Interview: What To Expect In The Next Phase Of The Ukraine War (rferl.org)
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To find out more about what to expect, RFE/RL spoke with
Russian military expert Michael Kofman, who heads the Russia Studies Program at the Virginia-based think tank CNA.
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Michael Kofman: ...
I think the way the war is going right now is that Russian forces are making steady progress, [but] most of the initial objectives in the war, I don't think they can reach at this point. I do not see a strong proposition for them being able to assault and capture Kyiv, for example, and [it is beginning to] look like Russia is revising its war goals down towards some sort of political settlement [with the Ukrainian government].
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Kofman: ...
So, the future of the conflict most likely is that the Russian military is probably going to become exhausted in the coming weeks and need operational pauses. They’re going to become combat ineffective, and they’ll need to replenish and reorganize and rearm units. So that means that we're probably going to be looking at a cease-fire of some kind -- maybe not a full political settlement -- in the coming weeks. That's my projection [and] it's about the most optimistic I’ve been in this conflict.
Having said that, I think the war is still going to get ugly over the course of this time period and you will see the Russian military in some areas using outright pressure tactics by barraging cities and just hitting the civilian population to put pressure on Ukraine's political leadership.
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RFE/RL: Beyond what you've already mentioned, what has surprised you most about how this war has been fought?
Kofman: The fact that the war was essentially kept secret from large parts of the Russian military [was very surprising], so they were materially unprepared, psychologically unprepared, and had very low morale with very little organization for a proper military operation. That, of course, really ceded the initiative to the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainians have put up a tremendous resistance, they fought smartly, leveraged urban terrain, [and] attacked Russian supply lines, which were the Achilles' heel of their effort.
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It's also a good opportunity to reflect on to what extent this is the problem of the [Russian] military itself or to what extent it really was just a bad plan. It's really [President Vladimir] Putin's war and I think that's what surprised me. The Russian military is prosecuting it, that's very clear, but ineffectually and unimpressively.
This is fundamentally Putin’s war and it turns out that when he tried to characterize it as a special military operation, he really meant it.
It looks like he really thought this was going to be a special military operation. They were going to be in and out in a few days and they were going to somehow conduct regime change and overthrow the government of what is the largest country in Europe outside of Russia, which sounds wild. It’s phenomenal [to think of] the delusions that [would] have led to those kinds of assumptions and that plan, but nonetheless, here we are.
