Russia-Ukraine War Near a Stalemate_ Expert

And now to dig deeper into the current state of the Russia-Ukraine war, we're happy to have on Michael O'Hanlon, Director of Research and Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. Michael O'Hanlon, thank you so much for joining. Nice to be with you. Thanks for having me. It's nice to have you back, Michael. So you recently wrote an article for the Washington Post suggesting that the Russia-Ukraine war is basically at a near stalemate. Could you sort of give us an update as to what's actually happening there on the battlefield? Thank you. Well, it's a near stalemate. Unfortunately, Russia is making some progress, throwing a lot of bodies into it and outgunning Ukraine in the eastern part of Ukraine and making, you know, gains by a few hundred yards a day, trying to take small towns that, if they were to be successful, could add up to a slight exception to the overall argument that Will Brooks and I made in our piece. But what we had done, we used some very good maps created by a different think tank, the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute. And they've got teams on the ground actually reporting back by social media where the fighting is happening. And what we found was there was a lot of movement in the battlefield in the first few months. And some people will remember this. That's not a radical new finding. But on balance, after the late fall of 2022, there's been almost no movement in the battlefront. There has been, to be more specific, about 1% of Ukraine has been shifting hands one way or the other since that moment. So for almost two years, the fight has been, yes, against Ukraine's cities with missiles and drones, and now a little bit into Russia with Ukraine's incursion starting last month. But for the most part, it's this sort of semicircular swath of land through eastern and then into southern Ukraine that represents the front line, where there are a lot of fortifications that have been built. That battle line has been more or less static. When I say static, I don't mean literally static, but it takes a lot of effort to move it by one kilometer in either direction. And it rarely moves by more than five kilometers, so let's say three to five miles. So over two years of war, that's sort of the degree of movement we see in most parts of the front line. So Michael, you mentioned the incursion into Russia that Ukraine had. Talk to us about that. Is that just kind of a small victory, or how is Vladimir Putin processing that and looking at that? Is that something enough to cause him to react in a way that we may not want to see? That's a great question. Let me answer it in two ways. First of all, let me take your question literally. How big of a deal is it in terms of territory? It's about 500 square miles. In other words, let's say, roughly speaking, 30 miles on one dimension, almost 20 miles on the other. Of course, it's not really perfectly shaped like a rectangle, but 500 square miles is about 30 by 20. So it's not trivial. They got in far enough. That's like the size of a metropolitan area, 30 miles. But it's not anything close to the size of Western Russia. It's a tiny sliver. And it's also small compared to all the land within Ukraine that Russia now occupies. Ukraine's lost a little bit of that initial incursion in recent weeks. It's still holding pretty steady, but it doesn't seem likely to expand its holdings. So that's the specific, literal answer to your question. But the broader question about psychology and strategy is not at all clear to me. President Zelensky, I guess, has been meeting today with President Biden and with Vice President Harris and congressional leadership of both parties. I think he hopes to meet President Trump. And the overall pitch I think he's making is that he has a concept of victory. And the land he's now holding inside Russia is part of that theory. Clearly, he's hoping that it either can be something he uses to bargain back at least some of his own territory. Or it's something that shocks Vladimir Putin into feeling that now Russia itself is under attack and that's going to make Putin less confident that he should just keep waging this war. But I'm worried, like you put in your question to me, that there's also the chance Putin uses this as a pretext to escalate. And so I hope that President Zelensky is not overestimating what this will do for him. So, Michael, as you mentioned, President Biden today did announce an additional $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine. This sort of sidesteps Congress, if you will. Do you see this being helpful? And at the same time, President Biden says he's not yet ready to offer Ukraine long-range weaponry that could make its way into the interior of Russia. What are your thoughts on that? Well, first of all, I'm not sure this really sidesteps Congress, because as you know, the Biden administration was diligent this past spring about waiting for congressional authorization before providing that $61 billion aid package. And I think this $8 billion probably comes out of that $61 billion. You may know differently. I haven't looked at the details. But the Biden administration has been pretty diligent about making sure Congress is aboard, partly because they know that Congress could really try to cause them trouble. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. And so when presidents try to go around that, they historically get in trouble. So Biden didn't really have much of a choice. He doesn't really have much of an option, which raises questions of what would happen next year, especially if Vice President Harris won the presidency but got a Republican House or Senate or both. To what extent could she bring Congress along? Because that $61 billion aid package from last spring is going to run out by early in the next president's term. So it'll help. It's good. But it's the kind of thing we've been doing for two and a half years. It's not going to be a game changer. That would be my overall reaction to what President Biden has just provided. Michael O'Hanlon, really fascinating perspective. Thank you so much. Thank you kindly.