Russia’s War in Ukraine Reaches the One-Year Mark: A Conversation with RAND’s Dara Massicot.

Evan Banks

You're listening to Policy Currents, a weekly podcast from the RAND Corporation. I'm Evan Banks. It's February 24th. Today marks one year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Over the last 12 months, we've seen intense fighting, thousands of casualties and even nuclear saber rattling by Moscow. Last week, I was joined by RAND researcher Dara Massicot. She's an expert on Russian military strategy, combat operations and escalation dynamics, and we discussed what's unfolded in Ukraine over the last year, recent developments in the conflict and what might happen next. You can follow Dara on Twitter @MassDara. Dara was also one of nearly 30 RAND researchers that we pulled for a feature about the anniversary of Russia's invasion. You can find this feature right now on rand.org. Here's our conversation.

Evan Banks

Dara, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Dara Massicot

Thanks for having me.

Evan Banks

What were the initial signs that Russia was getting ready to launch this invasion of Ukraine? And how did those evolve until an attack became inevitable?

Dara Massicot

Well, I think we need to probably pull back to the spring of 2021. There was a lot of really unusual activity going on in the Russian military where units were being moved around and deployed to Ukraine. A lot of those units did not leave and return to their home garrisons. And at the time, the Russian military had a very unusual reason for that. They said, we're keeping these in Western Russia for the Zapad exercise, which has never really been done before. So I think there was a lot of concern even in the summer of '21, that something was off. And that process really started to accelerate after the exercise ended. None of these none of these units went home and they just stayed near the border of Ukraine and the process accelerated. So really, it was it was a hard thing to watch in slow motion. I'm sure you remember all the videos of the tanks moving on the rail cars and then moving to training areas. The whole time the Russian government was, you know, talking sideways about, this is just training. There's nothing to see here. And things began. Things began to get more and more serious as February approached. And that's when you started seeing things like field hospitals showing up. You started seeing equipment sets that were maybe 100 miles away from Ukraine breaking apart and things moving near the border. And then you saw it in the days running up, I think it was a week in advance. They started spray painting all the vehicles with the Zs and the O and B at that point, it was just waiting for it to go in. So it was a slow build. But then everything all at once at the end.

Evan Banks

I remember hearing how they were bringing up like blood transfusions and that which is something that, you know, you don't you don't do for a training exercise.

Dara Massicot

Right. Right. Now that's that is a very serious indicator. Another indicator to me at the time, not only of the invasion, but there was something, something wrong with how they were doing it. And if you remember, they they said that the Russian forces that they were bringing from the Far East, this is 11 time zones away and they brought them on a train all the way to Belarus. Took two weeks to get there, and they had them doing exercises. And then magically, you know, 3 or 4 days before the invasion, they said, there's a there's been a delay. You know, we're going to stay here for a while. And to me, that really signaled that the high command was was making a series of mistakes with how it was running this from a personal perspective, like lying to the soldiers about what they were doing there. And at the time, I thought, okay, this is part of the opsec maybe, surely they're not lying to their invasion force. But we went we knew within within days that that is indeed what they did.

Evan Banks

Not to get not to get too far ahead. But Russia made a lot of mistakes in its invasion of Ukraine and in the follow up days. And we'll get to I'd like to talk a little bit more about like Russian logistics and how they moved personnel and equipment around. But it also seems like in the days leading up to the invasion that everyone, seemingly everyone knew except for Russian troops and Russian leadership that this was going to happen.

Dara Massicot

Right. So I it's unfortunately this has happened in their history, in their recent history, in their invasion of Ukraine in 2014, there was this same kind of pattern where they didn't necessarily tell everyone that they were going inside Ukraine. And of course, they denied to the world that they were even in there in the first place. It was just polite people and little green men. And this also is a pattern that existed in various degrees in Chechnya and especially in Afghanistan, where they would tell Soviet conscripts, you're not going to Afghanistan, you're going to go plow some fields and then surprise, they'd get off the aircraft in Tashkent and would be deployed in. So, unfortunately, this is a this is a pattern for them. But I agree with you, the Russian war plan was already in the press. It had been debunked or pre-bunked, I should say, by the Biden administration. And the Ukrainians knew and were waiting for the Russians. So it appeared that a lot of people knew, except for a sizable percentage of their actual infantry.

Evan Banks

Which strikes me as a very bad way to plan for and conduct an invasion. And I think it's indicative of deeper strategic errors that, like Russia makes and just sort of the the way that Russia kind of treats its own military. It's a very they don't they don't show a lot of regard for human life.

Dara Massicot

No, they don't. They don't. And I've I've written about this. There is a there's a deep seated problem within the Russian military culture, and that is a fairly high level of disregard for their human capital. It's it's very different from how we do things. And, you know, I try not to apply, you know, how how the U.S. military does things or there are different country, different backgrounds, a different context. But there was an effort, you know, 15 years ago to try to reform and modernize. And it seems like the hardware was easy for them to fix new tanks, new jets, new missiles. But the human aspect of this, even though they made attempts to do it, it really didn't sink in all the way. And when push comes to shove, you know, they went back to this Soviet command style of distrust up and down the chain from top to down, top to bottom, bottom up distrust. And you really see that playing a role in Ukraine. I mean, the unit cohesion is terrible. Morale is terrible.

Evan Banks

Yeah, I've read about a lot of critical parts go missing. There's just a lot of corruption within the ranks, even in the upper levels. I've also read a lot about the really awful hazing traditions that exist in the Russian military. And I've heard stories about soldiers not being paid on time or at all. Can you talk to where this sort of attitude might come from in terms of like the historical background? Is it is it something that comes from like the Soviet era or?

Dara Massicot

Well, you know, there's there's a lot of Soviet legacy in there, you know, personnel policies. And, you know, to their credit, they've they've made a lot of changes over the last decade or so. And we actually have a RAND report that will be out later this spring that goes through the last 30 years of how they've tried to to change this. So they've instituted a lot of different policies like automatic transfer of money so that cash doesn't have to flow through the unit commander to the individual soldiers. That's a relatively recent change in the last decade, really to try to cut down on some of these issues. And there have been serious attempts to fix many of the aspects of military life. And, you know, not all of them were fully executed. But I think, you know, to get back to your larger question about corruption, it's you know, there's been lots of documentaries out there about senior members of the Russian military brass that have mansions. And they go on these very elaborate, you know, vacations to Europe. So this is all happening in the open. It's it's part of the larger ecosystem in Russia. The military cannot be separate from the society that it's in. Right. So there are some there are some issues despite their forward progress, I think there really is this instinctive when they're going to war, still, kind of Soviet mentality of we're going to, you know, "not one step back", you know, like the old Stalin saying and like this this way that they treat each other. And you contrast that with how the Ukrainians are trying to to learn and break free from their Soviet past. And you don't see that kind of I mean, there's still some aspects of the Ukrainian military that are trying to get rid of these things. But by and large, you see this this different way in how they they they treat each other, how the command relationships work, how the unit cohesion is working. It's really quite stark.

Evan Banks

Let's go back to the impetus for this invasion and how much of this is just coming straight from the top, from from Vladimir Putin and his and his top circle?

Dara Massicot

Well, you know, I think it does. I think it does come a lot from Putin. This is a this is a project for him. He had this very bizarre article that he wrote, I think it was a year ago, talking about, you know, Ukraine's history and it's really not an independent country we all have this shared past. I recommend anyone who's curious about his state of mind to read that note, read that letter that he wrote. But I do think that this was this invasion plan was cooked up by a small group of people at the top. And it appears now, from what we know in the news and then how it played out on the ground, that this was this was not really a plan that was disseminated with all the key stakeholders that you would need for something like this. You cannot box out your logisticians from an attack on one of the largest countries in Europe in the way that they did and expect success. But that's that's how they did it. You know, I'm not sure all of the reasons why now he felt like this is the time. I think there was a hubris about "our military is good enough, it can do it, the Ukrainians won't fight back. We have a network of spies in Ukraine that are well, that are well placed and are willing to be this, you know, shadow government that we're going to stand up". None of those things were true.

Evan Banks

The Russians did have, you tell me, fairly successful campaigns in Syria and in eastern Ukraine.

Dara Massicot

Yeah. So, you know, if we if we go back to, you know, the characteristics that made those operations, you know, relatively successful and the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian military was in a different place at that time. They had not received as much training. They hadn't learned lessons from being at war for eight years like they have by the time the invasion kicked off last year. The Syria operation was different, too, because it really it was an air war and it really wasn't contested in any meaningful way. I mean, the Russians took a few losses from from MANPADs, but not a contested air environment. But I think stepping back from it, I mean, these are also operations that were led by Gerasimov, not him personally, but, you know, he was in the hot seat as these things were going on. Those are far more limited. There was limited goals, limited objectives. And the force that they had brought for those limited objectives made sense. So that's why it's so surprising when you look at the invasion last year or "Operation Z", as they call it, a really large departure from his style and from the things that he once advocated, which he advocated a strategy of limited actions where you keep it small, small as possible to achieve what you need. So, you know, I'm speculating here, but I do think that there was probably some Kremlin interference in here just because as an invasion plan, it didn't make a lot of sense. It didn't make a lot of sense from the force structure that they had. It didn't make a lot of sense for straining their logistics. It didn't make a lot of sense for their own strategy, how they prosecuted it. So I, I have to think that the Kremlin may have handed down some objectives here, like we're going to go in, we're going to get Zelenskyy, this whole thing's going to kick in, and you start to feel like the influence maybe of Russian intelligence in that process. And there's there's been some reports that suggest that that that was what happened.

Evan Banks

Russia made a lot of day one mistakes during this invasion. Can we look over a few? And I personally would like to start with the lack of air power on day one was really surprising to me. It's sort of a basic first step is you go in and, you know, very high precision coordinated airstrikes to soften up targets so that you can then bring in, you know, boots on the ground. And we didn't see that out of Russia and we still haven't seen that.

Dara Massicot

That's true. And, you know, we we RAND has studied this a lot and we have a report that's published on the initial period of war, as it's called, in Russian theory. It is supposed to look a certain way and did not happen on day one. So you're correct, air power should have been in the lead if they were following their doctrine in this regard. They would have led with significant airstrikes and missile strikes for days or weeks before you even commit most of your army. But that's not what happened. They committed them at the exact same time. And what happened and what we know now, the story is a little more nuanced than some of the early takes on it, which was all Russian air power is totally missing. It wasn't it was it was present and it was it was acting. It was going after fixed Ukrainian military targets. It was trying to disable airfields, it was trying to disable that ground based air defense that it would become so critical, a critical problem for later on. Those assets relocated just in time. Like there's videos literally of Ukrainian airplanes like taking off and missiles are like coming and hitting. But, you know, it's that's a that's a real, real question for me at the time. You know, I'm texting like other colleagues in the field. Like are you seeing this like, why are they doing it this way? And that was a critical flaw for them because, as you know, the Russian army ran into trouble in the north right away. The columns, you know, backing up artillery fire coming in on them. The Russian air force was actually pivoted from its missions, which was going after those, you know, fixed targets to doing close air support and trying to save the army. And they really weren't prepared for that mission. It didn't go well. That's why you saw all those early Russian losses, because they were essentially flying right into Ukrainian Stinger envelopes and Ukrainian SAM envelopes. They were they were getting hit. So it wasn't that they weren't using their air force, they were just misusing it. And the same kind of misuse you saw early day one of the Russian airborne. I mean, whether it was their failed attack at Gostomel or, you know, running the 70, 76 GAAD straight down with no preparation, they you know, that was the unit, of course, that was in Bucha and is, you know, accused of all sorts of war crimes for what it did there. So yeah, just compounding mistakes, you know, opening days, opening weeks when that theoretically should have been Russia's advantage.

Evan Banks

Was one of the things that I've noticed has gone extremely wrong for Russia. And I would almost call this a comedy of errors is their logistics. Can you tell me a little bit more about about what specifically went wrong?

Dara Massicot

Well, I think I think the first thing that went wrong was their campaign plan. I mean, their operational plan to attack Ukraine from so many different angles in it on such extended lines really stretched their logistics to the breaking point. You know, if they were doing this in a way that made more sense, logistically, they probably would have consolidated that and attacked from the east and the south, maybe at maximum. But this whole arc, you know, coming in from Belarus and on down to Kyiv, Kyiv was a priority objective with the most strained logistics and the most congested route to to attack. The Ukrainians were very successful in the early weeks attacking Russian logistics convoys there. You know, their trucks, they're not really heavily defended. And the Russians were not defending them and they weren't even doing route clearance. They weren't doing route clearance for their tanks or certainly don't have the means to do route clearance for their logistics. So a lot of the trucks and some of their best logistical troops, logisticians, excuse me, were killed early on, destroyed equipment early on. And it really put them in a bind and limited their ability to progress. Now, they did correct for some of these issues. By the time that they had consolidated into the Donbas, by the summertime, their logistics lines are shorter. Russia uses a lot of rail inside inside their own country, and they're also using a lot of rail inside Ukraine. And there's some speculation that the reason why we're seeing the offensives that we're seeing right now is because they want to press or push back the Ukrainians a little bit farther so that they can have rail coverage all the way up to the front. They are having to make a lot of changes to how they do logistics inside Ukraine because Ukraine has HIMARS now. Right. And so they're having to move all of that back, you know, towards I think it's like 80 or 100km back away from all of those things. And that that affects op tempo as well. So it's a logistics matter. The Russians, the Russians theoretically know a lot about logistics, and yet that really didn't happen for them. And I you know, we talked about it earlier, the the secrecy and I what I assume to be a very compartmented, secretive plan probably contributed.

Evan Banks

Should Russia have predicted Western support to the degree that that Ukraine got?

Dara Massicot

Yeah. I mean, that's that's another, you know, huge component for why this war has has turned out the way that it has for Russia. I think that they certainly weren't anticipating the comprehensive nature of what we're providing to Ukraine at this point. I mean, whether it's air defense systems, whether it's M777 artillery or HIMARS or, you know, all all of these, you know, things that we're doing now, it's Leopard tanks and other kind of armored vehicles. I think the Russians were assuming that our support for Ukraine would continue at the level that it was in the immediate run up to the war, which is pretty small step, you know, is meaningful, but small Javelins, Stingers, bullets, you know, those kind of those kind of things. I think the Russians were calculating, you know. Okay. I have a rough estimate of Ukraine's organic, you know, supplies, artillery rounds. They can't last that long. They'll last couple of months at most. And if you listen to Ukrainian officers who are speaking to the press at this time, they're actually saying those kind of things like, you know, we're around April or May. They're like, we're running really low. Like, we need, you know, where this is critical. And that's when U.S. systems started flowing in and all these 155mm rounds and things like that. So, you know, there was some Russian estimation there that that was Ukrainian stockpiles anyway, that was probably fairly close to the mark. I don't know. You know, I think there's a lot of hubris going on on the Russian side. We know now from different kinds of media reports out there that U.S. officials sat their Russian counterparts down at multiple times, starting in November with CIA Director Burns and Patrushev, with Blinken and Lavrov, President Biden to President Putin saying, look, we know about your plan and we're going to get involved, like don't do this. And the Russians, according to these reports, basically shrugged it off and said it won't matter. Which is a huge mistake. That being said, I do think that there was a pivot in our policy towards Ukraine that happened like right after the war started. If you go back in time, if you're reading things said in January, January, February, at least, what's in, what's in the press? I don't know what the conversations were behind behind closed doors. But the press suggested that there was this idea that Ukraine could not hold off this invasion, that things would kind of degenerate into like a, you know, partisan kind of event. So when that didn't happen and Zelenskyy said, you know, I need ammunition, I don't need a ride. And, you know, everything kind of coalesced. I think there was a pivot in that support that the Russians were not anticipating and have not been able to cope with. They are not willing or not able to impact those weapons flows into Ukraine. And it's having a devastating impact in some cases on their front.

Evan Banks

I mean, they almost certainly weren't expecting the war to last as long as it has already.

Dara Massicot

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they thought this was a short thing.

Evan Banks

And then, of course, they weren't expecting the sanctions. Absolutely devastating to their economy in impacting their own supply chains to the to the extent that they have. Particularly, I think like this summer, there is a big there was a big turn, I think I noticed and and not Western support, but the kind of support that we gave. And I'm thinking of like HIMARS in particular and how like wildly successful that has been at like pushing Russian positions back. Can you talk a little bit about?.

Dara Massicot

Yeah. No, I mean in particular, yeah, there's, there's been a few, you know, points in time where something has been introduced into Ukraine and it's it's really made an impact. And, you know, there's different phases to it. Right? So there was the pre-war deliveries of Javelins and Stingers and they had their role. By the summertime, we started getting more artillery, more precision rounds, those kind of things. And and the Russians, it took them about a month and a half to two months to like cope and understand. I mean, you probably saw the videos on Twitter of, you know, these ammunition depots exploding, the Ukrainians targeting command and control nodes. Russians did eventually overcome that. You know, they had figured this out by, I don't know, maybe July, August, they started making changes. But I think the summer was really this when when all of these things started flowing in in large numbers.

Evan Banks

Do you see this as escalatory at all?

Dara Massicot

I mean, the Russians would have you believe that, but that's not really how they think about escalation. And, you know, when I think about escalation, I think about starting from the most serious case, which is escalating into nuclear war. Right. So that's. That's at the very top. And there's nothing that has been provided to Ukraine now that even comes close to that, those Russian red lines. I mean, Ukraine cannot inflict the kind of damage on Russia that would cross those nuclear thresholds that they discuss in their doctrine. Like, I mean, Ukraine has no nuclear weapons they can attack Russia with.

Evan Banks

That Russia discusses in its...

Dara Massicot

Yeah that Russia discusses. So when you when you hear these you know Russian leaders making these nuclear saber, saber rattling statements about, you know, this system or that system, it doesn't make sense according to what they say in their own military doctrine. Right. So this there's a few trip wires that would cause Russia to consider nuclear weapons. And I think it's important to to remember these things. If they're attacked with nuclear weapons or their allies or WMD, or if there's a massive conventional attack on Russia that threatens the very existence of the state and Ukraine is not capable of doing any of those things. So I'm I'm not worried about that. That's from the military side of the house. But then there's this wildcard question of just, you know, is there a distinction there? Is there a difference for how someone like Putin thinks about things like does he view, let's say, a collapse of the Russian front in Ukraine as an existential threat to him?

Evan Banks

Right.

Dara Massicot

And is then he looking for, you know, give me give me a solution? Yeah. And all of that is hypothetical, right? We don't we don't actually know how he would respond in that circumstance. We just have a few data points. You know, if we if we go back to like the Kharkiv collapse, this was in September of last year when the Ukrainian counter-offensive was happening in the south and also a surprise one up in the north. And a bunch of really spread out, weakened Russian units were unable to deal with that and panic set in and the whole thing just kind of collapsed in on itself. You know, if that were to happen, like across the front, you know, I think, you know, there's a sort of a panicked response that might set in into the Kremlin at that time. But again, there's nothing I can point to as a researcher to say, here's precedent for this situation. It's it's something I think people have on their minds. But overall, there is no kind of support that we're providing to Ukraine to allow them to defend themselves. That's going to cross your nuclear red line. It's just not it's not possible.

Evan Banks

Yeah. Just to clarify for me, because I don't know this, but I assume that Vladimir Putin has authority to launch nuclear weapons. Similarly to the president of the U.S.?

Dara Massicot

He does. But there's there's a lot of other there's a lot of other signoffs that have to occur below that. I'm not an expert in all of this.

Evan Banks

It's not a unilateral authority?

Dara Massicot

No, it is not.

Evan Banks

Well, that's a bit of a relief, maybe. Has this conflict played out like you expected it would? Has anything about it surprised you?

Dara Massicot

Where to? Where to begin? There have been multiple things that surprised me. Again, I think the early mistakes for how they led off the war, it really undermined a lot of their advantages and it exacerbated a lot of disadvantages. They did have you know, they have known manning problems. You know, they they were supposed to have an air force advantage over the Ukrainians and they they didn't utilize that very well. And there's there's maybe some reasons organizationally why why that's happening. You know, I, I assumed that they would not lie to their troops about the fact that they were going to fight a war like this only because they had committed basically all of them that they could commit. What an incredible risk. And yet they didn't. Even though their war plan was blown publicly and in private conversations with the Americans, he didn't deviate from it. They didn't even change it. What? Just the callousness, I guess, or the hubris, assuming that everything would work out according to plan was surprising. Again, just because of of the risk that they took by committing everything in at one time and with no follow on force. And, you know, like I guess I also have been surprised that, you know, it took them as long as it did to realize that they needed mobilization. They tried a few ad hoc methods to do this over the summertime and it didn't pan out. And then they ordered a mobilization. But again, there are and we've written about this here at RAND, there's multiple legal steps that they need to take in the run up to a mobilization. And I don't see any evidence that they actually prepared for that either.

Evan Banks

And you wrote that this is against their own their own stated military doctrine.

Dara Massicot

Right. There is a there is a and this is what, you know, I'm trying to tell people is that like there is a process for mobilization to make sure that when you actually mobilize and you open up the factory doors, like all the uniforms and stuff are there as they're supposed to be, there's a process for it. And, you know, they didn't they didn't do that process, even though it was clear to outside observers that eventually they were going to need to do mobilization. I have been surprised also that they continue to be very conservative with their air force. It is still a force in being. They have lost multiple squadrons at this point, fixed and rotary wing. But overall, it's still, you know, mostly intact. They are willing to where they are right now is literally throwing human waves at Ukrainian positions without air cover in most cases, maybe with the exception of Bakhmut currently. I've been surprised about that. I've been surprised that they are not they are hitting Ukraine with missiles and that is very devastating for Ukraine. However, they're not really learning on how to improve their targeting, and...

Evan Banks

They're running out of precision fires too.

Dara Massicot

They are running out of precision fires. And you see that they're able to launch waves of, you know, maybe 30 to 70 missiles like every 2 or 3 weeks. That's about what they can probably do at this point. It's not an overwhelming missile strike.

Evan Banks

They were targeting like electrical grids and infrastructure recently. So they do seem to be like learning a little bit about about tactical advantage and like where to strike.

Dara Massicot

They do. And, you know, there's but I want to add a little context to it. I mean, this is part of how they have learned and looked back at previous U.S. operations over time, whether it was Yugoslavia or whether it was, you know, some of the campaigns against Iraq. And they've come up with their own conclusions about, you know, what makes that work and what doesn't. But they don't have the resources that we did, right? so they have a limited ability to launch missiles and not just the missiles themselves, but like a limited launch tubes on aircraft and ships. There's no follow on. They they have used cyber attacks. They've used a lot of them. But the Ukrainians are able to bat away a lot of them. There's not really a ton of synergy there to to really make this effective. So, yes, they they are capable of understanding the Ukrainian power grid and they are targeting it and it is resulting in millions of Ukrainians being without heat or water. And the Ukrainians are working very hard to get that back online. And there's a bit of a problem in Russian strategy on this point. Like you, it's almost like their strategy is saying, okay, we're going to cause these strikes on critical infrastructure, something magic happens in the middle and then end state, you know, the enemy capitulates and is no longer able to...I mean, what's stage two?

Evan Banks

Is it that they're trying to just like inflict as much misery as they can on civilian populations?

Dara Massicot

That's true. I mean, I don't I don't know if that's you know, part of the equation here is I'm going to you know, me, Russia, I'm going to make everything so miserable for Ukrainians that, you know, it will what, bring people to the streets and overthrow Zelenskyy. I mean, that's that's not happening, right? Zelensky very early on came out with something I thought was very effective. And he said like he was addressing the nation. He was like, "If the choice is between lightness and being in the dark and you, like, we choose the dark. Or if the choice is between you or being cold, we choose cold." Like, you know. And it was just I thought that was really effective because he was going after and kind of like the guts of that whole striking the critical infrastructure. And it you know, it hasn't really produced results, they're expending a lot of missiles to do this, but it's not leading to any strategic effect.

Evan Banks

Yeah. And the Ukrainian resolve is still incredibly strong. Their will to fight is huge.

Dara Massicot

Right. And if anything, they've they've just made them more angry.

Evan Banks

Right. So what aspects of the conflict are you following most closely right now?

Dara Massicot

Well, so I'm following what appears to be the Russian, you know, spring offensive. Everyone's been talking about when is it going to happen? What are they going to do with the remainder of these mobilized forces? How are they going to use them? And I think we're seeing that right now. There are limited local offensives in areas like Bakhmut and Kreminna and Svatove. And these are areas that are in Luhansk and Donetsk. So it appears that there has been a directive from the Kremlin: push further, and maybe that's to the political boundary of these oblasts. I mean, I'm trying to figure out like, what is what is the stopping point right now that the Kremlin expects? I do think that there, again, is daylight between what the Kremlin wants and what the military can actually deliver based on the damage that it's sustained. So I'm watching those engagements in multiple places. I'm keeping an open mind to a larger offensive. I don't think Russia has a lot of resources right now to do that. I think they would need more mobilization and they would have to pull tanks and everything else even more than they've already done from strategic reserves out in Siberia. I don't see the signs of that happening, but it it could like they still have millions of people that are military age. They could mobilize. They haven't. They still have a lot of equipment out in Siberia, some of it very old and not in not even functional, but some of it is. And you can see it on Google Earth. It's out there and it's moving. They've been drawing down on it. So, you know, it remains something in the back of my mind. That's that's what I think is happening now. The Russian tactics are shifting again. It's a lot of, you know, brute force frontal assaults using infantry and waves to light up Ukrainian positions. And then, you know, other forces try to target. It is it is wearing on the Ukrainians. So even though it it looks you know, everyone can see it on Twitter, it looks bad for Russia. It's it's stressing the Ukrainians, too. So that's that's what I'm that's what I'm looking for for now. And then I remain ambiently concerned about what the Russian air force is doing. You know, as we said, it still remains largely intact. What are they? What are they waiting for? And I don't I haven't like that it's that's happening.

Evan Banks

Yeah. And I haven't seen Russia in general using kind of their their best stuff, if you will. So like this Su-57 has yet to like make an appearance. Now they only have like 16 of those...

Dara Massicot

No now, I think it's actually less but it's more like a prototype really than anything else.

Evan Banks

But tanks too. So they're I don't know why they're keeping so much in reserve.

Dara Massicot

Well, there's I mean, the losses to the tank fleet are extreme. I mean, they've lost a you know, I think it's upwards of around a thousand at this point, which is half their active duty tank fleet. Okay. Now, that being said, they have they have thousands in storage. But again, of those thousands, a small percentage actually functions well. Some can be cannibalized for parts. Some are have been sitting out in Siberian fields for 15 years. Like you're not going to get a lot of juice out of tank. But, you know, it is it is something to worry about. And especially, you know, keeping in mind Ukraine, Ukraine is being supplied now to the tune of I think it's 100 Leopard tanks. I mean, the numbers the numbers favor the Russians qualitatively favors the Ukrainians. But it's you know, these things are still, dynamics are still present.

Evan Banks

Yeah, Well, if the number of HIMARS units like taught us anything, what was it, like a couple dozen.

Dara Massicot

Yeah I think they have round like 16, 16, 17 at this point.

Evan Banks

Yeah. Wildly effective. So Yes. But wrapping things up. So what do you think is going to happen next and is there an end anywhere in sight?

Dara Massicot

Yeah, I wish I wish I could answer that question with any kind of confidence. But, you know, just looking at the dynamics playing out, it it seems that Putin still has his large objectives for Ukraine, which is neutralizing it. I don't think that that's possible. I don't think their force can take another run at Kiev. Even if they ordered another round of mobilization. It's not possible anymore. I think they would struggle even trying to open up another front against Kharkiv, even with an additional round of mobilization.

Evan Banks

I mean, this is this is amazing and a huge departure from whatever what I was hearing at the beginning of the war, which is that this is this is a small, scrappy country against an overwhelming force and and defeat was inevitable.

Dara Massicot

And yeah, and, you know, a lot of things really combined here to break against the Russians. You know they you know Ukrainian resistance is comprehensive. Western support is comprehensive. You know, their plan had a lot of problems and, you know, their own internal dynamics put it into a very secretive place that nobody really knew about it. So, you know, a lot of things combined here for this result. But it's the fight is not over. The Russians continue to try to press forward, even though their force is exhausted. They've been told you will go forward. The Ukrainians are exhausted, too, and they need a lot of support. Politically, I don't see Zelenskyy ever negotiating with the Russians for territorial concessions. I, I don't know if I don't know if the conflict will freeze or be a stalemate for a while. I don't know how the spring and summer will will end. But, you know, it's it's very much a war in progress and I don't see an off ramp.

Evan Banks

Thank you so much for talking with me. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Dara Massicot

Thank you so much.

Evan Banks

Thanks again to Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher. Obviously there's a lot that we weren't able to cover today, but if you'd like to hear more from Dara, you can follow her on Twitter @MassDara. Dara was also one of several RAND researchers, nearly 30, in fact, that we polled for a feature about the anniversary of Russia's invasion. We asked them to share notable takeaways from the first year of the war and to highlight what they're watching as the conflict enters year two. You can find this feature right now on rand.org. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. For more on today's episode, check the show notes at rand.org/podcast. See you next week.