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

My name is Ryan Evans, the founder of Warren the Rocks.

In this episode I talked with our friend Mike Kaufman about the war in Ukraine. These were some preliminary thoughts about the direction of the war where it's going and where Ukraine stands.

Michael be fleshing out more of his thoughts pretty soon, both on this show and on the Russia contingency which is

available for war on the rocks members and if you want to sign up for that it's at

war on the rocks dot com slash membership. My first reaction to the interview was that it was quite remarkable I felt to be

balanced the solution they had had in that interview said a number of things

or at least the way he described the situation where they were. It wasn't too dissimilar to the conversations we've

been having on this podcast, Ryan.

Yeah, and things that we get beaten up for saying a lot because we're not sufficiently

optimistic about Ukrainian forces and I guess when the guy commanding Ukrainian forces

says that people stand up and listen a bit more closely.

Well, I honestly felt like an optimist wrote to what I read to that interview almost.

A lot of the things I read to that interview almost. A lot of things I read were things that I know I'd

been saying and other analysts have been saying about the situation where it was perhaps

a bit earlier, but you know my main takeaway from it is not a self-validating one.

I think that people are largely looking at the same thing.

I understand the problem on the issue that's coming next year. as we head into a difficult winter the

question is what to do about it.

So I think one of the challenges though of course in that writing and in the piece is always

there's some debates and some contradictions and in the piece is always there's some debates and some

contradictions because on the one hand I felt disillusionally saw that air superiority

...