cents on that. I think all of that is pretty much right. And I've been asked by someone, by someone from the west just in the last few days whether, you know, whether the front line is actually about to collapse in any way and whether we are really on the cusp of peace. And you know, from the reporting in the west, it seems like things are really going to rip up any minute now. And you know, leaving aside the sort of potential for a miracle when it comes to peace negotiations on the front line, neither side is facing some sort of looming imminent collapse. Neither Ukraine nor Russia. And I think actually that fact is one of the main reasons why the ongoing negotiations are not like they don't seem to be going anywhere really is because for the negotiations to really be serious and ultimately successful, at least one party has to be ready for them. And you're ready for them when you know that you need to stop. And neither side right now feels the urgency that they need to stop fighting as soon as possible and they need to make a deal. And that's one of the main reasons why things aren't working out. But anyway, we're going to talk about that more now.

[Benjamin Wittes]

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[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, so let's fade and talk in about the negotiations. I will say if folks who are listening want, I think, a really valuable account of exactly the state of the line. CSIS put out a report, I think this will be last month. Yeah. At the end of January. By seth Jones Riley McCabe it's called Russia's Grinding War in Ukraine. But it has, among other things, really phenomenal visuals. Help you visualize where exactly the line has moved. And from January 24 to 26, you know, basically half the war, the line has barely budged. You know, a couple of incursions mostly along kind of the line of control within Ukraine, a few from the border coming in other areas, but relatively limited. And it's really, really striking visual when you compare that to the sheer scale of fatalities, not to mention resources and funding that goes into the conflict, particularly on the Russian side.

[Benjamin Wittes]

And I will just add to that. You could say the same thing about the line in World War I until the major breakout in I guess it was 18. Right. So lines are static until the moment that they're not. And the fact that the lines are static today does not necessarily mean they're going to be static next month. But Nastya's point is still the critical one, which is that because both sides feel that their position is relatively stable, they are neither of them inclined to cry uncle in a hotel room in Abu Dhabi.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So talk to us. What came out of these negotiations this week? Nasty. I know you had a long conversation with some other colleagues and friends of ours that will be out on our Lawfare podcast. So talk to us a little bit about what the state of the negotiations are and particularly because our audience is mostly American, the role of Americans are playing it in this administration.

[Nastya Lapatan]

So I mean, as a journalist, I kind of hate covering the peace negotiations because a lot of the times it's a lot of the same things, which means from the point of view of the reporter, it's a lot of nothing. It's a lot of like there is very little exciting new stuff. Like there has never, like in the year that these negotiations have been happening, there has never really been a breakthrough and most articles include that, you know, in their leader, Nutgrove, you know, so and so have met in this place and there hasn't been a breakthrough. And so that's just. And it goes on and it's. And there have been, I mean, I guess, like it depends on really what you call progress. Personally, I think, and again, this is kind of my subjective opinion, but I think that the fact that the negotiations are ongoing and the fact that the three sides, Ukraine, Russia and the US are talking and figuring out what it is exactly that Ukraine and Russia are comfortable with on a variety of issues, I think that's ultimately a net positive. Now, I am not saying that I'm confident that these negotiations will necessarily lead to an outcome, to a desired outcome, to a ceasefire. I don't know if they will or not. But I do think that signing a peace deal includes negotiating over dozens of various issues, many of which, some of them are easier to negotiate and some of them are a lot, a lot harder to negotiate and include a lot of technical management. And all of that takes just hours and days and weeks and months of the parties talking and hashing it out. And that's just the nitty gritty work, that's just the diplomatic work that goes on behind the scenes. And that work just has to be be done. And I just think that that work is worth doing because even if the negotiations don't lead anywhere right now and we're going to keep fighting for another year without any peace talks and then something changes and the peace talks kind of resume, we're not going to be starting from zero and that's going to be a good thing. So that's just my subjective opinion on it. In terms of the very latest rounds, again, there hasn't been any breakthroughs. As always, the one really good outcome that is one of the things making all of this dancing around Trump and all of it worth is that there was a prisoner exchange that was agreed upon at the latest round. And if not mistaken, 157 Ukrainian soldiers and some civilians came back from Russian captivity, which is the best news. And so, yeah, the main sticking point remains as and has always been the issue of territory and the issue of Donetsk oblast in the so called Donbass region in Ukraine's east. Russia controls Currently around 80% of Donetsk region occupies that land. Ukraine controls the remaining 20%. And Russia for many, many months has been demanding that Ukraine just voluntarily withdraws its forces from the 20% it currently controls, which includes this sort of the term coined in the Western media, the Fortress belt of Donbass. It's just an area, an area that's really highly fortified and has fortifications that have been built back when the war actually began in 2014, when the Russians invaded first, and includes several major population centers, areas like Slovansk and Kramatorsk, where hundreds of thousands of people used to live, and many still do. And so the proposition that Ukraine could agree to just give up that land voluntarily is really preposterous, because leaving aside the morality of it and leaving aside the historical justice or whatnot, problems, the answers to which are obvious, strategically, it would be a huge mistake, because that area, that is a hugely strategically important, militarily important area. And if Russia was to control it, it would be an amazing launching pad for them to go into the Dnipro region and sort of continue their invasion. It would be a very advantageous point from which they can do that. Which all of that is to say that that's exactly why the Ukrainian. The Ukrainian delegation has been saying that it's a red line for Ukraine, and Ukraine would never agree to it. Ukraine would never agree to cede the rest of Donbass region. Now, there have been several sort of creative ideas floating in the media that are apparently being discussed behind the closed doors about how to solve this seemingly unsolvable problem. And those include creating a certain demilitarized zone, demilitarized free economic zone, and, you know, finding whatever historical precedent you can to apply here. I think Zelenskyy said just recently that this issue of territorial negotiations, of the territorial question will be negotiated at the next round, which is scheduled for February 17th and 18th. The Russians haven't yet said they're going to be participating in that, but Zelenskyy at least confirmed that Ukraine will be. And I think that round, so in a week, in a little bit, is supposed to happen in Miami. And he said that the territorial disputes will be talked about there. So we'll see what comes out of that, and we'll see what the reporting says. But so far, it remains an unsolvable issue. And another layer is like, the Ukrainian delegation can agree to whatever they want, but it will have to put any peace deal up for a referendum, and the Ukrainian people will have to vote for it. But even after that, even if the majority of the country is so tired of the war and just really wants this whole thing to end, no matter the cost, even if the majority of the country does vote for it, you're going to be telling thousands of really angry, really tired, armed men that they have to leave their positions and that their unit mates died for nothing, and they're just going to walk away from the free, sovereign Ukrainian territory and give it up. And whether that is possible or not is an open question. But I think you're getting from the tone of how I'm describing it that it's, again, a near impossible situation. Again, we don't actually know. And I'm always leaving in my mind sort of a space for some sort of miracle to happen. As Ben said, the front line is stable until it's suddenly not. And the negotiations are useless until. Until suddenly there is a breakthrough. So There is never 100% certainty, but it is a lot of going around in circles and achieving nothing because ultimately Ukrainian and Russian goals are. The Russian goal is for Ukraine to be crushed and not be a sovereign nation. And Ukraine wants the exact opposite of that. And how you reconcile that is an impossible task.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So I think your point about both the lines and negotiations being these big buildups until there's some sort of breakthrough is Right. Right. There's all this background work. There's a lot of things that can happen, and there's risk on both. Risk and potential opportunity on both fronts. Ben, I want to come to you on the American element of all this, because we now have this timeframe that the Trump administration has started floating over the summer, which I think is not super transparent.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Hey, man, it's a lengthening of the time frame. It's not 24 hours anymore.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, exactly. It's not January 2025 like it was originally.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Timeframe gets more and more realistic.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yes, it is getting more. Somewhat more realistic. But to me, like, I have to read that in the context of elections. I don't know, you know, why you would draw a line there, except to say, yeah, we want to have this all wrapped up. We're having this new line as clearly effort to put the pressure on the parties. But, you know, my sense is that Trump's actually, like, in a little bit of a difficult position if he were acting as a politically rational actor, which is always a 50, 50 proposition with this administration. But if you were, it's actually in a slightly difficult position for the next several months in that the party over whom he has the leverage that's easiest to exercise is the Ukrainians through leverage, through cutting off support and assistance of various stripes, which even though there's an agreement in place now, in theory, we're still providing it at kind of reduced levels. That's a leverage point. But it's also the side that exerting that pressure comes with the domestic political costs. Like, no one's really going to hit Trump for hitting Russia harder in terms of domestic politics. So it strikes me as there's actually like a little bit maybe of a window opportunity for Zelensky and for the Ukrainians, insofar as I think the amount of actual pressure the Americans were able to bring down on them before November is likely to be limited. Like hard pressure, rhetorical pressure, drawing deadlines, saying bad things, saying, oh, your line is collapsing, you need to do something about it. I think that's real. But to really cut the rug, pull the rug out from under the Ukrainians between now and November, I think would be a huge domestic political risk for Republicans. And a lot of Republicans, I think, would be very vocal about that. Ukrainians have a lot of Republican friends in Congress, even though they've been quiet this last year.

[Nastya Lapatan]

And also an additional point to that is that the Russians understand that that come midterms, the political landscape in the US Is very likely to change. And what they are able to get out of the American administration suddenly also starts to look different. So I think both Ukrainians and the Russians are looking at this political election schedule in the US and are sort of taking notes on what that means for them.

[Benjamin Wittes]

It is amazing how often you hear the term midterm elections in Kyiv.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah. But I'm not surprised because it's just such a change of dynamics. And it does make me wonder whether if you're Vladimir Putin, you've really overplayed your hand very characteristically, because your window, where Trump was in the best position to drive a deal that you might want, frankly, closed this past November. Right. When Trump's political position showed itself to be a lot more vulnerable than he seemed, like all presidents seem in the first eight months after they're elected. But let me turn you on and spend like, what do you do with this if you're Ukraine? Is it just at this point really an effort? Effort to maintain the status quo, essentially, and continue support and assistance on the assumption that you can ride out the continued Russian offensive. And it is, in the end, the costs are going to pile up enough that they really have to deal with it. Particularly, maybe you do pivot towards domestic resilience. You address some of the issues we talked about on the energy front, you prepare for next winter better. There's ways you would change what that means. But in the end, you're still fighting the war of attrition. You're still trying to make yourself suffer the pain less, and you assume The Russians are going to be more. Or is there something more concrete you try and get out of the administration and the Americans, you're going to play very friendly. That's part of the game. And Zelenskyy's like walking a careful tightrope. I think fairly well. Since the blow up in last February or March, he's managed the administration a lot better.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Much better than the Europeans.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Better than Europeans, Although I don't think that's entirely Europeans fault. The whole Greenland thing was a bit of a curveball.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Right. Look, I'm not saying we're making the game easy for anybody, anybody, but. Yeah, but if there's one group of people, and I said this to a group of Ukrainians that I spoke to, there will come a time when there are shrines built in Kyiv to the diplomatic crew and people will go there to pray. Look, the Ukrainians have done a lot of impressive things over the course of this war, but I'm not sure I've ever seen diplomacy with a weaker hand played better than what they have managed to do over the past year in Washington and on the phone with Washington. And we've had these three episodes. They all follow the same trajectory, which is Trump goes out and he says what he actually thinks, which is that he hates Ukraine and he wants Ukraine to lose. And he doesn't understand why the don't just capitulate. Because Russia's strong, right? And he says that to Zelensky's face. And by the way, why aren't you wearing a suit and you don't have any cards and the whole world panics and the Ukraine delegation just goes into manage the situation mode and they work it and work it and work it and over two weeks, three weeks, kind of walk the United States back to a good place or a better place. And then it happens again with the Alaska summit and then it happens again with the Witkoff peace plan. Right. And by the third time it happens, the world doesn't even panic anymore because we cut. The whole world kind of knows that this process, this cycle is going to go on again. And so what is the Ukrainian strategy? Look, I think the Ukrainian strategy is very simple. It's. Oh, and by the way, Ukraine, as Nastya constantly points out to me, has gotten some big deal things out of Trump. The most important of which is the relaxation on the restrictions on their use of long range missiles. And so their position is precarious and they're not getting huge new aid packages right now, but they are. The tactical cooperation has continued and in some areas expanded. And so I think the best way to understand their position is that they are assuming they do not have a single major patron. They are dealing with every country and every block of countries as they have to make their case. They have to be useful to. They have to show that their war means to these countries what the most that it could mean. And they have to play for time, both with respect to the war of attrition and with respect to the domestic politics of every country. And I think that's exactly what they're doing. And it's actually an area where they've been, you know, unlike snow removal and ice management, they've been just incredibly effective at it, to the point that I am. I mean, I could not be angrier at the Trump administration for its treatment of Ukraine, but I'm not worried anymore that like, two weeks from now they're going to get cut off, you know, and so, like, I actually think this is an area where. And they'll never get credit for it on their, with their own people because, you know, diplomatic schisms that don't happen are not the sort of thing that you can run a campaign on. Right.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And plenty of their own people may not like this.

[Benjamin Wittes]

It's.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's the people who aren't their people as squarely that are like, generally more supportive of this.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Exactly.

[Nastya Lapatan]

I just want to jump in and argue with your portrayal of this a little bit and disagree a little bit because again, I think this is part of the just. My job is to keep my government accountable. Your job is to keep your government accountable. And this is another one of those examples. I think there was the situation that happened in the Oval Office in spring was a horrific situation for which I think our government deserves a small amount of blame. I think that situation could have been avoided if our government acted differently. And I think that right after that blowout happened, the Europeans descended on Zelenskyy, trying to save his butt and teaching him how to actually approach this Trump administration. And I think we wouldn't have been able. The diplomatic core to which. Absolutely. Shrines should be built. I agree. Wouldn't have been able to do their job effectively if it wasn't for the European guidance in the beginning there. So I think that would be a more fair description of that timeline. But in general, I agree with you.

[Benjamin Wittes]

I'm sure that's right. So I don't mean to say they have single mindedly mastered this. And I'm not saying they have not made mistakes. I'm saying if you had started with I'm going to solve this war in 24 hours, and I'm going to do it by making Ukraine capitulate, which was basically what Trump said through the entire campaign. And, you know, and you had started with that and said, and then said, within a year, Ukraine and the United States would be not on the same page, but not in, you know, would be working cooperatively in the context of repeated rounds of peace talks, and they would be in the place that they are today. I would have had a very hard time believing that, especially after the Oval Office meeting. But I was not surprised by the Oval Office meeting. And so I just think they've done a lot better than we expected or than they had any reason to expect that they were going to be able to do do with this administration.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So before we wind up our conversation, I do want to pivot back to a point that you made earlier in our conversation, Ben, that's kind of come up over and over again in our conversation, and that's the repeated presence of drones in every element of this conflict at this point on both sides. I had an interview with Shashank Joshi, who is the Economist defense editor. I think two, three years ago, I think just like a year into the Ukraine conflict, after economists ran a phenomenal special series about the technological developments in war that Ukraine is kind of showcasing and driving. And even then there are a couple of them, but drones and then drone countermeasures were kind of the two leading ones. And that is more true than ever now. And we're seeing it not just in Ukraine, but now lots of other conflicts. A lot of the techniques, methodologies developed in Ukraine are going there, whether it is, you know, Gaza or a variety of other contexts. So you had an opportunity to experience firsthand some of these drone techniques and the ways they're being taught to people. Talk to us a little about that experience and what it's kind of taught you about this new era of drone warfare.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah, gosh, this was such an interesting thing. So I was supposed to go to a drone base near the front line, and that did not happen because my accreditation didn't come through in time. It just came through yesterday, actually. But I did go to Adnastia did as well, to drone school. And so the first fascinating thing about drone school is that it is run by one of the military units, and it's available, it's open to the public. So if you want to sign up for drone school, whether you're a civilian or military, you can just sign up and go spend a week and they will teach you how to fly point of view kamikaze drones. And I asked, you know, them like, why do you teach civilians? And they said, well, they're not going to be civilians forever. And they're, you know, in very much the same way that, you know, like somebody associated with the National Rifle association would think like an armed citizenry is, you know, good for, you know, safety and security. There are parts of the Ukrainian government that have made a judgment that having a citizenry that knows how to fly point of view drones is, you know, a national security good to the point that they have these schools that, you know, they will just train people in. And you walk in and they have really complicated drone obstacle courses and they, you know, they start you on a simulator and it's kind of like, think of it's like part escape room, part, you know, video game, part war. You know, it's a pretty fascinating vibe. Look, the what's going on with drones is. And when people say drones, they're often thinking of the flying variety and that's most of it. But for lawfare people, it's really important to understand we're also talking about ground robotics and you know, the better of the military.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Maritime drones, very big deal.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Yeah, the better of the military units are now doing between 90 and 100% of their ground logistics using unmanned ground vehicles. These include extrications of wounded, they include mining, they include getting water to people who are at. And they have these very elaborate, complicated, different ground robots that are all point of view driven and they are, you know, different, different types of wheels for different types of missions. Some of them have incredibly long ranges, 30, 40, 50 kilometers. But the core of it is something that old time lawfare readers and listeners will remember is, you know, flying robots. And we think of these. When we started writing about this stuff, it was, you know, Predator drones killing people with, you know, from remote standoff positions. These are different. These are relatively short range, 30, 40 kilometers. Some of them can go up to 50. They are, you know, mostly quad or you know, a few rotors. They are basically, you know, if you just think of hobbyist drones that you can fly from your, from a console, they're kind of like that, only they're outfitted with thermal cameras and they have explosives strapped to them. And they have mostly, not entirely, but mostly replaced artillery for a lot of applications. They're extremely accurate because they're human guided in real time. And here's the thing that is I think just mind blowing. The pace of iteration is a matter of weeks, innovation and iteration. You produce a new set that can, has new capabilities, can resist the countermeasures that the other side is using. The other side adapts. And the life cycle in which these things are usable is extremely short, that they provide a tactical advantage in situation for a very, very short period of time before you have to innovate again. And that means, if you think about the standard model of the way defense contractors make weapons, right, they make a weapon with a long life cycle. You know, we're still using F16s. They've been around for a really long time, right? These weapons have life cycles that are very short. And that means that the frontline units have to be cooperating with and talking to the developers in real time so that the developers know, you know, what are the new Russian techniques that are being used. And they can adapt the devices very quickly. And so it's a completely new model of technological development in, in active warfare spaces, high intensity conflict. And the result of it is a, the very fast development of an indigenous drone industry in Ukraine that a lot of which are being made in basements and a certain degree of confusion on the part of western defense contractors, because how do you keep up with this pace of development that both of these sides are doing? And the answer is they can't. And so it's an enormously complicated and interesting set of challenges that really arise out of the fact that the missiles that we were providing, the Ukrainians, are extremely expensive and we put restrictions on them. And so why would you use a $250,000 javelin that has some restrictions on what you're allowed to do with it? If you can outfit a little DJI drone that doesn't have restrictions on it? And so it's driven by need, it's driven by the fact that these things are widely available as consumer products. And it's driven by the fact that you're always, always looking for things that you can do with greater and greater accuracy.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's so absolutely fascinating. So the one question I have is about this countermeasures evolution. It's something we actually kind of just lived through in the United States in a weird way. There's a story that maybe, except people at Lawfare were freaking out about last night and that they decided to shut down all the airspace around El Paso, the city of El Paso, for like 10 miles in a radius, which many of us took to mean that we were about to launch military operations against Mexican cartels. But in fact, what it appears to have been, that they were using Some sort of measure, countermeasure against cartel drones. That's reporting today. They lifted the ban, you know, just a couple hours later, essentially earlier this morning. And that was been the reporting confirmed by a couple sources. So it seems credible at this point, although I don't think we have more details than that. So the evolution of this countermeasure is really striking. Like did you get a sense or do you have a sense of that at all? And about like where this technology may go past the first person operated model, which of course has an Achilles heel, which is it needs a communications link. So you need some sort of radio, presumably secure radio if you're facing any sort of even basic or fiber optics or. Yeah, exactly. Or like, you know, Starlink or something else that can connect you to the communications line, which particularly for long range drones becomes more and more challenging. So is there a sense of where that's going in Ukraine that might give a sense about where other people are going? Are we seeing AI, are we seeing pre programmed routes come in? Or is that still. I mean Ukraine is unique in that the battlefield is proximate to a lot of population centers. So maybe that's less of a concern there than it might be in other theaters. But I'm curious if you're seeing talk about that or heard any talk about that in this or in Nastya and some of your coverage of this stuff.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Well, so a couple things. The first is that autonomy is coming and you know, the human rights community can whine about it all they want, but the world is moving on and you know, if you can interrupt communications links and from a use perspective you can solve that problem by programming the destination and releasing it and not having to communicate with it after that. You're just going to do that. So I think, you know, the autonomous weapons human in the loop crowd is going to lose this debate and we should just be frank about that. Look, I mean the countermeasures range from at one end electronic warfare jamming to at the extreme other end there are nets above the roads in some of the roads in Kharkiv to prevent drones from, you know, like literally netting. You know, if people look at my Instagram feed, you'll see some pictures of, of that netting and that's. That netting is just an anti drone countermeasure. There's also, you know, people have spent a lot of time trying to develop, you know, shotgun shells and stuff that can, you know, take out individual drones. There's a constant amount of work being also drone detection devices right and so there is a lot of work at areas that are really low tech, like nets and really high tech to try to get these things under control. And there is a constant dialogue. And it's. What's fascinating about it is it's not just a dialogue between the Ukrainian military and the Russians military measures and countermeasures. But the hobbyists are in on this too, because, you know, a lot of the stuff that ends up in the battlefield here starts with like, like dudes with DJI drones flying things around cities. Right. And so there's a, there's a dialog that involves mil tech that involves, you know, there's one of the, the people who, Nastya knows him, who, you know, runs one of the big American drone companies. He started his career as a teenage drone racer, you know, and, you know, he didn't start as a guy who was making military drones. He started as a, as a racer, you know. So the dialogue includes a lot of different segments of a lot of different societies. And I don't think, you know, in the long run, defense does pretty well. In the short run, offense generally gets an advantage. I think we're seeing a lot of cycles right now that are happening very fast in terms of what you can and can't do with these things.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Well, it's a fascinating topic. It's going to be with us for a long time. But we are out of time to talk about it today. But of course, this would not be rational security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Ben, what do you have for us this week?

[Benjamin Wittes]

So I would not be a good boss if I did not mention that Nastya insisted that she be allowed to take me shopping in Kyiv.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Do they sell dog shirts in Kyiv? That's unfortunate. I'm so sorry that we brought this to you.

[Benjamin Wittes]

So she told me that we were going, that there were a few brands that I needed to be that were iconic and I needed for my efforts to harass Russian diplomats worldwide. And so I am going to cede the time, my time, for Nastya to tell you a little bit about the two brands that she made me buy. And the next time you see me outside the Russian embassy, I am going to be wearing some of these clothes. And Nastya, why don't you give us a sense of what they are?

[Nastya Lapatan]

I honestly don't know if that's the most useful information we could be giving out to our audience, but sure, since you've put me on the spot, there are several brands that, that I made you buy mainly because they're very popular among the sort of hipster, military oriented Ukrainian youth. And one of them has incredible T shirts that have really funny phrases on them. Phrases sort of specifically taken out of the ludicrous Russian propaganda. So, you know, one of them, for example, is Ukrainsky slid. Yeah, I think that's the exact one you pulled out. Which means Ukrainian trace. And that's sort of mocking. Anytime anything goes boom in Russia or anytime anything bad happens anywhere, the Russian propagandists are like, well, probably the Ukrainians are behind this. And they use that exact phrase. They're like, well, there is a Ukrainian trace in here. This was a terrorist attack. Another one is the Kyiv regime. Kyivskarizhim. And that's again, that's just like the Russian propaganda about Zelensky being illegitimate and this being some sort of illegitimate authoritarian regime, which is crazy. And probably my favorite one is Zahid Nikura, which is the third one that I made Ben by which just says Western, like Western curator, Western handler. So that's, you know, Victoria Newland of the world, you know, who are supposedly paying us to me, I'm the Western.

[Benjamin Wittes]

I'm the Western.

[Nastya Lapatan]

You are the Western curator of Ukrainian culture. Yes, exactly. To do whatever you want. Want. So. So that's. Yeah, so that's that.

[Benjamin Wittes]

So I was thinking, I was thinking I was going to wear the Zechidni Kuratar to the next because I think that's, you know, how I want the Russians to perceive me. So that's gonna be.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Yeah, yeah. But Scott, do I get to talk about my object lessons?

[Scott R. Anderson]

You absolutely still do your object lesson.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Ben's was seated to you because I think mine, with all due respect to the brands, mine is a lot more important. And I want to mention the fundraiser that Ben and I have been doing. So Ben and I have been running this fundraiser on our respective substacks. One being Ben's substack being Dogshore Daily. A lovely name. And mine being yours, Ukrainian. And so we've been fundraising money to buy batteries, ecoflows or different brands, generators, heated blankets, hand warmers, but mainly batteries, mainly portable power stations for people mainly in Kyiv. We've already raised a bunch of money and bought at least two dozen power stations for families. Almost all of them have kids or small babies who are dealing with the energy crisis that we've mentioned at the top of the episode. So we still have requests from families coming. Basically every day I find a family that needs help. And so if you want to contribute in some way, please. I assume we'll link some stuff in the description.

[Scott R. Anderson]

We will have it in the show notes.

[Nastya Lapatan]

Great. Great. We'll have some stuff in the show notes. Donating money to Ukraine directly is kind of a huge headache. So the route we have is that people donate money to Ben's American accounts because that's the easiest for foreigners and specifically for Americans, to Ben's PayPal, Ben's Venmo, and then Ben either PayPal's that to me or mainly Western unions it to me. And that's how we figured out how to move money. And it's been successful so far. And of course, we keep all the receipts and Ben verifies all of it. So if you want to help people in Ukraine and in Kyiv specifically suffering from the energy crisis, you should. Yes, give us your money. We need a lot of it.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Wonderful. That's a great recommendation. And I will close up this episode, which I think has been a fascinating, really useful conversation, frankly, about a lot of aspects of this very important conflict that don't get enough attention. I encourage people keep paying attention to stuff going on this conflict and what's going on in Ukraine. I think we're doing our part here in Lawfare. It's getting harder. It's been flagged on social media. Washington Post shut down its Ukraine office. Media attention is shifting away from Ukraine. And frankly, that was always a risk and is frankly part of the Russian strategic calculus. And so part of keeping attention on Ukraine is, I think, helping Ukraine in the end because it just keeps people aware and unable to ignore what's happening in the US Role in it. So there's lots of things to recommend. I think csis, I mentioned earlier just did a very good report on the state of the conflict earlier this year that I've been digging into. Kind of a running series, I should say, that kind of culminator this year. I would check out. I would also say also the counteroffensive with Tim Mack, which I think we we've recommended here before. Former. I think we have the post for a while. Been a couple other places. We're correspondent npr.

[Benjamin Wittes]

Npr.

[Scott R. Anderson]

That's right. It's on npr. Excuse me. Sorry about that, Tim. But really interesting, I think does a really good job capturing the human aspect and experience of the conflict, which you lose with a lot of more conventional reporting. And so that's something I've been following a lot on this. Lots of other great sources as well, but definitely worth keeping an eye on it. And we will do our part to help you keep doing that at Rational Security and at Law Fair more broadly, probably. But until then, until next time. That is all we have today on Rational Security. And that brings us to this week's end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit [e-mail] for our show page, for link to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information, Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast, among other special benefits. For more information, visit law firmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was no Osman of Go Rodeo and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan. And we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guest Ben and Nastya, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service. We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real world complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order. And we also see it when FIN goes up against competitors. It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard, and if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all.

[Benjamin Wittes]

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