Ukraine’s long resistance

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: The war in Ukraine lurches into year five this week. People in Great Britain, Germany, Serbia, and elsewhere came out to mark the anniversary of the start of the conflict.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: In Ukraine itself, the anniversary means keeping a commitment to fight. 

Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who works for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and who we turn to occasionally for insight into military matters, is in Ukraine this week and joins us now from Kyiv.

REICHARD: Admiral Montgomery, good morning.

MARK MONTGOMERY, GUEST: Good morning. Mary. Thank you very much for having me.

REICHARD: Glad you're here. This week marks four years since Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2022. Tell us where do things stand on a military level while talks are still going on to end the war?

MONTGOMERY: So Mary, things are very much, you know, kind of consistent across the front, they actually just gained a little bit back over the last two weeks, but it's a fairly static front in the sense of overall size, although there's a lot of fighting in there. You know, I think the Ukrainians have maintained their military resilience, which is hard. They're outnumbered, a much smaller country than Russia. They have a much smaller budget, a much smaller military, and they have managed to hold their own. So military resilience is high. 

I would also mention that equally, civilian resilience is high. They are hit every night, or maybe every other night, with cruise, ballistic, hypersonic missiles and drones. I've been here the last couple weeks, and you know, it's two out of every three nights there's a pretty heavy attack. And look, a lot of damage is done to electrical power grid, to water systems, to schools, to apartment complexes, but the people move forward. Their resilience, I think, is high. They're stubborn and patriotic people who are not going to concede any more of Ukraine to an authoritarian, rapacious thug like Putin who's conducting an illegal and merciless war.

REICHARD: What are the Ukrainian military casualties at this point?

MONTGOMERY: That's hard to put a number on. It's well over 100,000. It's a lot less than the Russians, but they are a lot smaller population base. But they have worked really hard over the last year to preserve their most precious resource, their people, and so they are reducing their casualty rates. They're increasing the casualty rates on the Russians at the same time. Most reporting is that 80% of Russian casualties come from Ukrainian drones, either air or ground drones, which are effectively mines. So, you know, this is an, you know, it's a very unique kind of warfare set going on here, but one that the Ukrainians act more now are more and more acting like a Western Power than a former Soviet state.

REICHARD: You spoke of the Ukrainian people as being dug in and committed to not ceding anymore to Russia. How would you describe the morale of the troops?

MONTGOMERY: I mean, there's a big gap there. If you're infantry on the very front line, it's a tough slog. They're on the front three to maybe six months of unremitting attacks by the Russians, dug in hard, you know, with a lot of camouflage, supported by aerial drops, by drones, not by contact with humans, and, you know, having to deal with their own wounds and things like that.

And then it's unit by unit. Some of their units are fantastic units led by officers that would may be in the same rank they're in in the U.S. military, had they joined the U.S. military. And the morale tends to be better in those ones, because people know they have good leadership. 

So it varies, but at no point do I come across like, "Why are we fighting this war?" People know why they're fighting this war. You know, I hear Steve Witkoff say, "hey, it's this is a silly war. Can't people have some dignity and get out of it?" Shows an egregious lack of understanding of what happened here. It's Steve Witkoff being the lead American negotiator, so it matters that he's so ill informed. 

But this is not a silly war for Ukraine. They were attacked with the intention of their country being dismembered and the government overthrown by an autocratic Russian regime that has executed a four year war crime against the people of Ukraine. So this is not silly. Dignity for them is defeating Russia and not acceding to it.

REICHARD: All right, well I want you to take us out on the street there in Kyiv where you are at the moment. Describe what you see: strikes, winter going on, power outages, what's happening?

MONTGOMERY: It's cold. This is one of the coldest winters they've had in a long time. It has a weird effect. It's tough on the civilian people, and that makes the strikes on the power grid even more problematic. 

But for the military, it actually kind of freezes things a little better, literally and figuratively. So it's harder for the Russians to advance, and the Russians have had a rough couple months with casualty rates that actually exceed their incoming arrival of replacements. So, but it's a tough winter, and I think the Russians thought it might break the Ukrainians. They're probably a little, they're once again disappointed in their underestimation of the Ukrainian will to resist.

REICHARD: Mark Montgomery is a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

Mark, thanks so much.

MONTGOMERY: Thank you for having me, Mary.

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