Putin’s next move

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: examining the Ukraine crisis from a military perspective.

What might a full-scale Russian invasion look like? And how much can the Ukrainian military, with Western support, really do to stand up to Russia?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Here to help us answer those questions and others is retired Army Special Forces officer, Col. Steve Bucci. He is a former top Pentagon official and now a visiting fellow with the Heritage Foundation. Colonel, good morning!

STEVE BUCCI, GUEST: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Thank you. Let’s say Russian forces start rolling into the capital city of Kyiv, what would that look like exactly? Describe that for us. Put us on the ground there and tell us what people on the streets of Kyiv might see if and when the Russian military moves in.

BUCCI: Well, the first thing is that the Russian doctrine, they don't like to fight in urban areas. They tend to bypass urban areas and sort of surround them. And then as we refer to it – reduce them either by just keeping supplies out and getting them to give up or as the Russians did in Chechnya, where they surrounded the capital city of Grozny there, and they've literally leveled the city. They just bombed it, shot artillery at it, shot rockets at it until the the entire city was a gigantic rubble pile. Nobody wants to see him do that to Kyiv. It's an enormous modern city. And that kind of barbaric methodology, we just hope that that's not on Putin's menu right now. So they're probably going to try and surround it and squeeze them and get them to comply, to give up, and admit that they can be a part of Russia. The taste for that is not high in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have shown a great explosion of nationalist fervor in the face of this Russian aggression. So I don't think they're going to give up. The Russians will have the option of going into the city to try and ferret out any resistance there or go to this other methodology where they just start bombing everybody. It remains to be seen, but if you get stuck in Kyiv after the Russian surround it, it's not going to be a very positive environment.

BROWN: If you were advising Ukrainian military commanders right now, what would you tell them to do?

BUCCI: Well, looking at what they've already set up, I would say, yes, go for that really hard punch in the nose initial defense. Try and convey to the Russians that this is a bad idea by really making them pay a price for this attack. Try and use the terrain as much as you can to cause the Russians to stay on the roads and out of the fields, which are still kind of soft, in an effort to make them more vulnerable to the anti-tank rockets that they have. But be ready at a quick turn to go from that kind of defense to fading into the countryside as guerrillas to, again, if you can't stop the big mechanized formations, if you switch over to that guerrilla methodology, which Ukraine has done during World War II and other times, you can, again, up the cost to the Russian military in ways that hopefully will deter Putin and his ruling group from continuing this this unwise adventure. So two steps: defend hard and fast, but then be ready to switch over to guerrilla warfare. If you cannot stop the mechanized units moving forward, then basically fall on their back, jump on their supply lines, their command and control nodes that are behind the frontline troops, and really make them pay dearly for being inside Ukraine.

BROWN: Let’s talk now about involvement from the West. What kinds of equipment and supplies has the West provided Ukraine?

BUCCI: Well, if you recall, back in 2014, President Obama refused to send any lethal aid to Ukraine. They sent a lot of non lethal aid, MREs, blankets, that kind of stuff, even some helmets, but nothing that went bang. That has changed. President Trump sent them a bunch of lethal aid and fortunately, President Biden has now continued that policy. We've sent them javelin missiles, which are shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. One rocket can destroy a tank, even the best Russian tanks that they have. We've also arranged for them to get Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, another shoulder-fired weapon that can take down an aircraft, either a helicopter or an airplane. And other NATO members have also provided similar weapons systems to them.

So, they're still not a match, you know, tank for tank, artillery piece for artillery piece to the Russians, but they're much more capable than they were in 2014. And so they're gonna cause the Russians to bleed when they do this. Will it be enough? Probably not all by themselves to stop them. The Ukrainians do not have much air power. If they really get into this kind of pitched fight, somebody on the West is going to have to provide them some close air support. I think we'll also be providing them a lot of intelligence and other logistical support, ammunition, refitting, that sort of thing. But it's tough because you're talking about big heavy pieces of equipment. For us to get that kind of stuff to them in the midst of an attack is almost a bridge too far. It takes time to move big heavy pieces of equipment, definitely from America to Ukraine, but even from other parts of Europe to Ukraine. That's a tough lift—literally and figuratively—to do.

BROWN: Okay, Steve Bucci has been our guest today. Colonel, thank you so much!

BUCCI: It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.