Show Notes
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine moves into its second year, Peter and Eric welcome to The Drill Down the author Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert who served as a Russian strategy specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency and with the CIA’s National Clandestine Service to analyze the war’s likely outcome and ask questions about the Biden administration’s strategy for helping the Ukrainians.
Rebekah Koffler
Koffler is the author of the book Putin’s Playbook, a deep study of Vladimir’s strategic attempts to reconstitute the territory of the defunct Soviet Union, where she was born. Under Putin, Russia launched an invasion of the territory known as the Crimea in 2014, then invaded Ukraine a second time one year ago.
The war continues, with Russia’s casualties mounting and Putin’s goal of overrunning Ukraine looking less likely every day. Peter sets up the conversation: “We are fully in support of the Ukrainian people and support their efforts to defend their sovereignty and independence. But you do have this problem of people in the Ukraine and the US of profiteering.” First, though, a brief update on what is happening overall with the war.
“The Russians are using a centuries-old strategy in Ukraine – to out-suffer and outlast their adversary,” Koffler explains. They call it “the meat-grinder strategy.” {Editor’s note: See below for sidebar on the “Wagner Group”} The Russians lost 25 million of their own citizens in World War 2, and have sustained about 200,000 losses so far in Ukraine. But, she concludes, despite Ukraine’s valiant efforts, the war is unwinnable for them. They don’t have enough people or weaponry to resist the Russian war of attrition. “The Ukrainians are going to be slaughtered.”
Eric is troubled by what GAI researchers have found in research for the podcast – that US defense contractors are anticipating this conflict will be become a cash cow for them. Lobbyists are already lining up in Washington to get in on the $196 billion in total aid to Ukraine.
The defense industry has not yet experienced a “boom” from the war in Ukraine. Their efforts to replenish stocks after Ukraine aid reduced stockpiles has exposed significant supply chain problems for them. Big defense contractors adopted what is known as “just-in-time manufacturing,” a form of efficient production developed by auto manufacturers, which complicates surge production in a crisis. Lockheed Corp. and Raytheon Technologies Corp, which co-produce the Javelin and Stinger missile systems, don’t expect a bump in sales until 2024.
That, and other actions of the Biden administration, suggest it is prioritizing the goal of “bleeding out Russia” through their military support for Ukraine, as Koffler tells Peter and Eric. Given Russia’s vast reserves of conscripts for the Russian army and lack of opposition to Putin at home, however, will that actually work?
Peter notes the Biden administration seems to be holding out for some kind of “unconditional surrender” by Putin, but notes that such a demand actually puts Putin’s back to the wall and offers him no reason to negotiate and instead gives him reason to escalate to using battlefield nuclear weapons, as he has already threatened.
The dilemma, Peter says, is that Ukraine is itself a corrupt country filled with “ethically challenged leadership,” but also that “these are the vessels we have to deal with. Give them the means to defend themselves, but don’t give them any cash. In Afghanistan, there were fictitious “ghost armies” that were recipients of US aid, which was just stolen.
Koffler puts it succinctly: “If you love Ukraine, you must pressure the Biden administration to urge Zelensky to settle with Russia. The elites in this country are saying it is good strategy to “bleed” Putin, but it’s really hurting the Ukrainian people. Second, tell the truth to the American people. There is almost an embargo on doing so in the media. Anything negative said about Ukraine and you won’t be invited back on.”
Sidebar: “The Wagner Group”
The Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary force that began with Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. It claims to be an independent group of fighters, but western journalists have tied the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to Vladimir Putin. The group has been, according to independent observers, responsible for committing war crimes in Ukraine and believed to be behind a plot to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
On the show, Rekekah Koffler refers to a 2017 incident, what then-President Donald Trump called Putin to confirm that the “Wagner group” was in no way part of Russia’s military forces, before telling Putin that he had ordered a missile strike on the group’s headquarters in Syria as retaliation for their involvement in Bashar Al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians in the conflict there.
Strategic analyst Peter Zeihan discussed the Wagner Group recently and explained that the group draws its membership from Russian ex-military and from Russian prisons, where convicts are offered commutation of their sentences in exchange for joining the group and being sent to Ukraine, where they are often used as cannon fodder. Zeihan believes the group may be coming to an end this year now that Putin has mobilized the entire military as eligible for service in Ukraine and word has spread among the prison population that jail is preferable to death on a Ukrainian battlefield.
