Lawfare Daily: Ukraine War Update with Francis Farrell

[Intro]

Francis Farrell: They are moving forward faster than they had been over winter. Obviously it was a big success story for, for Ukraine that they managed to stabilize the front line, which was kind of out of control for a while over winter, but now is gonna be the big test.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It's The Lawfare Podcast. I'm Anastasiia Lapatina, Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare, with Francis Farrell, a frontline reporter at the Kyiv Independent.

Francis Farrell: I think it was a great operation at, at the start, but even from the very start, the strategic, like, rationale didn't really add up. Would've been nice as a raid, a short success story, but now, you know, I think, I hope it's clear that, that Ukraine just needs to focus on waging the most effective defensive war possible going forward.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Francis and I spoke about the ongoing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and why despite the peace talks, the fighting is now deadlier than at any other point in Russia's war.

[Main podcast]

So I wanted to talk to you because in the past couple of months, but also specifically the last couple of days, there's been just this frenzy of, you know, reporting and news and headlines about the peace negotiations and you know, the talks between Trump, Ukraine, and Russia, and what's gonna happen, if Putin's gonna come to Turkey.

I don't know when we're gonna be releasing this episode, but FYI we’re talking the week before Putin may or may not show up to Turkey for talks with Zelensky.

Francis Farrell: Well, two days before, right? It's meant to be on Thursday and what, this is Tuesday, so–

Anastasiia Lapatina: This is Tuesday, May 13. Yeah. So there's just a lot happening in the diplomatic sphere, but I wanted to kind of ground our Lawfare audience a little bit and bring it back to the harsh reality on the ground in Ukraine and talk about the battlefield, because you know, there's a lot happening there and it's kind of overshadowed by the diplomatic side of the things.

So, you know, we keep talking about peace negotiations and ceasefire, and everyone is kind of mentally preparing for that, but in fact, the Ukrainian military has been talking about Russia potentially preparing for a new offensive late spring or in the summer. So could you just talk about that and you know, and what you've been seeing in that side of things?

Francis Farrell: Yeah, so I think it's just a good time to just remind people, I guess, not to forget about the battlefield because the war is still going on, it's going on at the same kind of intensity that we've seen over the past two years.

And, you know, every time there's been some kind of so-called temporary truce that's been announced by Putin, whether it was for Easter or for Victory Day, people were looking about whether they were still doing long range drone strikes or missile strikes. But the whole time the fighting was continuing all along the front line. That's what soldiers were, were always telling me. And I remember one battalion commander telling me during the so-called Easter truce that, you know right now, the, the fifth assault of the day is ongoing; Russian infantrymen are walking up to our positions, trying to take our land and kill our people, so doesn't look like much of a truce to me.

And I think that was just quite basically, yeah, poetic, I guess in a way, in, in saying, you know, what, Russia's main, base, modus of operandi still is what their main goal is to move forward, kill more Ukrainians, take more Ukrainian land and even their minimalist demands on the negotiating table requires a lot more of Ukraine to be conquered. That's the parts that they illegally annexed, but don't fully control.

So Russia's still going forward, they still want a lot more of Ukraine and I don't think there's any sign that they're pretty interested in, in stopping which is why it's been good that, that the focus has been on a 30-day ceasefire in this diplomatic arena because it really puts the magnifying glass on the fact that Russia does not wanna stop and Russia needs to stop for peace.

But to go to the actual question—yeah. I mean, it's already started. So the, the, the spring offensive, I mean, it's now the third month of spring, it's now May; the spring offensive is well underway, and soon we will see probably that speed up even more and intensify over summer. We are expected to have a very hot summer out here in Ukraine, and I'm not talking about the temperature, I'm talking about the battlefield.

But what does that mean on the front line? Is that an aim of taking this or that city or this or that region before this or that deadline? Well, you know, maybe there are these areas that Russia would like to take over the, the summer campaign that could be Pokrovsk, for example, or the city of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk Oblast, or maybe Kupyansk further up in, in Kharkiv Oblast.

But it is still important to remember that this is first and foremost a war of attrition—a war where Russia's main aim is to degrade Ukraine and the Ukrainian military's ability to defend its country along an extremely long front line of, of hundreds of kilometers and, and over a thousand if you include all of the state border as well.

So in that sense, as we saw last year Russia is looking to attack weak spots. It's looking to push forward in areas where it's more difficult for Ukraine to set up a very favorable attritional fight, and in doing so, maybe they can gain some territory and make a different fight more favorable to them after these gains, and that's exactly what we're seeing right now with the main Russian movements.

The place that we have seen the most movement over the past few weeks—and I would say quite concerning movement actually—is right in the middle of, of Donetsk Oblast between the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk. We've seen a big Russian push to try and drive a wedge between those cities.

They're both cities that Russia lost so many people and failed to take completely in a full frontal assault. With Toretsk, they've taken most of the city but have lost, you know, huge amounts of, of men, and, and with Pokrovsk, they haven't even reached the outskirts. They tried to surround the city at first over autumn and winter, but that was stabilized over winter in a big success for the Ukrainian army.

But now they're pushing in a new location, which is right between the two cities, and they're really making some progress. They've reached a key highway, and the danger here is that by pushing in these weak points, they could now compromise the defense of neighboring areas of the front line, which are being held by some of Ukraine's best brigades including, for example, Azov in in Toretsk, or some of the good brigades like Chervona Kalyna National Guard in, in Pokrovsk.

And so, you know, they are moving forward faster than they had been over winter. Obviously it was a big success story for, for Ukraine, that they managed to stabilize the front line, which was kind of out of control for a while, over winter. But now is gonna be the big test because obviously it's diff, it's more difficult to attack in in winter. You know, it's difficult for your infantryman to survive going forward, which is the main way that that Russia attacks and it's easier to spot anything that moves with drones and hit them with drones because there are no leaves on the trees.

And so now things are picking up and the question is, how well can Ukraine keep a hold on their defense and what are the main challenges for them to do that?

Anastasiia Lapatina: So just to set up the geography pretty quickly, what are kind of the main hot directions of the Russian attack right now that people should be looking out for? You've already mentioned Toretsk and Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk, that's all in the East—are there any other directions where things look worrying?

Francis Farrell: Yeah. So we can do I guess a little bit of an overview. Further south of things still in Donetsk Oblast is, is another area of concern; that's the area where the Russias, the Russians, made them the quickest gains over autumn after they took the cities of Vuhledar and Kurakhivka, then Velyka Novosilka. These are big, flat fields in the south of the Donetsk Oblast with a few villages and, and kind of industrial cities in between them.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Just a sentimental note, I've been to Vuhledar before, like a few months before the full-scale invasion, and it was just the sweetest little cozy Donbas town, you know, where it seemed like nothing was really happening, but it was still like, just, I remember it being really nice and it was fall and sunny and beautiful and it's just so crazy. You know, just another one of those crazy wartime things like that, the place is basically now gone, right. Russians would flatten it.

Francis Farrell: Another one of those of, of those Ukrainian cities that was liberated by Russia from its existence.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Exactly.

Francis Farrell: Like we, we're talking about homes, or people, life in, in any way. And you can see that, what that looks like even three, three years down the line. You know, you can see pictures coming out of, I think it was in Bakhmut, they, they, they were putting up billboards celebrating Victory Day, this big 80th anniversary in a completely ruined town, like no reconstruction, nothing. I mean, there are no people there left and they were putting up billboards for, for Victory Day, and I think that was quite poetic.

But to, to continue, I guess with the front line, I mean, yeah, other hotspots, of course, of course include Chasiv Yar, and together with Toretsk and this new push from Pokrovsk, it looks like the Russians are getting, you know, closer and closer to approaching the city of Kostiantynivka from three different directions, which used to be an a very important logistical hub, and it kind of is still, but the Russian drones, including fiber optic drones, have started to just fly into Kostiantynivka and hit whatever they see that moves.

And it's not critical yet, but it's, it's one of those situations where it's like, the first step is, it used to be the first step was getting an area in artillery range, and then in direct fire range. But now what's more important is getting that area in in drone range, because that's already a high precision missile, like a high precision weapon, and with that, it's very easy to quickly devastate and deny enemy logistics in an area. So that's something to keep an eye out on.

Other parts of the frontline that are hot. As I mentioned, the areas of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, that was obviously liberated by Ukraine in autumn 2022, but now the Russians have made a lot of progress and have kind of gotten close to the outskirts of Kupyansk. And they've also crossed a major river, the Oskil in an area where they shouldn't have been able to cross. But unfortunately, because that was a lower intensity part of the front line and they had that river, Ukraine had some really, let's say not very combat effective units holding that area, and it's just a little reminder of what it means to have an overstretched military environment, and, and big holes in the frontline.

Anastasiia Lapatina: For the listeners, this is in the kind of northeast of the country. This is sort of north.

Francis Farrell: Yeah, this is now not Donetsk region, but Kharkiv Oblast. The frontline near Kharkiv itself is, is pretty stable; it was just a year ago if we remember that there was that huge cross border offensive on Kharkiv which we were reporting on back then, and it seemed pretty scary at the time. But Ukraine moved some of their good units to defend from that area. But in doing so, because they don't really have many reserves or any reserves at the moment, every time they are forced to redirect some of their good units from one area to another, they have to make compromises.

They're, they're, they're going through some kind of dilemma, and that's, I think a theme that is coming up more and more, because now of course, I mean this is, and this is kind of more Ukraine's fault that they're in this position, but now there's another front line on the northern border, which is around Kursk Oblast and Sumy Oblast. So that's in the same area.

Anastasiia Lapatina: We’ll talk more about Kursk a bit more later.

Francis Farrell: Yeah, it's the same area where Ukraine crossed the, the border and there incursion back in August last year, but now as we all know very well they were pushed out of, almost completely out of Russian territory and are now defending Ukrainian territory in a completely new region, and that's just another extra a hundred kilometers of frontline that they need to worry about defending at the moment. So it's just worth remembering that this is all an attritional battle; of course, Russia wants to take all of Donbas, of course, Russia, you know, they're still looking at Zaporizhzhia Oblast, but overall, it's still about the overall attrition game.

Anastasiia Lapatina: What are some of the biggest challenges that the Ukrainian troops are struggling with right now?

Francis Farrell: What is now the basis of the way Russia fights and the way Russia attacks is completely different from the way obviously that they invaded in the beginning of the, of the full-scale war.

Now, the main concern for the Ukrainian defense is a few things. Firstly, the lack of manpower. The fact—and when I say manpower, people talk about the manpower crisis, but what we really mean here is the infantry, is the foot soldiers, the guys who are meant to defend the very zero-line position against Russian attacks.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So the mobilization issue is still pretty much a huge issue for Ukraine.

Francis Farrell: Well, I mean, it's not limited to mobilization. That's the thing as well, that the, the manpower problem is also a bit of a complex equation of, well, you have your mobilization, you know, who are the people that are coming into the system, you know, what is the input, what is the rate of, of new people coming into the military? How do they feel? How are they motivated? Then, is the question, how are they trained? Then is the question how are they equipped? And even when you get to that point, perhaps more important than any is the question of how they're organized and commanded in the field.

And that's one thing that we saw a lot of shortcomings with, in the Ukrainian military, especially over the last year. They, they existed before, but we really felt them over the last year, which was the kind of poor decisions by the higher command leading to more infantry casualties than necessary. You know, part of it was a kind of Soviet command culture refusing to withdraw until the very last minute and punishing lower level commanders who, who withdraw to save their own guys.

But a lot of it was like also decisions like the creation of many new brigades that were, maybe they got some good equipment from from the West, but they were led by, you know, Soviet era officers and, and filled the ranks of which were filled with completely green, not very well motivated, mobilized soldiers when that same human resource could have been used in a smarter way to replenish existing, existing brigades.

But there's a bigger problem here, I think at this point, when we talk about the manpower crisis, we talk about all the things that Ukraine could do to improve it—which is all true, mobilization training, better command, so on and so on—but at the same time, any infantryman now is entering, a new infantryman, is entering a battlefield that is just getting deadlier and deadlier for them with each month because the Russians, well both sides, but including the Russians, are getting so good with drones on their side, and I'm talking about especially FPV drones, so like single use kamikaze drones that are hunting individual people on a, on a massive scale.

That makes just the trip out to frontline positions deadlier than has ever been. You know, you used to be able to drive up with a pickup truck to those positions or maybe one or two kilometers away and then walk the rest. Now it's more and more common to have to walk 10 kilometers to get there because any vehicle gets hit and because it's so deadly to make that walk and so difficult, they're spending not several days on positions, but several weeks at a time on positions.

And when they're there, you know, they can't even, you know, put their head up to go to the toilet, they can't get out of the, the little hole that they're in. It's an incredibly deadly and, and really miserable environment to, to be in, and then let alone, you know, if you're, if you're wounded and you have to evacuate your wounded comrades.

So the, the Russian coverage of the frontline—as, as, as the Ukrainians also do on their side—is just making life for the foot soldier at the moment, incredibly, incredibly deadly. But because those Russian drones are also not only, there's, not only are there more of them, but they're also flying further back. That makes the battlefield also more deadly for different types of units, which normally were working in conditions of relative safety and stability.

Like artillery, drones, medics, normally they would have a much, much lower casualty rate than, than infantry, and they still do, but now you can see—I was at the field hospital that a few weeks ago of the third assault brigade in, in Kharkiv Oblast, and you could see that the wounded were coming in were not infantrymen anymore 'cause you couldn't even get those infantrymen out, that they were, they were drone soldiers, they were artillery men that had been targeted found by the Russians, targeted with drones.

So it's just important, I think, and it's important for any Western decision maker or military person or expert to, to just understand how, you know, in the space of, of weeks and months, how quickly what the battlefield looks like is changing.

You know, we, we, I talked about Azov in Toretsk—you know, they were seeing, they were saying that since the, the Russians moved some of their best drone units into the area just over the space of the last month, the, the situation got so, so, so much worse for them with, with regards to logistics, with regards to evacuating infantry, and this is one of Ukraine's best brigades.

And so, and you know, I started with the, the Russian drone side of things, but it's important to understand as well that the Russians are having all the same problems on their side. Things are just getting more and more difficult for them to move anything close to the front line, let alone begin an actual attack on Ukrainian positions before they're also hit by, by heaps and heaps of Ukrainian drones run by very, very experienced and professional Ukrainian drone units.

And so, of course when both sides have so many drones and the, the battlefield is saturated on both sides with, with high precision, cheap weapons that can target anything that moves, the question is, well, what's the difference between the two?

Well, the main difference is that Russia is attacking, and so Russia needs to move forward, they need to come out into the open, but they do have the resources to do that. They still have tens of thousands of recruits every single month that they can keep throwing at the front lines whereas Ukraine doesn't have to attack, but they're really struggling with manpower.

There are less and less infantrymen on each position, there is more and more space between infantry positions and sometimes the infantry is so like I, I guess, thinly spread and it's so difficult for them to even fight because they can't put their head out of the trench or of the little bunker that they're in or the basement. It's basically almost like defending empty positions without infantry at all.

And so this is like the little tactical puzzle that will have to be solved to, to understand which way the, the front will actually move over summer.

Anastasiia Lapatina: What you're describing here is this, part of this profound shift that happened, right? A move from a, a war that was predominantly an artillery war, to a war that has now become the drone war, and we, we hear that a lot, right? That this is now the war about innovations, about who's gonna create what new innovations with drones and cooler drones and better drones.

Talk a little bit more about what that looks like on the ground. I know there has been some—I mean, I wanna say cool, but that kind of seems like a poor choice of words—but some innovation in terms of fiber optics being used with drones. Talk about what that looks like. It's fascinating.

Francis Farrell: Yeah, so I mean, the innovation game with drones is a constant cat, cat and mouse of like new measures and new countermeasures and obviously it's important that both sides are able to upscale production.

I guess the first thing is that, as you said correctly, when you know the, the full scale war started, drones were started to be used pretty quickly, but mainly for reconnaissance. So mainly for just seeing what's going on, on the battlefield constantly, even using cheap off the shelf drones that any civilian can buy. And that already was revolutionary straight away because it gives a completely, you know, much more updated, higher quality, new vision of what's going on on the battlefield, and it lets you correct artillery fire much more efficiently.

But it was about the end of 2022 that both sides started—well, first more Ukraine started experimenting with strike drones; at first they were dropping little bombs off these, off these Mavics, and they were starting to fly FPVs, which were these very cheap, high precision little kamikaze drones that, you know, could take out potentially even a tank, and, and they started to be a thing. And both sides, once they realized they were a thing, both sides raced to, to up the production of FPVs on, on both sides and, and to build big factories. And now both sides have done that.

So both sides are capable of having so many FPVs out on the front line, you know, making thousands, producing thousands and thousands a day so that not, not even tanks and cars, but every single infantryman can now economically be the target of several high precision strikes within minutes.

And that's, I think that fact itself is the main way that war has just been completely transformed. You know, when I speak to, to maybe foreign military people about that. They haven't quite come to terms with that and what that means yet.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I mean, yeah, that, that means you have to rewrite all, like much of your planning and assumptions and whatever war gaming you do in the future, you know, for NATO-Russia conflicts, anywhere—like that that affects all of it, right?

Francis Farrell: Yeah.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And you just have to rethink it completely.

Francis Farrell: Yeah. It, it completely changes what tactics are because, because you can't, you know, easily get around, nevermind you know, air support, helicopter evacuations—you just can't get around at all near the front line.

And of course, it's also worth mentioning that FPV drones you know, they were a civilian hobby. So it's something that is incredibly easy to figure out for anyone and you don't need access to high technology. This is something I'm surprised that it hasn't been quicker to, to fall into the hands of non-state actors, of insurgents all over the world. And everyone around the world should be seeing what it means to be fighting an enemy with a saturation of FPV drones, what it means to have that, what it means not to have that.

So we, we reached that point over, I guess towards the end of 2023, the first months of 2024, when both sides had enough drones to target, target infantry, at least in the hotspots of the front line. But then at the same time, both sides understood that it was important to find countermeasures, and it was possible to find countermeasures, and the main countermeasure to drones that run on a radio signal is jamming, is radio jamming devices.

And they can be, they come in all different shapes and sizes, obviously they need a lot of power to run, but you know, over 2024, if you travel around frontline areas in eastern Ukraine, you can see that every military car over that year managed to get one of these little units with little domes or little antennas or little mushroom looking things on the roof of their car. You know, some are more expensive and more powerful than others, and there are some units that you can take in a backpack, and there are some units that, you know, it's, it's a huge system that's very expensive and you need to hide it somewhere. It's more static.

But this became super important in the fight against FPV drones and it was this kind of cat and mouse game between who can figure out drones that are better at avoiding electronic warfare and who can figure out more powerful electronic warfare that, that, you know, how, how do you boost your signals so that it's more immune to enemy jamming?

But then at the same time, people were thinking about solutions to avoid being affected by jamming at all. And a, a lot of people were kind of banking on AI drones, which is obviously still definitely gonna be a big thing in the future, but they were thinking, you know, if the drone is smart and it can see what the target is and hit it itself autonomously. Then we don't need to worry about jamming 'cause we don't need a signal to the pilot.

But then the Russians in a kind of very, I, I guess Russian way said, hmm, we actually have a simpler solution here. What if instead of taking a step forward in technology, let's take a step back, and instead of using remote, kind of remote control to, to fly our drones, we could just use a very, very thin wire to guide it, you know, giving a perfect hard connection between the pilot and, and the drone itself.

And this is not a, a new idea—some American and, and Soviet anti-tank weapons, for example, use the same principle. They have a coil of wire that comes out when you fire it, and that's how you, you, you move it, as it as it's flying and, and control it. But here they needed something more lightweight, so they went for fiber optic the same stuff that brings high speed internet to people's homes all over the world.

And so I've, you know, I've played with it. This is just a very, very thin glass fiber, and it's about like as big as like, maybe, I don't know, a two liter bottle of milk or something. You know, it's not, not even that heavy. And in that, in that container, you can have a spool of 10 kilometers, maybe even 20 kilometers of–

Anastasiia Lapatina: Wow.

Francis Farrell: –of this fiber optic cable, which you can fly out. And of course there's some, you know, difficulties. It makes the drone a bit bigger, you need more power to, to take it.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I mean, the tree, right?

Francis Farrell: And well, if you get stuck on something, yeah, it's, it's annoying like if you, if your, if your cable falls in the water or it gets stuck on something, but the point is that it's constantly unraveling so you can just keep flying forward very often. And yeah, this is now impossible to jam.

So this is now, if they become more mainstream, which is happening right now—especially on the Russian side, 'cause they started this first—all of those little devices on, on the cars are not gonna help against these drones, and that is, is looking to be a big problem. It was a huge problem, it was a huge region, a reason why Ukraine had to withdraw from Kursk because the logistics were controlled by, just completely under the control of really good Russian drone units with lots of fiber optic, and now those drone units have come to Donbas and are causing similar problems. Ukraine's playing catch up with those, they're probably like a few months behind, to be honest, and it's, we'll see how, how quickly they can get their act together with that.

But, you know, once, once your drones are on fiber optic, then the only way to, to stop it from hitting you is physically. So that's why now we're seeing both sides starting to build these huge tunnels of nets, like following key logistics roads, behind the front line, you know, everyone's now starting to carry, well, shotguns, some people prefer a rifle over a shotgun to just shoot these things out of the air if you see them. And that's gonna be the next big challenge. You know, already all vehicles, they have this kind of Mad Max array of, of nets and chains defending them from drones, and now it's that physical barrier that's gonna be more, more and more important.

Anastasiia Lapatina: You've mentioned Kursk, so let's, let's talk about that. It's been around nine months since Ukraine invaded Russia and Kursk Oblast last summer, and occupied, you know, a sizable chunk of Russian territory. And that kind of stuff used to be unthinkable, right, that Ukraine would invade Russia invade with Western weapons and occupy territory there, but it happened. And there were really high hopes, I guess, in the Ukrainian government and also the civilian population, how that could play out, you know, that Ukraine could use that as a negotiating card and future negotiations.

But nine months later, we know that Russia basically regained all of that territory that Ukraine withdrew from Kursk. And you and I have discussed Kursk a bunch of times before and it was kind of really hard to make any analysis or to come to any conclusions 'cause the operation was ongoing, right, so it all of it was very forward looking. But now that we've withdrew, how do you look back at that operation and what do you think it ultimately achieved or didn't achieve and just how do you look back at all of that?

Francis Farrell: Yeah, I mean, it was a very emotional time. I remember like seeing, you know, seeing the, just, just frantically trying to follow what was the new, the next settlement that Ukrainians were like taking pictures of in front of the, the sign, you know, and how far they would, they would go, you know–

Anastasiia Lapatina: Into Russia, yeah.

Francis Farrell: Obviously, obviously something that reminded us a lot of, of the time when, you know, they were liberating huge amounts of territory so quickly, and it was very clear that no one had, had, had seen this coming, let alone the Russians. It was, when it comes to OPSEC, when it comes to, to tactics on the ground, it was an incredibly well planned out operation.

Problem was—and this is something I was actually very critical about from the start—what were the aims? Because nothing to me really made sense, unfortunately. And of course if, if, if, if they had gone further, you know, got close to courts, got this nuclear power plant, of course it could have been a, a different thing, but at the same time, the things that people were saying were not making sense to me.

Like the, the idea of this being a negotiating card for, for the future didn't make sense because we know that Russia's aim is still to break Ukraine's ability to, to defend and, and Russia was moving forward faster and faster with each month in Ukrainian territory. And so the question was, well, that's working out pretty well for them and, and Russia, and, you know, Putin doesn't really feel sentimental about the, the, the few tens of thousands of Russian civilians in this area. They will just stick to their guns.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And Ukraine would need a huge amount of, you know, people and resources to hold that territory–

Francis Farrell: Right, exactly.

Anastasiia Lapatina: –before the negotiations would begin to use that card. And that's ultimately what we failed to do.

Francis Farrell: Exactly. Like what, what would Russia, what would Russia give away for that when the overall, and this is, it goes to the second part of what I wanted to say, was it didn't change the overall attrition equation in Ukraine's favor. Because now they were forced to—when they were, the military was already overstretched back then last summer, and the, the effect of that was showing in Donbas where the Russians were speeding up because they were hitting more of these weak points, and Ukraine had this bigger manpower problem already, and in that environment to decide to open up a new part of the front line where you're kind of already surrounding yourself on three sides by Russian territory already, your logistics isn't great. And that's extra, so much extra frontline that you now have to sit and defend in the same way you're defending down in Donbas, just doesn't make too much sense.

And people were saying that the idea was to draw Russian forces away from Donbas, okay–

Anastasiia Lapatina: You didn’t buy that. You were, you were even at that press conference, right? Where you asked Zelenskyy whether, whether he thought that that worked, and he said yes, and you, you basically said he was lying. Well, not to his face, but-.

Francis Farrell: Well, I mean, the strange thing was that right before Zelensky and his press conference, the commander in chief, General Syrskyi basically admitted that this part of the plan hadn't worked. They said that they, that the Russians had only doubled down on their attack on Pokrovsk, which is where they were making the most progress.

And then Zelensky came on and, and he told me the opposite. He said that the Russians had slowed down, which was just not true, and it made me think like, I mean, I, I don't envy envy, Zelenskyy for, for one minute, and, and I just didn't understand at that point what his you know, his understanding of, of the reality on the ground was.

And then there's another factor, which is you know, and it's difficult to, to understand this in advance, but it seems like Kursk was the reason why Russia took the step of bringing in North Korean troops which was another force of—you know, you can argue, you can debate like how effective they were because it was clear at the beginning obviously, that they didn't have any idea about what a drone was, but then they, they got used to it and they became a pretty useful, motivated, strong, disciplined, expendable, assault force, which is another force that, that Ukraine was then forced to spend resources fighting back.

And so, you know, I think it was a great operation at, at the start, but even from the very start that the strategic like rationale didn't really add up. Would've been nice as a raid, a short success story but now, you know, I think, I hope it's clear that that Ukraine just needs to focus on waging the most effective defensive war possible going forward.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Let's turn to talking about the United States and its role for a little bit. There is this narrative that keeps coming out of the Trump administration that Ukraine is on the brink of collapse and that, you know, if the war continues and if Trump doesn't intervene and doesn't stop the bloodshed, that the frontline in Ukraine will just fall apart and Putin will override the entire country. Is there any truth in these claims?

Francis Farrell: To be honest, not really. That's, and that's pretty good news, of course, when it comes to the negotiation process and, and Trump's hope for a quick peace and, and thinking, I think for a while that, well, it's gonna be easier to push Ukraine into that quick peace, and so I can use my pressure and leverage on them rather than on Russia.

But Ukraine, obviously, you know, they're already fighting Russia on the battlefield for three years, and, and Ukraine always has the right to keep fighting, the right to say, to say no. But it's important that that right to keep fighting is also backed by the ability to keep fighting, because the right to keep fighting is not necessarily very useful if your frontline is indeed collapsing.

But it is, you know—and there are lots of problems of, as we've mentioned, that the manpower crisis and, and, you know, needing to figure out a way to fight with less and less infantry is, is a big, you know, thing that's, that's gonna perhaps really define this year of fighting, but at the same time, they've shown that they do have the ability to keep going for a long time.

And the main reason for that, is, has been the incredible growth and organization and performance of Ukraine's home, homegrown, especially, well defense industry, but especially drone industry and, and the incredibly professional and efficient units that are, that are waging that war on the ground, you know, where, where, where, again, we're seeing something completely transformative in warfare where, you know, we have entire battalions of drones being upgraded to regiments and being upgraded, then further even to brigades, and now a whole new branch of the armed forces dedicated just to drones. It's a bit confusing because the best drone units are not actually in the drone, in the unmanned systems forces, but–

Anastasiia Lapatina: That's very Ukraine-like.

Francis Farrell: Yeah, it's a bit confusing sometimes because the best drone units, they, they grew out of units that were inside army brigades,

Anastasiia Lapatina: Right.

Francis Farrell: And, and then they became separate drone units that are now not tied to the brigades that they're in, but they can move around. And so it provides Ukraine with an incredibly powerful and mobile and, you know, efficient and professional, you know—not like the old Soviet Army—an incredibly strong base of firepower with which they can fight back Russian attacks almost all, all across the front line.

The problem is, of course, that those drone units need to be protected. They need to be fighting in conditions of relative stability. So they need, they still need a brigade in front of them to be actually holding the line. And that side of the equation is, is far less rosy.

But you know, Ukraine has been able to you know, fight on through this whole timeline of full scale war, they've always had some crisis—it's either been, you know, shells at first, or vehicles or, and now obviously it's, it's manpower—but they, they've always found a way to keep going, and, and they've, they've found a very good formula to making any Russian advance, even if they do advance a little bit, to make that just cost huge amounts of casualties and equipment.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Speaking of Ukraine's homegrown industries and its successes, how reliant is the Ukrainian army right now on American weapons and munitions? Because of course, in the very beginning of the war, there was a huge reliance and everyone constantly talked about it, asked for weapons.

Are there shortages that are being felt right now since we know that the chances of there being another supplemental funding bill in Congress are, you know, nearly zero? And there are some good signs about the U.S. you know, agreeing to sell some systems or, or technologists to Ukraine or green lighting the delivery from other countries, right, like a Patriot system from Israel and some other stuff from Germany—all of that's great, but we, we know that we're not gonna go back to the Biden era, you know, constant flow of free like American aid coming in. And so, so what does that mean for Ukraine? Would Ukraine be able to survive a complete cut of all of the deliveries and sales from the us?

Francis Farrell: Well, they'd be able to keep going for, for a long time, and at this point, if, if we, if we've, you know, rewind to a year and a half ago when the, the next aid bill was, was starting to be blockaded in, in Congress, that was a different war. That was a war where both sides main kind of ability to wage war, whether it's obviously you need more offensively, but was, it was defined by suppliers of artillery ammunition and, and the ability of either side to just lay down firepower, especially just with simple artillery shells.

And we saw, I mean, I remember what it was like in February, March, 2024 when the shell hunger was really bad because, because that was, you know, that was being held up by, by the U.S. and I, and, you know, artillery command is telling me that they were already halfway through their reserves of, their final reserves of 155 millimeter shells and they could only use, like, they could only spare shells on the most important targets and, and so on and so on. And, and Ukraine was really feeling the pain at that point.

But with shells, the problem has been more or less solved in a few different ways. Ukraine is making their own shells now for, for some artillery calibers, there's the Czech initiative which has been very useful for, I guess, bridging the gap and buying time. And there is still ammunition coming in from the previous Biden pack packages, which has been very useful. And, and Europe, Europe is slowly getting their act together, they're, they're pledging more shells for 2025 and 2026.

But more importantly, that firepower gap has now been made up by drones, and that's now the main way rather than shells. I mean, artillery is still great to have, always, it's great to have those big guns booming and, and, and, you know, the shells like large munitions coming down, destroying shelters if need be and so on, but now it's just like it's, it's playing more of a supplementary role where, where the defensive drone firepower is now the main way that Russian attacks are being stopped.

So then you look at other things. Of course, everyone talks about Patriots and for good reason; it's the only reliable anti-ballistic missile defense that Ukraine has and they need to be very careful of how, how they use these very expensive interceptor missiles. But you know, for now it seems like we don't feel a, a Patriot crisis immediately. I spoke, I've spoken to, to air defense commanders about this and they say, you know, for now, for now we're fine, although it is a concern in the future, and it, as you mentioned, it depends a lot on how Trump kind of ends up stopping helping Ukraine, you know, do, do, does he even have a ban on on other countries putting up the money?

Other things you know, another interesting one is HIMARS. For example, I was speaking to a commander a few days ago about this, and he was saying that the problem is that the high precision HIMARS rockets, the ones that have GPS units in them, navigation, those are being jammed. The GPS in them is being jammed and they're no longer high precision in most of the frontline if the Russians have the right jamming kit in that area. So they're still being used more for like unguided rockets where they shoot several at once and they're obviously cheaper. It's a good—again, it's a good fire asset to have, but now Ukraine is looking at, you know, at that distance, you know, from 20 to 80 kilometers behind the front line, they're trying to use more and more of their own long range strike drones.

And then, you know, beyond that, of course it would be good to have more Bradleys coming in. It would be good to have more vehicles, more Abrams, all these things, but now more or less, you know, Ukraine, as I said, has always fought this war in far from ideal conditions with far from adequate levels of equipment, and they've always adapted. And now the war is, is one of infantry and drones primarily. And so, you know, the—it's not good for the infantry, but the little bright side of that is less reliance.

And I, and I don't wanna say, you know, Ukraine's completely fine without American help. America's still obviously the biggest partner, but all in, in, in perspective, all relatively speaking, it's, it's a different war now.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Okay. Let's finally talk about sort of the elephant in the room I guess. Let's talk about the peace negotiations. We can’t not talk about them.

I know you have a lot of thoughts 'cause we've talked about this privately, but what do you make of, you know, everything that's been happening? And again, for the listeners, we are speaking on May 13, so the, the weekend a few days ago was, you know, a lot of public diplomacy, intense negotiations happening. What do you make of all of that? But then also, have you spoken about this to the soldiers that you're meeting so often and does this matter to them? What do they say? What are they thinking?

Francis Farrell: It's good to speak to soldiers about peace deals because it, it also keeps everyone else in, in perspective and keeps yourself in perspective. They, they kind of laugh at the, at the concept.

And, and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of funny on one hand, but on the other hand, a lot of soldiers do want the war to end. They do want to go home to their families. And, you know, maybe some of them have, have some, some hope that, you know, Trump will wake up and realize that he needs to, he needs to play hard with, with Russia, and, you know, we could see an end in the fighting that's like palatable for Ukraine in the near term, but I don't think that will happen because I mean, again, Ukraine and, and Europe and, and the US have done well to focus on this idea of a 30 day unconditional ceasefire because it just, again, shines light on the fact that Russia doesn't plan to stop. Russia wants a lot more of Ukraine.

And what I see when I look at the, like the latest diplomatic circus and the latest like flurry, I guess, escalation of, of these, you know, potential talks and meetings and statements, I think we're not really talking about, at the moment we're not really talking about Ukraine and Russia coming close to terms that are gonna be acceptable for both because they're still so, so far away.

I think what we're seeing here is basically an escalation of the battle for Trump's final decision. I think we have to see it eventually come and it might not come quickly and it might not, it might come in a kind of murky way, but we understand that the only way, you know, because Russia wants so more, because they're still so far away from even getting their four regions, the only way that they will stop and that there will be peace is either if they see it as very much in their interests or they're stopped with hard, hard pressure and, and, and hard power. That's on the battlefield, and, and it's also in the diplomatic arena.

And, you know, some, someone shouldn't have to be a, a geopolitical Machiavellian genius to realize that if you have one power that wages a war of aggression and, and of, of ending a, a, a neighboring country's independence and sovereignty basically completely, and they're still very far away from that, you know, maybe to stop that war, which they started, you know, something should be done about them, not about the victim, even if you're doing it, you know, in a context of, of compromise.

So Trump, you know, he's, he's waking up to the fact that Russia doesn't intend to stop, but you know, the ball is not in Putin's court. We're, we're here thinking about whether Putin will show up in Istanbul or not—I don't think he will—but the ball is not in Putin's court.

Ever since like Ukraine and the U.S. agreed on a framework of a unilateral ceasefire, and Russia hasn't done that and has refused to do that openly you know, saying they need to fix the root causes of the conflict, which is a, a, an independent Ukraine existing first, the ball has always been in Trump's court to see what are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about a side that just stop, refused to stop.

And you know, Trump's showed his emotional frustration, but he hasn't done anything about it. What he has done, whether it's through him and through Vance basically projected already that he could disengage from the process, which, I don't understand some commentators saying that, you know, Putin doesn't want Trump to disengage from the process because he wants Trump to help him get a better deal or something like that.

I don't agree. I think that's exactly what Russia wants, and Russia wants the U.S. to, to get bored and disengage, but you know, it looks pretty bad for the U.S.—it's Trump giving up on making peace and, and, and taking a big step back in, in the international arena. And so he doesn't wanna do that, but he doesn't wanna put pressure on Russia in the end, and that is why over the last few months since the Oval Office argument and since his inauguration basically we've just been on this constant like merry-go-round, and it feels like now we could be reaching a point where that decision has to be made. I'm not too optimistic, but it's gonna be interesting to watch.

And you know, once, once we see that decision made and the equivalent consequences for the balance of power, that's when you know we might have a better idea of how this could end, but in the meantime, the biggest factor dictating the balance of power, in my opinion, is the battlefield. The strongest card that Ukraine can have is a stable defense where Russia's just not having any luck, and they're only losing more and more people, you know, battering their heads against the wall, and the best card that Russia can have is a defense that's collapsing on the Ukrainian side of course.

And so now with, with, you know, on the doorstep of, of a really hot summer, that's the big question: How stable can Ukraine keep it, and how chaotic can Russia make it as we go into more crazy times of, of negotiations?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Francis, thank you so much. This was fascinating.

Francis Farrell: Thanks for having me, as always.

Anastasiia Lapatina: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter through our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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