Key Points:

• Russia’s failed quick-strike strategy has led to a prolonged, costly war.
• Nearly a million casualties and severe economic damage in Ukraine.
• Risk of conflict escalation and waning international support for Ukraine.
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Austin and Michael discuss the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, focusing on the Kursk incursion and Zelensky’s proposed four-point peace plan. They explore the potential long-term impacts if the war continues for years, examining Russia’s initial decapitation strategy, which failed and led to a protracted war. The conversation touches on the economic, human, and political costs of the war, with a focus on the difficulties both sides face. Michael highlights how the conflict has already caused significant casualties and could continue to escalate, potentially leading to a broader conflict.

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Edited Video Transcript:

[00:00:00] Austin Smith: Defense and military expert for 24 7 Wall Street. Michael, we’ve got a full plate today, and we’re gonna be touching back on a topic that always seems relevant. We’ve talked about quite a bit, which is Russia, Ukraine, and then we’ll move on to some other topics from there. But it seems really timely. We have the Kursk incursion from Ukraine into Russia, which by all measure, all measures appears to be more effective than originally anticipated.

[00:00:23] Austin Smith: We have Zelensky meeting with world leaders to propose what we have heard is a four point peace plan. So we’re now here to talk about, Ukraine is relevant. It’s in the news right now as it always seems to be, but let’s jump in. I wanted to talk with you and say, let’s say Zelensky’s peace plan is not accepted or is not received well by Russia, which is almost certainly going to be the case.

[00:00:47] Austin Smith: Everything we’ve seen suggests that Putin is gearing up for the long haul. He’s talked about making Russia the second or third largest standing army on earth. So putting aside the proposal of what happens if the war in Ukraine continues for years, it’s already extended longer than most people guess three years, give or take.

[00:01:05] Austin Smith: So

[00:01:05] Michael Muir: what happens if this continues? Yeah, let’s examine why the war has lasted a lot longer than anticipated. And really to do that, we can just look at the failures by the Russian armed forces at the start of the war. What Russia was banking on was its decapitation strategy, which it has used successfully in the past.

[00:01:24] Michael Muir: And what that essentially meant was Using airborne special forces to quickly seize and hold an airport near the capital, move in airborne reinforcements take the opposing government out in the first few hours of the war, and then roll in and mop up any resistance. That was the plan but obviously it didn’t work out.

[00:01:43] Michael Muir: Pan out like that. The problem Russia had this time around was they were trying to do essentially a small scale tactic on a much larger area. So it had been used successfully in the past in places like Czechoslovakia in Afghanistan, even Crimea actually 10 years ago. But the Ukrainians knew it was coming.

[00:02:00] Michael Muir: So the airport that Antonov Airport was defended and the defenders in that airport were able to buy enough time for the Ukrainians to mount a effective counterattack. So ultimately that gambit to win the war very quickly quickly fell apart and we get this protracted war. Another aspect, of course, is the lack of air superiority.

[00:02:19] Michael Muir: Russia’s air force is much larger than Ukraine’s, but a combination of Effective the Ukraine air force really punching above its weight and ground based air defenses proving to be very effective. So that’s why we’re in this situation where we’re almost 3 years in. But if we look at what a protracted war, sort of the effects that we’re going to see for the global economy, it’ll be fairly marginal. There was a brief spike in price of oils. Obviously Russia is a major global oil producer. But we typically see there is when there are geopolitical events tensions like that.

[00:02:51] Michael Muir: There is, brief spikes in price, but those quickly stabilize. So I don’t anticipate that being a major issue, even if the war drags on. The other aspect will be from Ukraine’s point of view. Obviously, the longer it goes on, the more difficult the post war recovery is going to be. It’s already, of course, been a devastating war on all aspects, but, Ukraine’s GDP contracted by about 30 percent in the first year of the war.

[00:03:14] Michael Muir: So that’s going to take a long time to stabilize. More importantly, of course, would be, the human costs. It’s already been a very destructive and bloody war. The most significant conflict we’ve seen in the world in decades. Russia, casualty figures are going to be very difficult to to ascertain right now, as the war is ongoing, neither side are going to be terribly forthcoming about how many troops they’ve lost, but according to some analysis that I’ve read, as Russia is pivoting towards relentless pressure and a war of attrition, they’re losing somewhere in the region to 800, 1200 troops every single day.

[00:03:46] Michael Muir: So we could see, yeah, it’s a staggering Thought in the modern era we could see casualty figures in the hundreds of thousands, possibly even a million if it carries on at this rate. There’s no guarantee it will, of course But it’s just important to be aware of that for Ukraine.

[00:03:59] Michael Muir: They’re not losing as many soldiers. But again, the future, the post war future for Ukraine is under question. They simply don’t have that many troops to lose. If you actually look at the age composition of the Ukrainian forces, they tend to skew a lot older than most militaries. The conscription laws don’t apply to young adults because they are trying to preserve that.

[00:04:19] Michael Muir: But as needs become more desperate, the. The minimum age is decreasing. So again, the longer this goes on, the greater the human cost politics always comes into play. I always bring this up in our discussions, but it’s always such an important aspect of any conflict. The longer this war goes on, the harder it will become for other nations to continue supporting Ukraine if there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.

[00:04:44] Michael Muir: As we’ve seen in some of the elections in Europe, the rise of right wing populism and Ukraine skepticism is increasing, so it’s going to become a tougher sell to continue to support Ukraine, but their war effort is contingent on support from Western nations. And then finally, it’s just the risk of escalation into a wider conflict.

[00:05:05] Michael Muir: As Ukraine is showing increasing willingness to strike targets within Russian territory, we’ve heard a lot of alarming rhetoric from Putin about the consequences of those strikes, which haven’t come into, which haven’t, materialized yet. Maybe it is just a bluff, but the longer the war goes on, the more desperate Russia becomes, the worse the consequences could be.

[00:05:25] Austin Smith: A lot of great details in there. So this sort of like early decapitation strategy, maybe like a shock and awe approach, also known as like a total early dominance approach is just a rapid dominance rather just not effective. So Russia, It would seem their early plan, backfired on them and they had to, they’ve had to develop this multi year strategy in flight.

[00:05:46] Austin Smith: It would appear based on everything we’ve seen on the terrain that they have not, they did not go in with a contingency plan. They had assumed their initial rapid strike would be effective and they’ve had to backfill this war strategy in real time, which, which has contributed to what is a really horrible milestone, which is now I saw just a few days ago, a million.

[00:06:05] Austin Smith: People are either now dead or injured in the Russia Ukraine war.

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