You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans. I'm sitting here again with Michael Kaufman to talk about what's going on in Ukraine.

Thanks for joining again, Mike.

Thanks for me back on the podcast.

So I'd like to start with this shift of Russian forces and resources down from the

Don Boss to the south.

Can we talk about what's driving that and how that's going and how that's been unfolding?

In the past couple of weeks there was a redeployment of a substantial number of Russian units off of the axis from a

zoom in northern Dumbass down to Crimea and from Crimea

into Kyrgyzun.

And we deployed a lot of units from Eastern Military District.

They've also much more focused on the southern front and the done Bosse were at large.

And so the situation I think as it stands now is they've substantially reinforced Kursun and they've redeployed a number of airborne units.

Well, the airborne units had been there all along. They simply reinforced them somewhat west of the river.

Then east of the river they seem to have a large mobile reserve that they're establishing.

And that may be because they're unsure exactly as to Ukrainian plans but you know they

anticipate some kind of offensive in the south.

uh... meanwhile there's been also a shift to attacks by Russian forces, particularly some of the

mobilize LDNR personnel, to the southern front and Denezk around Pizki and Marinka.

So the what what scale of attacks are we talking about it? How does it compare to

prior Russian and Russian back of back defenses in in the east?

Russian forces in the east are actually still trying to slowly break through the

...