Ukraine's Offensive and its Meaning for the War

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Following Russia's failed winter offensive, Ukraine appears to be preparing for its planned counter-offensive. Ryan sat down with Mike Kofman to discuss the state of Russia's armed forces, the current state of the Western-led effort to train and equip Ukrainian forces and the latest from the battle for Bakhmut. The conversation also touched on the role of the British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missile, Ukraine's ability to absorb the F-16, what exactly happened during the recent cross-border attack on Belgorod and revisited concerns about nuclear escalation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.
0:14.0	My name is Ryan Evans, the founder of War in the Rocks, and I'm sitting here with Michael Kaufman, who you all know very well and needs no introduction.
0:22.0	I think this is the longest we've gone without
0:23.5	recording an episode since the war started. Yeah we definitely heard about it.
0:28.9	Sorry to those who are waiting, but we're here. We got a long episode to record a lot has happened. I think it might be good to start with the
0:36.6	Ukrainian offensive. Has it started, hasn't it started? There seems to be some basic disagreement about this.
0:42.0	Sure and a lot of focus on what will happen.
0:45.0	Look, you can look at two ways.
0:47.0	I mean, it's obvious that the main offense of the operation people are expecting,
0:51.0	the one with units specifically
0:53.1	so aside for it has not begun yet. In terms of things people like to call
0:58.6	doctrine, shaping operations are sort of the maybe preparatory phase or sort of things that set the conditions for the funds of from my point of view that started a few weeks ago and I think the
1:11.0	Activities that that involves is a host of Ukrainian troop movements and sort of
1:16.4	localized probing attacks along the front, a localized counterattack at Bachmoot, which we can discuss a bit later, but I think was in part meant to fix Russian forces there.
1:27.0	A series of strikes against Russian logistics and C2, including those that involve the newly acquired storm shadow
1:37.2	air-launched cruise missiles provided by the UK and this most recent diversionary operation, the cross-border raid into Belgrade, which I think is also meant to distract Russian attention and try to get them to consume their resources.
1:52.0	So I think you're seeing a host of activities, the net sum of which... and try to get them to consume their resources.
1:52.5	So I think you're seeing a host of activities,
1:54.2	did not some of wishes that Ukraine is seizing the initiative back
1:57.6	for the first time since probably around December.
2:01.3	There's quite a bit going on in terms of strikes and trying to set the conditions,
2:05.8	sabotage in Russia, strikes that took place before against facilities in Crimea.
	...

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