This video is a little over 50 minutes and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA1yofpkMg (bold added). A couple of timestamps noted.
Michael Vlahos gave background on himself: has taught war and strategy at various war colleges since 1980; served in the Navy, the CIA and as a senior executive with the State Department.
He provided background on Col. Douglas MacGregor, US Army, retired, and the last officer to lead an armored cavalry squadron in tank to tank combat.during Desert Storm. He's a national champion of military reform, and perhaps the most important thinker on American combat power and grand strategy writing today. His most recent book, Margin of Victory, will frame much of our conversation.
The war in Ukraine is still raging after 9 months and 10 days. First and foremost we should remember the Ukraine war is the creation and the culmination of a long-standing and aggressive US policy of NATO expansion into former Soviet states, especially Ukraine.
The backstory is there for everyone to see, laid bare by the lectures and interviews of John Mearsheimer; the writing of Jim Goldgeier on promises we made to Boris Yeltsin and archives released detailing US government
representations to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet premier.
This will be a conversation in three parts. Part 1, what does the war tell us, what has happened, where are we now; Part 2, why has NATO failed so strongly at the strategic level and look at a proxy war effectively run on denial and deceit; and Part 3, what is to be done and where do we go from here.
Let's start at the beginning. What was the original conception of the special military operation (SMO) in terms of its goals and the net assessment that allowed Putin to initiate it.
DM: I think Putin decided that all his efforts to talk us into some level of understanding had failed to persuade us that Russia would not tolerate NATO membership for Ukraine and the eventual
positioning of NATO forces, especially NATO missiles, long-range strike weapons in eastern Ukraine led him to conclude he had to go in an demonstrate how serious he was.
I think he made a number of assumptions about how this would work out that turned out to be invalid. One assumption was that the leadership in Washington and in Kiev would want to negotiate
and avoid a wider war. I don't think he was prepared for what turned out to be the opposite.
So the first going-in proposition was we're going in with limited troops; we're going a short distance into eastern Ukraine, principally into those areas where the majority of the population speaks Russian; and we plan to demonstrate we're serious and want to negotiate. He outlined certain things he wanted: 1)
Ukraine had to be neutral, not a member of NATO; 2) the two breakaway oblasts, Donetsk and Lugansk, should have the right to live as Russians within Ukraine with equal rights as Ukrainian citizens with some degree of autonomy; 3) recognition of the legitimacy of Russian control of Crimea which they had conquered in the 1770s.
He also talked about eventually having a Russian representative sit on the equivalent of the Ukrainian National Security Council, just to represent Russian interests.
I think he was surprised there was no real willingness to consider these conditions. We do have evidence at the end of March after the war had been going on for six weeks that Zelensky said
Ukraine could live with neutrality. Then Boris Johnson, representing Washington's interests, said absolutely not, we'll support you to the bitter end, you must stand your ground and fight for every inch of Ukraine.
MV: Why did Putin believe this would work? The US had been training up an ersatz NATO force, the second strongest army in Europe after Russia, up to NATO standards, and had spent billions on this enterprise. Why would Putin not take that into account?
DM: I think there were several reasons. First, Putin, unlike his predecessors, really does know something about the West. If you go back through the Soviet and Russian leaders over centuries, very few of them had traveled outside their homeland. That's not the case with Putin, and he's predisposed to cooperate with the West, not just on a business level but in a cultural sense.
Second, he didn't want to convey the impression that there was anything Soviet-like about the current state. So he was not going to send forces into Ukraine that would be destructive (MV: you mean like Hungary in '56). And he gave strict orders to the
forces that went in there to minimize losses in the civilian population, try not to destroy infrastructure; and I think his assumption was that we would somehow figure out what his intentions were.
We were never interested in his intentions. In fact, from our vantage point, I think we thought this war was manna from heaven, that this was a war that this new Ukrainian army we'd invested so heavily in could win. And we mistook the underlying
assumptions that shaped the initial operation as weakness.
MV: so the intial operation that was supposed to be completed in a few weeks turned out to be the initial phase of a longer war. At what point did the Russians realize that the Ukrainians had been
persuaded to fight total war and decide to recalibrate?
DM: That's tough to answer without seeing transcripts of the meetings that were conducted. But we know in April and May there were several meetings and discussions because the feedback coming from the Russians living in Ukraine was very interesting. The Russian troops told them, "we're here to liberate you but we're not staying." The Russian residents then said, "if we cooperate
with you, as soon as you leave, the Ukrainian secret police that we call the SBU will come here and shoot us all in the head. So if you're not going to stay, to hell with you, we're not going to support it." This became increasingly obvious as the war drew on.
The second thing was, we sent very hostile signals. If you go back to March and listen to President Biden's famous "by accident" regime change speech - that "until Putin is removed and this state is transformed into something that meets our
standards, there can be no peace." I think it took a while for that to sink in. By the beginning of the summer it was clear that what Russia had done in Ukraine thus far would not secure Russia.
MV: so what you're describing is not something that Americans really understand, that when the initial phase essentially ran into a brick wall, there was a transitional period of 6-8 weeks in which the Russians recalibrated. They then went into a strategic defensive mode in which they held the territory they'd taken in the south, consolidated it by taking Mariupol and Lysichansk and the
Sevrodonetsk conovation and manned it with a relatively small force.
DM: Yes, they never had more than 20% of their ground force engaged, about 190,000 troops initially. It became clear that was going to be inadequate because the war was not going to end with the capture of these territories.
So at some point in the summer there was a meeting between the General Staff and I think President Putin. And his question was, what do we have to do to win this war and end it? That is, we
want to win on the battlefield but in such a way that we bring this war to a close.
People were always showing these marvelous films of Russian tanks being destroyed by Javelin missiles and the weapon system the British are using, the Light Anti-Tank Weapon system which is very good, it's turned out to be more effective than the Javelin.
The Russians looked at this and told Putin, if you want us to win this and bring it to a close, we have to make fundamental change in all the assumptions and first and foremost, we have to move over to the strategic defensive. And for the time being it's going to have to be an economy of force operation because we don't have enough forces. Not only do we have to bring in most of the regular army, the active force, we're going to need additional reservists and volunteers, What's really interesting is the enormous success they've had with volunteers, not just Chechnya but also within Russia itself.
This is when Surovikin was named the new commander. He said that he was happy to hold the territory but did not want to be committed to holding every inch of it. If I think it's necessary to withdraw somewhere to economize so I can be more successful elsewhere, I want to be able to do that.And Putin told him, you're now the theater commander, you're in command, everyone takes
orders from you. So there was a restructuring of the commands to ensure he was the final say on any operational items that occurred in the theater - that was not the case earlier.
MV: so this second phase evolved into something more productive than just holding the line. This is reminiscent to me of the withdrawal of the German army, which was also outnumbered in WW1, to the so-called Hindenburg line in 1917. They left a
barren wasteland full of obstacles and mines and pull back to a position that shortened the front and allowed them to build up a larger strategic reserve. You seem to suggest Surovikin sort of deliberately done this in Kharkiv and Kherson.
DM: the Russians have an advantage over us in this sense. They understand that ground in and of itself has no real value unless it gives you a military advantage. He said, we're not going to defend something we can easily retake when we decide it's necessary, we're going to stay where we think we can defend effectively.
Surovikin is in a position that isn't different from Montgomery's in WW2. Montgomery was sensitive to minimizing his casualties, and when Surovikin took over he made it very clear he wouldn't
countenance any frontal assaults, he was not going to waste lives unnecessarily. And I think he got the same level of confidence and trust from Putin that Montgomery got from Churchill - you can do whatever you want, I will give you all the materiel necessary and we will do what you say and attack when you're ready. [side note: MacGregor said Montgomery was badly mischaracterized in Patton, that he was a very competent military leader)
And I think Surovikin is the sort of man who said, I'm not making a move until all the conditions are met that I think are essential to guarantee successful offensive operations.
MV: Can we go through each of the elements of shaping the battlefield? The third phase has clearly been mobilization, building up forces, levying attrition on Ukrainian forces to weaken them and
preparation of the battlefield for the offensive. Can you talk about those?
DM: I think if you talk about intelligence preparation of the battlefield, the Russians aren't going to make the same mistake they made before they went into eastern Ukraine, so they're not going to assume they'll get support without commitments they're
prepared to make to the population. They also understand that infrastructure is important, but not all infrastructure. They also want to make certain to annihilate most of what passes for air defense before they begin this offensive. That's also reminiscent of the Allies during WW2, which went to great lengths to strip away the German air force as much as possible.
Finally, the buildup of supplies and ammunition, the pre-positioning of medical support. All of those things have been happening and Surovikin has been personally involved in it. He and Putin, BTW, have gone down to the troop level to look at how these reservists are being equipped - do they have the right winter clothing, the right set of equipment, the adequate training; it's been very thorough.
And what he wants to know at some point is, is the transportation infrastructure now at a standstill; have we attacked all the ammunition and fuel storage points; have we eliminated the power grid for all intents and purposes, forcing people to flee because the fewer civilians they have to deal with, the better. By the way, to their credit and they never get credit for this, they always bring food and medicine with them when they move into these areas and distribute them. No one covers this in the West because we're busy maintaining this narrative of the evil Russians.
All of these things are being carefully examined and when all those conditions are met - and of course, we're talking about weather, which is no small consideration in that part of the world, I know they're waiting for things to freeze but they have gotten there yet in the deep south -
MV: you said at one point it would take 2 weeks for the ground to freeze to a level of 3 or 4 feet...
DM: but now having said that, we have to go back and re-examine this economy of force mission, which has turned into something much more than an economy of force mission. They discovered they could induce the Ukrainians to launch counterattacks against them. This is the issue we don't really appreciate in the ground force, this coupling of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance (ISR) with strike weaponry. Not just artillery in the conventional sense but everything that falls into that standoff attack category.
And the Russians have a lot of experience with this (gives example from WW2). Fast forwarding to the present, there are examples of cruise missiles being launched within minutes from vessels in the
Black Sea, to strike targets as far north as Kharkiv where there were Ukrainian artillery and anti-tank positions that could not be reached by any other means. It was done within minutes, there was no lengthy debate with the air force or lengthy targeting
discussion, it was done.
MV: Would it be too much to say the Russians have taken advantage of their famous maskirovka (Russian military deception) because they've been handed a receptive West that willing to believe they're on the run? Apart from you, I've seen no discussion of the buildup of Russian forces being discussed in Western media. So in effect the Western media is handing the Russians the benefit
of a big surprise moment by being unwilling to talk about what's actually happening.
DM: I'm not sure you could attribute it to maskirovka. This is a self-inflicted wound. There's not much happening on the Russian side that we can't monitor with space-based surveillance and all the technologies of the NSA, etc. and all this information is fed to the Ukrainians on a routine basis.
And we have thousands of "contractors", former soldiers and undoubtedly NATO staffs at lower levels taking advantage of this. But what the Russians did not expect, and this has worked to
their advantage, that Ukraine would be foolish enough to launch attack after attack for political reasons, trying to demonstrate there was life left in Ukrainian forces.
If you look at Bakhmut right now, this is the topic in the press right now, it's being portrayed as this strategically vital logistical hub and if it's lost, conceivably it could unhinge the strategic or operational defense in southern Ukraine. I don't know if this is true, but what we do know is the Russians have simply held the cheese out for the mice to encourage them to come in and defend Bakhmut, so they've held back from capturing it in the hopes more troops will be introduced - they just introduced another 20,000 there a few days ago, half of them aren't even Ukrainian, they're Poles, Americans, British...
MV: I've heard the Poles have had 5,000 casualties.
DM: these are unofficial reports coming to me from people on the ground in Poland who have relatives in Poland and Ukraine and they say as many as 1,000 Polish soldiers may have died.
The morale (of the Russian troops) has risen because soldiers are always much happier when they see damage inflicted on the enemy. So instead of just sitting there waiting for an attack, they've managed to manipulate the battlefield and do enormous damage with this ISR-strike capability.
MV: we don't know what wil* happen but what would be required to achieve a decisive operation.
DM: It's important to remember there was never an intention to conquer all of Ukraine, this place is the size of Texas. The Russians don't want to have to manage millions of western Ukrainians who have no desire to live under Russian rule or government. In a Q & A back in 2015 in St. Petersburg Putin said that the people in western Ukraine would probably be happier under Polish administration than under ours.
I think he wants a clear, unambiguous outcome - the Ukrainian army gone, the government in Kiev gone. Either it's moved to Poland or it's being destroyed. That's the first condition.
The second is, we're going to redraw this map. I think he would prefer to negotiate over that, to have a strategic partner, but if he has to redraw it I think he's likely to say that the Dniepr River is now the western boundary of Russia. I think that's his inclination at the moment because I think his fear is that if they just take the southern areas that are traditionally Russian down to Odessa from Kharkiv - a long front that's vulnerable - who's to say a future Ukrainian government wouldn't build up a force on the eastern side of the Dniepr and resume hostile operations... If he takes our threats seriously that we're going to try to turn Ukraine into some form of Afghanistan, he wants a clear boundary that he can easily defend and monitor what's going on on the other side.
MV: right now the Ukrainian army has been enticed into a potential cauldron at Bakhmut. But what would be an effective operation that would not reach the culminating point of attack before achieving its objective? What would that look like.
DM (29:58): There are 3 very large concentrations of Russian forces. You have one in southern Ukraine and this is beyond the troops that were there several months ago. Then a concentration east of Kharkiv going toward Russia. And now you
have a concentration in Belarussia that's probably south of Minsk and just north of the Ukrainian border west of Kiev. There are 75,000 Belarussian troops and the Belarussians have made it clear that the Russians are now with them but most of them are now committed to the border with Poland and Lithuania.
MV: Yesterday there was a surprise announcement that the Belarussian forces will be under Russian control. Is that being done to preserve unity of command or to keep a large percentage of
Ukrainian forces tied up at the Belarussian border?
DM: I think both are true. The second is a more difficult proposition because they're down to about 190,000 left in the Ukrainian army. I think the other part of the issue is that Belarussia wants the Western allies in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland to understand that an attack on them will be treated as an attack on Russia - to disabuse them of any notion they can intervene in Minsk. But they've also said that if Russia strikes south into Ukraine, Belarussia will support that with troops.
MV: there's all this talk of final cutting of rail links to whatever Ukrainian forces are still left in the east. Is it really necessary to strike south from Belarussia and what would that hope to achieve?
DM: this is an interesting question because they have the potential for 2 or 3 operational axes. One of the goals of this new offensive will be to permanently cut off western Poland from Ukraine (sic), to ensure that Ukraine is no longer supplied with Western weapons over that Polish border.
Looking at the (Russian) force that's up there, in broad numbers we've counted 1500 tanks, 1000 rocket artillery systems, thousands of armoured fighting vehicles, thousands of conventional
artillery. We don't know how these will be distributed but I see a substantial enough concentration in Belarussia that it makes sense to strike downward, which would be west of Kiev but east of Poland. If you look at a map you can go down from Belarus to Zhytomyr, and from there to Vinnytsia and from there it's a short distance to Moldova. Moldova is important because we've eyed it repeatedly as a potential jump-off point for offensives against the Russians in southern Ukraine. Just by positioning the force there, Kiev is isolated.
MV: it's ironic but sometimes on Polish television news programs they put up maps of a post-war settlement showing the little bit of Ukraine that's Hungarian going back to Hungary, the little bit that's Romanian going back to Romania and then there are 3 oblasts that were part of Poland not so long ago...what would be left, the oblast around L'viv, would be a rump state of Ukraine.
DM: the nice thing about going to Zhytomyr, and from there to Vinnytsia is that you're not confronting a Polish military contingent. They could also conceivably avoid confronting us if we're stupid enough to commit 30-40,000 US troops 50 or 60 km
into western Ukraine. I'm hopeful we wouldn't do this.
MV: To me these ironical admissions suggest that in spite of all the political rhetoric, the elites are thinking about a post-war settlement that does not involve the status quo ante (the state of affairs that existed previously) for Ukraine.
DM: I think it also creates the possibility that whatever settlement emerges will not include Washington. And to be frank, Washington would be smart to stay out of it. Anything that can occur without us and offers stability in some form is probably desirable. And I'm sure from the Russian standpoint, they would be less concerned about the Polish presence provided it didn't symbolize an aggressive NATO presence, i.e., no US missiles, etc. Now that's a huge assumption given Polish attitudes which are frankly dangerous.
(36:41)
MV: There are some profound misperceptions that Americans have about the conduct of war and operational arc. I thought we'd discuss this so viewers can better understand what is actually going on, the actual dynamic of battle and the way in which the Russians have been performing and succeeding.
DM: this is something that came up early on, I think we have a very light infantry-centric leadership in NATO because of the last 20 years of light infantry operations against very weak insurgents. The British fall into this category naturally given their imperial past. The French as well, though to there credit I think they've largely stayed out of it in terms of physical presence on the ground.
I think the idea of fortifications is appealing because of an assumption that if you place forces inside a city, everyone has to stop to remove them. In reality, the case is opposite. If you're kind enough to immobilize yourself (stay in one place), the enemy will eagerly surround you, cut off your water and food, you will run out of ammunition, and then you have a choice either to surrender or be annihilated. Well, the main body of the force moves on to other locations. So this is a huge problem for us (the US) because it undermines all our assumptions about how we want to fight in
the future.
The second thing is we think we've found a new technology to destroy tanks, but we've always had the technology to destroy tanks. It's like minefields, we've got them all over Eastern Europe during WW2, North Africa - it's not a new phenomenon.
But what people learn to do is partner these capabilities with other capabilities that are designed to protect them or enhance them.
So you may see a change in the balance, 50 tanks instead of 100 in the future and more of something else, but the bottom line is you end up with a different construct that's designed to exploit that strike capability thanks to ISR. So instead of sitting and waiting for something happen you're now moving through the ISR-strike environment.
MV: This is what has struck me about the war in Donbass where you have this WW1-like buildup of fortifications and how essentially passive the Ukrainians have been. Or, if not passive, they're like attacks in WW1, they're suicidal.
DM: They started with very large-scale counteroffensives, 50-60,000 troops. They've been cut down to company-size elements relentlessly being hurled against these defenses which, as we've pointed out, the Russians have welcomed, but that has been detrimental to the Ukrainian war effort.
MV: Americans have a cartoonish idea that somehow Russian fires (firepower) are massive but indiscriminate, and because they can't be precisely or promptly targeted they're not achieving their
goals. I'd like you to clear up the Russian approach to and success with fires.
DM: The first thing we have to understand is that the monopoly on the microcircuitry that was essential to precision that we enjoyed in 1991 is gone. Soon after the turn of the century that microcircuitry found its way into Russia and Chna
and elsewhere. The Russians and Chinese and whoever cares to buy their equipment now has the ability to attack precisely any point they can identify provided they have the range with the weapon system.
So the Russians now have the ability to deliver accurate, devastating firepower with enormous precision, to the point that immobilizing yourself or sitting still for any great length of time is dangerous. Now if you can disappear under 20 feet of concrete
temporarily you may survive for a while but it's not a long-term solution. The only solution is some degree of protected mobility, integrated air defenses, and the Russians have demonstrated
their integrated air defenses have been marvelously effective shooting down things like HIMARs missiles, which we didn't expect.
That's when you look at these axes, where could they go. Clearly the ideal way to handle Ukrainian defenses is to attack them from behind. I would be very surprised if that didn't happen. Because you have enough forces on the eastern side of Kharkiv that could easily come across the river and instead of going north toward Kiev, turn south and meet the other concentration of Russian troops coming up from the south.
These two things I think will happen. The real question is what happens with the concentration in Belarus. If it comes down, it could have the effect that Inchon did. A lot of people don't remember that it wasn't just that we struck where the enemy was
weak, but they were positioned in such a way that the North Korean forces had to retreat. They realized their position was hopeless and started rushing northward for fear they would be circled and destroyed. So it could make sense for the Russians
to do something similar, then everyone runs north on the east side of the river to get out of the trap.
MV: In many ways, since say April, the war has resembled a siege all along this 1100 km long front. And there's this assumption by Americans that the Russians will have to bleed themselves white trying to break through the Ukrainian front but you've just laid out ways they could get around that. So I want to ask if you had a breakthrough from Belgorod or south of Minsk, what would the forces in the south and the Zapporhozian area do, try to break through or just hold?
DM: If they can attack simultaneously from both sides, it will fall apart quickly. No one should diminish the fighting skills and power of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians were always good soldiers, under the Tzar and in the Wehrmacht and in the Soviet army. But you can only expect so much from any human being. These people are exhausted, and they've been bled white and they don't have the experienced cadre they once had.
By Oct 1943, the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, had lost 55,000 officers. That's incomprehensible. That means that most (not all) of the talent, particularly at the lower level - these are
the people that ran all over Europe for years - were gone, or they were wounded. And as a result the German army's offensive striking power after the Fall of 1943 was dramatically reduced and frankly inadequate. I think the Ukrainians are in a similar position right now.
MV: Have the Russians adapted in terms of their combat unit organization in ways that leave behind the unwieldy organizational structure of divisions and corps and (?) that most Americans think of with maneuvers?
DM: they really already have. When they went through a series of reforms you ended up with a vast majority of them being what I would call large mobile brigade groups, usually 5-6,000, sometimes 4-5,000, sometimes 3,000. It depends on whether it's a tank-heavy operation or mostly motorized infantry or mechanized infantry. They do have motorized rifle "divisions" 8,000 strong, there's the largest formation in the Russian army but they've been used primarily when they're brought into assembly areas, where they're then committed to other formations to fight (i.e., a temporary designation) as opposed to sending in a division-
sized unit.
All of these formations are commanded by generals. And what we saw even with the Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), which was a new innovative approach that had merit - I think our USI (US intelligence?) has said Russia has abandoned it but they're the only ones saying it and I would be surprised if it was true - but they had situations where they had one of these brigade group
headquarters that was managing 7 or 8 BTGs simultaneously.
We're a lot more rigid in our thinking, as we were in 1942, 43, 44 so it's incomprehensible that we would do business that way. But the Russians, even toward the end of the war, would have as many as 7 to 10 divisions under one army headquarters, which was a Corps equivalent. Unthinkable for us, but it gained enormous ground quickly.
MV: so you have generals commanding brigades in Russia then. That's something you don't have in the US.
DM: The British army does, they have brigade battle groups but they don't usually have more than 4 combat battalions in a brigade battle group. The Russians are showing they can do better, they're more flexible and agile.
there doesn't seem to be anything here