Eve Blau:
Welcome and good afternoon, and I'm Eve Blau, I'm Eve Blau, I'm faculty director of the Data Center for Russian Integration Studies, and we're very pleased, and I'd like to thank you for joining us for this, our third session of this new year-long data Center series, which is called Russia in Search of a New Paradigm, Conversations with Yevgenia Albats. In this series, which actually meets on Tuesdays, every other Tuesday from 5:00 to 7:00, usually in this room, although the next lecture will be, or next session will be in the room next door. And we'll be back here again. So in this series, veteran journalist and political scientist, Dr. Yevgenia Albats talks with scholars, with military experts, with prominent journalists, and many others about the most pressing questions facing Russia and Russia watchers today. Among those questions are, why did Russia evolve into an aggressive militaristic power? Where has Putin found the resources to run the war despite massive economic sanctions imposed by the West? What did economists get wrong about Russia's economic capacities? Will the Russian Federation survive in its current form and size or will it fall apart? And is there any chance for Russia to return to the road of democratic development?
So today we have the privilege of hosting Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg and Mr. Aleksandr Golts. They will discuss Putin's military might, bluff, and reality with our series host and also with you, our audience. I invite you to participate actively in these discussions. They will be recorded, and they will be posted on the Davis Center's YouTube channel.
The first I want to introduce our speakers, our participants, Yevgenia Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, a political scientist, an author, and a radio host. Since 2007, she's been the first political editor and then the editor in chief and CEO of the New Times, which is a Russian language independent political weekly, originally based in Moscow. In 2004, Albats started hosting Absolute Albats, a talk show on Echo of Moscow, the last remaining liberal radio station in Russia. Before that, she was an Alfred Friendly press fellow at the Chicago Tribune in 1990. She was a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993. She's been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists since its founding in 1996. Dr. Albats has also spent quite a bit of time in academia. She was a full-time professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, where she taught the institutional theory of the state and bureaucracy until 2011 when her courses were canceled at the request of Kremlin officials. Since 2017, she's been a fellow and visiting professor at a number of American universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and at Yale. She has also spent a considerable amount of time here at Harvard. After graduating from Moscow State University, she received her PhD in political science from Harvard in 2004. She was a senior scholar at the Data Center from 2019 to 2021. And she has returned this academic year as a visiting scholar to host this new speaker series on Russia's impact on international security and stability. Between these two stints of the Davis Center, she was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard in 2023/24.
In addition to journalism, Dr. Albats is the author of four books, including one on the history of the Russian Political Police, the KGB.
Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior research scientist at the Strategy, Policy, Plans, and Programs division of the Center for Naval Analysis. Dr. Gorenburg is a data center associate and previously he served as executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, which is now the association for Slavic East European and Eurasian studies or ACEs. His research interests include security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, and ethnic politics and identity. Dr. Gorenburg is the author of Nationalism for the Masses, Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation published by Cambridge University Press 2003. And he has published extensively in journals such as World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. He currently serves as the editor of Problems of Post-Communism and was editor of Russian Politics and Law from 2009 to 2016. Dr. Gorenburg received his BA in international relations from Princeton University and his PhD in political science from Harvard.
Aleksandr Golts is a Russian journalist. He has served on the editorial board of Krasnaya zvezda, and a Soviet then Russian, Military Daily. He also served as military editor for Itogi, a premier Russian news magazine, and he was also a military advocate for the New Times and the Moscow Times. Mr. Golts has been visiting been a visiting fellow at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, and the Institute for Russian and Eurasian studies of Uppsala University in Sweden. He's the author of several books, including Military Reform and Militarism in Russia and Surviving the Cold War Experience of Diplomacy. Since 2022, he's been an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.
Before turning things over to Dr. Albats, I want to just make a quick plug for the next two events in the series. On Tuesday, October 22nd, two weeks from today, Dr. Albats will be in conversation with David Hoffman, who is contributing editor at the Washington Post. The title of that session is The Coming Arms Race, Russia, China, America, and Nuclear Weapons. On Tuesday, November 12th, Dr. Albats will talk with Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, and Susan Glasser, staff writer of the New Yorker about the US administration and Russia, whatever that administration will be. Without further ado, I turn it over to Dr. Albats and Dr. Gorenburg and Mr. Golts with our time.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you very much. Put this in our lovely presentation. Thank you very much. And so thank you very much for coming. Today, we have a critical seminar conversation/interview on Putin's military might. What is real and what is a bluff? There is much confusion in the media and of course in the American media as well regarding the state of the war in Ukraine. Some say that Ukraine is losing the war and thus it should negotiate a peace deal with Putin, land occupied by the Russian in exchange for frozen conflict. Others suggest that on the contrary, Russia's success on the battlefield is marginal. As a gift for yesterday's dictator birthday, Russian Generals promised to kick out Ukrainian troops from Russian soil in the Kursk region, but they fail. Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic in her recent report from Ukraine argues that the assumption that Ukraine is losing the war is wrong. And as an example suggests that Ukraine, a country without much of a navy defeated Russian Black Sea fleet thanks to Ukrainian sea drones. So today, Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg of the CNA and Aleksandr Golts, currently with the Swedish Center for East European studies, he left Russia as I did in 2022. I'm going to give the analysis of the Putin's military might. Dmitry Gorenburg, the floor's yours.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Great, so I think we'll start, talk a little bit about, I think there are some misconceptions about why the Russian invasion went as poorly as it did at the beginning. 'Cause a lot of times a lot of the conversation has to do with, well, maybe the Russian military isn't so strong, and so it's paper tiger and all this, and I don't think that that's actually accurate. So I wanted to just start by walking you through a little bit about what really went wrong. And I would argue that the problems were caused primarily by bad strategy rather than a lack of capabilities per se. And there were also, I mean, combined with a number of intangible factors like command and control, organization that wasn't quite as good as people thought it was, certainly morale issues. So that's kind of at the highest level I think where we're at. So some specifics. One area where kind of they started off on the wrong foot at the beginning is that rather than carrying out an act like a straightforward military operation according to the doctrine that the Russian military kind of practices and follows, this operation was really planned out by the FSB, not by the military. And so it was kind of this decapitation operation that didn't really take into account some of the limitations of any military, including the Russian military, and also some of the capabilities of the Ukrainians.
So for one thing they did is that I think is the fault of the FSB, is that they misjudged the Ukrainians, they expected a lot less resistance. So then if you expect there's a little bit of parallels to some people when thinking about the Iraq War in 2003. And there were sort of this idea that people will greet them as liberators in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and that obviously didn't happen. So they kind of believed a little bit of their own propaganda on that score. So that was one, and second problem is that they didn't prepare their troops properly. A lot of troops had not been told that they would be invading Ukraine. Some were told that they were participating in a military exercise, others that they were just being sent to the eastern Donbas region where there was already fighting. So that meant they weren't psychologically prepared to take real casualties. If you think you're going to an exercise, and suddenly you're invading another country, it could cause some problems. So that could take an immediate toll on troops' morale. And when you combine that with some of the organizational issues that I'll touch on in a second, the morale can really suffer.
So another problem that's tied to the strategy, is insufficient logistics. So if you expect that you can take out the capital, change the regime, take over much of the territory in a few weeks and captured war plans make it clear that they thought, eh, this'll last about three weeks, then you don't stock enough supplies for the longer fight, and you don't make enough plans for resupply. And that causes problems when the war drags on, initially, in the first few months. So then there were other problems that when they did the resupply, that there was there some of the convoys or trains would get attacked and destroyed and that disrupted the operation as well. They also failed to permanently take out Ukraine's air defenses. They were able to destroy the stationary ones, but Ukrainians fortunately were able to disperse their mobile units right at the last minute, really in the last day or two before the invasion. So that allowed them to resume action and prevented the Russian Air Force from carrying out a bombing campaign that really could have seriously deteriorated Ukrainian capabilities. And that meant that Russian ground operations were taking place without sufficient air support because they are aircraft, weren't really able to operate as much as they expect. And then, again, because they were expecting not to uncover as much resistance, they attacked on too many fronts at once. They kind of dispersed their capabilities, and they didn't have a unified command and control because they weren't thinking of this as a regular military operation. And one might say they neglected to really consider the size of Ukraine, but they know how big Ukraine is, I think--
Yevgenia Albats:
You're talking about February and March?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yevgenia Albats:
2022?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, why they failed.
Yevgenia Albats:
But wait a second, if we fast forward, and we get into the autumn of 2022, Russians had problems, Ukrainians managed to deoccupy.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, I'll get to that one sec.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
One sec. So, okay, and this is the last one, and then I'll get to that, promise. They failed to have a plan B, that's the last one. They had no backup plan for what to do when their initial plan didn't go right. So the troops kind of kept going as they were originally ordered. So you'd have armored convoys being dispatched without infantry support, that made them easy targets, etc. I won't go on, but then they made adjustments, and we actually saw, we have to remember that between the problems they had in the fall of '22 and the problems they had at the beginning, there was a period when they were gaining territory in May, June, July.
So they made adjustments, and they did what their doctrine, they said okay, it's a military operation. They were doing actually things very similarly to what they're doing now, but they weren't yet fully mobilized for war. So what's the standard doctrine for Russian military? Artillery based attacks, mostly with small units rather than this kind of American style maneuver warfare with large combined arms surrounding. And if you're attacking, and you have a situation where your side has an advantage in artillery and fires and manpower, then that can lead to slow and steady gains, and that's what we saw that spring but then Russia began to run out of soldiers, and that was the problem in the fall of 2022. And that allowed to Ukraine to make its most significant gains of the whole subsequent war, and Russia's response was partial mobilization, as everyone probably all remembers. Which fixed the problem, at least in the short term of shortages of manpower. Not a hundred percent, but enough. So they could maintain their lines, they could build some reserve units for a later offensive that didn't go super well, but nonetheless they were doing that. So maybe it might be good to show you some maps. I'll share that.
And let's see here, right slide. Okay, so here we have. The other thing they did that is also very much according to Russian doctrine is they built defensive lines, and that was sufficient to stop the big counter offensive. So now we're in spring 2023. And you could see on this map that Ukrainian gains at that point were fairly small. Why? Because there was a combination of Russian defenses, being many layers of mines and so forth. And the Ukraine kind of telegraphing exactly where they were going to attack.
Yevgenia Albats:
Wait a second. You're talking about the spring of--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Spring of 2023
Yevgenia Albats:
It was pretty cold! I was there, there were no big fighting. They were using--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
The big counter, maybe, let's say June. Okay, June, fine. But the big Ukrainian counter offensive that started in June and was supposed to, there was some possibility that, the goal was to cut off the land bridge, go to the Asov Sea, and that didn't happen, obviously. But that's because, why am I telling you all this? Because the Russian military had the capabilities to do this, to stop, once they stopped doing crazy things that were ordered by the FSB and started fighting the way they were trained to fight, they were equal more or less to the Ukrainian.
Yevgenia Albats:
But they also built the Ukrainians line--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
That's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying! Defensive lines, the defensive lines, that's the doctrine. That's how you put in mines, put in fortifications. Now it's very hard to advance.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
For the opponent.
Yevgenia Albats:
Right.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
And that's what they've been doing since then. There've been some adjustments, mostly tactical. So they use drones more. Both sides use drones more, but Russians use drones a lot more than at the beginning
Yevgenia Albats:
Because they managed to get it from Iran, Czech
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yes, but they also improved their own production. One of my colleagues is working a lot on this kind of, there's a Russian word that I'm forgetting, but basically homemade like volunteer efforts to build small drones for the Russian military.
So there's a huge effort, and that has changed reconnaissance and has changed certain targeting and things like that. And it's much harder to move units without being spotted now than in previous wars. But still largely the same Russians fighting the way they were trained to fight. Yeah, some other innovations, they use glide bonds now from aircraft. That's new 'cause the aircraft themselves can't penetrate too far into Ukrainian airspace 'cause they might get shot down. So now you can launch bombs from Russian territory that the bombs move, rather than the plane. And so then you can attack the front lines, and that's been quite damaging. And then you have an environment where now suddenly Ukraine, and we don't wanna talk too much about it, but there was a period of time when Ukraine was facing a shortage of both shells because delays in assistance from the US and manpower because they didn't get their mobilization organized properly.
Yevgenia Albats:
Is there, they have the same sort shots now?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
It's better now, but yes, they got some things organized, but yes, and that's where Russia starts advancing again. So now we're in a situation where if you follow the headlines in the media... you would think that Ukraine is losing lots of territory. Like every week there's report of this village fell, this city fell, and if you look at, and so here's a map that more, I mean this isn't exactly, this is some weeks old now, but if you look at like the red territories where it was already controlled and then the various other colors are some other than the purple are the Russian advances, and they've advanced a little bit more. The news today was Russian troops have entered Toretsk and they're closer to Pokrovsk in the main effort. So then this map, so it looks okay, significant. But if you look at it in the bigger picture, you can see that this is very, oops, small compared to even the territory of the Donbas, much less.
So incremental gains is where Russia is. And that's where we are now, so continued incremental, slow progress, and that's where the forces are. And we can talk later about the defense, industrial side of how this continues, but that's basically the adjustment. So the takeaway is that Russian forces, they're not at the level that maybe people thought they were. But they're not competing with the US military, they're competing with the Ukrainian military, which is good, but it's a lower level, and Ukrainian military's advanced a lot over the 10 years now that they've been fighting. But it has the same doctrine originally, as this kind of artillery first, and so that creates a situation where a country with somewhat more resources, both in terms of population, in terms of industry, in terms of revenues from oil sales and so forth, we probably heard about that two weeks ago, can have a small but steady advantage. And that's where we are, and that's where we were likely to continue to be for at least the next year, two years.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay.
Audience Member:
What's the blue on this map?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Oh yeah, so the blue is the territory that Ukraine has regained since February 22nd. And, red is the territory that Russia controls. And also I guess I don't have a pointer here, but you can see the little blue segment of Kursk that is inside Russian territory, that you can see kind of on the top there, like a slightly lighter blue, that's the Kursk offensive.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, so if I ask you directly, do you agree with those who say that Ukraine is losing the war, and it's time for Zelenskyy to agree for whatever demands Putin has for him?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
No, no, Ukraine is not losing the war, and the situation is close, it's not a stalemate, but it's closer to a stalemate than to one side winning or losing. As long as Ukraine can continue to get support from the West, because it does depend on weapon supplies. It can continue to fight this war for years, but so can Russia, so the war will be won or lost, politically, it's about will to fight.
Yevgenia Albats:
Elaborate?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, yeah. The question is resolve, like will to fight. So when we talk about what is Putin expecting? He's expecting that the West will decide we've had enough, we're gonna stop supporting Ukraine, and then Ukraine can't stand on its own. So creating a narrative that Ukraine is losing is much more important than actually taking Kirovske, or Vuhledar, or whatever city. Similarly on the other side, Russia, Russia's never going to lose enough territory to stop fighting. I just don't see that that's the way to win this war. The Ukraine launching some counteroffensive, if it takes, I mean, yes, they can take some more if the right conditions, it could retake some territory, but it's really the economic strength of Russia. If Russia can continue to support the war politically and economically, then it can continue to fight. And the way that that can be broken is not by some Ukrainian ground troops advancing somewhere, but on a larger scale where is it oil revenue, mentioned oil revenues dry up, or there's such high inflation that there's protests or some something, some financial crisis, or some political crisis. But that's where I think the--
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
The detention point is.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, Aleksandr, let me switch to Aleksandr. Aleksandr, I remember when I was still in Moscow in July of 2022, I spoke to one of your colleagues, he's still in Moscow, I'm not going to name him, but one of those who considered to be a very good military analyst, and there were whole bunch of us, it was of course some sort of the Soviet-style, clandestine meeting so to avoid air dropping from the side of the FSB my lovely Czechs, and he said, and I kept ask, I was asking him what's going to happen, how long Putin will manage to run this war? And already hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians killed already Bucha happened. All these atrocities happened in Bucha, Brianka, in Kupiansk, and also the Kharkiv originalists. And he said, Yevgenia, don't worry, Russians are going to run out of ammunition by the end of October, 2022. And you know, if you're like me are looking, as seeking good news because I didn't want to leave, and I was trying to figure out how long should I go into hiding inside Russia, what to do? And I said, anyway, to cut a long story short, of course, we know that even, and yes, I remember even Ukrainians were telling me, oh, Russians are running out of missiles they used to bomb Kyiv on regular basis. And then they started to do every other week.
Anyway, so tell me, how did Putin manage to get this ammunition, and listen, we heard from Zelenskyy when he was here in the United States, that for every one shell that Ukraine army has, Russia will have 10. So I also want to say that I remember your article that you published in the New Times back in 2014, and there was these conversations where Russians were going to continue trying to occupy from Donbas over then take over and go all the way to Crimea because Crimea was in bad need of supply, and there was a problem with water and et cetera. And you wrote an article, you said, no, Russians don't have the capabilities, they have 165,000 troops capable to control the territory. That's it. Now, Russians control Mariupol's region, half of Kherson region, half of Kharkiv region, half of the Pohrebyshche. And of course Donbas, and that's what Putin is trying to do. He's trying to total occupy Donbas, Donbas which is by the way he put as a territory in the Russian constitution. So tell me, how did he do this?
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, Yevgenia, Russian war against Ukraine was a catastrophe in many, many dimensions. A Russian war was catastrophe in many dimensions, and one of these dimensions is a total catastrophe for military analysts because none of their prognosis was fulfilled; I can remind you, for example, all these libraries of books about future warfare. Now we can see absolutely another war on the battlefield in Ukraine. I can remind you the reaction of experts to American leaks. Two weeks before the invasion, none of us really believed in these leaks. Then we experts started to say, okay, Russia will smash Ukrainians in one week, then turning 180 degrees said, okay, Russians are so weak, Ukrainians will kick them out. I can continue this list. In my mind, we should not understand Russian opportunities, Russian military capabilities, if not turn to Soviet past. I think that Soviet past is very important heritage, Putin is using now.
Let's look at Soviet army. It was ideal and classical mass mobilization armed force. The idea was to defend the country, calling under Carlos millions of reservists. According the last Soviet general staff plans, in case of emergency, they had planned to call something like eight media people in a month. For this reason, to be able to do so. So that armed forces work huge training center. The number of armed forces in peace time was five plus million people. And the basic idea of the army was to push through the armed forces to train as much future reservists as possible. Another problem was to arm all these reservists in case of emergency, and Soviet Union, an ideal system of arms building. Look, it had nothing to do with real economy, but each, I stress, each Soviet enterprise, nevertheless, did it produce past toys or anything, had so-called mobilization task, and it should produce something for military in case of emergence. It did not permit Russian normal goods to be more or less sufficient because managers has to pay money for having these long lines of military production doing nothing and bringing new profits at all. You need ghost plans to balance prices artificial. But at the end of the day, we had very sufficient military industry.
But these people in military world, they were, honestly speaking, they were very skeptical about ability of Soviet industry. They knew for sure that western industry is much more efficient, but they planned a conventional warfare for months or something else before nuclear engagement will start. So they had an idea, okay, their industry is much better than ours, let's build as many military equipment, as many tanks, armed vehicles, warships, fighter jets, everything as we can and store it in order to use during global warfare. For these particular reasons, we had these more than 60,000 tanks, everybody in the West was sure that Soviet Union was ready to break through La Manche or something like the English Channel or something like that. No, they want this 60,000 tanks, which is three times more than Americans have, and two times more than all other countries in the world, only just to prepare to this global war. For obvious reasons, this system collapsed after collapse of Soviet Union. And this mobilization, armed forces, showed itself totally inefficient during Chechen Wars, and war against Georgia. Military reform, in fact, it was rejection for Serdyukov reforms. It was total rejection from mass mobilization concept. Serdyukov closed, not--
Yevgenia Albats:
Excuse me, Serdyukov was the minister of defense--
Aleksandr Golts:
Defense in 2008, 2012, yeah.
Yevgenia Albats:
Yes, 2008, 2012.
Aleksandr Golts:
Yes. And the result, okay there were, he closed nothing. He cut the number of units within ground forces in 11 times. And the result, Putin received fully staffed 2002 or 20 plus armed brigades. And they showed themselves very effectively during 2014 invasion in Crimea. In my mind, the best result reached by Russian army was happened in February 26th of 2014, when according Putin order something like 50,000 troops deployed along Russian-Ukrainian border. It's a modest result, again, if we compare with Americans deployment. But keep in mind that in 1999, it took three full weeks before first battalion of parachute paratroopers began to deploy in Kyrgyzstan after Chechen and Kurds. And unfortunately, Putin read absolutely wrongly these good results of 2014 invasion. He thought he can invade European country. In my mind, all these false FSB reports and all failure of Russian army came because people received orders they could not fulfill. If you have 200,000 troops, you cannot invade big European countries, it's totally impossible.
Yevgenia Albats:
I would say, sir, but I would ask you, we don't have that much time-- I want to know how did he manage to rebuild Russian army after that? He was lacking ammunition in the autumn of 2022. And what is he left with now? What are his might now? Please, no longer.
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, okay. After failures of the autumn 2022, we can suppose that he asked his generals what to do, and the answer was very clear, we should return to this mobilization model. What does it meant? It meant that we should return to mobilization system, and they revive this mobilization system in 2023, when first after this not very successful partial mobilization, they start volunteer mobilization, paying a lot of money to people who signed the contract. And point number two, they began to use this huge Soviet deports of military equipment. Nobody knew what to do with this equipment for 30 years, but now they are ready to when we have information, when they say proudly that Soviet, Russian plants were military plants work seven days, 24 hours. It's true. But they are not producing new equipment. What they are doing, officially it's named modernization, but they make very old tanks, armed vehicles, artillery, more or less workable.
Look, now they use T-55, which means that the production started 70 years ago and was ended in the middle of sixties. When I looked, when I read in Red Star, my beloved Red Star that A-10 Howitzer is a good cannon, I did not believe my eyes because these A-10 Howitzers was produced in forties. Nevertheless, the type of war in Ukraine permit them to use these very antique military equipment even more, in this type of war, there three, all very old T-55 tanks is better than one Leopard because each of the one of them can make air shoot and destroy this Leopard. How long can it last? The biggest question, look at these figures taken from military ballots at the beginning of 2023, Russia had something like 5,000 tanks in its deport. Now it to the beginning of 2024, they have 4,000. So it means that they lost 1,000 tanks in battles during the year. And please keep in mind that during 2003, they conducted mostly defensive operation. Now they are conducting offensive operation and they lose much more military equipment, more or less the same with all other figures. And it moves us to understanding--
Yevgenia Albats:
Remind me, what is it, this IFV?
Aleksandr Golts:
Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
Yevgenia Albats:
And what is it, APC?
Aleksandr Golts:
Armored personnel carriers.
Yevgenia Albats:
Armored personnel carriers. Okay, mm-hmm, okay.
Aleksandr Golts:
You can see that these figures are diminishing And if these figures are true, we can conclude that maybe in year 2026, this resource will be exhausted, you to understand. As we can see, Russia badly needs at least 1,000 tanks a year. Across the board, is producing only 300 new tanks a year. So the same can be said about human resources. It's more or less clear that this innovative system of volunteer mobilization, again, it doesn't work, for this reason, regions are rising price for signing the contract. Now we have unbelievable money, 3 million in the Belgorodska and Bryanskaya. So it means more or less that resources can be exhausted. The single way out in my mind will be total mobilization or at least the use of consequences. It's quite possible. But what about military equipment? And here I think the single chance to support new mass mobilization will be turn to Soviet practice. They badly need to restore Soviet economy 2.0, to reinitialize all these enterprises. By the way, this process started in year 2023. They took at least, according my estimation, something like 125 private enterprises. And it was very interesting, Chemezov, who is chief of Rostec, the main military industrial company in the country who said, okay, we are looking, if we need something, we can take it. So we should watch very attentive, if they turn to total industrialization, it will be path to mass mobilization, and it will permit Putin and his subordinates to conduct the war next few years. If not, they should finish the war in let's say three next years.
Yevgenia Albats:
That the latest analytical piece published on the website of the Swedish Institute for East European Studies, you pose a question, is Russia losing a war of attrition? Do you really believe that Russia is losing this war of attrition? And if so, what?
Aleksandr Golts:
Yevgenia, I just put a question, what happened in Kursk, it became absolutely and totally clear that Russia has no strategic reserves.
Yevgenia Albats:
In terms of manpower or ammunition?
Aleksandr Golts:
In terms of formed units which they can deploy. And the biggest question appears, and it was reason for my article, where are all these people? Russia is recruiting and putting the report. Russia is recruiting 1,000 men a day. Where are all these people? So it can mean only that Russia lost something like half of a million man in hostility. But--
Yevgenia Albats:
But that's the number of the British intelligence, Americans, American War Institute provides something like 350,000.
Aleksandr Golts:
It's not a question of thousand, again, fact is a fact, they have no strategic reserves. And if we speak about Ukraine, the question, again, it's interesting. Kursk showed that Ukrainians are able to mobilize people and to use them properly in specific directions. For me, it's a question that I cannot answer. Ukraine is not my field of analysis, but there are very controversial reports about Ukrainian mobilization. Mike Kaufman, for example, wrote that Ukrainians managed to rise number of volunteers and mobilized in two times after this May decrease. We don't know.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, thank you very much Aleksandr. I will have more questions, but now you know, I will switch to Dmitry Gorenburg. Dmitry, just recently you published a CNA report. You coauthored this report, and you argue, and you write about structural problems of the Russian defense industry, its technological backwardness, corruption, lack of workforce and et cetera. Are those variables significant for the war of attrition? Some argue that the kind of war that we see in Ukraine, it's the World War I, it's not even the World War II, it's the World War I type of a war.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, maybe I want to add one thing first. Because I think you had the question before about what happened after the fall of they had this shell shortage. Right? North Korea happened. One of the factors that shifted in the fall of '22, Ukraine had a massive advantage in terms of firepower. And that's why they were gaining territory. But then two things happened, not at the same time, but over a period of a year, one, Russia made a deal with North Korea to get a large supply of shells that they filled their manpower gaps by this partial mobilization, and they filled the shell gaps from North Korea. At the same, maybe even a little earlier, they ramped up their own production. They, like Aleksandr said, can only produce 300 tanks, that's true, but they haven't increased too much, but they have increased the amount of shells they can produce and also the amount of missiles they can produce. And I don't have numbers with me, but there's data available, and you can see that--
Yevgenia Albats:
According to the former Prime Minister, Kasyanov, Russians produce 4.6 million shells a year. As opposed to that United States of America plus European Union can produce something 1.3 million shells or 1.5 million shells. So Russians produce three times that you guys are capable to produce.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
And that's why we saw the United States to supply the counteroffensive in 2023, they bought shells one time right from stores, they got shells from South Korea, they got shells from Israel, I mean US shells, but they were stored in Israel. This was obviously before October 7th. There were all these, but you're absolutely right. The production wasn't increased the same way that Russia did, which is why now we're in a position where Russia has an advantage in ammunition. They have the manpower, I agree with Sasha. So this is just a graphic from this report that we just did, which is actually mostly focused on how Russia defense industry is coping with sanctions. But where Russia's getting, and this is already the problem with getting these kinds of things cleared for public release, is they're never completely up to date. So you can now make Iran and missiles green also. There's now evidence that Iran is supplying some missiles as well. But Russia is dependent, not completely, but to some extent on the top three countries, UAE not so much, but it's a few things, to keep its war machine going. North Korea and Iran for actual weapons, and China, not for weapons, but for components for Russia making their own what?
Yevgenia Albats:
Despite of the secondary sanctions imposed by the United States.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, I mean it makes it harder, and there are limits, but that's direct. There's also another component which is parallel. Something it's called whoops, advance itself parallel imports. And what parallel import means is components that are coming from Western countries or Asian countries that are part of the coalition and getting to Russia through these other sort of third parties. And this is kind of the kinds of things and the kinds of countries right here, But here, I think this is a great chart that Kyiv School of Economics did where this is material that's coming specifically for the production of weapons. In Russia. And the country of producers, that's kind of who designed the weapons? What country owns the intellectual property? Runs the factory and so forth? And you can see that about half, almost as much as China's coalition, that coalition is United States, EU, Japan, so on, but then as you move along, so country of origin, so now a lot of the manufacturing is actually taking place in China, and then it's being imported to Russia through China also, but also Hong Kong, and then a bunch of those other countries that we just listed. And then eventually it ends up in Russia.
So these are paths through which the Russian war machine is being supplied. And so that's a battlefield goods. And then you see very much the same thing for critical components. Even more, the components are really coming, they're designed in the West by and large, 94%, but then they're manufactured in a lot of different places, including in the West, but then they get imported through these kind of back channels, and then eventually they end up in, again, Hong Kong or Turkey or China, and then eventually they end up in Russia. So that's a big part of how the Russian military is able to keep functioning. And so machine tools are, advanced machine tools, are critical for making weapons. And you can see that initially after sanctions were implemented, there was a big drop, but then these parallel channels were developed and improved, and then you get to a point where you're almost at the same level, or in some cases higher than the level, of what they had in January of 2022. So and again here's lots of information available on which countries this is coming through, and so it's just a little bit more a breakdown. The Kyiv School of Economics people are doing great work on this. And this is machine tools here, but that's how the Russian military machine is able to keep functioning is they need these components from the West.
Yevgenia Albats:
When you're talking about components, what exactly do you mean?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Chips, microchips.
Yevgenia Albats:
Chips, first and foremost?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Microchips and machine tools are the most important ones. Other things too, but those are the quick ones. So microchips we all understand, machine tools is like, if you're gonna make parts for weapons, you need precision machine tools. Lathes and all these things, I'm not an engineer, I don't know exactly what, but the best ones are made most, in Germany is the best. South Korea maybe, and China's are not as good. So they're fine for a lot of, like if you need to modernize your T-54 tank or even T-72 tank, it's fine. But if you need to do to make a new abscond air missile or something, then maybe not so fine. So you need these western machine tools. So the more that is, and since we wrote this, especially since this past summer, the West has been doing more and more to try to cut off the supply. And it's hard because you sanction one shell company, they create a new shell company the next day. But that's the process. And there are ways to do this, more on the policing, internal policing on the producer side, rather than, trying to get the people who are trying to sell this stuff when it's already in Hong Kong.
Yevgenia Albats:
The Russian media exiled insider reported that in some ammunition discovered by Ukrainians on the battlefield, there were parts and components from the United States.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yes.
Yevgenia Albats:
How is that possible? One hand you support you Ukraine with another, you support--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
That's what I was just describing, that's what I was just describing. Nobody's importing these, no company in the United States is saying, oh, we're gonna sell some chips to Russia. No, they sell the chips to Turkey or to some United Arab Emirates or someplace like that. Then it gets--
Yevgenia Albats:
And they don't know that it'll get to Russians, no?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Maybe they don't, that we don't know.
Yevgenia Albats:
We're talking about money, money, money.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
But that's the process.
Yevgenia Albats:
Capitalism, yeah, I understand.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
I just put up here. We do have some, the report I was just referring to is the green one there, but we've got some other ones that have just come out in the last few days. So also one on mobilization on the website there, but yeah, you had a different question before that I probably didn't or maybe you didn't. Maybe this I did answer your question?
Yevgenia Albats:
Yes.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Good.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you, but I have another one. And both to you, and I have plenty of questions, but of course then I will give flow to questions from the audience. But first tell me and Sasha, that's also question to you. So put in order in an increase in the Russian army by some hundred 82,000 troops, that's three honors. What does that tell you about his intentions? First of all, how long will it take to train these people? Does he have enough officers to command? And most importantly, what does it tell you about his intentions? What is he trying to do?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
- Well, there's two things here. One is the immediate, which is the short term. Which is the war against Ukraine. And what it tells me is that he expects it to continue for the foreseeable future, but there's also a second part. And that's kind of obvious at this point. The second part is that he's also thinking ahead about whether--
Yevgenia Albats:
- The war in Europe?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
- Well.
Yevgenia Albats:
- Expanding the war of--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
- Well, I don't know if, I wouldn't go that far, but reconstituting the military to be prepared. It's like the Soviet military. It doesn't mean that we're going to tomorrow invade Germany, but it doe mean that we should be ready in case there's a war. So the Russian ground forces have suffered a lot of damage, units have been destroyed, reconstituted and destroyed again, in some cases. And also the war was started officially, or in part because of the threat of NATO and expansion, to Ukraine. At least that's one of the things they've said.
Yevgenia Albats:
I totally disagree with that
Dmitry Gorenburg:
No, no, no, I'm saying that's what Russia,
Yevgenia Albats:
That's what prevented him to do it earlier.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
No, that's the Russian--
Yevgenia Albats:
In the unoccupied Baltics.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
That's the Russian propaganda, that's what I'm saying--
Yevgenia Albats:
- You cannot leave. You cannot frame.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
That's what I'm saying! That's why I said ostensibly That's the Russian message, that's the Russian message. But what did they get instead? The expansion of NATO instead of ever actually going to happen expansion to Ukraine if there had not been a war? Actual expansion to Finland and Sweden. And the Russian reaction is we need more forces in northwest Russia to defend against the coming Finish invasion! So they need more troops for defending or it can be defending also, but they need more. So that's my takeaway first and foremost is that when Putin talks about that we are really at war with the West, and war doesn't mean we're shooting, it means like Cold War was war. We should believe him.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, Aleksandr, do you have do you have to add anything to this kind--
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, look, in my mind it's more bureaucratic movement than something else. As we remember report in 2022, in the end of 2022--
Yevgenia Albats:
Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation?
Aleksandr Golts:
Yeah. He directly asked for 1.5 million people. It's not real people. We should keep in mind, it's not real people, it's just staff positions, which usually in Russian armed forces are not filled. Again, it's not a story about they want to enlarge armed forces as far as they can, but there are obvious limits for this.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, tell me, 82,000 troops, how long will it take to train them?
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, according mobilization norms, it's something like a month, no more, and then sent to the battle.
Yevgenia Albats:
Do they have commanders?
Aleksandr Golts:
Soviet manuals, if you like.
Dmitry Goreburg:
But of course they don't have those people.
Yevgenia Albats:
Right, okay.
Aleksandr Golts:
- If they had them, they could train them quickly.
Yevgenia Albats:
When we spoke with you, Aleksandr, prior to this event, you told me that most likely Putin is going to increase the draft that all these young people. So tell me quickly about that, what's going to happen with with the conscripts?
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, again, he has two resources for mobilization. First is general mobilization, a reserve something like 25 million people between age of 18 to 51 according Russian laws. But as we could see, the total mobilization is not to affect, my feeling is that he can use, and he is moving now with his generals to idea, to use conscripts. It's more rational from cynical and military point of view. You just can keep these conscripts in units there prepared and use them partly, send them to the battlefield. And now it's very interesting that deputy chief of main mobilization department of the MODI, during his briefing, he said, for sure we will not use conscripts in new Russian territories, which means for me at least, that they can use conscript in Kursk for example where we have had hostilities.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you. Dmitry, so next year the Russian military budget is expected to be 33% of the federal budget or 6.5% of the nation's GDP. It's more than in 2024. How would you explain that? Why does Putin need more money?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Well, so the combination of the one, one thing, the payments, as Sasha pointed out, the payments for recruiting are increasing. So you need more money to pay people. Because people, the Patriots have all enlisted and now there aren't so many patriots left so you need to pay money to get the manpower you need because Sasha is absolutely right, you can get more conscripts, but unless you change the rule and send the conscript to actual Ukrainian territory to fight, they're not gonna help you in Zaparisha or--
Yevgenia Albats:
And you guys still believe that Putin obeys by some rules, he can do whatever he wants!
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Of course he can! But he hasn't so far. I mean, you're right, he could change the rule. Absolutely, but so far he hasn't. So for now, assuming that he doesn't think actually on January 1st, 2025, I'm changing this rule, he needs to budget to pay those people to go fight.
So that's one. Two, they still need to make more weapons. They need to pay Iran or North Korea, whoever it is for whatever they're not sending them for free The parallel imports that I was talking about, they can get the stuff, but it's more expensive than the old ways. So all of these things cost money, before the budget was set up with this assumption that the war will end, we will win, and it's fine, and then we can reduce expenditure. Now the war is not ending, so they have to revise, and then the expenses are going up, and also there's inflation. So things are more expensive, just in rubal terms. So all of this means you need more money.
Yevgenia Albats:
Thank you, I have more questions, and I follow up with these questions later on, but you know, now I would like to give a floor to the audience. Yes, we have, thank you so much- And can you please just introduce yourself just a sec?
Mark Schneider:
Hi. Thanks for the commentary, in war of attrition, God is on the side of bigger battalions. It's a 4:1 ratio in population, let's say between Russia and Ukraine. What is the kill ratio in the current war right now? Because that's ultimately in war of attrition, probably the most important number. Putting the material aside and morale aside. What do the numbers look like? And a related question is, what is the political implications of a full mobilization on the Russian side? Can Putin pull it off?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Sasha, do you know about the, I don't know the numbers on the kill ratios, I don't know if you do?
Aleksandr Golts:
Look, it's one of the biggest problems here, speaking about Russian casualty rates. We know for sure that figures produced by British Defense Ministry. I mentioned there's something like half a million people and we know nothing. And we should assume that Ukrainians figures are more or less the same. Look, if we speak in terms of war on attrition, we have a classical attrition warfare, it first World War. And you should keep in mind that victory and failure in this war was not the result of hostilities. It was not the result of battle of situation on the battlefield. First, revolution is in Russia, which took from the scene, one of the main players and then revolution in Germany. Germans were more or less successful on the battlefield at that time. And it's a tricks of war on attrition. So it's a big question. It's not ours in my mind, Dmitry, it's not a question to us, it's a question to sociologists who knows public support or public rejection to support its governments in Russia and the Ukraine. That is the main reason, all in which we should speak about war and attrition.
Just one more thing. Ukraine can have advantage on the battlefield in this war on attrition, but the basic question is the support to Ukraine from western countries, in my humble opinion, look, everybody in the West is speaking now, how to keep existing support to Ukraine on the same levels. To win Ukraine's, in my estimation, needs at least two to three times more. And people, public in the West should understand at the end of a day that it is situation of new Cold War.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah. I'll address the mobilization question and also add that, and this is exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about the political will being more important than the exact numbers. The question about mobilization. And I think that--
In Russia? In Russia, in Russia, that the reason Putin has done everything he can to avoid another mobilization. Why? We don't know exactly, but we suspect that he thinks it would be politically dangerous with perhaps a second component, which is that the people that, I mean we have to remember that the unemployment rate is officially like something like 2.4% I think in Russia.
And so the people that you would mobilize are the same people that you need to run the war economy. So there's a shortage of people, men really, given the way they operate, that creates this tension. And so if you do another mobilization, probably there will be another, perhaps temporary, but nonetheless outflow of people to Kazakhstan or wherever. And that'll just exacerbate all those problems. So it's politically much better to avoid anything like that and do maybe some hidden mobilizations. Maybe either through these payments or the prisoners that were sent to the front and all this kind of thing. There are political constraints, we think, yes, Putin is a dictator, he can do whatever he wants, but he's not on constraint.
Yevgenia Albats:
Right.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
And that's I think, part of it.
Yevgenia Albats:
- Thank you. Yes, please. Ah, yeah, uh huh, thank you.
Steven Wheeler:
Hi, I'm Steven Wheeler. Ukraine's Kursk's defenses and Russia seems to keep its focus in the Donbas, and not really like redirecting a sizable portion of its army back to recapture that. What, if anything, does that tell you about their, like, state of mind or how they plan to keep on fighting the war?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, I mean, the Kursk offensive was an interesting gamble in a way by the Ukrainian side. And their goals were to do two things, and they achieved one of them. The first goal was to change the narrative so we can still take territory. And that they achieved that, at least in the short term. But the second, and arguably the most important was to create a dilemma for Russia, which is either we ease pressure in the Donbas by moving forces to defend Kursk or we lose Russian territory. And the Russian leadership answered this challenge by saying, we don't care about Russian territory. We're going to our, we know Ukraine won't, like, they don't want this territory. They don't need this territory. We'll just let 'em hold it for a while. We'll bomb, they'll take casualties. It's a minor political embarrassment, which is surprising. That's not how we thought it would go. But nonetheless, what's important is to continue progress in the Donbas because we have the goal of controlling all of Donbas Oblast by some time which moves around, but whatever. And so what that suggests to me is that the command went out that the offensive is the top priority, and we'll mop up Kursk later.
Yevgenia Albats:
That it was quite an embarrassment. It was the first time since the World War II that foreign troops got on the Russian territory. It was quite an embarrassment to Putin, and according to sources in Moscow, Putin, he expected his generals to deliver him the success in Kursk meaning, kicking out Ukrainian troops as a gift for his yesterday's birthday. Well, and they failed to do it.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Well, yeah, but they took some, not the best ones. Troops are not all the same, if you're using territorial defense, you're using conscripts. It's not the same thing as battle hardened units from the front.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, next question?
Lea Ardin:
Thank you so much, first of all for letting us ask questions. My name is Lea Ardin, and I'm student from Kazakhstan, and I heard the term mass mobilization as a prediction, at least for next two or three years. Specifically things connected to other or central Asian support environmental efforts. If there's any projection in terms of your data, Mr. Golts, there will be conscripts that are attracted from central Asian countries. For example, from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Okay, yeah. Speaking about conscripts, it's absolutely clear they cannot use people from foreign countries as conscripts. Only Russian citizens can be dropped. And there is a long story when Russian authorities want to draft person in a moment he receive Russian passport, I mean immigrants from CIS countries. Another story, another interesting story is recruiting people from CIS countries, and not only from CIS countries, but even from Africa, Asia, anywhere where, look, Russia is paying good money. $2,000 a month is comparable with salary of American military and is much higher than salary of many, many military in European country. So it's good money, ad of course you can, theoretically you can find people, and I suppose people from Kazakhstan and other republics will buy this proposal, will agree to risk their life for money. It's quite possible. But it's not about conscription, it's about volunteer recruiting. And again, it's very interesting question. Does mother country permit this or that citizen to be mercenary or not? For example, Cuba, that surprised me very strongly. They strongly rejected the idea that their people participate this war in Ukraine mentioning that Cuban citizens cannot be mercenaries. And it depends of position of Kazak, Tajiks, and other governments also.
Yvgenia Albats:
More questions?
David Erinthol:
This is just a quick question. I'm David Erinthol. I am surprised I haven't heard the word nuclear--
Yevgenia Albats:
That's the question that I have on my list--
David Erinthol:
I'm curious as to what that means. Why has the topic of nuclear weapons not come up in this conversation?
Yevgenia Albats:
There will be special session on that on October 22nd, David Hoffman of the Washington Post is preparing a presentation on that. But I do have this question, and first, of course, it's the question to which extent we can trust Putin to use nuclear weapons, because that's his constantly and very successfully, he blackmails west all the time. Any minute Ukrainians say, oh we would like to shoot Russian military targets like located on the territory of the Russian Federation. Not that I like this because obviously I'm a patriot, and Russia is my country. However, immediately Putin says this, then the Ukrainians asked for that. Putin responds with saying he is going to use the nuclear weapons. And his latest decision was that he can use nuclear weapons regardless of if another country is going to use nuclear weapons. That any country which has nuclear capabilities, if it stands behind Ukrainians then he's going to use nuclear weapons. Of course, it's a blackmail, but that's what I'm going to ask you guys. Do you believe that he's capable, Sasha, first, I will ask Dmitry Gorenburg, and then I will get back to you.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
So I think I largely don't believe. I think that if--
Yevgenia Albats:
Unlike President Biden.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
President Biden is paid to assess risks to the United States, and it's like the cost benefit analysis.
Yevgenia Albats:
Mm-hm.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
I don't know what he believes, I don't talk to him, but what I see is that every time the West is talking about some new weapon or some new capability that they may give to Ukraine, and the most recent one a couple weeks ago was, it was right in the middle of the discussion on whether to allow Ukraine to use long range American missiles against targets within Russia. Putin makes some statement or something related, when these capabilities are provided or allowed, there are no statements about, it's forgotten. Not forgotten, but that's not when the rhetoric happens. The rhetoric is clearly being modulated to shape the decision making on whether or not to give the weapon. Now there was an earlier point when the US intelligence community, I don't know what went into that, but we've heard the reports is there was a moment when they were assessing that there was a 50/50 chance that Russia would use nuclear weapons when the war was going kind of fairly badly in the fall of 2022. I don't know where they were getting their intelligence or how they were getting to those numbers.
You notice that most recently when there was also like in the media right around the time of this discussion with the long range weapons, there was a publication about the US intelligence community highlighting that if we do this, there will be escalation from the Russian side. This was interpreted as a potential nuclear, but that's not what the intelligence community was saying. They're saying there would be escalation, there are other ways to escalate. Including providing weapons to Houthis in Yemen or various things that Russia could do to escalate that don't involve nuclear weapons. And we've had this conversation, Putin wants to live. That's clear that like, he got from the news today, he made sure to get covid tests from Donald Trump in 2020. Using nuclear weapon increases his risk of not living, let's put it that way.
Yevgenia Albats:
Aleksandr? Before you answer this question, I will ask you the affiliated one. Tell me, to the best of your knowledge, what is the procedure in starting the nuclear war that existed in Russia? So Putin is a commanding chief, and he can give this order. So what is the procedure? As far as I understand, five people are involved, he cannot do it himself. He can press the-- Procedure. Tell me about the procedure.
Aleksandr Golts:
No, of course not. He have so-called-- new, I don't know how many people participate, but he has his so-called nuclear briefcase. So what he have to do is to push the button in order to inform all others that President, Commander-in-Chief made his decision. After this, this order is doubled by defense minister and chief of general staff. Then command goes to three branches of nuclear forces, such as strategic rocket forces, Navy component and aviation component. So the same time there is a so-called dead hand. There is a special place somewhere in Ural Mountains, which is ready to start nuclear war autonomously in case some signal will be stopped will be not goes from Kremlin. And your next guest wrote a book on this issue. So I think to--
Yevgenia Albats:
Five people between Putin's decision and starting a nuclear weapon, at least five people and all those five people should agree that their lives and their wealth and wellbeing of their families should go into the nuclear waste? Do we really believe it's gonna happen?
Aleksandr Golts:
Again, it's not question for me, I think, I'm not psychologist.
Yevgenia Albats:
I understand
Aleksandr Golts:
it all depends. Again, these people gave oath to Motherland and Mr. Putin, and for all years of their service in nuclear forces, they were trained to make such kind of decision.
I will not exclude, sorry, I will not exclude, they can do it automatically because they are trained to do this automatically.
Yevgenia Albats:
Who, minister of defense? Chief of staff? Are you kidding me?
Aleksandr Golts:
No, no, no, these people will translate--
At the end of a day, it will be majors and colonels who will push red button in the command center of of strategic nuclear forces.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
So can I add one thing?
Yevgenia Albats:
Yes, please. Of course.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Because the one thing that flashed, that report that we just published on debates in Russian nuclear community?
Yevgenia Albats:
CNA, you mean?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, CNA. Moscow doesn't believe in tears. It's the title, but the thing is that, and this discussion was started by Sergei Karaganov--
Yevgenia Albats:
Who is of course now board of drunks. Wait, I should stop here. And we always know whenever he starts talking about use of nuclear weapons, it means that he was drunk for the last 10 days. Okay, go ahead.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Okay nevertheless, Yevgenia, his drunk speeches turned into Putin's words about changing military doctrine. A year ago, Putin insisted on changing the nuclear doctrine and now they pretend to change nuclear doctrine. So maybe we'll speak about Putin's was drunk or what.
I think the point is that this is actually, these speeches are important and Viedov tweeting, maybe also drunk, I don't know, is important. Because what it does is that, and every time they go, and they go on some TV shows, whatever, and talk about nuclear weapons and how it's part of our great power in this or whatever it is, it means that the population that's watching this or listening to this becomes a little bit more acclimated to the possibility.
So that major that Sasha was talking about is that much more likely to have in his head that this is okay. So I don't know if it's the intended goal of those discussions, but I think it is part of the result. And also there's a great book that was published maybe six years ago now by Dima Domsky, who was a great specialist in Israel, called Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy. And it's about the connection between the Russian Orthodox church and the military, and particularly the nuclear part of the military. And again, if you're blessing missiles and the priests, maybe priests are still trusted more than others. Again, it gives this legitimacy to the potential nuclear use And that's dangerous.
Yevgenia Albats:
I have hard time believing, I interviewed Korgana five times and when I turned the mic off, he always said, Yevgenia, you understand, you understand I have to make my living so obviously I believe that the scenario was us falling that Korgana was summoned up to the presidential administration, was told stop talking about that. And he is the kind of a guy, and we know that he has couple of apartments in European Union, and he is the kind of a guy which always ready to do what people in power tell him, he doesn't have options to go outside and et cetera. So with Putin, remember at club when Korgana was once again talking about the use of nuclear weapons, Putin said, oh you, he pretended as if he's the old European in Russia as they used to call him.
So it is bluff, I cannot believe that these people who were busy stealing everything in the country and making this immense wealth, look at Putin's palace, his residence, his Valday residence, his Dacha residence, this and that, the guy who is afraid to use planes, the guy who is using, they made the special armed train for him to go from Moscow to Valday. It's just two hours by car. So I have had time that it's not just about Putin, we do understand that there is people around him who are worth several billion dollars, Lukashenko, his closest guy, 2.5--
Dmitry Gorenburg
We all agree.
Yevgenia Albats:
So no, I'm afraid that you guys here in the West, you tend to scare yourself. That's also helps to explain why Ukrainians haven't received the kind of missiles that they needed, the kind of F-16s that they needed and et cetera. Anyway I don't want, yes. Let's go back to the audience, and once again, on October the 22nd, David Hoffman wrote that he's going to come here in , and he's going to speak precisely about the use of the possibilities of the new nuclear war, not just Russia, but also China, but predominantly Russia. And I'm going to ask you, what are American's abilities to control all this movement of nuclear heads in Russia and in China? Go ahead, please.
Eric Tugal:
My name is Eric Tugal. Yeah, my question for the panelists is, in the course of your research, did you find anything that indicated maybe a different perspective on the southern occupied provinces versus the provinces getting a lot of attention?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Perspective, you mean, you mean in Russia or?
Eric Tugal:
Of the Russian perspective.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Oh, like what the Russian government or military thinks about the two--
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Sasha, do you wanna start this one, or do you want me to? the question is, are the Russian leadership or military treating Donbas provinces, Luhansk, Donetsk, differently or thinking about them differently from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia? So east versus south.
Aleksandr Golts:
I think from military point of view, it's more or less clear that Luhansk and Donbas are the first targets of Russian invasion because they had base for advance from these regions. And of course it's a huge shame for Mr. Putin that he failed to take over Donbas for these two and a half years. So I can imagine how frustrated he's speaking with his generals, and that's why they're conducting this advance in Donetsk because Donetsk is a primary target, the Pohrebyshche and her son is a little bit another question because partly they are under Ukrainian control, and in my mind they look a little bit secondary from military point of view as secondary targets for Russia.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
I'll just add one, I agree. The only thing I would add is that I think the primary purpose of the southern regions or the parts of them that Russia controls is to ensure land access to Crimea. And so that means that there's not a particular need to go farther, especially across the river, that part of Kherson that they gave up. But it is important to protect what they have occupied already because otherwise that land bridge would be in danger.
Yevgenia Albats:
There are reports that Russians are building a railroad, so even if Ukrainians manage to destroy the Kerch Strait Bridge, they're building this railroad that will allow, that go will go through Mariupol or that will allow to supply stuff to premiere by land.
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Yevgenia Albats:
So you don't think that Russians will occupy Kharkiv region?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Oh, well, I was talking about the South versus--Kharkiv region. I mean Kharkiv itself is a huge city. The problem for Kharkiv is that if they occupy a little bit of the region, then if Kharkiv is within artillery range, again, as it was earlier,
Yevgenia Albats:
Just 45 kilometers from Russian border?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
Yeah, but that's not quite, if it's closer, then this was the danger of the offensive, the short offensive that they had in Kharkiv a few months ago, that if Kharkiv was in artillery range, they don't need to, they can destroy it, they can make it unlivable, so that's the danger for Kharkiv
Yevgenia Albats:
And that's exactly what Putin is doing. We have to run up this very interesting conversation. But there is one question that I cannot help but ask you. Some analysts say that the West failed in the face of Russian aggression as it failed to provide Ukraine with the necessary ammunition. And the ammunition that it needed regarding the volume of supplies, duration, and the quality of those supplies. As a result, post-communist countries that had been oriented toward the European Union, such as, for instance, Georgia in the Caucasus began to turn toward Putin's Russia. And it's pretty rational. They see that the West is not in a rush to support Ukraine. That's why, and they see Russians who threatened them with another invasion or alternatively Putin will support Georgia with money and with all kind of stuff.
Why did West turn out to be so weak? Or is it not about the West's weakness, but the calculated decision to bleed Russian defense industry as much as possible at the expense, unfortunately, of the lives of the Ukrainians?
Dmitry Gorenburg:
So, I mean, it's kind of a loaded question, of course. But, and I think it's more complicated than that. The west it's been, what, two and a half years?
At various points. The West, you could say the West was stronger than expected. At other points you could say it was weaker than expected, over the two and a half years. Initially I think the West was stronger than most people expect.
Because I think stronger than Putin expected, the European unanimity and the strength of support from Ukraine, he didn't expect Germany to provide any equipment. Now it took Germany some weeks or months to change its whole military and foreign policy essentially on weapons, but it did, and not with Merkel, but with Schultz, who is from SPD who is more supposedly more pro-Russian. So this is, I don't think this was expected. I think one of the reasons why the invasion happened, just one small one was that Merkel's departure made Putin think, ah, the strong German leader is gone. Now it's opportunity. I mean there are many other reasons, but that was one factor. So I think, and the fact that the West had provided the weapons that it did as quickly as it did, I think was also surprising. Now, the question you're asking is why didn't they just do everything all at once? That's what you're actually asking. Why didn't they give F-16s and long range missiles in the spring of 2022?
Well, the US government's or Biden's, let's say calculation, and also I shouldn't say Biden's, the combination Biden and Schultz and all the leaders. 'cause they had to work together, there was the question of what was politically acceptable. And there was a fear, we can say it was, they were out bluffed by Putin, sure, but there was a fear that if Ukraine won too fast, then Russia would use those nuclear weapons. Whether that's a legitimate fear or not, given the time, you can discuss that in two weeks. But it was there, and so there was a decision, and we can already discuss whether it was correct or incorrect to gradually ramp up assistance. And there was a time when they thought that was good enough. It turned out to be wrong. But you have to put our minds back to the preparation for the Ukrainian counter offensive. So if we go back to the spring of 2023, everyone was waiting to see just how successful Ukraine was going to be. How quickly could they get to the Azov Sea? Turned out to not be the case.
Russia had gotten enough time to prepare and had what I talked about the beginning two hours ago. But you have to think about the mentality at any given time. I think it's just incorrect to say that they're using Ukraine to bleed Russia or I think most, if anything, Western capitals would like the war to be over, and if Ukraine also won, that would be great. So I think that that's the primary objective. But they have other objectives. They have the desire to not start a big war with Russia. They have a desire for Russia not to escalate. So these things, we're here as analysts, we don't have to think those thoughts. We can focus on what we care about, but I don't know, Sasha--
Yevgena Albats:
Sasha, what do you think?
Aleksandr Golts:
Okay, look, I prefer to look at this problem from another angle. The problem is psychological problem that Russia thinks that it is in war against the West, but West doesn't think that it is in Cold War with Russia. These 30 years of peace after collapse of Soviet Union played its role, and now we need, I think people in the West need time to understand the situation. Also, look, it cannot be happened at once. Americans, the production of military equipment is a long process, I'll give you only one example, to receive powder for shells, Europeans have to buy it in Bosnia or in Albania. There are no plants that are producing powder in EU countries, for example. So you need to restart to build these long production lines. It will not happen at once. And of course, until now, here in the West, nevertheless European countries or United States, we still have peace mentality where people still want to pacify Mr. Putin somehow. And it's a real problem.
Yevgenia Albats:
Okay, thank you very much, Aleksandr Golts. Thank you very much Dmitry Gorenburg, thank you very much all of you for coming. So we're going to discuss in depth the possibility of the nuclear disaster on October 22nd in two weeks. So thank you so much. Please be ready. Be please come in two weeks, and we will continue.