Episode 731: Russia's Fourth Summer of War, with Dr. Dmirty Gorenburg

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
And good day everybody. Glad to have you on board
another edition of the mid Rats podcast. And if you
are with that esteemed cohort Live, I'd like to invite

(00:51):
you to join the chat room. It's a perfect way
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(01:11):
If you don't already, head on over to wherever you
get your podcasts, whether it's an iTunes, Spreaker, Spotify, wherever
you get them, and look us up. We'll be there
and you can go ahead and subscribe. And today we're
going to dive into something that it's almost becoming an
annual occurrence. Here is when the rush of Ukrainian War

(01:32):
kicked off in early twenty twenty two. There are people,
obviously a lot of them were in the Kremlin who
thought it was going to be a quick, successful war
and then they could go forward, go onto one. There
are people who didn't want to really make an opinion
one or another, but there are others who saw that
this could be a long war. Would they have thought
that we would have a fourth summer of the war, Well,

(01:55):
some of them could have seen that path, and it's
a good opportunity to kind of talk that. But we're
not just going to dive into that. We're also going
to dive on with the news that's been in the
last few months that there are some serious attempts to
at least try to go to the table where that
might play out. Where the Russian and the Ukrainian people
are in the fourth year, what they want going forward,

(02:16):
how things may have changed, and also how things have
changed on the battlefield. That's influence seeing how Russia is
looking at how she will defend herself in the future,
but also Western military is China, everybody else is looking
at the lessons of the Russia Ukrainian War because it's
not a little imperial policing action. It's not a little

(02:37):
flash of a plan. It's a serious war with serious
combatants that at least modern militaries can relate to. And
returning for a guest that we've had for almost since
the beginning of the show, we're really glad to have
him back again to talk about all things involving the
Russian military and things related to the latest conflict. Doctor
Dimitri Gornberg. He is a senior research scientist and the Strategy, Policy, Plans,

(03:01):
and Program's Division at the Center for Naval Analysis, where
he's worked since two thousand. His opinions stated here today
are his own, and not necessarily those of CNA, d
O D or any organizations he may be associated with. Dimitri,
Happy high summer to you. It's great to have you
on board again.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thanks for having meat.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Great to be back for I don't know, I haven't counted,
probably like at least the tenth time, maybe more.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I think.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So it's like I don't think if do you get
a green blazer, a gold blazer or a scarlet razor
with gold with gold pipe. I'm not sure, but it's
something I don't know, maybe that outfit that what was
his name in the death of Stalin, deputy party chairman,
who had that beautiful white outfit with.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
The collar swine with that Yeah who anyway.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Whatever that outfit is, maybe you get that for the
tenth time. It looks good. But kind of how we
started the show because we are in the fourth summer,
and I remember, and we were all watching in the
early parts of this conflict, when you know you can't
write friction fiction like this, when the Russian airborne forces,

(04:10):
their elite forces, were going to seize Hosmo Airport and
this rag tag if you got a gun, run to
the sound of the fire, and even some of the
reserve units from keV managed to push them back and
totally change the initial plans for the war. I was
when I thought, Okay, this is going to go longer.

(04:31):
I was thinking months and months and months. But here
we are in the fourth summer. But as we were
talking about in the pre show, there were people when
this kicked off, we're seeing that, Hey, everybody needs to
cool your jets. There's a potential here that this conflict
for go, for go for a long time. Talk a
little bit about what people were seeing early on in
this conflict. This should have given the short war hypothesis,

(04:55):
people a little bit of pause on how they were
going a few things.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, sure, I mean in you know, before the war began,
lots of people, most people, i think most analysts thought that,
you know, Russia could win pretty quickly, and you know,
there been various analyzes in life why that proved not
to be the case. It was you mentioned Hastemel. That
was you know, that was probably the most fraught moment.
If you know, if that assault had been successful and

(05:22):
the Russian forces were able to penetrate in the Kiev
and thro the decapitation strike on the leadership that they
were in attended, it could have gone quite quickly in
Russia's savor, at least, not to take over all of Ukraine,
but to really undermine the resistance in terms of maybe
there'd be gorilla warfare and that sort of thing for sure.
But as a way it turned out, you know, a

(05:42):
lot hinged on that battle. But once that worked out
the way it did, and once the Russian columns logged
down around Kiev as they did, that's when it became
clear to a lot of analysts that this wasn't going
to go quickly. And the reason why was On the
one hand, it was, you know, seemed that the Russian

(06:02):
forces weren't prepared for the kind of war that they
were suddenly going to.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Have to fight, and that they didn't end up having
to fight.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
So on the other hand, if you looked at the
kind of the balance of power, let's call it right,
if you you know, industrial base, manpower, all those kinds
of things, it seemed that in the long run Russia
could potentially do what it's doing right now, which is
kind of continuing to grind make very slow, you know,

(06:33):
steady small gains. That was very much a potential and
so from that perspective, I think a lot of people
thought this could this has I mean there were various points.
Obviously politicians can decide that there's ways out, they could
end but have a cease fire or whatever.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
But it had the potential at.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Least of going a long time because neither side was
strong enough to inflict that kind of overwhelming defeat on
the other side.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
What price as the as the Russian people paid for this,
I mean, are they usually when war stopped, there's some
internal discussion, shall we say, about the effect on what
it's causing, the harm to the to the home front.
Is that a factor of this war? And it has
it changed since Ukraine has been more successful with some
of their long range of drome.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well, I mean, you know, there are different kinds of prices,
right Like one price that the Russian people have paid
from day.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
One that you know, maybe a lot of them don't
care about it.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
With the price, nonetheless, is that the level of repression
domestically is you know, skyrocketed. So from that perspective, if
you're not you know, towing the line on you know,
either supporting the war or at least or otherwise staying quiet,
you know, you have a pretty high risk of getting
a you know, a serious prison sentence and that sort

(07:54):
of thing. So that's that's a price, and a lot
of people obviously left the country as well, so that's
you know, that's one kind of price.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
The other kind of price is casualties.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
It's hard to get exact numbers, you know, it's definitely
in the sixth you know, okay, uh six figures for
for for deaths for sure, and and then you know
even higher numbers are wounded that are even perhaps you know,
it's always harder to.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Track up from the outside.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
So you get, you know, there will that's you know,
those two things I mentioned to go together, because the
repression makes it harder to talk about openly about any
discontent that population may be feeling about all those casualties.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
And also while you're in the kind of while you're
fighting the fight.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
You know, a lot of people think it's not appropriate
to question the war effort. But that's the kind of
thing that one could see being, you know, at a
topic to be discussed, let's say.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Once the war is over. For sure.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
On the economic side, the price hasn't been too high
so far. The economy's held up better I think than
a lot of people expect, certainly better than I expected.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Early on.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
They managed to you know, there was an initial shock
from sanctions that were probably stronger than the leadership expected,
but they managed to kind of stabilize the economic situation,
figured out how to import things from whether it's from
China or you know, through what they call parallel imports,

(09:25):
which is getting sanction goods that are real wing with
a lot of Western goods through some third country through
whether it's China or Central Asia, Turkey in some cases,
and so they can get the things they need. Both
for the war effort and in terms of civilian goods
and so forth. So they managed to keep things going.
It is getting harder. We are seeing, you know, higher

(09:48):
inflation on the financial side is becoming more difficult to manage,
and so so we could see higher costs from that
in the next year or so. But that's you know,
those are the kinds of costs that I think are
in play.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
And you know, how the population.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Views it at the conclusion of the war, will, I think,
depend on the combination of how bad those things are
seen as being and the outcome of the war. Russia wins,
maybe they'll the perception that it was worth it.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
If they lose, go the other way.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Because one dynamic and you heard, especially in the first
year of the war, there was a lot of conversation
about the and again you have to be careful putting
too much of a American or Western European lens on
looking at it. But a difference between rural Russia and
some of their more distant in both range and ethnicity

(10:43):
of their outer lying areas, especially in the south and
in the east, and the impact of the war not
so much economically but in people and where they're recruiting
from versus the impact of the ongoing conflict in Moscow
in Saint Petersburg. I haven't seen many people write about that,
maybe just because it's hard to get good information from

(11:05):
the in the field in general public or people just
aren't interested. But is that a dynamic that's worthy of
people looking at that they're looking for support or possible
conflict inside Russia? The difference between the outlying areas and
the cities of the big cities like Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I think well, possibly, and certainly this is something that
the Russian leadership was concerned about, which is why they
tried to avoid, Like when they were doing various mobilization
efforts and so forth, they've tried to avoid affecting the
major cities too much because they thought there was more

(11:43):
kind of protest potential there than versus you know, rural areas. Now,
what we're seeing since then is that it's more about
like where where's recruitment more successful, So, and a lot
of the recruitment has to do with the relative alternative
economic opportunities. So if you're living in the big cities,

(12:04):
you probably have lots of maybe not lots, but a
number of different options for what you can do in
terms of making money and so forth.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
If you're a twenty.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Something, you're old guy, right, Whereas if you're in some
small small town with that kind of antant economically depressed area,
some of those bonuses that they were paying for recruitment
looked really nice. And so there's been lots of reporting
about people signing up for the war effort just to
get those bonuses for their families, and so that I

(12:37):
think has balanced things out a bit. So we did,
you know the one there was that early period when
there was a perception, I'm not sure how true it
actually was, but there was a perception that some of
the minority ethnic regions right that weren't majority Russian were
being kind of singled out, and there were more people
going from those regions, and that led to some protests

(12:57):
from those groups. The Dougast stone on was one place
where Chech, now there were it was well, Chech is
not a place where you could protest as such, but
there was you know, the Cadeira people were kind of,
including Kadurov himself, We're saying, you know, we're not really
going to do mobilization here because because that's you know,

(13:18):
that's not for us. So you know, Boreatia is another one,
so that kind of but that's kind of quite down
because I think there's the leadership after that initial kind
of fall of twenty two need to kind of do
an involuntary mobilization.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
They've they've managed to keep it enough.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Manpower coming in with these various recruitment paths, and now
a lot of that costs a lot of money in
terms of these bonuses and higher salaries and so forth,
but it does mean that the people going are going
of their own free will, and that reduces the kind
of discontent let's say.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
Yeah, one of the one of the things I've noticed,
and I think other people have commented on, is is
it In the beginning, it seemed like Putin or his
representatives were saying, you know, Ukraine really is part of Russia.
We were just trying to get back what is ours.
And now it's shifted to, you know, we're fighting a
defensive war against Western aggression. Is this is this part

(14:16):
of the pitch to the to the recruits to get
them to volunteer. Is it mother Russia's threatened again?

Speaker 2 (14:22):
I think yes?

Speaker 3 (14:24):
But the one, the one I think modification I'd make
to what you said is that those two factors were
always present. Now they may have, you know, shifted the
balance between them over time a bit, but there was.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
From the start.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Putin was talking about this being Russia being on the
defensive against NATO and being surrounded by NATO, and NATO
just kind of put bases in everywhere all around us
and that sort of thing, so that you know, that
was always one of the justifications, and the other being
you know, the Ukrainians are committing genocide and the Dambas
or whatever, and we have to go to rescue the

(14:58):
poor Donbas people. So some ways, I think the kind
of the more imperial notes against like like Ukraine as
ours have become.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
More prominent in a way over time. I mean, there
was always there. You know. Putin wrote this article in
the summer of twenty one.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I don't know if he wrote it himself, but he
certainly oversaw the writing of it where he kind of
made these Initially. It wasn't the first time it was,
but it was the first time he kind of laid
it all out in one cohere at a platform that
Ukraine is is really part of Russia, and so that
was always there. But then there's the question of how

(15:40):
to actually justify the war and that you know, if
you remember in the fall of twenty one, there was
a lot of sort of this you know really, I mean,
it was kind of a game, but they were, you know,
playing with you know, we're going to make these demands
of NATO and the United States and they have to
acquiesce or else. You know, well if they don't, then

(16:05):
that will show that the Native was out to get us,
so to speak. And it was all kind of a
bit of a game for them to see. Kind of
the way it was presented was very kind of calculatedly
insulting to in a way that you would never do
if you actually wanted to have a real negotiation. But nonetheless,
you know, that was part of it already from the start.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
I don't know there's a Russian word for jingoistic, but yes,
it wasn't it wasn't very diplomatic on the way they
went at it. When the initial rush and it looked
like the war was going to go longer than seventy
two hours or three weeks or something like that. One
thing that we saw is we saw a lot of
paramilitary irregular forces used by the Russians. We saw you

(16:46):
know PMCs like Wagner that doesn't work out too well.
And we also saw a lot of chess in formations.
But I just confirmed that it wasn't just my reading locations.
I looked around to see recently has there been much
at least reported on such things, And there's not compared
to what there was in the beginning of the war.
Though we do have the North Koreans that they came

(17:09):
in and defended some of the border around Kursk. But
is that more of a sign of the Russian military
decided those are not the most reliable forces, or is
that the Russian military and Nest leadership just it took
a while for them to get up on step and go, no,
we're going to professionalize this and we're just going to
straight stick it from a military point of view from

(17:31):
here on out. Because that was one interesting thing about
the early part of the war that seems to have
significantly faded into the background.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, I think it's it's the ladder, It's it's they
basically initially they weren't prepared and that was you know,
part of they weren't prepared for the longer war and
the amount of manpower they would need to actually fight
on this pretty long front line because they thought they
could just kind of decapitate and take over. So because

(17:59):
of that, needed these kinds of extra forces let's say,
you know, paramilitaries and.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Touchings and all the rest.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
And especially after the Wagner mutiny, they realized I mean,
I think they were already realizing by that point, but
that they kind of.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Cemented the need to centralize all of that.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
So it's not that they've entirely gone away, but they
took a lot of those forces and incorporated them into
the regular military.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
So so you see, like if.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
You remember early on when Progoshin was kind of doing
all this publicity, you know, Wagner was recruiting prisoners from
from you know, Russian prisons to go fight in Ukraine. Well,
after a few months, the mod took that over and said, well,
you know that this seems to work well for you guys,
We're going to do that and bring those people into
into our own units. And then after the mutiny, the

(18:51):
remaining Wagner units basically were incorporated. The ones that were
you know, I mean, they had there other Wagner units
that were like doing things in Africa and the rest.
But but the ones that were closer to home were
more put under the direct control of the MOD So
that's but it's basically been a gradual process of kind

(19:15):
of building out a more regular kind of war effort,
right where you have uh central more centralized command and control.
Initially they didn't have a single commander for the whole effort, right,
and you have these different kinds of paramilitary units being
put under the control of the MOOD and so forth.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Now there's still there's still various kinds of you.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Know, different kinds of shadowy forces that are still involved,
and there's might recommend to your your readers. Was an
article and were on the rocks in the less I
don't think could last week, but maybe two weeks on
this by friend of mine Maria on Alchabo. So look
then I'm search We're on the rocks for Ukraine will
be one of the last things that was published, So

(19:56):
recommend looking at that.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
When we're talking about economics a little while ago, everybody
keeps predicting that the there's gonna be a recession in Russia,
that there that they're wheat or their their Yeah, I
guess wheat crop, whatever the crop is is, isn't a
good one this year because of frost and in a
very dry summer, and that they're facing some of their

(20:19):
best customers for their oil however it's delivered through their
shadow fleet or whatever, are being pinged on by the US,
including the US threatening tariff's higher tariffs on India, which
takes about twenty percent of Russian oil. So is it
possible that this is gonna that the economy, the economic
situation can encourage the Russians to to a bargaining table

(20:43):
and to reach some kind of agreement.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
I'm I'm a little dubious, to be honest, I think that.
I mean, there's certainly potential for more pain coming for
the Russian economy. I'm not an economist, so you know,
this is not any research I've done, just things I
read by other people. But those same people say that
it's you know, it might get worse, but it's not
going to be unmanageable.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
And so from that perspective.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
You know, we shouldn't you know, if Putin remains committed
to the war effort, and also say suggest that he is,
that's not going to be you know, lead to any
kind of quick out. The other thing is, you know,
just since you mentioned India, I just just say that
I'm concerned that that kind of pressure is actually counterproductive.
I think the Indians don't appreciate those kind of tactics.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
And you know what we've seen is signals from them
since since.

Speaker 5 (21:35):
This uh uh, you know, the these initiatives were made
to kind of get closer to China, get closer to
reaffirm they're continuing to buy Russian oil and that sort
of thing, and make the other moves in terms of
kind of public public relations, ID say, no, We're We're

(21:56):
going to stick with Russia.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
So I think I think a few months ago, if you.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Remember when Modi was visiting the US, there seemed to
be like that the carrots side seemed to be working
better in terms of potentially separating Russia and India. And
that makes sense to me because India's they see themselves
as a major player and they don't like to be
kind of told what to do. Let's say, and I'll

(22:21):
just do a little self promotion I have. I just
some colleagues, we just published a report on Ruffe India
relationship just.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Came out a few weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Should be a more on the Rocks article civilizing that
within the next hopefully next this coming week. So I've
done a little bit of research on that, and that's
why I kind of howted to get that in there.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Well, did you will know exactly what I'm about to
quote from here? But for listeners, I wanted I'll put
a link up in the chat room for everybody. But
earlier this month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over at
India because they got tired of getting stomped on, and
they put out a six point little notice and I

(23:05):
just wanted to read points three, four, five, and six.
I'll just go ahead and quote for it, cause it's
a legitimate pushback by India, and I'll give them credit
for that. People can come in and read one and two,
but I'll pick up for point number three and this
is from the Ministry of External Affairs. Excuse me from India.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
The European Union in twenty twenty four had a bilateral
trade of EUROS three hundred and seventy five billion in
goods with Russia. In addition, it had trade and services
estimated at Euro's team point two billion. In twenty twenty three.
This is significantly more than India's total trade with Russia
that year of Subsequentlypan imports of local fied natural gas

(23:44):
in twenty twenty four, in fact, reached a record sixteen
point five million tons, surpassing the last record of fifteen
point two one million tons in twenty twenty two. Russia
trade includes not just energy, but also fertilizers, finding products,
chemicals and steel and machinery and transport equipment. Whereas the

(24:05):
United States is concerned, it continues to import from Russia
uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry. Yeah, that's something back
to the nineties, I could do in a whole article
pladmium for its ev industry, fertilizers as well as chemicals.
In this background, the targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable.
Like any major economy enemy, all necessary measures to safeguard

(24:28):
its national interest in economic security unquote. I think that
the India point is something when you look at not
so much European but US interest in its decade and
a half effort to pivot to the Pacific trying to
improve relations with India and the India government as a

(24:51):
counterweight to the to China. There is a little bit
of a blowback in the efforts by the West to
push against India, that is, having them not have a reason.
For those that do not want to get closer to
the US and the West, We're giving them a little
bit of ammunition based upon us punishing them or trying
to punish them or shame them for continuing their economic

(25:14):
relations with Russia.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Agree with everything you just said.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
It's one of the things that you can't both internal
and external Russia and we have, Like I said the
title of the show, we're in the fourth summer of
this war on the European continent against two struggling but
developed nations with all sorts of potential second and third
order effects, but both externally the international trade with Russia

(25:37):
and the rest of the world, and also internally as
Russia tries to keep its civilian population happy while still
trying to fight a war. It's I don't know if
there is a you have a good academic background, maybe
you can describe it for me. But this we are
not seeing what is generally known as a war footing
or a war economy with regards to Russia. The Internet,

(26:00):
It's like everybody is hedging their bets all over over
the place to the point that it's not free trade,
but it's also really not work on it.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Well, you mean like in the West, I mean Ukraine
obviously isn't a war economy, right, We're talking about like
Western Europe, the US and so absolutely, and this is
the difference. Russia realized. It took him a little while,
and so one of the reasons they you know, they
were struggling in that first year of the war was

(26:31):
that they hadn't yet transitioned to that war economy, and
so they were having you know, if you remember, before
the North Korean sent troops, they sent shells, right, and
that was the Russians were having shell hunger. But they
got their defense industry up and running at full capacity,
they started working to expand that capacity, building new plants

(26:51):
and that sort of thing, while the Europeans and certainly
the US were still kind of you know, doing a
lot of same same old in terms of you know,
trying to well you know, you know, and I mean
on the defense industry, right, we weren't expanding it that
that quickly. There were some you know, some kind of

(27:12):
Germany talked about it, and they're doing some things, but
it's it's on kind of it's not on a rapid
time frame, let's put it that way. And also there
were clearly, you know, the US and the European countries
were trying to balance different priorities. They didn't want to
cut off, you know, to do a full cutoff of

(27:33):
Russian oil or Russian natural gas because they thought that
would cause price spikes, they'll be really politically unpopular in
their home countries at a time when inflation was already
pretty high. So so they didn't want to sort of
kind of make the or they didn't think they either
didn't want to make the pitch, or they thought they

(27:54):
wouldn't be successful making a pitch to their population saying
we've got a sacrifice for this war. And so they
tried to do it without kind of a minimum of disruption.
And that goes both for defense production and just general
economic factors. So yeah, that's that's a big part of
the difference. I mean, if we if you think about it,

(28:16):
that the Western economies EU plus US put together A
plus the various allies Japan, Canada and so forth, dwarf
the Russian economy and even with whatever Chinese assistance and
so forth. If the West had decided in you know,
twenty two twenty three that Okay, we're going to do

(28:36):
this and we're going to focus on providing all of
the hardware that Ukraine could possibly need for the war,
it would be in a very different situation, you know,
after a year or two than where we are.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
It's interesting to me that Russia just sent it's one
of its one of its nuclear cruisers. After thirty years,
they've got this thing through the shipyard. Apparently it's on seat.
It's just it's just an example of them trying to
show that that things are they're still Russia, they're still
forced to contend with and that they're whatever happen, they're
Navy in the Black Sea was just kind of a mistake.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
I wouldn't I mean, yes, in the long term, but
I wouldn't tie directly to this war, because this is
something they've been you know, we get to the navy side, right,
We've had longer. I think before this war started, we
used to focus you know, some of these conversations a
lot on the Navy just because of the you know,
both where I work and York show, you know, surface

(29:33):
combatants are not Russian military ship building strong suits. So
they've been modernizing this ship for years and years and years,
and so the fact that it's finally ready in the
sea trials is a sign that they finally got something
done after I think a decade or so, but not
anything that's specifically related to this war. And you know,

(29:53):
it's not not the kind of ship like like having
one of these. It's not something I would be too
concerned about, to be honest, right, and they hadn't you know,
they have Peter the Great Now they have you know,
Peter the Great is you know, is it isn't going
to come back and incluising itself, I think.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Which is their one aircraft carriers out pretty much.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
I think they've finally started to admit that it's going
to be scrapped and never actually sail again.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
You know. Where you know, if we want to talk
about maybe things.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
You know, where we ought to be concerned is with
their submarine fleet not there, not their surface ships.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, that's always been there, especially and then they've they've
especially especially the reason they've they've you know, they may
not be able to compete with the latest Virginia class
in a couple of ways, but they're they're pretty good.
Small in number, but the high quality with with what
they've been able to do, especially how you know what
you and I'd encourage people that haven't already you can

(30:45):
go up on you know, Google Chat, GBT and just
say what is the GDP of the Russian Federation? Then
what is the GDP of the European Union. You don't
have to include the US if you don't want to.
It's it's kind of ridiculous. So the Russians have definitely
gotten more bang for the buck. And before this this
war kicked off, obviously that was the title of your blog,
Russian Military Reform. You you looked and you know, you

(31:08):
had the pleasure of being over able to go over
to Rush on a regular basis for I guess their
equivalization of the conferences we have over at the Gaylord
Center and the Washington Harbor Association of the US Army
whatever the Russian version of that. You know, the conferences,
and they're talking like all modern societies are always looking
to reform, and obviously we're not traveling. Nobody's traveling over

(31:30):
there to do that. Last half decade or so, one
of the things that came really apparent early on in
the in the war is whether you're talking about tires
that expired eight years ago being being put on armored
vehicles and wondering why they go flat to the Russian
logistics being designed to be manhandled vice US logistics use

(31:54):
a lot of forklifts, strange technology. That is that you
saw some really arcade areas of reform and logistics for Russia.
So they've been four years into this conflict. Being able
to look at from afar and what you can get
an open source what are some of the areas that
you've seen the Russian military and not so much at

(32:14):
the tactical level with fpvs that everybody likes to talk about,
but some legitimate reform that you started, uh to see
from a distance that that would be worthwhile for people
trying to keep an eye open for Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
It's you know, it's it's it's interesting because you.

Speaker 6 (32:29):
Know when when I started that blog and the you know,
the the early well it's not so early, but I
guess the the what's called the Serikov reforms because a
lot of a lot of people think about them.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
This is like starting two thousand and eight, two thousand nine,
last about three or four years, and there were there
was a lot of effort to try to make the
Russian military more like the Western military. So that was
kind of when I was writing, you know, a lot
about the reform effort that they were trying to do.
A lot of that was kind of when Shoygu came

(33:05):
in as Defense minister in twenty thirteen, they kept that going,
but they kind of scaled it back a bit.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
They thought maybe it had gone too.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Far, and they were you know, there was some happy
medium between the traditional kind of Soviet based models of
how the military should be structured and what they had
learned from the Western models.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
And then when.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
After twenty two a lot of the people who had
been opposed to those reform efforts sort of felt vindicated,
or they argued that they had been vindicated because what
they said is, look, we destroyed our whole mobilization capacity.
We had structured ourselves to fight these kind of mobile,

(33:53):
small wars, but look what we actually need in practice.
We need we once again, you know, finding a war
on this giant you know, Western front, just like in
the old days, and so we need those kinds of
you know, mass artillery and yeah, supplemented by new technologies
such as drones and that sort of thing, but we

(34:15):
you know, we need these light brigade structures. That doesn't
work for us. We need to go back to divisions.
And so we saw the changes that we saw in
the war as far as the command and control and
the way the military structured and that sort of thing.
A lot of that has been going back to what
they used to do. You know, they got like one

(34:35):
of the more recent changes is they got rid of
the joint strategic commands and put a lot of the
different services back under the authority of the central headquarters
for that service, so no longer focused on joint operations
between air and Navy being run by one command center,

(34:56):
and but more the traditional Russian way of breaking those
things out, so that you know, that's the kind of
thing that I mean, some of it is, you know,
kind of makes sense given the war that they're fighting
in terms of you do need heavier divisions and that
sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Some of it is just kind of the people who
didn't like the new fangled ways having a you.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Know, taking get their way essentially because of what's been
happening with the war.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
But we do where we do see greater efficiency and more.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
You know, kind of positive change as far as they're
concern is things like logistics. So they've just have to
just because there's nothing like actually being you know, having
to do this day day in and day out in
a war to figure out where the problems are, how
to solve those problems, how to make things run more efficiently,

(35:54):
so you get a much more kind of It's still
not like the most efficient system because they're still you know,
dependent largely on rail. There's still you know, manpower is
maybe more important than high tech machinery in terms of
things you were saying moving things around. But they've gotten
the system down and so the system was functioning more
smoothly than it was four years ago. Other things that

(36:18):
I mean, colleague of mine's been working on military medicine
and there's a lot to be learned from i mean,
not from the Russians, also from the Ukrainians in terms
of how you know, tatement and wounded evacuation, they're wounded,
all that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
That this is a much different.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
Scale than any more the US has fought since decades.
So I mean we had some experience with that in Afghanistan,
obviously in Iraq and so forth, but this is just
a much larger scale. So there's a lot of lessons
to be learned from that kind you know, on on
those kind of I mean, certainly there's various things on
the war fighting sign, but there's also things on the

(36:57):
kind of the back end. Let's say, you know what
the Russians call tool which isn't there, which is not
really easy to translate, but it's basically all of the
support elements. Let's say that they go in to support
the war fighters, and I think that that's where they've
just had to improve because they're they're in the war.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
I was just looking at comparing Russia's GDP with one
of the US states, Texas. Texas's GDP is actually higher
than the Russian GDC. Sure, I am. I'm amazed at
their ability to continue to fight the way they've been fighting.
I mean, it's it's astonishing that they can. They can
fund this stuff, and as you say, they've got a

(37:39):
lot more efficient and a lot some of that's because
they are very inventive, a lot more than many people
would give them credit for using some of these unmanned
supply things they've got going and in addition to the
unmanned aircraft they're involved, you know, and I think this
is really helping everybody else in the world think, well,
you know, maybe as we need to really take a
hard look at this mad stuff which we certainly are

(38:01):
doing in our country. Is this a game changer as
far as what's happening in these wars where they were
the field conditions under certain you know, like in winter
Russian winners which used to be notorious may still be
the mud war periods. Is this these things that can
change that that dynamic quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yes and no.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
So let me just say one thing about just kind
of close out that GDP topic. We just have to
remember that, you know, when you're comparing GDP of different countries,
you're not really comparing like with like so couple colleagues
of mine have done a lot of work on showing
that it's you're really if you're talking about military expenditures

(38:41):
as well as most other kinds of expendures, you want
to be looking at something called purchasing power parody because
it's just cheaper to produce you know, tank or Colosnikoff
or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
In Russia, because.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Labor costs are lower, you know, all those things, So
you don't want to be comparing like pure exchange rate
dollars between between the two. You want to kind of
equilibrate that. And there's various things have been written out
there on that. People want to look that up. But
on the on the drone. On the drone side, we've
actually seen is that you know, the drones have made

(39:13):
it made battlefields kind of more static in a way
because of the reconnaissance side, right, Like it's very hard
to move even fairly small units without them being detected.
And once they're detected, they can be targeted. So so
you're seeing this is why you know, Russians have done things,

(39:33):
like both sides have adapted in various ways, but I
spend more time looking at the Russians, so I'll talk
about that. But you know they're using motorcycles instead of tanks,
right because because that's maybe a little bit harder to spot,
and you can go in with a small company or
something penetrate. You know, the motorcycles can move move at
them more quickly, and then they even potentially dismount and

(39:55):
go in out foot once you reach the urban area
or something, and so you're, uh, you just a lot
of the you know, you end up kind of you know,
for a long time the war was you know, gone
back to trench warfare in a way because because of
these reconnaissance aspects of the UAVs and so so I

(40:17):
think a lot of people initially thought UAVs are going
to revolutionize the war and make it even more mobile
and even more you know, you can penetrate and do
all these things, and you can't. I mean, we've seen
the Ukrainian both sides, you know, using UAVs to strike
the very distant target, you know, critical infrastructure, petroleum refineries,

(40:40):
et cetera, et cetera, airports in some cases, not certainly bases.
But when you get to the front line, it's just
made it much harder to move. And that that has
been I'm sure that. I mean, this is an area
that's super rapidly evolving. My friend Mike Kaufman, who goes
down to the Ukraine every three months or so to

(41:03):
check out the situation on the ground, he's every time
he comes back, he says, well, they've changed tactics again,
because that's you know, this, this is something that's evolving
very rapidly and then me down the roads. There may
be a way that these innovators find to use that
to break through lines, but for now, what we're seeing
is a more static environment as a result of the UAPs.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
That's one of the things that I've seen as well,
and I follow what he does. Is his reporting as
well is really good. And there a couple other folks
that have gone to the lines, and when you watch them,
I like when they do the reporting chronologically because you
can you can see as you get closer to the
lines where the drones get into play more and more.

(41:47):
It's that restriction and movement, and it has resulted in
something that the smallness of the war is reflected in
the maps that you see. For instance, I got a
couple of books I've picked up over the last few years,
a little archaic but that's okay, which has that discussed
from both the German and the Soviet point of view.
You know, the first, the second, and third Battle of Kharkiv.

(42:08):
Well I think there was a fourth, maybe there's just three.
There was a lot of fighting around there. But when
you look when you look at the maps, we're talking
one hundred kilometers here, a two hundred kilometers sweep here,
and all the little arrows or the little symbols everybody
loves on their map. It's a pretty big scale. But
when you look at somebody says Ukraine has advanced into
the Russian salient or the Russians have created a salient here,

(42:30):
And when you look at the maps, it's almost an
agricultural map, where you've got one hundred hectors here, seventy
five hectors here. So instead of looking at these broad sweeps,
you're really looking at company sized movements have become significant
because how you reach a point, and this kind of
ties in to what we've seen the last few months.
Trying to make an attempt to get both parties to

(42:51):
come to the table to negotiate, both parties have to
be in a situation where they feel us in their
advantage to do so, whether a plus or you know,
let's talk this out. This war has become so static,
and the costs to advance are appear to be so
great and the cost of defense not so much is
great that you know, what is the motivation for both

(43:13):
parties to think it's in their interest to start to
negotiate when all these modern developments have created the defense
on the primary that that big breakout the Ukrainians had
coming out of Karkiv. Again what was at A twenty
three late twenty three, early twenty four. Big movements like
that almost seems impossible because that drone technology is created,

(43:36):
this this layer of intensity. The closer you get to
the front, the harder it is to mass anything because
you're going to be seen, and if you're going to
be seen, you're going to get hit.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Absolutely, you know a lot of those those early advances
were the result of a combination of Russian manpower shortage,
just sold they you know, they could barely have enough
soldiers to cover the lines in Harkey at that point.
US Ukrainians had an advantage in drones early on, right,
they were way ahead of the game reason the Russians

(44:08):
in the in the early months, but the Russians caught up,
and because what they did is they really focused their
kind of Ukrainians were kind of doing a lot of innovation,
but in a decentralized manner, so you know, volunteers, different
separate organizations or companies doing their own thing and then

(44:29):
kind of spreading it around. Whereas the Russians once they
got going, they kind of did an industrial scale and
centralized in that Russian way that you know is their
their default manner. And so that's slow comparatively, right, It's
not as nimble, but it can. But once they get
it moving, it can be scaled up and become more

(44:50):
dominant over time because they can bring the full night
of the state, so to speak, to focus on that
and say we're going to build this kind of thing
because this has been shown to work over here, and
so that can then be be leveraged across larger you know,
the whole front line for example, you know, different animations

(45:11):
and spread around mark you.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
There, Yes, I pushed the wrong button again. Much help
that the Russians have in in developing these drones from
the Chinese and the Iranian.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Well, Iranians a lot, right, I mean that kind of
jump started the effort by first by using you know,
just kind of buying Uranian drones.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
And then.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
And then getting basically purchasing a license to build the
factories in Russia and producing them and then modifying, you know,
then they start developing variants domestically. The Chinese it was
mostly like kind of off the shelf commercial drone technology
that was like that was being adopted and adapted for

(45:57):
battlefield use, but by both you because it was kind
of commercially available off the shelf stuff. But both the
Ukrainians and the Russians were using Chinese stuff from from
the beginning. But it was stuff you could buy, you know,
it's not it wasn't like military technology. It was it
was it was kind of the small, small ua vs
kind of things that were still quite effective. But but

(46:19):
that that was kind of just a little different with
the Chinese usity because the Chinese have not or supplied
any weapons directly.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
To to to the Russians.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
They supplied components various uh uh uh, you know, electronics,
especially on machine tools, but weapons themselves.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
One of the secondary effects of the Russia Ukrainian War.
It's kind of interesting to watch as a former you know,
NATO staff officer. It was kind of a running joke
for a long time because the Fins in the Swedes
via the Partnership for Peace, you couldn't go to any
major NATO headquarters well you know, back in the early
two thousands and even the late nineteen nineties, they had

(46:59):
they had Fins and they had Swedes and in Afghanistan,
the Finns and the Swedes were scattered all over the place,
almost like they were in NATO, but they couldn't come
into our NATO meetings, dedicated NATO meetings, but obviously pushing
them into the alliance. But one of the interesting things
it's really started to come out in relief as the
longer this war has gone over is when you look

(47:20):
at the former Warsaw Pact and the former Soviet republics
that are now in NATO. And there are a couple
of exceptions here, but there's almost a north south divide
where we see Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic,
especially the Czech Republic has done some neat things to
be able to get shelves to Ukraine, but they have

(47:42):
really increased their defense spending their support to Ukraine. But
as you go south, especially with the last election, you
have Slovakia, Hungary and to a slightly lesser sent Bulgaria,
not pro Russian but more depending about how you de
find it, but more accommodationist. And that's looking here from
this side of the Atlantic, and when you look from

(48:03):
Russia west that dynamic inside of NATO, how do they
see that kind of divide and especially up north some
of that historical animosity where that seems to be jelling
a little firmer.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's not quite like
that straightforward north south because you know, you didn't mention
the Romania.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
It's fairly.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Fairly strong anti Russian as well at least, But a
lot of this also depends on the political situation. You know,
the Romanian election had gone a different way and they
haven't caught the Russian interference, etc. Can be in a
very different place with Romania, and we might be in
a very different place with the Czech Republic down the road,
depending on who wins their next election. So so that

(48:47):
you know, can still vary. Like I think Poland is
of the of the Eastern countries that have significant military forces.
Poland's I think the only one where all the sides
are pretty much anti Russian, whether left right, But from
the Russian perspective, I think they've been They've been working
for years long before the war, you know, go back
a decade.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Possibly longer, to kind of trying to influence.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
These, uh, you know, the political systems and all sorts
of countries, right, I mean, there's been all sorts of
information about Russian funding and various parties in France for example,
and kind of doing some under the radar things for
these vi the Brexit referendum, trying to get break up
between the UK and Europe going and that sort of thing.

(49:31):
So that so as far as the Russians are concerned
in the places where you have Orbone in charge or
Slovakia and so on, this is some of those investments
bearing fruit as far as they see it work.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
You got button issues, Yeah, of course, I edit out,
don't edit it out.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
It's much fun.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
I say, we've we've taken up an hour at plus
now because of my button issue of dimitrious time. And
I was going to ask you you've mentioned you've got
a piece coming out and war in the rocks, Uh
pretty soon? What else have you got the in the
on the fire that we can look forward to seeing?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Well?

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Yeah, so so, uh, I should you know, put in
a plug for some of the things we've just put
out because CNA, you know, if you go go on
the CNA website and look, you know, click on the
reports buttons. We've just had about four Russia relevant reports
and the one I'm in.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
One that I was involved in was the Russia India one.
But there's also.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Sort of how the Russians are thinking about future, the
future of warfare given their experience in the brain that's
only colleagues did. We also commissioned some papers, one on
cyber warfare, one on civil military relations. So we just
had a few products come out in the last month
or so that you know, readers might want or listeners
might might be interested in reading. As far as the future,

(50:52):
I'm just getting going on something. So it's like, uh,
things you wait see in a year basically, but we're
looking at, uh, the Russians think about horizontal escalation, We're
looking at how they think about active defense. And then
another project that I uh sort of hopefully going to
get started soon waiting for approval is h H military promotion,

(51:17):
so kind of the formation of the future Russian military elite.
So those are those are the things I'm kind of
starting to work on now. I'm kind of in that,
you know, somewhere is a good time to transition from
one set of things that are completed to the next
thing that you'll really.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Really get going. As we're planning it out and we're
going to start.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
We've started some research and we'll really get the writing
going and the fall and winter and these things to
look for and may or may or June next year.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
You know, Dimitrio, I was thinking that the first time
we had you on a long time ago, part of
our conversation was nobody's talking about Russia, so let's talk
about it.

Speaker 7 (51:55):
You know what.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
That was like?

Speaker 1 (51:57):
All you need is a dozen more colleague's, a thirty
hour day and a ten hour week, and then you
have time to do everything people want you to do,
So be careful what you ask for.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
That's right, Well, you know, I mean, you know you
say CNA for first fifteen years I worked at CNA.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
I started in two thousand. You mentioned I was the
only person working in Russia.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
Now we got I don't know eight or ten people
or so, so we go absolutely.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Well, you can always say I am the best Russia
expert at CNA, and nobody can challenge me. It would
be bragged.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Is actually true. I'm the senior, the senior.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
I don't want to. I don't want my colleagues too.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
You know, say, guy's good, but I've been around for
a while that gives me, That gives me some you
know grams.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
I suppose well, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
You can't put a price tagle I'm having a good
parking space.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
If no, no, that's right.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Well, hey, I really look forward to the next time, Dimitri.
It's it's been been a great hour. Hopefully we've given
the listeners some stuff to chew want and I hope
you have a great remind under a remainder of the
rest of the summer and look forward it next time.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Absolutely, thanks for having me again and we'll chat probably
a year or so.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
It's always great.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Thanks again, all right, and thanks everybody for joining us
for another edition of Interest and Us next time.

Speaker 7 (53:15):
I hope you have a great navy day. Cheers.

Speaker 8 (53:31):
Want to marry me and a friend for you being
to blame.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Me, s.

Speaker 8 (53:44):
Folding. It's a long way. It's a long way. It's
a long way. It's feren and go think on it.

Speaker 5 (54:09):
Farewell, list don't well.

Speaker 8 (54:13):
It's a long long way to set away. It's but
my lies, my d

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