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

My name is Ryan Evans, the founder of War in the Rocks, and I'm sitting here with your friend and mine,

Michael Kaufman, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Thanks for coming on the show, Mike.

Thanks for having me back.

So let's start with Harkiv.

The Russians made a big play, a big push.

What happened?

So Harkiv is an interesting story, I think a more nuanced story than it's been credited thus far. I think the Russian offensive in Harikov was anticipated but started a bit earlier than people may have thought it would

at least there are some indications of that at first the Ukrainian lines weren't

that well prepared or weren't as ready as they could have been but

Ukrainian forces recovered Ukraine put reserves into the fight and the front

stabilized the main Ukrainian defensive line wasn't at the front line anyway

it was further back. The Roshon

attack was primarily with two cores and a largely consist of dismounted

infantry so it wasn't really set up to achieve a major breakthrough or to

exploit one. I'm sticking with my original viewpoint which was that the point of Harqif for Russia was to create a buffer zone to threaten the city with artillery and to use it to both draw Ukrainian forces there and to fix them, essentially trying to fix their reserves.

However, they didn't seem to do much in the way of exploitation afterwards, meaning I think most of us...

They is and who, the Russians?

The Russian military. Yeah, I think most of them. They is and who the Russians?

The Russian military.

Yeah, I think most of us expected that the main Russian push

...