Transcription
At the moment this episode is released, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will already have gone on longer than World War I. Across both sides, the war is responsible for more than 2 million casualties, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to one of the war's most reliable casualty monitors by Media Zoner and the BBC, the two sides have suffered over 230,000 directly confirmed Russian deaths, more than double the combined US death toll from every American war since World War II. And that's just a confirmed count with the true death toll expected to be far higher.
With a war like the one in Ukraine, where the very future of the European continent hangs in the balance, it's logical enough to expect that if nothing else, at least the war is over when it's over. Both nations turn toward reconstruction, perhaps one day the hope of reconciliation, and the families who the conflict has left behind have the time to properly mourn the fallen. But on both sides of the Russia Ukrainian war, the expectations for a postwar order are very different. Whether in Moscow or in Kiev, national leaders, strategists, and commanders seem to agree. Any ceasefire that brings the war to a formal end will only provide a brief intermission before the next conflict begins. Before the war over Ukraine is truly settled, Russia and Ukraine will fight three wars, of which this incredibly costly exchange is only the second. According to some, the next conflict will bring about the end of either Russia or Ukraine, while according to others, it'll end in World War II. But according to all of them, the next Russia Ukraine war is coming. And once this fight is settled, it's only a matter of time before the next one begins. One conflict, two wars.
Now, at the outset of today's episode, we've got to admit the claim that Russia and Ukraine are bound to fight a total of three wars before their business is settled is oddly specific in a way that understandably might not make much sense from the outside. But to understand how Russians and Ukrainians get to that conclusion, we've got to introduce a bit of nuance. Because according to this overarching theory of Russia Ukrainian conflict, we're currently witnessing the second of those three wars, not the first. Instead, the first one was the one that started back in 2014 when in the aftermath of Ukraine's Euroman protests and the revolution of dignity, Russia seized and annexed the peninsula of Crimea before moving on Ukraine's eastern Donbass region. Of course, that war ended up flowing directly into the current war and across much of the world outside Russia and Ukraine. story of this conflict doesn't really make a distinction between one and the other. But in Moscow and in Kiev, the distinction is actually quite important because the lower grade war in the Donbass created the conditions for Russia's full-scale invasion. And the invasion will create the conditions for war number three, whenever it may take place. And we're not just splitting hairs here either. In a practical sense, the war in the Donbass couldn't have been more different than the full-scale war that came immediately afterward. And the time gap between the two, or really the lack thereof, is functionally irrelevant. Think back to the astronomical casualty counts we mentioned just a moment ago and those were nowhere to be found in the prior conflict. Instead, over nearly 8 years of continuous fighting, the casualties of the Donbas war standed around 14,500 killed, including Russians, Ukrainians, separatists, and civilians on all sides and less than 60,000 wounded. This was a war that Russia fought primarily by placing its soldiers and loyalists under a distinct separatist banner and only intervening directly to stabilize the front lines and prevent a Ukrainian victory or take interns national engagement. The Western world was certainly interested in a Ukrainian victory, but its involvement was nowhere close to what it's been from 2022 onward. Instead, the Dawnbass war was all about setting conditions. Russia slowly expanded into a staging area in eastern Ukraine, developed logistical and supply infrastructure to support a larger invasion and created the threat that it could recognize the separatist claims of Daetsk and Lahansk without actually doing so until just days before the full-scale invasion. Ukraine started work on a range of fortifications and contingency plans including its fortress belt while getting its relationship straight with western capitals to the extent that it was possible. But the Donbass war didn't end with either side achieving its wartime goals. Russia didn't capture the whole of the Donbass or secure international recognition for its Crimea annexation while Ukraine didn't manage to push Russia off its territory. Instead, both sides understood that the fighting would have to escalate further before those issues were resolved. So, both Moscow and Kiev spent those eight years making preparations as best they could. And in the end, Moscow was able to set the conditions for a full-scale invasion before Ukraine was able to set conditions that would have made a full-scale invasion impossible. So, Russia was able to progress to the next stage of the conflict on terms that were broadly favorable, if not necessarily ideal. Russia set a new series of goals culminating with the capture of Kiev and the destruction of Ukraine as an independent nation. And Ukraine was forced to set a new goal that basically consisted of preventing Russia from getting what it wanted.
So when we start to think about the possibility of a third war in the near future, the best place to start is by asking why. Why would Russia and Ukraine each believe that a renewed war is either in their own interests or worse, that the other side would be so hellbent on a renewed war that the outcome might be unavoidable? For Ukraine, this war has obviously been a horrific ordeal. But now that we're past the 4-year mark, K's prospects are looking a lot better than anybody expected. The nation is going to have to take on the immense task of reconstruction, but it's going to be looking at better economic prospects than ever, not least because of its eventual entry into the European Union or the creation of a booming, cutting edge defense industry. Ukraine is forming deeper defense relationships with many of its Western partners than ever. And it's got a clear roadmap to modernize and reinforce a peaceime military. The country is on track to become less corrupt, more developed, and less ex-s Soviet and more European, a better overall trajectory than Russia's by far. But even if Ukraine might have limited success in its counteroffensive before this current war concludes, it's highly unlikely to restore its pre204 borders. That means that despite its gaining power and influence, Ukraine will still be under Russian occupation, a deeply fundamental problem that must be addressed.
Russia, meanwhile, needs a war in Ukraine, or at least a war somewhere. But Ukraine is the easiest place to do it. That's because in order to keep the nation lurching forward, Russia has shifted entirely into a war economy where conflict and the associated economic forces are vital to stimulate the country. Nor can Russia's current leadership stomach the idea that it would give up on its war objectives or that it would allow the rest of the world to deny its claims to Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine. It can't sacrifice the tremendous investments it's made in occupied Ukrainian territory. and it certainly can't allow Ukraine to b its time, build up its military, and take back that territory at Kiev's convenience. Russia's place in the world is declining quickly, but a victory in Ukraine could still write the ship. Russia's economy is starting to crumble, but Ukraine's economic power could be the lifeline Moscow needs. In essence, Moscow depends on war with Ukraine, and it's long since destroyed all the alternative paths that it might have followed to chart a path back toward peace and stability. Neither Russia nor Ukraine could be satisfied with a ceasefire arrangement that would more or less freeze the conflict along the current line of contact, even though that's how this current war is probably going to conclude. For that reason, both sides shifted their war goals a long time ago to try and make sure that they accumulate as many strategic and tactical advantages as possible before the war ends in a ceasefire. That's because whether the ceasefire lasts a day or a decade, there are a whole range of things that Russia and Ukraine just won't be able to do during peace time. Once the ceasefire goes into effect, neither side can capture territory or target each other's infrastructure beyond the bounds of peaceime espionage. Neither side will be able to justify compromising the lives of millions of people, forcing an entire economy into alignment around a set of wartime goals, or absorbing the sheer cost of open conflict. By nature of a ceasefire going into effect, both sides will voluntarily give up both geostrategic tools and any progress they make afterward will be on the margins. That even includes steps like Ukraine joining NATO or Russia rebuilding its military to its pre-war strength. Seismic changes, but still well short of the change that's possible under wartime conditions.
As for what that means in a practical sense, both sides have already made that clear during previous rounds of failed negotiations. Russia's refusal to allow this war to end without capturing the Donbass region or at the very least Ukraine's fortress belt in Daetsk isn't an accident. Russia sees those cities as the anchor point of a future fortified Ukrainian border in a world where Kiev is able to regain control. Ukraine clearly agrees, hence KV's supreme unwillingness to entertain any peace terms that would concede parts of the Donbass that Russia hasn't yet captured. Russia wants to impose terms that would drastically limit Ukraine's military and prevent it from joining NATO. Because if Russia can't compel Ukraine to agree to those terms through the use of military force, then there's no shot that Russia could stop Ukraine through peacetime negotiations. Ukraine isn't willing to make any such concessions because in Ukraine's view, these aren't concessions that will make a future war less likely. They're concessions that will leave Ukraine weakened in a coming war that Ukraine regards as inevitable.
The next war. In most cases, when two nations not only expect to go to war, but also believe that their adversary expects to go to war, they're going to end up going to war sooner rather than later. After all, a nation that believes that future conflict is inevitable will spend their time and money gathering weapons and building up their fighting forces. In elected governments, leaders who can promise strength and strategic competence will be rewarded, while those that aren't up to the task will be brushed aside or will fail to gain a mandate. In autocracies where a return to war is a priority or even a fundamental economic condition, the instruments of the state will be directed toward that goal even at the expense of other national priorities or at the expense of its people. Culture will shape itself around anticipation of a future conflict and ideas of unity and national identity will be described in the language of that future conflict. It's not impossible that this kind of situation could resolve without a war, but it's a lot less likely than the alternative. That principle manifests differently on either side of this conflict, but it shows up constantly.
On the Ukrainian side, President Zilinski has often framed the war in generational terms. An irreconcilable difference between the very nature of Russia and the very nature of Ukraine and one that can either be resolved by the leaders and soldiers of today or by their children or their children's children. In his telling, there is no world in which Ukraine doesn't fight for its right to exist for their sakes. He's directly compared Ukraine to Israel in that regard, a country that will maintain a permanent state of military readiness on the assumption that Russia will remain willing to swallow Ukraine if it ever has the opportunity. Even stronger on this issue than Zalinski, however, is the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces and the most likely person to be Zilinski's successor, Valerie Galujni. As he's explained to Ukrainian and international media, he sees Ukraine's future as a long-term direct resource competition with Russia, where Ukraine will compete with the full backing of the Western world. He openly, frequently discusses Ukraine's future in a way that simply assumes that there's another war with Russia in the future. And Ukrainian's apparent willingness to elect him in a post-war government suggests that the country is likely to operate on exactly that premise in the post-war years.
In Russia, meanwhile, the idea of continued conflict with Ukraine, so long as Ukraine exists as an independent country, has almost a mystical quality to it. Take the stance of Alexander Dugan, a highly influential political philosopher who shaped the modern Kremlin's idea of its place in the world. For decades, he's preached that Russia is on a path to create a grand Eurasian Empire, but one that cannot exist unless Ukraine is reclaimed and made part of the Russian Federation first. In Dugan's mind, the current war is in an early stage, in an apocalyptic battle of good and evil, and the battle for Ukraine must continue until it's won. Nor is that idea unique to him. Since 2006, for example, one of the guiding ideological works in Putin's inner circle has been a novel called The Third Empire by Mika Yurv in which an unannounced war in eastern Ukraine slowly metastasizes into an apocalyptic World War II. Ex-president Dmitri Medvidev, today a regular Putin attack dog, has been framing the Ukraine war as the prelude to a Russia versus West confrontation that will last for decades. While another highly influential political scientist Sergey Karan Kanov has also consistently amplified that same frame. Even Russian leaders who haven't been quite so overt like defense minister Andre Balosovv appear to be working toward the same goal in substance including with Bosov's decisions as the architect of Russia's perpetual war economy.
Even European leaders have largely come to the same conclusion, which has been a key part of their resistance to Washington's efforts to establish an immediate peace in exchange for concessions that just don't make sense if there's expectation of future conflict. According to numerous reports from across NATO's European governments, the alliance fully expects Russia to challenge NATO directly in the next few years if it can establish favorable enough circumstances in Ukraine. Within a timeline of 1 to three years, Russia is expected to engage in a relatively limited attack meant less to capture a large amount of territory and more to test the limits of NATO's commitment to collective defense. On a longer timeline, however, European intelligence agencies anticipate a full-scale war, if only to sustain a Russian state that will struggle to survive without it. But even if Russia could try and conduct a very limited assault without getting Ukraine involved in a world where Ukraine were left weak and excluded from NATO and irrelevant European defense, that's not the world on the horizon. Instead, Ukraine is very open about the fact that it sees itself quite justifiably as the defender of the entire European continent, even as European leaders are increasingly willing to concede that after this war, Ukraine outclasses any of them on the battlefield. Taken together, those changes have a strange way of reaffirming what Dugan, Medvidev, and all the other Kremlin stooges believe that in order to set up an eventual ultimate confrontation with arrest, Ukraine will have to be dealt with first. Prophecy creates policy and policy eventually ends up fueling prophecy.
In the event that a ceasefire is agreed between the two nations, then each of them will have clear urgent priorities to address before a return to conflict. And we should specify here, unlike the transition from the Dawnbas into the full-scale invasion, it seems that both sides are going to need some semblance of a break. Whether that pause lasts for a few months, a few years, or a decade plus is anyone's guess. But regardless, it's going to be a sprint for as long as it continues.
On the Ukrainian side, Kiev will be looking to modernize its forces as quickly and comprehensively as possible, leveraging foreign investment to fuel its defense industry and accepting hard-hitting, sophisticated military kit that it can't make by itself. At the same time, Kev will work to reinforce the layers of defenses behind its fortress belt and along the western bank of the Nepro River to stonewall the next Russian attack whenever it comes. After the success of its mid-range and long-range campaigns, Kiev will probably try and greatly expand its strike capabilities. While it'll also be looking for hard and fast commitments from European and global military allies. That might mean NATO membership, or it might mean the deployment of a strong, robust coalition of the willing. Anything that guarantees if Russia attacks Ukraine, it must expect to face Ukraine's strategic partners, too.
For Russia, the priorities will be to rest, recover, and train its soldiers without allowing too many of them to return to civilian life. while also laying the foundation for a larger mobilization of Russian citizens in the future, including from the wealthy cities where Russian forced recruitment has been much less common. Moscow will have to do its best to reconstitute its higher tech industry, its all refining and export infrastructure and other industrial bottlenecks and choke points that Ukraine has targeted while also providing such an overwhelming volume of lowcost munitions that Ukraine would be forced to abandon its frontline fortifications under an incomprehensible mass of fire.
At the same time, both countries will be trying to deal with a critical demographic problem. Long before the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine was well aware of its looming population crisis with too few young people to sustain the country to the point that Ukraine's military is far older than most global fighting forces. Russia, meanwhile, has a large population overall, but it's also dealing with a similar, if less pronounced, demographic crunch. More to the point, Russia has sacrificed a high proportion of its entire generation of younger fighting edge men, while those who've escaped so far have either gotten very good at draft dodging or otherwise are part of the relatively wealthy Russian elite and are currently operating under the assumption that they're safe from force conscription. For both countries, that dynamic creates another incentive to work fast, prepare, and they get another war started and finish before the crisis gets even worse. But it also creates an incentive to build meaningful military alliances and lean on the help of other nations and their troops. That's going to be much easier for Ukraine than it is for Russia, partly because of Ukraine's high chance of securing a coalition of the willing deployment in the near future, but partly because Russia is the expansionist power here. And it's a lot easier to talk military partners into mutual defense than it is to talk them into shared acts of overt aggression.
If there's one key message to take away from all of this, it's that even if a third war between Ukraine and Russia isn't completely guaranteed, it should still be regarded as inevitable until proven otherwise. Both Ukraine and Russia understand that they're heading into what might become a decadesl long cycle of confrontation and that the only way the cycle ends is if one of them collapses before the next war starts. So for Ukraine, it is quite literally inconceivable to make the sorts of concessions that its less strategically adept allies like Washington's Trump administration have demanded. It's inconceivable to surrender fortified defensible territory or abide by limitations on his armed forces or geostrategic alignment because this isn't over and it won't be over for a very long time to come. The war that's going on in Ukraine today will end and perhaps even before the end of this year. But once that happens, Ukraine and Russia will enter a frozen stage in a conflict that hasn't yet been resolved. The allies on both sides of the divide, Europe, North America, and others for Ukraine, and China, North Korea, Bellarus, and others for Russia, just cannot have any illusions about this, or else they're going to be very surprised when Russia and Ukraine continue to walk the path to war when the entire world is expecting a lasting peace. Thank you for watching.