Lawfare Daily: A Ukraine War Update with Anastasiia Lapatina and Eric Ciaramella

[Intro]

Anastasiia Lapatina: The Russians are really stretched thin with Kursk and Pokrovsk situation happening at the same time. They don't have a whole ton of resources. Just kind of fighting for Pokrovsk and holding Pokrovsk is going to take a huge amount of resources. So they're probably going to have kind of an operational pause after Pokrovsk and just stand there and not move forward.

Benjamin Wittes: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, Editor-in-Chief of Lawfare with Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare's Ukraine Fellow, and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Eric Ciaramella: There's been this very strange narrative in some corners that like, oh my god, there was a government reshuffle, the wheels are coming off the bus, and Ukraine is imploding politically, and that's just a very silly take.

Benjamin Wittes: Today we're talking about the latest developments in Ukraine. Major erosion of the front line in Donetsk and yet the Ukrainians maintain control of Russian territory in Kursk. Is the United States about to relax restrictions on Ukrainian use of long-range weapons? And there's been a cabinet reshuffle.

[Main Podcast]

Nastia, I want to start with the intensity of Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities over the last two weeks or so. It's been quite a time. Tell us about it.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. So, the last two weeks have been pretty crazy, especially the last week from when we're recording this, it seemed like there were horrific Russian attacks almost every day. And I mean, there are horrific attacks happening every day, but not all of them take like dozens and dozens of lives, as was the case last week. So, there was an attack at an educational facility in the city of Poltava. It's a military institution. And at least 58 people died in that attack. I say at least because like, dozens of people are also hospitalized with, you know, pretty horrific injuries. So, the number is likely to grow. More than 300 people were injured which is also horrific. And, you know, the buildings just seem to collapse, like, you know, a house of cards. And a pretty notable thing about the attack also was that the people in the institution were on their way to the shelters, but the attack happened so quickly because it was ballistics that it was like, I think something like less than a minute after the air raid sounded. So even people who were responsible and were caring for their safety many of them were killed too. And it kind of highlights just the tragedy of life near the border with Russia, where these attacks can happen so, so quickly.

And then after Poltava, I'm pretty sure literally the next day was a horrific attack against Lviv. Lviv is in, the biggest city in Ukraine's western part. It's like a few dozen kilometers away from Poland. So, it's really close to NATO territory. And it's generally, have always been considered safe, and it's kind of the safe haven for all of the internally displaced Ukrainians. So, a bunch of refugees, a bunch of IDPs are there. People go for like, kind of vacations there. It's a very popular tourist hotspot. And there haven't been like that many attacks to be honest, to be honest, throughout the entire war, just because it's like one of the cities that's very far away from the fighting, which I think also means that the air defense there isn't kind of as top notch as in Kyiv, for example.

So when Russia does try to get Lviv, it really does end up in, in tragedy. And what happened last week was terrible because Russian missiles, of course, targeted civilian areas. They targeted just a regular apartment complex when people were asleep in early morning. And the people who were killed, there were seven civilians and four of them were a mother and three of her daughters. And the only one surviving in that family was the father, which is, you know, just horrific, and there were these images of the father being there at the site. I mean, obviously losing his mind and like fighting with the first responders trying to let go and like, kind of dig the bodies out himself and he was all in blood. And these videos were like everywhere on Ukrainian social media. It was so horrific. Like, I mean, we've, I feel like we've all seen the face of this man, like thousands of times by now. And he's the only one who survived in this family. So that was terrible.

And then several days, basically every day after that last week, there were pretty bad attacks, right, of the Sumy region near Kursk and near Russia's border. Attacks against Kyiv as well. There were no casualties, but it was pretty loud. I mean, my family lives in the center of Kyiv and we barely ever go to the shelter just because the Kyiv air defense was so good. But we went to the shelter like three times last week. It was really bad. It was the loudest it's been in a while. So yeah, it was a pretty horrific week in that sense. I don't remember the last time something like that happened in Ukraine.

Benjamin Wittes: And, Eric, do we have any sense of what is behind that? Is this Russia raising the cost to Ukrainian cities for Kursk? Is it a pressure tactic? What's, how should we understand it from a, you know, what Russia is trying to do here perspective?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I don't know that there's any real kind of change in the Russian strategy. It's all about the types of weapons used and the air defense capacity that Ukraine has. And sometimes, you know, Russia manages to fire things like Nastia was talking about, the ballistic missiles in particular that are harder for the Ukrainians to intercept. And, you know, there, there has been a real challenge from Ukraine's partners about surging enough air defense interceptors to them to be able to, you know, shoot down Russian missiles and drones. You know, we should also mention this, this news that's been coming out the past week about Iran's shipment of close range ballistic missiles with a 75-mile range to Russia, which, you know, is not a game changer in terms of capabilities, but it does free up Russia's longer range arsenal to be able to target more Ukrainian cities. And so it just gives them a greater capacity to wreak this kind of havoc across Ukraine.

But, you know, again, I don't see, I don't think this is a kind of necessarily tit for tat for Kursk because this, a lot of this was happening before Kursk anyway. It's just about the mathematics of, you know, Ukraine's air defense shield, the systems they have in place to be able to intercept at different altitudes and the different mix of weapons that Russia's using. And again, sometimes they get lucky in terms of the, the targeting and, you know, in the Poltava case, for example, you know, with just a couple of minutes difference in terms of the warning. I mean, the casualty count could have been a lot lower if more people had gotten into the shelters. And so this is just, you know, again, this is kind of the terrible logic of the whole thing that it just, there's some luck, you know, on the Russian side of getting things through.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I was going to say that I think a lot of it is just about chance. I mean, they attack civilian sites literally every single day. And, you know, sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't, there are many factors, so I also don't think that it's some sort of retaliation for Kursk or something like that.

Benjamin Wittes: And you mentioned two things about Poltava, which Nastia, which Lawfare listeners will may think of as, as in some tension with one another and just for law of war purposes, I want to clarify. You describe it as an educational institution, but also as a military facility. And you know, one is presumptively not a legitimate military target, the other may be tragic, but you know, you are allowed to target military facilities. So what do we know about what the facility that was hit in Poltava was?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah, fair question. I should have been more clear. So the Russian ballistics targeted the Military Institute of Communications and also a medical facility nearby. So it was kind of like a military college kind of thing. It was like a military educational facility.

Benjamin Wittes: All right, so let's talk about, since we, we've alluded to Kursk let's talk about Kursk, which is, you know, it's now a month in, and there are still 500 square miles of Russian territory under Ukrainian occupation. Eric, how do we understand what, this was supposed to be a little incursion that made a statement and it's turned into the little incursion that could what what's going on?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean the little incursion that both could and couldn't because we still, the strategic objective, as President Zelensky laid out, was to draw Russian forces from other parts of the front line, where there was much more pressure. Like in the area of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have been, you know, retreating pretty much steadily over the past few weeks, and the city now has no, you know, water or natural gas supplies. And, you know, it's pretty much. I don't want to say bound to fall at some point, but the situation is extremely dire there. And the goal was to relieve pressure at least one of the goals of the operation. And it seems like, you know, Russia has not really, in a significant way, diverted its forces. I mean, they've found, they've pulled forces from other parts and, you know, but they're still moving forward at a pretty accelerated, for at least this attritional war accelerated, clip in Pokrovsk.

So it didn't, it hasn't achieved that objective yet. At the same time, it has made a big psychological impact, I think, and we, you know, we kind of have to talk about this war in two dimensions, you know, the military and the cognitive-psychological. And in that regard, obviously it, like we were talking about a couple episodes ago, I mean, it was a message to three different audiences to Ukrainians that, you know, Ukraine has not run out of gas and there can still be victories against Russia. And I think in that regard, you know, and I'd be curious to hear Nastia's thought, I think it has been pretty successful in bucking up Ukrainian confidence at a time when the news had been pretty grim for many, many months.

The second audience was Western partners to show, you know, the Ukrainian Army was still capable of a major offensive operation, not maybe in the direction that people had expected, but still capable. And to also puncture the escalation logic that, you know, Ukraine is now occupying parts of Russia's homeland, I mean its territory and there hasn't been this major escalation. Therefore, the logic is, and we've seen that play out in the meetings this week, Secretary Blinken has been in Kyiv with his British counterpart, therefore, allow us to use the Western long-range weapons against targets inside Russia. And I think maybe there's been some progress in that narrative, but we still have to see what the decision is. And, you know, if the decision is to allow ATACMs to be used against targets in Russia, then I would say that, you know, the Kursk operation probably had a significant impact on changing the narrative there. So we'll see. And then the third audience, of course, was the Russian public and the Russian leadership. And in that regard, there has been some reporting about unease in the Russian leadership and all of that, but I don't think it's fundamentally changed the picture and Ukrainian officials have pretty much acknowledged that.

And then, you know, sort of, so we talked about the two, you know, objectives, the military one to you know, force the diversion of Russian forces, the political-psychological one. And then the third one is about gaining leverage in a potential negotiation down the road. And for that, again, the question is, can Ukraine hold the territory at a low enough cost to Ukrainian forces over a long enough period of time, such that it could be parlayed into some sort of talks? There's no talks that are going to happen in the next few weeks. We're talking months down the road into next year. I mean, we have no idea when this is going to happen. And that will pose some resource challenges for Ukraine to hold onto this territory. I mean, there's a Russian counterattack happening as we speak and, you know, it's going to become costly for Ukraine to, to defend this. So we have to see, I mean, there's no, you can't pronounce it a success or a failure on that front yet. We'll see what, what, in retrospect, the Kursk offensive, you know, how it factors into any eventual negotiations. So overall, you know, for listeners, the picture I would say is mixed. Some successes, primarily in the cognitive psychological domain, which really shouldn't be underestimated. Because for a long war of attrition, I mean, keeping morale and the will to fight up is a significant part of, you know, a country's success. But again, on the pure military level and on the diplomatic part, we kind of, it's too soon to make a real assessment.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I want to kind of push back and add on a little bit to what you said. So, I mean, the last time we talked about this, this was weeks ago when the Kursk operation just started and the mood in Ukraine was definitely jubilant and surprised and it was great. But now that we see the dire situation in Pokrovsk and, you know, people and people's friends and family members are, keep dying there. I think less and less people care about Kursk in Ukraine, to be honest. Even as far as the to say that, like, I've seen soldiers and some prominent activists, kind of, within the military community speaking out against the fact that, like, okay, Zelensky is going to praise the Kursk operation, but that doesn't help us here near Pokrovsk where our guys are dying. And, like, Zelensky keeps saying that the Russian offensive there slowed and we're winning and it's all great, which are the things that Zelensky has been saying. And actually another problem of this whole situation, Pokrovsk and Kursk is that there are a lot of mixed messages coming from the Ukrainian government and the military leadership.

They kind of keep contradicting each other, but basically more and more people within the military and just civilians are pointing out that the situation is in Pokrovsk is so bad that people are kind of starting to question, like, what are we doing the Kursk thing for? So I feel like the boost to morale, it was definitely there. It definitely happened, but I don't know how long term that is, because I mean, there are still more than 20,000 people in Pokrovsk. And another tragic thing that happened last week is that there were a lot of, there was a lot of reporting from Pokrovsk and the areas from where people were evacuating. And there were all of these crazy photos of like babies hugging their fathers because they're leaving. So that's to push back on the thing.

Now to add on to what you said, I think another really interesting point is kind of the interplay between Kursk and potential peace negotiations, as you've said, and I think Zelensky has been alluding to that more and more in recent weeks and kind of saying openly. I think he just recently said that the Kursk incursion into Russia is related to Ukraine's second peace summit that's being planned right now to which they're supposedly trying to get Russia to come and participate because everyone understands that Russia is going to be crucial, you know, to participate, to end this war. And he said that, you know, the Kursk operation is one of the stages to end the war. And so he's clearly pointing this out. And I've also seen some people and journalists talk about Kursk in the context of the Chinese peace plan, which is kind of like the main alternative to the Ukrainian plan. You can call it Chinese, Russia-backed, whatever plan. It's clearly the thing that like Russia is also agreeing to, and the interesting part there is that the Chinese plan basically suggests that we just have to stop fighting and we just have to stop where we are right now, which, you know, includes Ukraine's occupation of Kursk.

We just, you know, stop fighting, come to the negotiating table, don't move anywhere anymore and the territory stays as it is. And obviously that's no longer possible because, well, is Russia going to give up part of its territory? Of course not. So I've seen people point out that another thing that like the Kursk operation basically renders the Chinese peace plan useless, which means that the Ukrainian peace plan is the only one that's kind of left on the table, even though it's like very maximalist and very, you know, extremely pro-Ukrainian, obviously, because it's the Ukrainian plan. So that's, I think that's also interesting because a lot of states have been pointing out that, you know, the Chinese peace plan is, you know, the main alternative and should also be considered. But basically, no more, because how are you gonna follow that logic of just, let's just stop fighting, you know, there's going to have to be some sort of territory trade in happening for Russia to get Kursk back. So that's also interesting.

Benjamin Wittes: So let's talk about the Kursk a little bit. Nastia, you said that there's a lot of mixed signaling from the government and the military establishment, flesh that out, what is the range of Ukrainian messaging about the erosion of the Donetsk front?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Well, I think the problem that the government is dealing with is they have to manage the optics of Kursk, right? They have to manage this thing of morale and kind of keep showing to the world and to Western partners that, look, this is going really well, this is going as planned, they also needed to, you know, boost the morale of the civilians. So they have to keep kind of like praising the military for doing a good job and accomplishing its goals.

But at the same time, there's this part of the society that's kind of seeing through that and is like, okay, but what are we doing about Pokrovsk? And nothing is slowing down there. And, you know, that means that if Zelensky just keeps talking about Kursk, people are going to get mad because he isn't mentioning Pokrovsk, but then how do you talk about Pokrovsk without making the whole thing sound terrible? And also not being accused of lying to the public, which is actually kind of something that happened because Zelensky gave this huge press conference recently, I think last week as well. My former colleague from the Kyiv Independent, Francis Farrell, asked him point blank. He asked, you know, how does kind of the Kursk situation fit into Pokrovsk and what are we doing about Pokrovsk? And Zelensky kind of got mad at him and you know, said that like, well, did the Russian offensive near Pokrovsk stalled? And Francis said, no, I don't think, kind of like, no, I don't think so. And Zelensky argued back and he was like, well, it did. And like, if you look at the data, like, that's just not true. The Russians really have been pushing there and there's just no evidence to suggest that the Kursk operation had any kind of significant effect. So there's all of this kind of tension between what's really happening coming from the government and the military apparatus.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really a terrible situation because as I've said, there are thousands and thousands of civilians still there that have to evacuate. It's this kind of really big regional hub in Donbas in Donetsk Oblast and it has some really important logistical sets as well. It has rail, a railway station that connects Donbas to other cities kind of more in the west of Ukraine, like Dnipro Oblast. And it also has a very important highway that connects Pokrovsk to other crucial big cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. So basically Russians take control of all of that. It's not going to make or break the front or, you know, it's not going to be some huge catastrophe, but it's going to be very problematic.

Another, another thing though, is that people have been pointing out that even if Russians take Pokrovsk, it's unlikely that this is going to have a huge effect going forward because the Russians are running out of steam. I've seen Ukrainian analysts talking about it. I've seen the Institute for the Study of War pointing that out, that like, it's going to be really bad, but not bad to a point that, you know, it's going to be some, sort of, kind of, breaking the war thing. Cause I mean, the Russians are really stretched thin with Kursk and Pokrovsk situation happening at the same time. They don't have a whole ton of resources. Just kind of fighting for Pokrovsk and holding Pokrovsk is going to take a huge amount of resources. So they're probably going to have kind of an operational pause after Pokrovsk can just stand there and not move forward.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so I want to, at the risk of speaking bloodlessly about this in, in the presence of a Ukrainian, Eric, I want to ask, maybe Zelensky's calculation is right, right? These are big countries, and this is the erosion in Petroska is a positional erosion across a very large front where things are moving very, very slowly. And so, yeah, 30,000 civilians are going to have to be evacuated. It creates some transport and logistics issues. It's obviously, would be the biggest city to fall in a while, and therefore has some damage, prestige damage. But at the end of the day, the war is not going to be won or lost over this. It's not like, you know, it's not a Stalingrad situation, right? It's a, it’s a positional erosion in a war that things are moving increasingly in small increments. And you had a chance to bite off a big increment with negotiating leverage potential in Kursk. Why isn't the answer, hey, maybe this is actually worth it?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, it could be the answer.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I was just gonna say, we don't know what's the answer.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, it's very hard to, you know, prove counterfactuals, but, you know, Pokrovsk, the line around there was already deteriorating significantly earlier in the summer before the Kursk incursion. And so, like you said, the cold-blooded calculation from Zelensky could have been, we're probably going to lose Pokrovsk anyway, by the end of the year. And so we need some kind of, you know, win in our category to give us some card to play. And, you know, it's possible that Kursk a little bit accelerated the Ukrainian fallback, but it's very hard to know. Like, did it double the rate of Ukrainian setbacks there? Was it just the marginal again, would Ukraine have been able to hold on, absent Kursk? Probably not.

So I don't know, in my view, I mean, I definitely hear what Nastia is saying because it is hard for you know, again, Ukrainian frontline soldiers to see that resources are being pulled to a different part of the front where they're in a critical situation. But this is the horrible set of no-win decisions that the political leadership has to make because they can't defend everywhere or go on the attack everywhere. And they're, they have to make these decisions to, you know, the terminology is to trade space for time. So sometimes you have to give up certain things in order to gain a little bit of breathing space elsewhere. And that may be the case with Pokrovsk and then Kursk was just a way to have something that the Ukrainians could use as leverage in the medium term.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And the argument there was that, like, the direction of Pokrovsk is going to be a meatgrinder one way or the other, because Russians are set on getting that city. They need a win, it's kind of like a Bakhmut situation, you know, comes, what's the phrase, hell or high water, but like, we're going to get that city. So, Ukraine could be losing some of its best special forces and with best trained fighters there, or it could do something like Kursk at a very high price, yes, but still have at least something of a win. And I agree that it sounds kind of cold-blooded, but strategically it makes sense. I'm not arguing for or against that because I can't, I don't have all the data, but I think it makes sense.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, Nastia mentioned Bakhmut and General Syrskyi, who was commanding that operation and is now the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, got a lot of criticism for, you know, fighting for Bakhmut and sending all these really well-trained Ukrainians into this meat grinder for nine months when really the writing was on the wall at the beginning that Bakhmut was going to be indefensible from the Ukrainian side ultimately.

And so, you know, one can look back at the failures of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and say that actually, you know, Syrskyi and the leadership's decision to defend Fortress Bakhmut at all costs. I mean, Zelensky was in on that because this was as he pronounced it in his address to Congress in the end of 2022, we will, you know, the war will be decided in Bakhmut is what he kind of said. And so they had a political imperative to defend this place and they actually, you know, kind of upended their own reconstitution of these units that were going to be used for the broader counteroffensive in the summer of ‘23. And so one can write an alternate history where, Bakhmut, you know, was surrendered in a more orderly fashion in order to preserve for a counteroffensive. And in this case, maybe Syrskyi learned a lesson that, you know, we have these really elite troops, instead of, like Nastia was saying, using them for a losing battle, let's do something with them and so, we'll see.

Benjamin Wittes: We'll see, but we'll probably never know, because these are n of 1 experiments, you don't get to run them a second time.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly.

Benjamin Wittes: And if you defend Bakhmut to the last shell, you will be criticized for that because there are opportunity costs of doing that. And if you don't do that, Pokrovsk will be criticized for that because there are, because the Russians will take it a little bit more easily. And so, you know, these are the no-win choices and, and it's very hard to know. I suspect you're accurately describing the psychology of it that, you know, they regret the decision in Bakhmut and they're behaving differently here, but there are costs to that as well.

All right. So let's talk about one of the other potential benefits of the Kursk operation, which is the possibility which has also been, of course, arisen because of the escalation of the bombardments, which is that Ukraine is in fact achieving some degree of relaxation of its use of long-range weapons. The Dutch removed restrictions the other day, and as Eric mentioned, Blinken and the British Foreign Secretary are in Kyiv this week discussing the same matter. And the noises, at least as they have leaked out, seem to be that there is progress or an accommodation being reached of some kind. Eric, what do we know about the evolution of the American position in this area?

Eric Ciaramella: This does seem like the main kind of topic of this flurry of diplomacy this week with Blinken in London, and then he and David Lammy, his foreign, his British counterpart going to Kiev, and then the U.K. Prime Minister, Keir Starmer coming to Washington to talk about this kind of joint U.S.-U.K. potential relaxation of the rules on use of ATACMs and Storm Shadow missiles inside Russian territory. Unfortunately, this issue has become like, this litmus test for the administration and, you know, for Ukraine's Western partners, and it has become this thing that everyone has decided is like going to be potentially a game changer.

And what I will say is that in, again, on the cognitive psychological dimension, it will be significant if President Biden, you know, changes his approach and allows for the use of U. S. long range weapons against Russian territory. But from a military standpoint, I don't think it's going to have the kind of significance that people might hope, and the reasons are a few. Number one, we're talking about a really small number of missiles overall, just based on the stocks of what we've been able to provide and the inventory of what we could provide, you know, in the next 3 to 6 to 12 months. This is not, we don't have a plethora of these missiles. So, we're talking about a relatively small number of targets.

Second, these targets are distributed over a massive amount of territory and the problem is, you know, unlike the Crimea campaign, where you saw the Ukrainians very effectively use Storm Shadow and ATACMs in a very concentrated area to disarm and degrade Russian military infrastructure that was threatening the Ukrainian heartland, air defense sites, drone launch sites, you know, missile launch sites, so, so on and so forth. That's not really going to be the case here because Ukraine was able to mass fire effectively in this pretty concentrated area in Crimea, and it's not going to be able to do that across, you know, hundreds of miles of Russian territory.

The other issue is, and people have pointed this out, you know, the glide bomb threat is really the issue that Ukraine wants to be able to have the tools to counteract. And had this decision been made early on, and maybe that's the sort of point of criticism here, had this decision been made when the Russians innovated and created this glide bomb situation that has really, you know, caused a tremendous amount of destruction in Ukraine over the course of 2024, Ukraine could have hit the launchers, the planes, as you know, they were on the runways and hangers and whatnot close to the Ukrainian border. But since this whole discussion has become such a heated issue, the Russians have adapted and have pulled a lot of these, you know, aircraft back beyond the range of ATACMs strikes. So again, on the glide bomb threat, it's not really going to kind of change the picture. Yes, there are stationary military installations that Ukraine is going to be able to hit, but in order to mass the fire appropriately so that some of the missiles get through, because again, some will be shot down by Russian air defense, you know, it's not going to be a huge amount of firepower, I don't think, but I wouldn't underestimate the psychological impact. And so again, it's a ratchet, but it's not going to be a game changer.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I agree with the fact that, I mean, obviously Russians make a lot of mistakes, but they're not completely stupid. So they've started to cover their planes better. They started moving them away and things like that. But at the same time, there are hundreds of Russian military objects and installations and bases that are in the range of ATACMs so that's still a lot of damage that we could do. And I'll reference the Institute for the Study of War here again, they've done another cool map as they often do, and it shows all of the Russian military objects that Ukraine could be hitting that are in range. So, I mean, as a Ukrainian, it makes me think again of like how much damage we could have done over the past months and years, you know, if these things, if the ATACMs came faster, if the rules and the red lines have been lifted and, and if we had the ability to strike, how many lives we could save, but you know, that's a broader philosophical question.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, and of course, as Dmitri Alperovitch likes to point out, I think correctly, the game changer, individual game changer missile weapon systems never in fact change the game fundamentally because the other side adapts to them. And this is an iterative conversation that involves a whole, like people like to imagine that the Javelin is going to be the game changer or the HIMARS is going to be the game changer or the ATACM is going to, and each one creates a moment that requires an adaptation, but the adaptation does happen. That said, anything you can do that makes it harder for the Russians is advantageous and I do think it is quite frustrating that this issue has persisted as long as it has and been as difficult to resolve as it has been. All right. So, let's talk about one final thing before we wrap up, which is that the government of Ukraine, Nastia, looks completely different than it did a few days ago. There was a major cabinet reshuffle and the reaction from just about everybody I talked to seems to be kind of, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. So, what is Zelensky and the parliament trying to do here? What message are they sending? And is there any actual difference?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Those are all great questions. So to answer shortly, no, nothing much has changed because I'll speak to at least the wartime, the, since the political invasion, most power has been concentrated around Zelensky and his team and in the presidential administration, which is headed by his chief of staff.

Benjamin Wittes: And in the military leadership.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Of course. But very much mostly around Zelensky and Yermak. You know, this is not to paint Zelensky as some authoritarian. I mean, of course he has a team and there are different people and he changes the people, but it is true, and all Ukrainians know it, that his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, does have a lot of power. And it's very clearly seen in this recent reshuffle as well. So, more than 50 percent of the cabinet was changed. I think we have 20 ministries. So the leadership of 11 out of 20 has changed. So some ministries didn't have like an actual minister, they had an acting minister. So those were now appointed. So, you know, ministries like the Ministry of Culture or Sports and Youth.

But the most important arguably people who are out of the cabinet are Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Ukraine's Strategic Industries Minister, Oleksandr Kamyshin. They were really great in negotiations, played a really big role in you know, Russia's fight, Ukraine's fight against, against Russia. And about Kuleba, I've read that, I mean, he's been in the post for years and he was just kind of tired. And I've read that many of those people who've been changed that, you know, they just kind of, you know, got exhausted and needed kind of a change of pace and a change of job.So he left and he is going to be replaced by Andrii, Andrii Sybiha, who is a long time career diplomat. He's been in the foreign service for decades. He used to be Ukraine's Ambassador to Turkey. And then in 2021, he actually joined the presidential administration. So he was working with Yermak.

So here we go, one of the signs that this big reshuffle is not about some radical changes in the cabinet itself, but more about, you know, the power that Yermak and Zelensky's office have. Kamyshin, who was the strategic industries minister, he actually took the post of Zelensky's advisor. So he was moved closer to Zelensky in that sense. And he's replaced, interestingly, by a 31-year-old guy, Herman Smetanin. He's the former head of the Ukrainian state defense production conglomerate Ukroboronprom. And personally, I find this fascinating because, well, first of all, he's really young, but also he's an engineer who's worked in kind of state defense production companies his whole life. So he's really somebody like from the production, from, you know, the military defense apparatus. So I'm just really interested in seeing how he's gonna, you know, be at the job, though I did hear from people who know him personally that he actually doesn't speak English, which may be a really big problem because somebody like strategic industries minister plays a huge role in negotiations, I think, with allies on, you know, weapons systems that are supplied and things like that, so.

Those are the two really important guys. Another important part is that the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, there were a lot of rumors that he was going to leave, that Zelensky didn't like him, that they wanted him out, but he actually stayed. Then also some ministers were moved into Zelensky's administration. So not much has changed other than the people who came into cabinet are from Zelensky's administration, Zelensky's office, presidential office, and those who left, some of them left to the office. So it's kind of a-

Benjamin Wittes: Revolving door.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And Zelensky did publicly say that he wanted new energy and that, you know, we need to win the war and we need new ways, you know, to win the war. And that, you know, people are tired and we need all of this new energy. But I mean, I mean, I think it's clear that that's just PR because nobody actually new other than like Smetanin, nobody new came in. They just shuffled people who were already in the government system for many years. So I'm not sure where he's going to get the energy from.

Benjamin Wittes: So Eric, the big news in this, in the international space, is Kuleba who is, of course, a very deeply respected and known figure among Ukraine's interlocutors. Does it matter if you replace him from a public diplomacy over? I mean, this is a guy who's been on probably other than Ambassador Markarova, who's been on more Sunday talk shows than any other Ukrainian over the two and a half years of the war. Does it matter if you replace him with somebody else? Or is you know, the State Departments and the British Foreign Offices and, you know, the various interlocutors understand that this, you know, that this is a country with diplomatic depth and we'll deal with who's ever there on more or less the same basis.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it really matters from an international diplomacy standpoint. Kuleba obviously was very well respected, but like Nastia was saying, you know, Sybiha is a career diplomat. And government reshuffles and changes in leadership occur all the time in, you know, our allies and partners and, you know, we'll work with anyone who is chosen by the elected leadership of an ally and partner. So, you know, there’s been this very strange narrative in some corners that like, oh my God, there was a government reshuffle. The wheels are coming off the bus and Ukraine is imploding politically. That's just a very silly take. I mean, there was a lot more reason for concern, I think, when General Zaluzhnyi was sacked because, okay, he's the commander of the war. And there has to be a really good reason to fire your commander who's beloved by troops and seems to generally get along well with partners. And there was fear that, you know, changing the commander mid, you know, mid-war could have some impacts and it didn't really have any impacts. If anything, it had a positive effect because the relationship between Zelensky and Zaluzhnyi had become so strained that there was dysfunction in Ukrainian leadership decision making and the relationship between Zelensky and Syrskyi seems to have been a lot better. So there's more of a coordinated kind of plan that's being presented to partners. And there's not this kind of friction.

So, you know, again, Zelensky has the right to choose people that he trusts. There had been some friction between Zelensky and Kuleba. And so, you know, maybe this will mean that kind of the foreign ministry operates, you know, it has a little bit more leeway to be involved in conversations rather than being cut out of things because Sybiha has the trust of Yermak and Zelensky. Again, the narrative about kind of continued centralization of power in the office of the president, I think has a lot of merit and there is a reason for concern there at the same time, it's a war and you do need the government to operate effectively. And if Zelensky felt there was a reason for a change, then, you know, again, the United States, European partners are going to work with whoever is in charge.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, I will just say on the Zaluzhnyi matter, I mean, by the time he was removed, he had written an article in the Economist, describing the war in a fashion that was frankly different from the way the government described it. And whether or not you take the position that he was right or that the government was right in their characterization of it, there's a very good argument as an executive branch for not tolerat-. If you believe in civilian control over the military, for, that the president's office shouldn't actually tolerate a military commander who is describing the war in a fashion that differs that greatly from the-. Although I think Zaluzhnyi turned out to be more or less accurate, that was not what the president wanted at the time and I think that's actually when a change of leadership is probably appropriate.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Well, it depends on a lot of factors, right? Because it's actually this very interesting question of the centralization of power and, you know, how much of it is okay? And the fact that Ukraine can't really hold elections during wartime and the fact that, okay, but if the war goes on for another five years, what are we going to do with that? Right? Like Zelensky is just going to be in power for, I don't know, 10 years, and he's just going to keep doing this, keep replacing people. So it's all like-

Benjamin Wittes: Well that’s what Churchill did.

Anastasiia Lapatina:  Yeah, it's, it's difficult.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. Although I should minor correction, I mean, Churchill did it for the duration of the British war. They suspended elections and there was a national unity government, parliamentary system, different situation. But, and by the way, the people voted Churchill out the moment the war was over, notwithstanding his leadership. So, we're going to leave it there. We will do this again in a few weeks. Nastia, Eric thank you both for joining us today.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Thank you.

Eric Ciaramella: Thanks, Ben.

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