I'm John Batchel with my colleague Bill Rajo, the Foundation for Defensive Democracies.

We're having a granular conversation about Ukraine with John Hardy of the Foundation for Defensive

democracies, these towns and the advances by the Russians and the retreat by the Ukrainians,

or, as John indicated, the Ukrainians waiting too long to get out of a pocket and losing more

in manpower than they do in territory. They have a limited reach into recruiting until and if they draft younger, and that

has not been resolved. John, I want to mention the curse salient only because I see no particular

success by the Russians in these last two weeks. Is there indication that Ukraine continues to reinforce the elements

they haven't cursed salient? Or are they looking to withdraw steadily? Can you tell?

Yeah, I think you're right that the battle lines haven't, don't seem to have changed much

over the past couple weeks. And curse that the pattern has been that the Russian gains kind of come in spurts.

So we'll see what may happen later this month or in February.

But so far the pattern has been kind of a steady pushback by the Russians with help from

the North Korean troops.

I think the Ukraine, for its part, seems determined to try to hold on to that salient in Kursk. And, you know, they continue to have

some of their, you know, significant force in the area, including some of their better units from

air assault brigades, 47th Mech Brigade, for example, 22nd.

So certainly they're not withdrawing wholesale from the region.

Bill, you have a question about Kersalient or any of these matters to do with the contest.

John, I was interested in the status of the power generation in Ukraine. In the fall, the Russians targeted

power facilities. What is the status and how has this impacted Ukraine's ability to wage war

against the Russians? Yeah, so the Russians have continued to try to go after a lot of these

facilities. I think during the kind of interlude between the spring, the spring strike campaign and in the fall, fall winter period, when the heating season starts, the Ukrainians were able to repair some of them. but certainly there's still a significant energy electricity

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