A New Phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War Begins

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

With Moscow's announcement that the core aim of its invasion of Ukraine is now just to secure the Donbass, the conflict has entered a new phase. Michael Kofman of CNA joins Ryan once again, for the fifth week in a row, to help us parse through events on the battlefield. They discuss the resilience of Ukrainian society, stalled fronts, the air war, tactical adaptations, the effects of Western armaments, drones, the maritime picture, where Russian munitions are falling short, why Michael doesn't think Russia will use chemical weapons, why the Battle of Kyiv is not likely to happen, the emergence of the suburban guerrilla, and the ability of Ukrainian forces to continue to turn back Russian offenses and possibly even go on the offensive themselves.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense and Foreign Affairs.
0:14.5	My name is Ryan Evans and I'm here again with Michael Kaufman of CNA, head of their Russia team.
0:20.5	We're going to talk about this war as it enters its fifth week, and as Russia has announced that they are scaling down their ambitions to the Dandas, which you predicted in our last episode.
0:31.0	What do you think that means as far as the operational picture
0:35.4	and Russian force employment? Well I think we saw in the last two weeks a lot of the
0:39.6	Russian military effort run out of steam and them essentially hitting an operational pause on two out of three fronts which were stalled the fighting around the Ukrainian capital cave and to the west of Kerson around
0:55.6	Nikolayev. It looks like the Russian leadership is trying to give themselves a
0:59.9	lot of flexibility about how they define victory later on to create the opportunity for outs.
1:06.4	You know, I think perhaps one of the more optimistic takes on the war is that they would recognize
1:11.1	what a difficult situation they're in militarily and they would try to focus on the Dunbos,
1:17.0	then essentially claim that that's what this war was really all about,
1:21.0	maybe trade away some other territory they have occupied to Ukraine for neutrality,
1:27.0	some kind of local settlement, and find a way back out early.
1:30.7	I think that's still a very optimistic take. It's not clear to me they've given up on
1:35.1	some of their political objectives and it's also not clear that the Russian political
1:39.6	leadership has a sound understanding of the military realities on the ground that they're as
1:44.3	pessimistic as we might be for them that the Russian military leadership is
1:48.5	conveying an accurate picture to Vladimir Putin or that he himself in any ways become less determined.
1:55.0	But those signs do suggest that there is beginning to be a focus in Russian military strategy.
2:00.9	They're focusing on the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation at Dunbar.
2:04.0	The other main fronts are going to try to essentially fix Ukrainian forces there so they can concentrate on Mariopold
2:10.0	and this other fight.
	...

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