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This is CBSI on the world with my colleagues Bill Rajo of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, Long War Journal, where you can find John Hardy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy is filing reports on Ukraine. And I mentioned initially that NATO is of a concern. But Bill reminds me, battlefield, battlefield.

Go ahead, Bill.

John, you've wisely reminded us multiple times in the past that this is a war for,

war of attrition, which Russia has many advantages.

And yet the Russians are gaining ground, albeit slowly, how does this factor in the, how does this factor with the Ukrainian military?

Does this push them to the brink that the Russians are grinding them down, that they are playing this war of attrition while achieving, even if modest success, when the battlefield,

and able to take several square kilometers of Ukrainian territory per day.

Right. So in a war of attrition like this, I think the question is really who's going to break first or kind of what will come first? Russia kind of running out of steam or Ukrainian, Ukraine's defensive

potential kind of breaking and potentially leading to a collapse of the Ukrainian lines and part

of the front. I think that that sort of collapse is really, really unlikely. Ukraine does, you know, have a number of problems, most notably manpower.

You know, this has really been the story since late 2023.

So we probably kind of sound like a broken record on this podcast, but, you know, that remains

a key challenge.

You know, for the Russians, I think, though, their ability to scale offensive operations is just so degraded right now due in large part to degradation and force quality, but also Ukraine's ability to effectively mass precision fires like FPV drones and other fires in concert with traditional systems like artillery, ATGMs, and then,

you know, combine that with fortified defensive lines that Ukraine has done a better job of building

this year.

And I note that, you know, given that the Russian advances so slow, Ukraine is basically able to

...