Win, lose, and draw

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Who’s winning the war in Ukraine?

In a very important sense, there are no winners in this war, but which side has the upper hand right now in this conflict? And what can we expect in the weeks ahead?

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Joining us now to help answer that question is Ryan Brobst. He is a researcher on Military and Political Power at Foundation for Defense of Democracy.

His research focuses on arms sales and weapons development as well as regional military operations. Ryan, good morning!

RYAN BROBST: Good morning! Thank you for having me.

REICHARD: Well, I think it’s safe to say that things have not gone according to plan for Russia in this invasion. From the Kremlin’s perspective, how poorly has this invasion gone?

BROBST: I think that Putin is quite disappointed in how this war has gone based on reports we've seen. They expected to take the capital city, Kiev, in just a matter of days. And as we're about to reach one month into the conflict, the Kremlin is nowhere near achieving those objectives and most of their attacks on Ukraine have stalled thus far.

REICHARD: What has the Ukrainian military done right? How have they been able to frustrate the larger Russian army?

BROBST: Right, so probably the most important factor is their high morale and willingness to fight on the battlefield. Russian troops, they thought they were just going to an exercise in western Russia, and then were rushed across the border. And you know, just to put this in perspective, Ukrainians and Russians often have familial overlaps with each other. They know each other. This would be akin to trying to have the U.S. military invade Canada. There's not going to be a lot of will to do that. As well, the Russian officers are – there's a lot of conscripts in the Russian military who are not willing to risk their lives in their one year term of service for unclear objectives. And so I think that's the main factor that Ukrainian military has done well, and then they're supported by enormous amounts of Western equipment, which has been provided to them over the past several years, as well as rushed to them in the past few weeks.

REICHARD: Does either side really have the upper hand right now?

BROBST: Here's how I would describe the situation on the ground. Right now, we're currently in a transition between phases of the war. This first phase, which we just talked about, was an attempted blitz by Russia to collapse the Zelenskyy government, destroy the Ukrainian military and install a Russian puppet government. That hasn't worked so far. The Russian advances in the north near Kiev and in the east near Donbass have stalled, although Russian forces have made gains in the south near Crimea. So what's happened over the past week is that Russian ground forces have been in an operational pause while they regroup and try to get their supply lines in order. And I view it as likely that they will renew their assault on Ukraine in the near future, which is when the second phase of the war will begin. So to answer your question correctly: No, neither side currently has the upper hand and we're about to enter a new phase of the war.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about the kinds of weapons the West is supplying to Ukraine. You recently wrote that the best weapons the West can provide are called loitering munitions. Explain what those are and why those weapons are so effective.

BROBST: They're a type of drone. And in America, when we think of drones, we kind of think of these large systems that are basically unmanned airplanes. But loitering munitions are very different. They're much smaller, kind of like the quad copters that you might see in civilian use. And what they do is they can hover above the battlefield, identify targets, and then dive in on them and detonate an explosive. So what it's doing is you're combining the surveillance and strike features, and the Russian air defenses cannot take care of these systems. But we only sent one hundred of these systems and we should be sending a lot more.

REICHARD: Ryan, how are everyday Ukrainians participating in this fight for their country’s survival?

BROBST: Ukraine established what's called the Territorial Defense Forces, which is kind of adjacent to the regular military, and allows civilians with oversight to help defend their towns and cities and provinces in the area nearby. And for those who can't fight, you know, they're supporting the war effort and other ways from knitting camouflage nets, to cooking meals for soldiers and just donating money, helping out in any way that they can.

REICHARD: Vladimir Putin has recently accused both the United States and Ukraine of harboring chemical and biological weapons. And President Biden has warned that Putin’s rhetoric suggests he may be considering using such a weapon himself and is trying to create a pretext for that.

How might this war change if Putin does cross that line and uses chemical or biological weapons?

BROBST: You're right. So what I've always said is the best way to figure out what Russia is going to do is to see what they're accusing everyone else of doing. And it does seem that they're laying out the groundwork to create a chemical warfare attack, which would be illegal and horrific. So the reason that they would do this is to try to terrify Ukrainians into submission, which for the record, I don't think is going to work given how Ukraine has resisted thus far, but they can kill a lot of civilians. And the U.S. and NATO are not going to respond in a kinetic fashion over this to avoid escalating the war. But what we can do is provide even more weapons, as well as provide protective equipment to Ukrainian units responding to these chemical attacks so that they can help treat the victims in a safe manner.

REICHARD: We’ll certainly hope and pray that Putin doesn’t cross that line. Ryan Brobst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy has been our guest. Ryan, thanks so much!

BROBST: Thank you for having me.

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