You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans and I'm sitting here again with our friend Michael Kaufman.

Thanks for coming back, Mike.

So Kirsond fell, pretty big event in the war, the only regional capital that had been

taken by Russia in the course of the war and was held, it's been held since pretty early on in the conflict as well.

What's the significance of this?

Well, strategically and politically it's a good, it's a major victory for Ukraine.

I think that by virtue of taking Carson and everything around it west of the Neper River,

Ukraine is first and foremost prevented the prospect of any future Russian campaign along the southern coast towards Mikhail and Adessa because Russian no longer has that foothold.

And it's also going to be able to move up, long-range precision fires to now range a lot of the southern

occupied territories from Kirsun. That of course sets up the prospect maybe of following campaigns east of the river in the south or in the

Dunbar itself. But there's another aspect to it which is that the way Ukraine took your son was essentially

a nutritional strategy pressing Russian forces, making their position eventually untenable. But from what one can tell these early impressions, the

bulk of the Russian military was able to withdraw with their equipment.

As Russia probably withdrew maybe 30, 30 plus thousand.

We weren't sure if they were going to do that.

During our trip there, there was a lot of mixed opinions

from Ukrainians that we were speaking to at all levels

about whether Rush would try to have a knock down dragout urban fight

or not.

Yeah, there were conflicting views.

And in fact, I myself became more conflicted

from the trip to Ukraine over whether or not

...