Bill Roggio Joins Us with an Update on Ukraine
CLAY: I know Ukraine has been going on for a while, and it’s kind of faded onto the back burners. Even some of the Blue Checkmark Brigade have taken down their Ukraine flags because they’re trying to search for whatever the newest new thing is. Maybe it’s reparations from the queen. I don’t know what the newest new thing will be.
But there’s actually really interesting news that came out over the past couple of days about an offensive that has been undertaken by Ukraine and what the impact might be going forward. And we are joined now by Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
He’s an editor of the Long War Journal and a U.S. Army veteran. All right. I feel like a lot of people out there are not that plugged in with what has just happened in Ukraine, Bill. What can you tell us about the latest there and why it’s significant?
ROGGIO: Yeah. Ukraine definitely has faded for a lot of people. I think you’re right. People want to move on to the next new thing. But look, this is a war that is (unintelligible), and it’s not a war — you know, it’s not a quick-fix war. Both sides are massing their forces.
And what we saw happen in the last, oh, I’d say four or five days is Ukraine is — they launched an offensive in the South, in the Kherson area which is near the port city of Odessa, a strategic area for obviously for Ukraine since they can’t use the Black Sea ports right now, and strategic for the Russians for multiple reasons.
The Russians redeployed forces from northern Ukraine that were near the city of Kharkiv, one of the largest cities in Ukraine. They redeployed forces to adjust and the Ukrainians massed up in the north and they’ve taken a large area from the Russians. The Russians were in full withdrawal over the weekend.
They took a lot of small towns and small cities in the area and — it looks like — and it’s hard to determine this right now — but it looks like they pushed the Russians back in — up in — from the northeast all the way up to the border. The Russians are claiming that it was a strategic withdrawal.
But it looks like they lost a lot of ammunition and possibly armored vehicles, definitely some armored vehicles. I’ve seen images of that. So, the Russians are on their back foot up in the north. The Russians have stalled the Ukrainian offensive in the south in Kherson, but, yeah, things don’t look good for the Russians right now.
I tell you; the Ukrainians are a determined fighting force. They’re well organized. And I think the U.S. weapons are…that have been supplied are having an effect. The Russians are just not adjusting well to occupying territory in Ukraine.
BUCK: Bill, it’s Buck. There are these reports as well along with this offensive and the territory that’s been taken of large numbers of Russian prisoners of war being taken by the Ukrainians, and a lot of Russians…and again, this is reporting and there’s been a lot of, you know, stuff that ends up getting reported that has to be either walked back or is not true, but it seems that this aligns with what we’re seeing in this offensive.
But you have a lot of Russian soldiers who are surrendering. I even read about a phone line that Russians can call to essentially arrange their surrender to Ukrainian forces. What can you tell us about that? ‘Cause that starts to sound like morale among the Russian forces is collapsing.
ROGGIO: Yeah, what happened up in the north is that Russians depleted the lines. They have basically a skeleton force in the Kharkiv region. The Ukrainians launched a quick counteroffensive, they moved through, surrounded Russian forces. It’s unclear the number of prisoners. Ukrainian tends to overestimate things. From what I’ve seen it’s scores to hundreds of Russian troops that have been captured.
That number may be larger. We just have to wait and see how that all settles out. I think the class is more related to the paucity of Russian troops that were in the area. They basically left a tripwire, and they thought they could defend it with artillery and rockets and missiles and things of that nature that they would be able to hit a counter — you know, counterstrike against this counteroffensive. But it didn’t work the way the Russians hoped for.
Certainly they…a number of troops have been captured. We just don’t know how many. And I think that’s more of a manpower issue than a morale issue. But that can have an effect going down the line if the Russians are leaving their forces like this in other areas. I think the reality is, this is a result of Putin not going on full military footing.
He’s trying to fight an economy of force offensive against the Ukrainians, and that’s not working. This is not old Soviet doctrine. And it’s coming back to hurt Putin right now. He’s gonna have to figure out how to readjust this war.
Is he gonna have to, you know, call up the reserves and initiate a draft and push more troops there or is he gonna be content with holding the gains in…and I think that’s the best the Russians could hope for now, holding the gains in the Donbas where they did have significant success over the summer and holding the Kherson front as well.
CLAY: Certainly, winter is a massive impact on what you can do in the field of battle. When does this winter arrive in such significance that we kind of have a pause, that you would anticipate that that would occur? And you mentioned Russia having to make decisions. Is there any concern that as Russia is embarrassed, that Vladimir Putin could decide to use strategic nuclear weapons to attack here? Is that a concern?
ROGGIO: It’s always a concern. I think the likelihood is low, unless the Russian forces in Donbas are, you know, unless they’re overwhelmed. I think that might be a case for the deployment of chemical or perhaps nuclear weapons. But I put the likelihood of that as to be…to be low, but I don’t discount anything that is a major concern. If the Russians were to collapse, particularly in the Donbas region, then all bets are off on what Putin might too.
BUCK: Bill, also people are starting to ask out loud, what happens if Ukraine wins? So, I would want to know, one, how much of a possibility do you see that, as in the Russians have effectively a full-scale withdrawal from all the areas they invaded at the beginning of this year?
And would the Putin regime, would Putin, as leader, stay, would he survive in his role if this does turn into a full-scale Ukrainian victory in repelling this invasion?
ROGGIO: Yeah, I can answer the second question first, I think it’s very unlikely Putin would be able to survive a full Ukrainian victory. I think the likely…what the likely outcome is this war probably will stalemate, particularly on the Donbas front. Now, look, Russians, even though they suffered this loss, they’re gonna have more forces now to redeploy into the Donbas region — that’s sort of the central eastern area — and then on the southern front in Kherson.
They will have more forces available to reinforce. And to answer your question about the timing of this, probably late November, early December are where things…where it becomes far more difficult for the Ukrainians to go on the offensive and probably wouldn’t see any type of offensive activities until late February, early March, is the…you know, depending.
But, yeah, Putin has to be thinking about holding onto his gains right now. The Ukrainians, they’re feeling it right now. They’re confident that they can have battlefield success. What happens in the Kharkiv front is just as bad as what happened in the Kiev front.
The Russian…I think the Russian military is better organized in the south and in the central sector than it was in the north with the Kiev and Kharkiv fronts.
CLAY: Is it possible that Putin could try to find a way to still declare victory and just end this thing?
ROGGIO: I think that it is possible that he…particularly if it does stalemate over time, if the Russians are able to commit the right amount of forces to hold their gains in the Don boss in the South, then we may have a situation arise like it was after the 2014 invasion in eastern…or part of Donbas and in the Crimea.
I think that’s probably the likely outcome. But who knows? I mean, it’s hard to predict how the losses in Kharkiv affects the Russian forces in the central and southern portion of Ukraine.
CLAY: Outstanding stuff. Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, editor of the Long War Journal and a U.S. Army veteran. We appreciate you. Thanks for this update.
ROGGIO: Thanks, gentlemen. Have a great day.
CLAY: Gonna be fascinating to see how this plays out, but I wanted to make sure, Buck and I both did, that you were all aware of what is fairly significant news in that what has been a stalemate, trench warfare almost situation for several months, and suddenly the Ukrainians are breaking out.
