How to Think About Bakhmut and a Ukrainian Spring Offensive

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fresh back from his research trip to Ukraine, Mike Kofman joins Ryan for a discussion about what he learned. They discuss the battle for Bakhmut, munitions shortages and force structure, artillery and attrition, Russia's unimpressive offensive, and what else the West could be doing to set Ukraine up for success in a widely anticipated spring offensive.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense and foreign affairs.
0:13.6	My name is Ryan Evans. I'm sitting here again with Michael Kaufman who is fresh back, sort of fresh back from
0:18.1	Ukraine. Mike, glad you made it back okay.
0:20.8	Hey, thanks for me back on the podcast. Sorry I couldn't join you this time. I had my had my fun on the first trip.
0:26.5	Yeah no I appreciate your will to go. All right so those of you who are members have already heard Mike talk about what he learned on the trip along with Franz and Conrad and Rob Lee who is also on the trip but not on the show.
0:43.0	A lot of you have heard that we're not going to recount everything that they said on the podcast.
0:47.0	You should become a member and listen to that show if you're interested, but I would like to dig into some of these issues and also just talk about the broader war in general and let's actually start there.
0:55.6	Can we, you know, can you give us a picture of how the war in general is going big picture?
0:59.8	Sure, so I would say the stage, the war still is comprised of a fairly lackluster Russian offensive
1:09.2	that continues to try to make advances along around five,6 axes and in practice it's actually more like 5-6
1:16.1	different battles and probably Russia's worst fight has been down south in Bogodar in
1:21.8	D'Anjansk that made a lot of progress in Marie. has been down south on Bulguidar in the Nensk.
1:23.2	That made a lot of progress in the Marine Corps of DFkah either.
1:27.0	I'd say the most severe fighting is around Bachmut.
1:30.8	And in the general Bachmut operational direction, they've also tried to push from
1:34.8	Cremina to Lehman and over by Kupianz.
1:37.8	This is sort of a rough survey.
1:39.1	So the Russian campaign to take the Dunbarz hasn't made much in the way of gains for them as anticipated if
1:45.7	you've been listening to past iterations of this podcast you probably know my thoughts on the
1:49.2	subject the Russian military doesn't have the force quality it doesn't necessarily seem to have the
1:54.4	ammunition either and it can't replace junior leadership in such a short amount of time so that
1:59.6	force had barely stabilized itself getting into the winter before being thrown into this offensive, led by Grosymov,
	...

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