Q&A: Missiles, strategy, shadow fleet, Russia's economy
In this video, I answer your questions. Unfortunately, I was not able to answer all of them, because there were just too many. But I tried to cover as much ground as possible.
There is a transcript below, but in this case I recommend listening to the video instead. The transcript is just so long for me to go through it manually.
Best,
Anders
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### _Transcript:_
_Note: Usually, I verify the manuscripts manually, but with this one that has not been possible because it's just too long. So take it for what it is._
Hi, it has been a while since I last made a video and the reason has quite simply been that I've been very busy, just very many things to do. One of those things that I've had to do is that I launched a book. I launched this one, so it's The Politics of War is my second book and it's out now. And when there is a book launch, you have to do all kinds of PR things to sort of make people aware that the book is there and it's taken a lot of time. It's in Danish only so far, but the good news is that my first book, this one, The Logic of War, is coming out in English finally. It's going to come out in December, and now that we have a procedure for translating the books and getting them out, I sincerely hope that it's going to be a lot quicker with the new one, The Politics of War as well, so that will be out in English as well. And then I thought, how can I do something to kind of catch up on things? Because so many things have happened since I last made a video. So I decided that for this one, what I wanted to do is a Q&A kind of video. So I asked on my Logic Award website, the subscribers there, if they had any questions that they would like me to answer. And somewhat naively, I thought I would get an amount of questions, a number of questions that I could actually answer, but then it turned out that I just was overwhelmed by the number of questions. So I'm sorry, it's not going to be possible for me to answer all of those questions, but I picked out some of them. I grouped them together and I picked out some of them that I thought would cover most of what people were asking about and that would allow me to talk about some interesting stuff. So I hope to be able to do this in hopefully not too long a video, but there is a lot of things to get through. So let's just jump into it. And a lot of the questions really centered around the questions of missiles, different types of missiles, flamingo missiles, Taurus missiles, tomahawk missiles, all kinds of missiles. So let's just start there. The first question is, what happened to the flamingo? Are the flamingos a reality or just propaganda? So the flamingo missile is the Ukrainian missile that was announced in August, and it got a lot of attention because it has some very interesting features. It has a very long range, up to 3,000 kilometers, and a warhead of about 1,000 kilograms. So it's a very large and powerful missile with a very long range. So if Ukraine can get these into serial production and start producing the numbers that they are talking about, which is about seven per day by the end of the year, that was the plan to increase production to about seven per day by the end of 2025. And that's several hundred per month. And that's really something that would create a lot of problems for Russia. But so far, we have not seen that much of it. So on paper, Ukraine should have by now already produced quite a few of these, but it's been very limited of what we have seen. And the question here is fair. Does this missile actually exist? Are there some kind of problems or is it just propaganda? I think it's fair to say that this missile does exist. We have seen it. It's been showcased. There have been launches of it. And we have actually also seen attacks with it. Just last week, there was an attack on a Russian Black Sea port that very, very much looks like it was the Flamingo missile. So there have been cases like this. And Zelensky was also out stating a week ago or so that they have been used, I think he said like nine times or something like that. So there have been instances where the Flamingo missile has been used. It's just not being said explicitly that's what it is. I also want to say that I do think it does indicate that perhaps there are some things they are still working on, especially in terms of the guidance systems. At least the cases where we have seen it being used and it's been documented, it does look like the Flamingo actually missed its target and hit somewhere next to the target, which is of course not ideal. And then obviously we don't know if there are other cases where the missile actually hit, then these are just the ones that we get to see afterwards. And that actually the other flamingo missiles that were used in the same attack, they did strike the right target. We don't know that. But I do think that it does look like they are perhaps still working on the navigation systems and increasing the precision of these missiles. And maybe that is why we haven't seen them more widely used. It's also possible that they have been unable to scale production quite as quickly as they wanted to, so that we're not quite on track to seven per day by the end of the month or by the end of the year. Another thing is it's possible that Ukraine is saving these for the winter, because we're We're not quite in wintertime yet, and there has been a lot of talk about this fight about electricity and targeting Russia's electricity grid, and is this something that the Flamingo missile would be good for? If Ukraine wants to do something like that, then maybe it's better to wait until they have more in stock and also until the weather is a little more severe. the consequences would be bigger. So those are some of the possible explanations for why we haven't seen it more. But it does look like the missile is there and they're working on it and eventually they will get it fixed even if it's delayed and the production is not scaling as quickly as they would have hoped. I think it's fair to assume that they're going to get there, just to iron out whatever technical issues there are. The next question is about Taurus missiles. What happened to the Taurus missile and how important would it be? So the Taurus missile is the German, a cruise missile, a very sort of powerful missile with a range of about 500 kilometers, some very good, very precise missile, has some very good bunker busting capabilities, so it would be very good at hitting hardened targets. That's been a very political issue about these Taurus missiles and the previous German Chancellor Schultz was not willing to provide them. Then Merz, who is there now, talked about doing it, but it hasn't actually materialized. There is disagreement inside Germany about that. Now we are at a point where it looks more and more unlikely that Ukraine is actually going to get those. But what I will say is also, I think it's important to note that Germany has invested heavily in other types of long range missiles. And I think a good guess is that we're talking about the Flamingo missile. So Germany has invested a lot of money in developing Ukraine's own production of long range missiles. And the problem about the Taurus is anyways, the number of missiles that Ukraine could get would be rather limited. So it might be possible to give Ukraine some number of those, and that would have some effect. But it would not be possible to actually deliver anything near the kinds of numbers that Ukraine can get if they can really get the Flamingo missiles up and working and into mass production. So I don't think the Taurus missiles are going to come. I don't think it would be a game changer. If it happens, it would be nice for Ukraine to have those for certain types of hardened targets. But I don't think Ukraine would, in any case, get a number that would substantially change the direction of the war, which something like mass production of the Flamingo missile might actually do. So, all right. Next one, what's going on with the Tomahawk missile? The Tomahawk missile is the American long-range cruise missile originally ship launched, so you launched from a ship, but you can just place that launcher on land and there are different launchers that you can use on land as well to launch the Tomahawk missile and it would work perfectly well for that. There was a lot of talk about how Donald Trump was going to provide those and then it turned out it wasn't. I don't think it's going to happen. I think it's something that Donald Trump is going to keep talking about because it would be a kind of way to pressure Russia into negotiations, but I don't think it's actually going to materialize. I also must say I don't really think Tomahawk would be a super game changer either. It might be nice for Ukraine to have it now as a sort of gap filler until the Flamingo missile is really online and working. But if Ukraine will not get the Tomahawk missile until they actually fix the problems that they have with the Flamingo missile, then I think it's limited what difference it would make. And again, I think it's a numbers question. I think in any case, it would be a very limited number that the United States would be able and willing to give Ukraine. So let's not put too much into this Tomahawk discussion. All right, another question here. Now that the US is no longer restraining Ukraine's attacks on Russia, why isn't Ukraine more actively targeting the Moscow area with airstrikes? Well, two things in this. First, Ukraine is striking Moscow. So we are seeing that more and more long-range drones coming to Moscow, disrupting air traffic in Moscow, for example, hitting targets there. Another thing I will say is that I don't think really that this has anything to do with the United States and what they are permitting Ukraine to do, because these are Ukraine's own weapons. So Ukraine does not need permission from the United States to do that. There have been instances where the United States could ask politely, like, would you please not target those things? And that did happen. It did seem to happen with the oil refineries, for example, in 2024, that the Biden administration actually did ask Ukraine not to target Russia's oil production facilities too much because they were afraid that this would push up oil prices, which would be bad for the election, the presidential election. And Ukraine then did that. But aside from that, as long as it's Ukraine's own weapons, the United States doesn't really get a say in it. And so I think this discussion about what they are permitting Ukraine to do, that's only relevant when we're talking about American produced missiles or missiles produced in other countries, but with American components, such as the storm shadow missile, for example, where it actually does require an American permission, even though it's a British and French missile. All right. So, but Ukraine is doing that. Then there is a question here, which is about the disadvantages of Russia's strategic death. The fact that Russia is so big, it's really difficult that used to give protection, that Russia was so big that when we had weapons with shorter ranges, then just being a bit away from the front line actually gave protection. But in today's military environment, where you have these long-range capabilities, then is not really protecting like that. So how should we understand that? And what would it mean for European strategy in a war with Russia? So actually, Russia's strategic depth has in an age where the missiles have the kind of range that they have now of a couple of thousand kilometers, then the strategic depth is actually a problem that Russia has because it also just means that the area that is within range of missiles or drones is so big that it becomes really difficult to protect everything with air defenses. So in many ways, it has created a situation where Russia is very vulnerable. If you take a country such as Israel, for example, it's very different, right? because Israel is super small and you can concentrate air defenses everywhere around that. So you can really build like the super robust air defense system that covers everything. But a country such as Russia, that's just not possible. The number of potential targets is so big that there is no way Russia can cover everything and they have to prioritize where to use their assets. And that obviously means that a country such as Ukraine has possibilities if Russia decides to really protect their refining facilities, for example, then Ukraine can go after production facilities or weapons factories or military installations. And then if Russia then protects the military installations, they can go after the refining capabilities. So it really challenges Russia and will mean that Russia will have to use massive resources on this. And that obviously is also something that Europe would need to look into in how can we leverage our advantages against Russia in a potential future war. The problem that Europe has is that we don't actually have a lot of long-range capabilities that can strike these things inside of Russia. So I think we're quite behind right now in the sense that we can't actually take advantage of this disadvantage that Russia has because we just don't have the production facilities for a very large number of drones, for example, or long-range missiles. Ukraine has that, so they can start really pushing Russia on this right now. But in Western Europe, we don't really have that yet. So that is something we would need to create in order to take advantage of this problem that Russia has. All right. There is a question here about Russia's nuclear weapons. What state is Russia's nuclear arsenal in and what capabilities can we expect them to have on the one hand, the internet jokes about poor maintenance and corruption and on the other hand we hear about nuclear torpedoes. There is a lot of theatrics about this and the nuclear torpedo is one, the Burevestnik missile, this nuclear powered missile is another one. Two capabilities that I will say are close to useless from a military point of view, They serve basically no purpose, but it's something that Putin really likes to utilize to create this fear in the West in the sense that Russia has these super weapons or something. But that said, I think it's also important that we do acknowledge that Russia is the greatest nuclear power in the world. They have the biggest nuclear arsenal. They have enough nuclear missiles to destroy the earth many times over and a large number of those missiles actually do work. So it's really important that we don't fall into the trap of thinking that Russia does not really have this capability that they're talking about because they do. These things do work and once you get into the problem about getting into this idea that maybe it doesn't work is that you can get into ideas about how you could get away with a first strike, for example, or how Russia would not be able to respond. And I think definitely we should assume that Russia's nuclear weapons do work. And many of the missiles that they are hitting Ukraine with every day are nuclear capable. So they could just as well have a nuclear warhead and they are creating huge problems for Ukraine's air defenses. They regularly beat something like the Patriot air defense systems. So we need to take it seriously. We need to respect that Russia is a nuclear power and that they do have this capability and also not get super scared when they come out with these big threats and big talk about silly nuclear weapons that don't really serve any purpose. That's their way of trying to threaten with nuclear capabilities and trying to remind us of the existence of this and the danger of nuclear war. And we should of course not be intimidated by that and we should not overreact to these things. It seemed that Donald Trump actually did overreact to this news about the Burevestnik missile, for example, because he did suddenly start talking about how the United States would but also do nuclear testing and all those things, which was not what Russia had done. Actually, all they had done was to test this missile that doesn't really bring anything new at all. But yeah, we should expect Russia to have a working nuclear arsenal. Then there is a question about the significance of Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine that there is so much fighting over. The tactical significance of Western Donbass is frequently said that it is a very good natural defense line. Is this view actually overhyped? And assuming not, is there another similarly strong line that Ukraine could fall back to between the Donbass and the Dnipro? So it is true that Ukraine's strongest defensive lines are in the Donbass. This is actually the area that Russia keeps saying that in order for any negotiations to take place, Ukraine would have to hand over these areas, just as a precondition for negotiations. And obviously Ukraine is never going to hand over their best fortifications to Russia. Ukraine has obviously prepared something on the other side of the Donbas. But Donbass is special in terms of Ukrainian geography in the sense that Donbass consists of many smaller cities, such as Pokrovsk, for example, that there is so much fighting over right now, but there are other Slovians, Kramatorsk, et cetera. So really many of these types of smaller kind of cities, 50,000 to 100,000 people kind of range. This is special in Ukrainian geography where other places it would be much more tend to be empty spaces and then larger cities. And that means that on today's battlefield, it is very often actually the cities that are the defensive line and are the fortifications, which the Battle of Pokrovsk that is taking place right now has demonstrated. It's taken a year and a half for Russia to get inside of the city. And the same would be true of the other cities, which are even bigger than Pukrovsk. So Donbass is special in that sense, that it gives better opportunities for creating these city fortifications. And you can't really replicate the same in the open fields of the area which is further to the west. So I do think it is true in that sense that Donbass is special and that it serves a specific military purpose just because of the way the geography there is with the cities and so forth. Ukrainian high command. What is your view on the Ukrainian high command? I see conflicting information about the way they operate." So this is a tricky question in the sense that if you go to Ukraine, you will hear a lot of criticism about higher command and how the generals are out of touch with reality, how they are making ill-informed decisions because information is not coming to them, not available, people in the system will lie about performance, will lie about mistakes or defeats or setbacks, and therefore the generals will make silly decisions. Or you have people there who are more busy caring about their own career than about actually winning the war against Russia. So you will hear a lot of criticism like that in Ukraine. But at the same time, you will also hear a lot of people praising the way the Ukrainians how it's really smart, how they are getting the best out of the situation, how they are leveraging technology to create good results against a larger army. So I'm a little conflicted on that. I think there is some truth to the criticism. I also think it's just necessary to understand that any large military organization, any general command in any country is also a bureaucracy of people. And there are sort of palace politics and people pursuing their own careers and other people eager to say what the boss is interested in hearing. It's something we also have in Denmark. We have the same discussions here. We have the same discussions in all these institutions. And that is just also necessary to acknowledge that this is also a reality. And it's something that when you are in a ward, you will probably, these things will be more visible. You will need to deal with it in a different way because mistakes have consequences in other ways. And also just in any bureaucracy consisting of hundreds of thousands of people and sort of mid-level managers, a certain number of those are not going to be super competent. And that is obviously also something that you would expect to see in Ukraine. So when you have these instances where suddenly some commander decides to have an award ceremony or something like that, hand out medals, and the ceremony is hit with Russian missiles because they violated the procedures for these things. Well, that's super stupid, right? But unfortunately, I think that kind of stupidity is also to be expected in pretty much any large organization like that. And of course, you have to work with it. You have to try to get rid of it. You have to make sure that the right people actually rise to command and that you reward the right kinds of results and behavior and those things. But it's a constant struggle because there are just things inside any bureaucracy that pull in the different direction, right? So on the one hand, I do think much of the criticism of the Ukrainian general staff would be fair and it's important to bring to light and to focus on how can we improve these things and make sure mistakes don't repeat themselves. But at the same time, I also think in the big picture, I actually think the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian general command is doing pretty okay in dealing with these things. And I do think that is reflected in the results that the Ukrainian army are demonstrating on the front line in holding the Russians back and actually fighting a very competent defensive fight against the constant attacks that they've been under since at least 2023. So, all right. That was my thoughts on Ukrainian high command. And there is a very interesting question here about closing the Danish Straits. Is it possible for Denmark to close the straits to Russian ships? I think there are actually two dimensions to this. There is the one, is it possible that we could close the straits for Russian warships if there is a war? I think the answer to that question is probably yes. I would tend to say that whenever we talk about naval warfare in the Baltic, I actually tend to see it not so much as a maritime issue, but more as an air power issue. I think we should expect the Russian Baltic fleet to more or less disappear within the first 48 hours of any large scale war. So I don't think it would be that big of an issue to close the straits for them. I also think the Russians would expect their Baltic fleet to disappear within the first couple of days because it's just almost impossible to defend it against the air power that is surrounding the entire Baltic Sea. The other question here that I think is really interesting to address is the question of can we close the Danish Straits for the shadow fleet, the Russian shadow fleet, the tankers that are exporting Russian oil from the St. Petersburg area and out into the world market. And there's been a lot of pressure put on Denmark to do that. I just heard Jack Watling, who's a RUSI military analyst, talking about how this would definitely be possible. We just need to do it. What needs to happen is just we need to get beyond the words. We need to actually start taking some action and we just need to change the legal basis for how the straits are regulated that the old treaty that is regulating them now, we just need to replace that with a new one and then we can actually start doing something. I think maybe this is something I should make a dedicated video about actually going through why this is so problematic. But the short version of it is that there are basically two types of straits in the world when you look at it from a maritime law kind of perspective. The first one is you can have all straits that are regulated by all treaties, and these are called historic straits. And the Danish Straits, for example, is one example of those because there's the Copenhagen Treaty from some 150 years ago. And then another example would be the Turkish Straits leading into the Black Sea, for example, where there is the Montreux Convention. Other straits are regulated by UNCLOS, the Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is from the 80s. And the system basically is that UNCLOS is regulating any strait that was not regulated by another treaty or convention that existed at that time when it was introduced. And that means that today the situation is that if any of these old treaties that would govern the Danish Straits, for example, the Copenhagen Treaty, if that fell away, then what would replace that would not be a new treaty that we could make. It would be UNCLOS. But UNCLOS also would allow Russian ships to pass more or less unhindered and not allow Denmark to stop the shadow fleet. And what's more problematic from a Danish perspective is that UNCLOS gives more rights to Russia than the current Copenhagen Treaty in that it would also allow Russian aircraft to pass through the Danish Straits, which is not actually allowed today from the Copenhagen treaty. So that's one of the reasons why Denmark is so careful about challenging these things, because we might end up in a worse place where actually the outcome would be that Russia, we don't get anything of what we wanted. And instead, Russia would actually end up with more rights. And also we are super concerned about sending the president here of violating the maritime law because that would basically give other countries the possibility of doing the same to our ships, other places in the world, right? So these are some of the complications in this. And so from that perspective, I think, no, I don't actually think it is super possible to close the Danish Straits within the confines of international maritime law, and then we would need to move outside of that to do it, and I'm not sure that's necessarily in our interest either. So at least it's a lot more problematic than many people say who just point to Denmark and say, why don't you just close that? It should be easy. All right. A question here about Russia's imperial ambitions. I understand that Russia has the interest to invade Baltic states, but do you really think that Russia is interested in invading Poland or even Germany if it has the opportunity. For me, it seems not realistic that someone would be ready to try something like this. What do you think? I think Russia's ambition is that the international organizations that we have in Europe, so that would be the European Union, it would be NATO, these kinds of bodies, that they would fall And then Europe would just consist of a bunch of individual states that act on their own and that would, in relations to Russia, need to negotiate on their own bilaterally, right? So in that relationship, Russia would always be the great power and they would be in a position to enforce whatever they think is right. So I think that is the condition they would rather see than necessarily where would the borders go of Russia. It would be about creating the conditions where Russia can exercise their power as a great power in Eastern Europe, the dominant great power in Eastern Europe. And for some countries, that might mean that they would be absorbed by the Russian Federation. So that could be the result that the Baltic states could go that way. That is what is happening right now to a part of Eastern Ukraine, right? But I don't think it's necessarily that important to Putin to absorb all of this territory into Russia itself. As long as these countries are willing to just submit themselves to Russian power and accept this great power status that Russia has and that they are the small power, then I think essentially Putin would be satisfied about that. What do I think that means for Poland and Germany, for example? I think for Poland, Putin absolutely sees that as being within Russia's sphere of influence. I think basically we should look at the map from the 1980s and see where was the Warsaw Pact and that's in round numbers, that is the area that he sees as Russia's sphere of influence. So I think for Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, et cetera, he absolutely believes that this is Russia's sphere of influence and these are the countries that should submit to Russia being the dominant great power. Germany, I would say that probably he would tend to see that as legitimate American sort of area, right? Where that is America's sphere of influence. So I don't think he would expect Berlin to submit in that sense to Russia in the same way he would expect Warsaw to do it. But basically that is the condition that he would bring about. And that would of course be a totally different Europe from what we're seeing today. It's a kind of Europe without the European Union, without NATO, without the cooperation between the many small states that we have now in Europe. And it's an idea of a future Europe that is totally incompatible with the idea that we have who actually live here today and who are very satisfied about how our life is unfolding inside the European Union, right? So we need to be aware of how much is at stake. It's not so much about conquering Poland or Germany, but it would be much more about bringing about an end to NATO and to the European Union. I think it's more along those lines we should understand Russia's imperial ambitions. Russia's economy. What is the current state of Russia's economy today and for the next year on money, finances, oil infrastructure and those things, and will this have any impact on the length of the war? The Russian economy is super bad. It worked pretty well for about three years after the full-scale invasion. That is not unusual that there will be an economic uptick after a full-scale... After a transition to a war economy when you start pumping money into society. But right now, those happy days are over and the Russian economy is really struggling. What we're seeing is that there is recession by now, still at a point when the central bank insists that technically speaking, it's not really recession yet. But I mean, there is negative growth. So let's just start from that and say this is recession. We are seeing signs of a slowdown. Businesses are struggling to pay the bills. We are seeing layoffs. We are seeing companies scaling back, going to a four-day work week, for example, something they are marketing as a kind of benefit for the employees, et cetera. But it's clearly because they are struggling to actually finance what's going on. There's super high interest rate and businesses really can't pay those interests. And we are still seeing super high inflation. So Russia is really being hit by all things bad when it comes to the economy. But it's going to take a while before this translates into something that actually hits the military production. Because what's happening is obviously that the government is trying to spare the military sector. So they are trying to let other sectors in society suffer while they keep military production high. We are seeing the first signs that also companies engaged in military production are struggling, But it's going to take a while until this really translates into something that is a problem on the front line. I think it's going to turn into problems in several ways. Over time, it will turn into problems in terms of logistics, in terms of providing the things the soldiers need, in terms of keeping the pressure there. So that's one thing. And then another one is that it's also going to increasingly put pressure on Russia's manning model, which is very much based on giving high bonuses to people to have them sign up voluntarily to fight. It's a very expensive way of recruiting soldiers, and Russia might run out of money and not be able to do that to sustain that model anymore. And another thing is that the more the economic crisis begins to bite in society, the less the value is actually of getting those bonuses and being paid whatever you're paid to be in the Russian military. So if you're mostly fighting because you earn a lot of money and then inflation is eating away that money, then obviously that is something that might eventually be bad for morale. So I think it's going to challenge Russia's manning model and over time it might force Putin into going in a different direction and maybe look more into actual forced mobilization. All right. Now that China is set to fund the war more directly via Yuan-denominated bonds, what do you foresee Russia? Do you foresee Russia becoming a battle state of China, similar to the Warsaw Pact countries in relation to the Soviet Union during the Cold War? And do you also think that this cash injection will affect the outcome of the war or is Russia's fate already sealed? So I think what's happening here, and I think this is an important nuance, is that Russia is now, there are now bonds, Russian sort of state bonds that are in yuan. sell Chinese money. But the important thing is that these are not actually for the Chinese market. They are for the Russian market. So what they are trying to do here is to leverage the fact that a lot of Russian businesses have ended up with a large number of yuan because they are selling things to China. But they have the problem that they can't really get rid of this money. They have nowhere to put it. So the Russian state is trying to collect that by having these businesses buy bonds instead. So it's not actually Chinese investors now investing in Russia's war economy. It's more for the Russian market and to trying to sort of scrape up the yuan that people have in Russia. I do think in the bigger perspective, I mean, the other thing might come. I mean, it's not that I rule that out. But I just don't think that's what we're seeing quite yet. In the bigger perspective, Russia is definitely becoming more and more dependent on China in all this. And it's one of the downsides that Putin clearly doesn't seem to be super aware of or take as seriously as I think most observers would say he should. But for Putin, and that's really important, the biggest struggle that overshadows everything is the fight against the West. It's the constant conflict against us that is the most important one. And things like problems with China, that is something that can be dealt with later, let's postpone that, let's deal with that at a later point once we're done stopping NATO expansion and restoring the greatness of Russia in Europe, and then we can deal with China afterwards. That seems to be Putin's line of thinking here, and I don't think it's super smart. I think he underestimates the long-term consequences of Russia becoming this little brother to China. But anyway, that is the way he's going with this. It's just simply that in his mind, there are other things that are more important. Yeah. Do I think this cash injection will affect the outcome of the war or is Russia's fate already sealed? I will say in a broader perspective, I think it's important to say that I don't see China's interests in the outcome of the war in Ukraine as being as great as Europe's interests. And ultimately, I think that is going to be decisive here. China is primarily, as I see it, interested in making sure that Russia does not lose the war too much. That's how I would put it, right? They don't care who gets to control what cities in Donbass or like Russia's project in Europe. That's not super important to China. What is important to China is that Russia continues to exist as this power, this ally they have on the world stage. So I think China is willing to sustain Russia's economy to make sure that it doesn't collapse entirely and that Putin suddenly disappears from the world stage because Russia collapses. So I think it's more in these terms we need to understand China's engagement. What has been... Okay, so this is different. Here's more about predictions for next year and a bit about evaluation of this year. What has been the biggest successes and fiascos of the war on both sides in 2025? And what will you follow closely the rest of the year and in 2026? I think in terms of the war itself, the frontline, those things, it's actually not moved all that much in 2025. I think the most significant thing is that the Russians were able to throw the Ukrainians out of the Kursk region where they were until in the beginning of the year and Russia pushed them out. I think that's actually been the most significant Russian achievement. I think that's one of the reasons why they are pushing really hard on Pokorovsk right now, because it's really hard at the end of the year to sell to the Russian people that our biggest success this year was that we were able to liberate the Kursk region where Ukraine was not supposed to be in the first place, right? So I think from a Russian perspective, it's actually been a difficult year in terms of showing off successes. But, you know, they might still be able to take Bukhovsk. That's likely possible that they can do that before New Year's. I think for Ukraine, I think the biggest success or the biggest challenge has been about dealing with the Trump administration. It's been about fighting the defensive fight and just playing for time while they got things sorted with the new Trump administration and trying to get the supply lines organized and figuring out what are we going to get from America going forward? What are we not going to get? What is realistic here? So that you can use that as a basis for actually making a strategy for how you can continue the fight. I think that's been the biggest challenge for Ukraine. And I think it has kind of... It looks like it's been kind of successful by now. They're not getting that much from the United States anymore. Actually, the United States is not giving anything, but the United States is willing to sell weapons to European partners who can then hand it on to Ukraine. That means Ukraine is now in a position where they can start making predictions about what are we going to get from whom, what types of weapons are we going to get from American factories, et cetera. And that means that they can start planning ahead. I think that's actually been the biggest challenge of 2025. And now we are at a place where maybe for 2026, there's going to be a bit more predictability about it and we can see Ukraine starting to maybe spend a little less of their time dealing with their allies and a bit more of the time dealing with actually pursuing a strategy of how to end the war. All right. Predictions for 2026 or what will I be following? I think the most important thing is actually going to be the long range war. I think the pressure on the front line, whatever is going on there, that is going to continue. The pattern is more or less set. I think there's going to be a continuation of things like the small attacks, the micro advances that Russia is making while taking very big losses. I think that's going to continue. Ukraine is going to continue focusing on a defensive fight. It's going to be really difficult, very static situation, mostly due to the drones and all those things that are really making things difficult for anyone who's trying to make offensive operations. So I think that is going to continue. But where the development might really be is in the long-range war because we are seeing both sides really increasing the output of long-range capabilities, drones, missiles. And we are seeing this intensify. We're seeing constant escalation. We're now seeing them targeting each other's energy grid. We're going to see Ukraine continue targeting Russia's oil production, like these kinds of things. And I really think that, as boring as it sounds, that the most decisive thing in 2026 will be following the war economy and to see if both sides will be able to sustain the current level of intensity. And especially the Russian war economy, I think, is going to be interesting to follow that. I think Ukraine's war economy is mostly dependent on European support. And while that is a big debate that is also interesting to follow that's happening in Brussels, I think in the end, I'm quite confident that the European countries are going to find a way to keep financing Ukraine here. So the biggest question is, will Russia be able to find ways to keep financing their side or their war? So that's what I will be looking for in the coming months and into 2026. But how is the war in Ukraine likely to end? Well, that's a big question. I think there are basically two types of scenarios here. One scenario is that it's going to end up as a kind of frozen conflict where the insensity is just going to kind of fade out. And we are going to find a kind of scenario where the fighting is going to continue. but on a more sustainable level, fewer casualties, less intensity. I think that's one possible outcome and I would say actually if I were an advisor to Putin, then I might actually tell him that I think this is a good... That is something he might be interested in pursuing because it might be one of the ways that he could actually best preserve his own position inside of Russia and without jeopardizing too much that the war just never really ends and that he just kind of keeps going and going and going. But what I will say is that I'm not quite sure how this would actually play out. I think there are challenges. We sometimes have these discussions about how about a Korea scenario where it's this kind of longstanding thing and it just never really ends. I think one of the big challenges about that is that the weapons technology is just very different from what it was in Korea in the 1950s. At that time, you could just make a zone of about maybe 15 kilometers and say that that's like a demilitarized zone and then nobody could shoot at each other. But how would a frozen conflict look in an age of long-range drones that can reach thousands of kilometers? I'm not quite sure that the weapons technology actually permits these things such as a frozen conflict. But it's possible that it could end there in one way or another and then that the two sides would just accept not hitting each other. But another way that I see this ending is actually with a kind of quite dramatic escalation as a result of Russia facing defeat. I think we, I feel pretty confident that Europe is going to keep supporting Ukraine to make sure that Ukraine does not suffer catastrophic defeat. But I don't think the Russian war economy can sustain this level of intensity for the coming years. And that means that we are going to see Russia's intensity decline, the intensity of the attacks decline. And then if Ukraine does not actually agree to stopping attacking Russia and then following that decline in intensity, then what that would translate into is Russia suddenly starting to lose ground instead of gaining ground. and Putin looking into something that really shatters his ideas of reinstating Russia as the great power in Eastern Europe and those things. If he can't beat Ukraine, then that is basically the end of the dream of the empire. And unfortunately, I think Putin would be very willing to take high risk to make sure that that does not happen and that if he suddenly faces this prospect of losing the war, that he would be willing to escalate in order to see if he can turn things around. And by escalation, I mean primarily against Western Europe because we are what is standing between him and the victory in Ukraine. If we stop supporting Ukraine, then Ukraine will pretty quickly run out of money and then Russia can win. So I think there is a high risk that Putin will be willing to put a lot of pressure on Western Europe to make us stop supporting Ukraine. And as I just said, I don't really think that there is anything that this is a realistic path that Europe could go down. So we might be heading into something that is a bigger confrontation between NATO and Russia in the coming years, as Putin will find himself in a more and more desperate position. Then there is a final question that I want to address. And that is, how do you keep hope up? Every time I look at the situation for Europe, I get strangled by despair. And yes, I can totally understand that. And especially based on my just last answer here, that we might be heading into a large confrontation between NATO and Russia, right? What would that look like? What I'm talking about is actually not just hybrid warfare here. I think way too many people are dismissive of the potential of an actual armed conflict between NATO and Russia that could happen within the next few years, right? Russia does not have currently what it takes to fight a great war against NATO, right? If we, they can't suddenly, while the war is going on in Ukraine, they can't suddenly march on Berlin, right? That's not going to happen. But what could happen is that Russia can absolutely find the resources to challenge NATO in a smaller way and challenge the cohesion in NATO. Right now, there are different reports about how many soldiers Russia has actually engaged in Pokrovsk, but it's somewhere in the ballpark between 100,000, 150,000, some reports say 170,000 people Russia have engaged in taking the city of Pokrovsk. This is something, this is a true buildup that Russia has been able to do while this war has been going on. They can do things like that. And they could also absolutely do the same thing on the border to one of the Baltic states. And if we look at the prospect, what would that do to NATO if Russia suddenly crosses the border to Latvia with 100,000 troops? Would that put us under serious pressure? Yes, absolutely. Would it be the great war? I don't know. define great war, but it would definitely be a huge crisis, right? And it's something like that, that I think Putin might be willing to do in order to force us to divert resources instead of supporting Ukraine. Instead, use those resources to defend ourselves, to defend NATO. And that is dramatic, right? I'm talking about these kinds of things being something that could potentially happen within the coming year or two, right? And this is, of course, something that could make you depressed, right? And I find myself more and more, you know, when I do public speaking and things like that, I really want to say something that will comfort people and give people some, you know, a feeling that it's not that bad, but it is actually pretty bad, right? So I fully understand that question. But that said, I think it's also important to be aware that there are many ways that this could not happen. It's absolutely possible that we will find ways out of this. We can make deterrence work. I think actually the fact that Ukraine, as I said, over the last year have managed to kind of normalize or get a working relationship going again with the United States. and that there is this cooperation between the United States and Europe about supplying weapons to Ukraine. The fact that the Trump administration has now put some sanctions on Russia, has shown some willingness to actually act in some way. I mean, all these are things that would make Putin concerned about what would the consequences be if I take the steps here of actually attacking a NATO country, for example? And am I sure that this is what I really want to do? Or, you know, we can be concerned about the willingness of Western countries to stand together. But from the Russian perspective, Putin would have to be concerned the other way, right? And say, well, we can't rule out the possibility that they might actually fight for each other and the Americans might engage in this. And I think if we can get more of that where we try to rebuild some of that relationship and try to get the Americans a little bit back into expressing more clear support for the NATO project, then there is a good likelihood that we're not going to end up in that worst case scenario that I talked about. And that is something that would allow us to get through the next year or two of uncertainty and into something where there can be a more stable deterrence in Europe. We can see a new kind of frontline, a new... We're not going to be friends with Russia for the foreseeable future, right? But we can get into a more stable situation where there is a defined kind of frontline and deterrence is in place and the rules of the game. You could see how these things could be created so that we can still maintain the Europe that like and that has been very good for us. And so I do think overall what gives me hope is that I do see how this could land in a positive way. I do think that's how... I do think we are... We're going to get there one way or another. But obviously I am concerned about these things, right? And when I say there is a possibility of this kind of war-armed confrontation between NATO and Russia, I think it's important to be aware that I still think that... I don't want to put percentages on this, but I still think there is a greater likelihood that it's not going to happen than that it is. So that gives me a bit of hope. All right. I am going to wrap this up. It's been like, I honestly, when I asked for questions that I could use in this video, I thought this was going to be like a 30 minute Q&A kind of thing. Now we're at least twice that. And I did not get through even half the questions. There are many, many more. I'm sorry to all those that I did not address here. But this was kind of my way of getting back into making YouTube videos and trying to catch up on the things that happened while I was away. And hopefully from now on I will get back into the routine of releasing more regular videos. That's the plan. Anyway, so, um, thanks for watching and if you made it this far, uh, well, thank you very much. I hope, I hope it was useful. See you next time.
