What’s Happening in Ukraine and What Might Come Next

BUCK: So the situation in Ukraine is as follows. You have over 870,000 Ukrainians reportedly have fled the country. The Russian military convoy is continuing to snake its way toward Kiev, the capital city. There are very heightened concerns about a siege of the capital as well as the escalation of Russian strikes that are hitting civilian targets. And there’s even accusations already that the Russians are specifically, in some cases, targeting civilian areas and going after not just critical infrastructure and military but other civilian targets of opportunity as they see it.

We have been wondering when we’re gonna get an official Russian Ministry of Defense update on casualties. Clay, over the weekend, the numbers we were seeing were in the neighborhood of between three and 4,000 Russians killed. That seems too high, to me. There’s no way the Russian military would be able to sustain three or four thousand dead a week for the duration of a conflict that could likely go on for months here.

They could handle it by numbers but not politically at home. Putin would… That’s far too many. They lost 15,000 in a decade in Afghanistan, by way of comparison, and we know what a disaster that was for the Soviets. The Russian defense ministry has said 498 of its soldiers have been killed in Ukraine with almost 1600 wounded. Those numbers do seem pretty close. Those are pretty… Now, look, they may be underplaying it, to be sure.

But, I mean, yeah, when you’re talking about 1600 casualties, all-in when you’re talking killed and wounded as well — killed and wounded together — 2,000 in a week, that then does correspond with what we’ve seen, which is a lot of footage of these convoys, armored personnel carriers, tanks being hit by Ukrainian resistance. And those Javelin anti-tank missiles and the other armaments that have been sent to Ukraine in recent years…

Notably, I would add, by the Trump administration over the objections of previous Obama administration officials, they’re certainly causing serious problems for the Russians. Clay, here’s the big question we’ve got. We don’t know which way this is going right now. Is Putin losing fast enough and heavily enough that maybe he is rethinking, or are we still in the early phase of a conflict that is just about to ramp up dramatically and therefore the Ukrainian casualties will get much higher and Putin is in this for the long run no matter what the costs, it looks like, in this early stage?

I’m hearing people go back and forth on this. Obviously tremendously different outcomes, depending on which one of those is the likelier scenario. And I’ve gotta say, I tend to think that the Russians have been underestimated up to this point in terms of their dedication to the conquest of at least eastern Ukraine. That’s my sense. But the Ukrainians are clearly putting up a really serious fight. I mean, over 2,000 casualties for the Russians. That’s a lot.

CLAY: No doubt. And if the Russians are admitting that, it’s probably likely that that’s the low end, right? The Ukrainian number is probably the high end, the truth probably somewhere in the middle of. But that is a substantial loss of manpower. And the question that really begs to be asked is, what is Vladimir Putin’s endgame here? Because let’s presume that if he continues to push his forces into Ukraine, at some point you would think the raw numbers would lead to his being able to seize Kiev and these other cities that he’s attempting to take control of.

But what does control look like? Ukraine is the size of Texas. So is Putin going to commit 150,000 troops long range in order to basically be policing all of Ukraine to ensure that whatever government he tries to prop up is going to be in power there? And then what sort of long-term consequences is he willing to accept in terms of the cost of that occupation? And also, Buck, the cost of that occupation plus the loss of men and materials that will continue.

Because I think you’re gonna continue to see Ukrainian citizens firing away potshots here and there, taking out troops, throwing Molotov cocktails, ending lives and ending the use of so many different apparatus of war there. So how does this end for Putin in any way other than a loss?

‘Cause that’s the way I’m already looking ahead for is there are metaphors this thing could end. Russia could decide, “Hey, it’s not worth it. We’re gonna get some negotiated settlement, claim that we got what we wanted, and pull out.” But it doesn’t seem to me, Buck, like this has any possibility of ending in a positive direction for Vladimir Putin. The question is just what’s the time frame.

BUCK: So here’s what I think, and this goes into the analytic prediction category, right? Here’s what I think Putin is trying to get out of this. And I’m the first to admit that there’s a lot of conflicting reporting about everything right now. The Russian morale for the troops is super low. The Russians have barely begun to fight; the Ukrainians feel like they can keep this going for months.

The Ukrainians feel like once the artillery comes in and close air support from the Russians are pounding them, it’s just a matter of days before they have to capitulate. So you’re seeing reporting — and debates about the reporting — on both sides of these major equations. Here’s what I think is happening — or, rather, here’s what I think Putin wants to happen. I’d say that. This is his endgame as I see it — and I could be wrong, and we’ll see.

But he’s going to encircle Kiev. That’s obviously underway right now. He’s gonna encircle Kiev, be pounding the capital city, and they’re going to be turning up the pressure, and there will be mounting casualties and also destruction of critical infrastructure and military and security units in the rest of Ukraine going on. So they’ll be strengthening the Russian bargaining position. The eastern part of Ukraine, for all intents and purposes, in Putin’s mind — the Donbas region — is Russia.

That is now the Russian Federation. Russian passports have been give an out. No way… That’s why he said from the very beginning he’s recognizing them as independent states or recognizing their independence. They’re part of Russia. In any negotiation, I think that will be immovable for Vladimir Putin. The part of Ukraine from essentially the capital east of the Dnieper River.

That, I think, is going to become a “Russian peacekeeping,” quote, unquote peacekeeping or protectorate zone. They’ll keep military there they’ll say in order to protect Russian speaking minorities and for stabilization during the ceasefires and negotiations that will be happening around the capital city. I think they want the government under Zelensky to effectively capitulate to full Russian control of the Donbas.

A Russian buffer state, if you will, or buffer zone in the east of the Dnieper River area in Ukraine and then they give, essentially, the concession will be the end of open hostilities and warfare with the end of the invasion effectively, and they’ll give the western part of Ukraine to some sort of power sharing or they’ll break that down and say, “Well, that can effectively be what the old Ukraine was at some level with this new government going on,” right?

That’s how I see it happening ’cause I don’t believe that Putin thinks that he can expand all across the entire country and maintain that. But what he does have here, there’s Ukraine-speaking Ukrainians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, in his mind, and if he can separate those out geographically and in terms of a political notion as well, it’s effectively a divide-and-conquer strategy and state in play. That’s what I think he’s gonna do instead of going to the whole country if he can get there militarily, which is the huge unanswered question that I can’t… I don’t know how that goes.

CLAY: I think the other question that a lot of people are debating — we should talk about this when we come back in the next segment — is how does Zelensky play into this? Because you know the way that people respond to issues like these, Buck, is they become attached to stories and they become attached to the individual story. And Zelensky has become a hero of much of the Western world and, frankly, of much of the world in general.

How does Putin finesse that? Because it doesn’t seem like Zelensky is going to walk away from Ukraine even if his life remains — as it is so far — in incredible danger, and what is Russia going to do with him? How do they reconcile the immense amount of political legitimacy that Zelensky is going to retain no matter what? To me, that’s one of the big topics of discussion here because it goes to what Russia will be able to do even if they, quote-unquote, “win” this war in some way, which I think certainly there’s a big debate about whether that’s going to happen or not.