Russians on the run

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 4th of October, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up: Russians on the run.

Recent advances by Ukrainian forces seem to have turned the tide in the war, forcing many Russian troops to retreat or surrender in eastern Ukraine.

EICHER: In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin put in place a military draft as he tries to add hundreds of thousands of troops to the battlefield. Additionally, he’s trying to annex more parts of Ukraine and threatening nuclear war.

So what will it take for Ukraine to continue beating back Russian forces and ultimately winning the war?

Joining us now is retired US Army Lt. General Thomas Spoehr. He’s an expert on national defense strategy and equipment modernization.

BROWN: General, good morning!

THOMAS SPOEHR, GUEST: Thank you, Myrna. Good morning to you as well.

BROWN: Well, as we mentioned, Ukrainian forces just recaptured the city of Lyman. Why was retaking this particular city strategically important?

SPOEHR: Yeah, thanks. So it’s a major railroad junction and Russians rely a lot on railroads for resupply, you know, that's something that United States forces really don't do. But the Russians have not developed the big truck fleet that the United States has and many other countries have. And so they rely a lot on having railroads right up to the front of the battle. So Lyman is a major railroad junction. It's also symbolic. It's a major city. And so, and the other part of it is, as you mentioned in your introduction, Vladimir Putin just annexed this oblast or this province of Donetsk and this is a major city within it. And so it kind of demonstrates to the world that even though he has illegally annexed this province, he really can't even hold it. So for all those reasons, it's really an important move by the Ukrainians.

BROWN: How has Ukraine made the recent progress it has made, I’m referring to the retaking of cities like Lyman and Izium?

SPOEHR: Oh, part of it is the weapons that the western countries have provided them. They’ve provided them effective support in the form of artillery and rockets and vehicles and munitions. That has helped. Another part of assistance that has helped a lot is Western intelligence. And so the United States and western NATO partners providing Ukraine overhead intelligence and information on where the Russians are strong and where they're weak. And so you obviously don't want to go where the Russians are strong and so you avoid those places. And that has allowed Ukrainians to pierce through the Russian defenses in exactly those places where they are weak. And then, finally, you have to give credit to the Ukrainians. They're motivated, they haven't lost their will to fight. In fact, they seem even more inspired than they did months and weeks ago. And so I think for all those reasons, they have become more, not less, effective in the last few months.

BROWN: Putin is trying to add hundreds of thousands of additional troops to the front lines. That’s a lot of troops.

But we’ve heard stories now of enlistment officers grabbing people off the street, drafting people with zero military training, some in their 60s even! So what impact do you think this military mobilization will have?

SPOEHR: This mobilization is not going to have much impact in the near term. These people that they’re grabbing right now, untrained people on the battlefield really just represent targets and casualties. They do not represent an effective force. Until Russia can get these new mobilized soldiers trained and equipped, they're really just a liability for Russia, and they will not turn into a value-added for months. I think in the short term, this is a problem for Russia because up to this point, Vladimir Putin has avoided mobilizing any part of the armed forces. He did it just with the active forces he has. This has brought this war—and he doesn't call it a war, but it is a war—this has brought this war home to your average Russians and now they are realizing what their president is doing to them. So I think it's difficult to find a positive result from Vladimir Putin declaring this mobilization.

BROWN: General, we’ve been hearing about increased concerns that Putin could get desperate enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. First, What exactly is a tactical nuclear weapon? And what would that look like if he actually decides to use one?

SPOEHR: Yeah, so nuclear weapons are measured in their explosive power using kilotons or megatons. A kiloton is a thousand tons of TNT. By reference, the the bomb that was dropped in World War II in Hiroshima was 10 kilotons. A tactical nuclear weapon typically—and there's no set definition for it—goes up to about 100 kilotons. So still a very powerful weapon and one that this world has never seen used before except for those two times in Japan. I think, we're all speculating now, I don't anticipate that Vladimir Putin, as irrational as he is, would use such a weapon against a NATO or a Western country because that would precipitate immediate, essentially World War III. It's hard to imagine he would use it in a populated area of Ukraine, because that would weigh completely against the message he's trying to send that he's trying to liberate that country. I think the most likely—and I don't even want to call it likely—but the most potential use of a nuclear weapon would be by Vladimir Putin in maybe some relatively unpopulated area or above it in Ukraine or maybe even over the Black Sea. And it would be more of a symbology that, hey, Russia has been pushed back far enough, we aren't going to take this anymore, that type of thing, or we have just crossed a red line, and trying to coerce and blackmail NATO countries to stop their support for Ukraine.

BROWN: So, kind of posturing?

SPOEHR: Yeah, exactly. If you can imagine a nuclear weapon as posturing, because it's a big statement, but yes.

BROWN: The United States and NATO have warned of “catastrophic” consequences if Putin uses a nuclear weapon. What does that mean? What do you think those catastrophic consequences might be?

SPOEHR: Yeah, so you know, context is very important here. Obviously, if that nuclear weapon affected NATO or the United States, that would precipitate a war. But short of that, short of attacking the United States and short of a lot of civilian casualties, I think you could expect the United States to immediately give Ukraine, you know, thus far they've been fairly restrained on the weapons they would give Ukraine. They won't give them long-range missiles, they won't give them fighter aircraft. I think all those types of things are off. It would not surprise me to see the United States intervene in a limited way in Ukraine against Russian forces there, would not cross into Russia, but potentially attack Russian forces that are in Ukraine. And certainly, we would hope that countries such as China and India, who have thus far kind of refrained from condemning Russia, would now condemn Russia and that Russia would become completely isolated from the world stage.

BROWN: The objective of Ukraine and NATO is obviously to win this war, break that down for us please. What does that mean? Does that mean the ouster of Putin? Or just completely beating the Russian military into submission? What would victory look like?

SPOEHR: Yeah, I think for President Zelenskyy, at least, the president of Ukraine, he has said that victory for Ukraine means that there are no Russian forces in Ukraine. So that would obviously mean all the areas, even those that Russia captured in 2014 during their earlier war in the Crimean Peninsula. I think the United States would consider that victory. There's no established need to completely crush Russia or its armed forces. Some of this will be very difficult. For example, getting the Russians out of Crimea, very difficult because of the terrain and the mountains and everything there. So I think there's probably an intermediate objective of at least booting the Russians out of those areas, which they did not control before 2022.

BROWN: Going forward, what does Ukraine really need from us to continue its progress and ultimately win?

SPOEHR: Yeah, most importantly I think for Ukraine is support in terms of military weaponry, munitions, and supplies, those tools of war that the United States and other countries in the West are providing are making the crucial difference. Without those, this war would already be over. Europe is contributing a lot to this fight, as you know. They are harboring over 3 million—maybe the number is bigger than that—Ukrainian refugees. So they're doing a lot there. And then I think Europe is also providing support to keep the government of Ukraine going, because as you can imagine, Ukraine isn't in a position to collect any taxes. They don't really have that many exports. And so their economy is essentially cratered. And so, the European Union and folks like that really need to keep the Ukrainian government going and paying firefighters and police and things like that if they're going to have a chance to survive.

BROWN: We’ve been talking to retired Lt. General Thomas Spoehr. He is the director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation. General, thanks so much!

SPOEHR: Thank you.

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