Four years of Russian war – Assessment #NATO#Russia#Suwalki#Ukraine#USA#War in Ukraine#War of Attrition
This article is based on transcript of a TV analysis and interview for Slovak TV channel JOJ24. Full video in Slovak you can find here https://youtu.be/W6wKJmZkeqA?si=qFfzH0PSrlDUbImm
Moderator: The war in Ukraine is entering another year. Peace negotiations have not yet brought the desired results. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is convinced that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has already started the Third World War. The war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. It has caused enormous material damage. According to a joint report by the World Bank, European Union, UN and Ukraine, published on Monday, the costs of post-war reconstruction are estimated at approximately $558 billion over the next decade. However, peace is nowhere in sight.
We will now discuss more with Lieutenant General (Retired) Pavel Macko. Welcome. Thank you for finding the time.
General Macko: Thank you for the invitation.
Moderator: Mr. Macko, at the beginning, we could assess how the front and the war are doing now at the beginning of the fifth year.
Levels of War in Ukraine
General Macko: This war is taking place on four levels.
Tactical Level – Front Line
The most visible one for us is on the front line, it’s about tactical combat. We are in a stage of attrition warfare that is very difficult, with heavy losses and minimal movements on the front line.
When I compare it, at the peak of the Russian invasion in 2022, the Russians controlled 29% of the territory. Then the Ukrainians partially pushed them back, and since then, for at least the past two years, this kind of attrition warfare has been ongoing, where the Russians are slowly trying to crumble, literally breaking Ukrainian defense like stone.
They are helped by gliding bombs, which they have brought to the battlefield or into use in the meantime. But actually, over all that time, over the past two years, they have gained less than 1.5% of Ukrainian territory.
So today, after four years of war, at the beginning of the fifth year of war, the Russians control only less than 20% of the territory. Despite this, they pretend that they could continue prolonging the war, that they could continue.
Operational Level of War
If we look at the operational level of war, the Russians are intensively attacking deep into Ukrainian territory and destroying infrastructure, but just as they failed to destroy Ukrainian air defense at the beginning of the war, it has meanwhile received reinforcement through Western assistance, so it still resists quite effectively. Despite the fact that the strikes are getting bigger.
In four years, however, the Russians have achieved:
🔸The ability to produce more missiles
🔸Produce substantially more drones
🔸Modernized those drones
🔸If the Russians couldn’t hit moving targets deep in territory for three years, they have now achieved this
On the other hand, Ukraine has gained:
🔸The ability to conduct deep strikes into Russian territory with its own forces
🔸We have seen the latest attacks not only with drones, but also with missiles, whether cruise missiles or their own ballistic missiles, which they continue to improve and can manufacture themselves.
Naval Operations
Despite not having a fleet, Ukrainians managed to first push out the Russian fleet, the Black Sea Fleet from Crimea, which became too dangerous and uninhabitable for this fleet.
They pushed them to the eastern coast of the Black Sea to Novorossiysk and surrounding areas. And this through attacks:
🔸Missiles on Crimea
🔸Long-range drones on Crimea
🔸Naval drones
War Transformation
In general, this war has brought fundamental changes. What we see today is a completely different war and different armies than what we saw at the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022.
The armies have also transformed. Many of the most experienced have already fallen or had to be replaced. And on the other hand, we see that there has been a great transformation of those armies, their organizational structures, there has been technologization of war.
And by the way, this is also what enables Ukraine to survive so far:
🔸Great support from the West – financial, economic, material
🔸Mainly constant asymmetry, modernization
🔸Efforts to balance the numerical superiority in terms of people and equipment on the Russian side
Strategic Level
At the strategic level, we see that the Russians have gained nothing, because Ukraine continues to resist after four years. They wanted to quickly gain Ukraine under their power and gain control over it. That didn’t work out.
And they wanted to discourage other countries from closer relations with the West. The opposite happened. NATO expanded with Sweden and Finland.
Hybrid Activities
On the other hand, and this is the last dimension or level of that war, this war is also taking place in the form of hybrid activities or in this information and psychological space, whether inside Russia, inside Ukraine, or in the surrounding world.
Regarding inside Russia:
🔸Russians suppress any opposition
🔸They try to regulate social media now
Inside Ukraine:
🔸They try through bombing infrastructure and attempts to freeze the population to undermine the will
🔸This has never worked particularly well in history
🔸Despite this, it has devastating effects on the Ukrainian population, but the determination is still strong enough
Towards the West:
🔸Russians try, including through participation in negotiations, which they deliberately prolong, to divide the West and gain support from third world countries
🔸They try to sow seeds of doubt among Ukraine’s Western partners
🔸They conduct long-term information hybrid activities against us
🔸We have seen in recent months and years even sabotage activities directly in the rest of Europe
And we actually see not completely clear unanimity and unity of the West, but support for Ukraine still continues.
War of Endurance
So in summary, we are in a situation where it’s a war about who will last longer.
🔸Currently Ukrainians have nowhere to retreat, they must endure, because they would face the liquidation of statehood and nation
🔸Russians are still fighting on foreign territory and cannot move forward in the war
So they try rather in those other areas, in the psychological, in the hybrid influence to undermine what keeps Ukraine afloat and that is also the external help.
Moderator: I’ll go to the words of General Zaluzhny, who was the army chief. He said these days that basically there is no army that would somehow be able to end this war in the current situation, because the war, as you also indicated, has completely changed from what we were used to.
Not only how the war is conducted, but also the various brakes and counterbalances in stability and security are absolutely different, that the world has changed.
Volodymyr Zelensky also said that Vladimir Putin started the Third World War in the sense that so many countries are actually involved in the conflict, in negotiations, in arms supplies. Do you also perceive it this way, that we are basically already in the Third World War?
Has the Third World War Already Begun?
General Macko: I will answer on two levels.
Regarding Zaluzhny’s Statement
First, regarding Zaluzhny’s statement. Of these current armies that are fighting – Russian and Ukrainian, neither has the strength to make a fundamental change and dramatically reverse the course of the war.
That means it’s an exhausting war that will go on for a long time. We know such wars in history. After all, Russia defeated Napoleon’s stronger and more modern armies by eventually exhausting them – by avoiding direct confrontations and wearing down the French army. It had to retreat there and they finished it during that retreat, so Napoleon actually lost despite expectations, lost in an attrition war.
So an attrition war can be won even by the weaker partner. It’s not at all that mathematics automatically decides in favor of Russia. If it were just about mathematics, all conflicts would be decided in advance. But they weren’t, and we could go far back in history.
How It Could Change
That means it could be changed either by someone else coming and entering the conflict:
Russians tried this:
🔸They drew North Korea directly into military involvement
🔸They rely on military support from Iran and North Korea
🔸But we see that North Korea has now withdrawn, rather only provides material support
Moderator: Iran also has its own problems.
General Macko: Iran has more than enough of its own problems. And there it was also the opposite, that the Russians also didn’t help Iran when it needed it most.
And China is not engaging directly militarily, not providing military aid. On the other hand, many Chinese technologies, machine tools enable Russians to expand military production.
Ukraine’s Problems
When I look at the opposite side, Ukraine has the biggest problem with people. That’s why there’s technologization of war.
It tries to bring innovations, tries to use as much as possible:
🔸Drones
🔸Autonomous systems
🔸Ground drones
🔸Naval drones
So it’s an effort to compensate for that disadvantage in human resources – there are substantially fewer Ukrainians – with other measures.
And it has always been that such a great war brings something like a revolution in warfare and it changes.
Definition of War and Third World War
But if we look at whether there is a Third World War or not, it depends on how we look at the definition of war.
If I look at the definition of war in that classic sense, what for example Clausewitz, such a classic said, that war is the continuation of politics by violent means, but it is politics, then Russia de facto is already conducting this war.
Chronology of Russian aggression:
🔸It has been conducting it in Ukraine at least since 2014
🔸But de facto it has been conducting it since 2008
The moment Russia sensed a chance that the West was not united and moreover consolidated its domestic affairs after two Chechen wars, it did gain control over Chechnya. President Putin decided to take advantage of the fact that in 2008, Georgia and Ukraine were not invited to NATO. Because much is said that in 2008 Ukraine and Georgia were invited – but they were not invited at all. They were only promised indefinite future possible NATO membership. There was no courage to invite them to NATO and they also didn’t have such great domestic will to join.
Consequences of Delayed Integration
And this delay of official invitation and integration caused Ukraine to rather focus on European Union integration, at least they wanted to associate.
This was negotiated by Yanukovych’s regime, which was pro-Russian, but negotiated it. Eventually the Russians intervened and the result was Euromaidan and actually removing Yanukovych from power. The Russians then resorted to open war.
Russian Hybrid Activities
But when we look at what experts have long been saying and what I have also analyzed several times in the past, that Russians conduct activities on our territory, but also elsewhere in the world, that are far beyond spreading friendship and peaceful influence.
Because we have various Polish institutes, French institutes, various competitive Russian-Slovak friendship societies, which aim to spread some culture, promote their own country. These are all welcome and non-violent forms of cooperation and promotion.
But Russia systematically acts and can be said with hostile intent against institutions, against the democratic system that functions in the countries of their opponents.
Russian State Doctrine
Overall, their state doctrine is that they perceive the world as permanent conflict, which is only resolved by different means according to what time it is and where what works best.
So from this perspective we see massive Russian hostile activities. These escalated after the invasion of Ukraine, also in an effort to discourage the rest of the world from cooperating with Ukraine, from supporting Ukraine. This is in accordance with the UN Charter, but the Russians don’t like it.
So we have seen various:
🔸Sabotage actions
🔸Assassination attempts, for example on the head of German Rheinmetall and similar
That means, from this perspective, it can be said that Russians are already carrying out activities that are far beyond peaceful promotion of their interests, but are explicitly of a hostile nature.
Nuclear Rhetoric
And into this comes rhetoric, where Russia has actually used nuclear rhetoric so intensively over the past three years, which we didn’t have during the entire Cold War.
Simply, during the Soviet Union era, this topic was taboo. It was in some strategic calculations. Partners knew about it, but if nuclear weapons were discussed, it was rather in Russian-stimulated peace protests and movements in the western part of the world, then bipolar world, but not in Russia.
Today we see that nuclear intimidation has become a topic of television shows, that it’s actually spread in those evening television programs, but not in some crazy private television, but in Russian state television this nuclear or even nuclear-terrorist propaganda and intimidation is spread.
It’s also spread by Russian state officials, they use this war rhetoric and Putin himself, apparently also in an effort to justify the failure in Ukraine, so increasingly and more speaks about actually conducting war against the entire West.
Which is of course not true, but from this perspective he is already mentally in that conflict with the West and in a figurative sense, even if not literally, it can be said that yes, Zelensky is right when he says that Putin and his regime are already conducting the Third World War with the West – they conduct it systematically and use various tools for it.
Escalation Signals
Which may not be those visible weapons, although we have seen:
🔸Drone intrusions
🔸We have seen testing of our readiness and defense on the eastern border
So it’s a situation that could be said to be already „phase zero“ of a potential military conflict, which – we hope will not happen and doesn’t have to happen.
Moderator: At the security conference in Munich, President Macron got a question from a Ukrainian MP about when NATO member states will send their units to Ukraine. And Macron answered him something like we’re trying not to escalate the situation by having some ally’s foot step on that territory, so we send money, we try to arm Ukraine but we don’t send soldiers.
There is a coalition of the willing or community of the willing, which somehow took over the role after the United States and deals with arms supplies and financing. Is this enough? If we can already say globally that we are somehow drawn into that conflict anyway, is this enough for Ukraine to endure?
Western Support for Ukraine
General Macko: It should be enough, but of course at the cost of high casualties on Ukraine’s side.
Here it must be said that many opportunities were perhaps missed at the beginning of the conflict, that there was too long hesitation by the West.
Even that support, while continuous, has great fluctuations. After all, for example, the Russians advanced most after the Ukrainians pushed them back at the end of 2022 or in the second half of 2022, and then they were preparing a major offensive and Western support stopped or slowed down.
So Russians advanced most at the beginning of 2024 and this at a time when Ukrainians almost ran out of ammunition, because a major aid package was also stopped in the American Congress, we were not able to quickly ramp up military production including ammunition.
Macron’s Position
But the essence is – President Macron from this perspective tried to explain that:
🔸Ukraine was not a NATO member state
🔸The international community first cannot enforce the will of the UN Security Council because Russia as an obstructive element with veto power prevents it
🔸But the General Assembly condemned this aggression repeatedly
🔸He also said that we are clearly helping, because it’s also our duty in terms of the UN Charter – even if it’s not legally enforceable, but it’s our duty
Non-Escalation Strategy
And from this perspective he says that we don’t want to go into direct confrontation with Russians, as long as we don’t see it as inevitable, as long as we see it can be managed otherwise.
This of course may not please Ukrainians. On the other hand, those cautious ones in our societies welcome it, because President Macron and France are still in a state of security, even though they increase measures against threats, because the security situation has worsened. Germany too, all countries, us too.
But we simply don’t want to go directly into that confrontation, because the recipe is:
1) First, help Ukraine to withstand this
2) Second, with economic, diplomatic and other tools pressure Russia – also with that military aid to Ukraine – pressure Russia to abandon continuing this aggression
Problematic Compromises
And Ukraine’s leadership even accepted very favorable conditions for Russians, because Ukraine actually de facto agrees that if the conflict were frozen according to the current line of contact or that front line, it would de facto recognize at least partially those current results and the real state on the battlefield and the results of that war.
Which from the perspective of international law, morality and ethics is absolutely unacceptable, but Ukraine has no interest in continuing the conflict at any cost when they see themselves that they cannot push them out and are looking for a solution that would guarantee that when this happens, Russia won’t use time to recover and continue the war.
Counterbalance to Macron’s Position
And here perhaps it’s also necessary to say the counterbalance to what Macron says. He says that we don’t want to get involved in the current ongoing war, but we are building our defense, to prevent Russia from trying to expand the war to us or elsewhere.
At the same time, we are prepared to guarantee security, if there is an agreed ceasefire and agreed solution – at the same time we are prepared to send even soldiers who would guarantee that the conflict doesn’t break out again, that Russia doesn’t use this situation.
Compromise Between Reality and Caution
That means, it’s such a compromise between that reality and the slow ramp-up of Western aid and the effort not to escalate and on the other hand to prepare so that we are not surprised like when the Russians attacked Ukraine.
But to be prepared, so that we actually deter the Russians in advance with our preparedness from attempting to expand the conflict and expand the great war with the West.
Russian Ambitions
Today Russians actually openly communicate that they want not only to get Ukraine, but they actually want to change relations in Europe, they want to change relations in the world:
🔸They want to have a bigger role in the world
🔸They want to have their sphere of influence
🔸They demand pushing NATO back before 1997
🔸And thereby handing over countries like Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland into – if not subjugation, then into Russia’s sphere of influence
🔸Where Russia will have final authority in deciding what and how these countries will do
And that’s a scenario that nobody wants, so they don’t want to escalate.
Consequences of Ukraine’s Fall
And on the other hand, they are aware that if Ukraine were to fall, that we don’t help it stay afloat, then Russia will be strengthened, will be encouraged by that quasi-success and at the same time will gain the human and economic potential that Ukraine provides to its calculation.
And actually at that moment it will be easiest for Russia – similarly as we saw in history and it’s not just World War II, but also in older history – that such aggressors if they are rewarded for aggression, they consolidate their forces and try to gain even more in an effort to disarm that possible reversal or prevent that reversal, that it should return to the original state.
Moderator: Yes. Many politicians also point out that Russia would definitely not stop at Ukraine. However, you mentioned that we are really preparing and I mean Europe.
And today General Řehka also said this, he is the Chief of General Staff of the Czech Republic. They had a command assembly with the new minister and he mentioned there that the security situation is not simple and that the main danger not only for the Czech Republic, but for Europe is the Russian Federation.
And at the same time he said that many allies inform about this, that they expect the conflict between Europe and Russia between three and six years and that the time for preparation is meanwhile very narrowing.
Is this open communication, that we know you could attack us, a certain way of deterrence by us preparing? This time we won’t let you surprise us?
Deterrence Versus Defense
General Macko: It’s definitely part of that, because there’s a big difference whether you deter, discourage or whether you already have to defend yourself.
Because Ukraine was underestimated by Russia and despite that or precisely because of that Russians, because they thought they could, that nobody would prevent them and that it would be easy, because they misjudged those signals and Ukrainians‘ determination to defend themselves, so they started the war.
And now it’s completely irrelevant whether their big goals failed. The consequences are clear:
🔸We have almost 2 million wounded and fallen
🔸We have many civilian casualties
🔸We have cities in eastern Ukraine completely devastated to the ground
🔸We have destroyed infrastructure inside Ukraine
🔸We now also have damaged infrastructure in Russia
🔸We have huge economic losses that spill over in the form of energy, food and other crises to the rest of the world
🔸And of course, who is closer than Europe, which bears it harder or more
Paradox of Russian Strength
That means, if we want to prevent this, we see how Russia is doing in Ukraine and what Russia is doing. Here is such an apparent paradox – many will object that Russia can’t even properly conquer Pokrovsk, nor the Donbas in four years and why should it be a threat to us.
We still must proceed from the fact that Russia is already in a state of war mobilization:
🔸The economy is redirected to military production
🔸A third of all public expenditures go to war and the defense sector
🔸Russia adopts extraordinary financial measures
🔸Most recently President Putin basically opened back doors for possible forced conscription of reserves, meaning further waves of partial mobilizations
Moderator: So they’re going with that „we are many“ tactic again.
General Macko: Because since they can no longer recruit even for money and it’s apparently not financially sustainable, they’re already starting to openly consider forced conscription to war. Because there’s a difference when you call reserves for different wages than those recruits they get from poor regions of Russia for wages of 5000 euros per month.
Problem of Return to Normal
So when I summarize it all – Russia now has trouble finishing off Ukraine, but if Ukraine were to surrender or there were a ceasefire, Russia also has trouble returning to normal and starting to actually do normal civilian production, stopping those armaments factories.
That means, it’s perhaps advantageous for them, running. If Russia continues at this pace and our pace is slower, these are the assumptions that speak of three to five years, that Russians could dare to go further.
Russian Ambitions and Reality
Now, if Russians openly communicate that their goal is to change relations in Europe, gain greater influence in Europe and change world order, on the other hand it must be said that currently they don’t have the strength and won’t have the strength even in five years to militarily occupy all of Europe.
But they can unleash a conflict on some section, where they provoke NATO to react and will test:
1) First, whether we really keep that Article 5, whether we all stand up decisively
2) Second, that they scare with nuclear weapons – that if you defend yourselves, they’ll take part of Estonia or whatever and if you defend yourselves, they’ll immediately rattle nuclear weapons
3) And they’ll say: „But that will mean a big conflict, let’s negotiate“
4) And there they’ll already have a more advantageous negotiating position. They’ll actually have an advantage, be the one who actually dictates the topic and content of these negotiations
How to Prevent This
The only thing we can do about this – if we don’t want to find ourselves in this situation, if we don’t want to test our resilience, we must clearly and unambiguously communicate:
We must tell the Russians „We are already taking measures, arming ourselves, preparing, we see you, what you’re doing, we understand what you want, but we won’t allow you to do it and we’ll be ready.“
International Communication
And this is communication not only by Karel Řehka, this is communication by Estonian defense minister, who clearly stated that:
„You know what, if you tried to attack at least part of our territory, we’ll strike deep right on the first day we’ll strike back right deep into Russian territory, so you realize you’re opening a big war.“
That means, it’s important and it must be credible, because the whole problem is that as soon as we question our unity and determination in various our discussions, as also at the Munich Conference – we see that there’s actually a West-West dispute, the United States pursues a somewhat different policy.
As soon as we send signals that it might not be so, that Article 5 might not apply, then it can eventually happen that we unite very quickly and react harshly, but the aggressor misjudged it based on our preceding communication and disputes and would resort to aggression. Thereby you’re in such escalation that always threatens to get out of control.
Moderator: While we were talking, we also had a map of the so-called Suwalki Gap. This is a place that should be such an Achilles‘ heel. Why?
Suwalki Gap – Strategic Vulnerability
General Macko: When we look at that map, we actually see that Belarus is part of a union state with Russia:
🔸Today Russians have their nuclear weapons deployed there
🔸They have their bases deployed there
🔸It’s more or less a puppet government that serves in favor of the Russian Federation
🔸After all, Belarusian territory was also used for aggression into Ukraine
Geographic Situation
This, what we see on the map between Kaliningrad Oblast – which is such an enclave, a remnant of what was once East Prussia, which the Russians controlled – and Belarus is the so-called „Suwalki Gap“ according to the town of Suwalki.
It’s roughly a 100 km section and Russians have a so-called A2AD strategy – anti-access area denial. That means, when we look at it, even within the range of rocket artillery – that means that rocket artillery, but also artillery – a large part is under fire control from the territory of Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus.
Baltic Vulnerability
So when I take countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, they are vulnerable from the perspective that we can only support them by sea. This is of course always risky. The entry of Finland and Sweden has significantly improved the situation, but we can’t really support them much by land.
Many institutions, think tanks have done studies on this. When I commanded the training center, we did scenarios of what it would mean. We modeled it.
Defense Problem
The problem is that if we don’t have permanently such large forces in the Baltics that could defend the Baltics in that clear flat terrain from Russia’s initial assault, we must bring in reinforcements.
And when we want to do this, we must strengthen border defense there to gain time. That’s also what they’re doing:
🔸Making terrain obstacles
🔸Building those defensive ramparts
🔸Trying to make a drone wall
But there’s still that Suwalki Gap, where Russians within such provocation would try – they could try to either directly enter that space and occupy it, or keep it under fire control, so that we couldn’t bring additional reinforcements in favor of these Baltic countries.
And that would be the moment of that blackmail. Moreover, they probably also have nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.
Analogous Situations
Russians had the same thing in the Black Sea, for example. That’s why Crimea is important for them, because from Crimea they control practically – within missile and aircraft range is the entire Black Sea. They can hit the Bosphorus strait if needed.
And simply this is Russian strategy, which even with smaller forces allows them to control that certain part of the chessboard or map. In this case it’s that Suwalki Gap.
That’s why it’s very important what measures we take and how we could prevent Russians from occupying the Baltics – we must think about it – how we could counter such Russian effort to actually isolate the rest of the Baltics.
Moderator: You mentioned that Russians are already thinking about where to mobilize more soldiers. Mark Rutte in Munich mentioned that about 30,000 soldiers fell there in the last month. The previous month they mentioned basically the same number.
We know that Russia could definitely get some soldiers. It’s a big country. They know, they could handle it. What’s worse are finances.
And now there’s talk about the state fund in Russia, which analysts estimate that from this fund they somehow finance the war and that this fund could last only a year and a half at higher oil prices, maybe 2.5 years.
Do finances have any fundamental impact on when this war will end? And could we perhaps rely on Russia simply running out of money?
Economic Factor in War
General Macko: Since we are in a stage of attrition warfare, it has absolutely fundamental impact, because in attrition warfare there is gradual consumption of personnel and resources for conducting war.
Ukrainians try to replace this with technologization, robots, drones. But you need resources for it.
Standard Scenario
That means, normally it would be that if these countries were in an isolated system, one or the other country would collapse and of course the one with smaller economic, human potential has a greater chance to collapse.
But Ukraine supported by the West has behind it the greater potential. Although the willingness to give maximum support is complicated. We see how difficult it is for even those financial packages to support Ukraine to pass.
Russian Support
On the other hand, Russia receives support from North Korea – we already mentioned that the source has significantly diminished there. China also only gives that support to a certain extent.
American sanctions are a tool despite Americans having such fluctuations in that pressure – sometimes they pressure Ukraine to quickly conclude peace, sometimes the Russians – but still the law was passed in Congress.
We see that:
🔸They confiscate tankers
🔸European countries have also started confiscating tankers of that illegal shadow fleet, which quietly under false flags creates the flow of these Russian products
They try to take away these resources and indeed in history all these attrition, exhaustion conflicts ended on economics, on logistics.
Historical Parallels
After all, World War II was decided on battlefields, but actually both World War I and World War II were decided by economic potential.
Americans at the end of the war both supplied enormous amounts of aid to the Soviets. They deployed the army themselves. But when we look at production, Germans were cut off from oil sources – the main ones. They were gradually cut off from those production capacities and actually on the other hand Americans produced hundreds to thousands of aircraft. That was already such a force that even mathematically Germans couldn’t withstand. It was only a matter of time when they would collapse.
Of course, Germans were broken rather on the battlefield, but here it can be predicted that this time will come.
Uncertainty in Russian Economy
Because the question is that we don’t know the real depth of problems in Russia, just as we didn’t know the actual strength of their army, which looked great on Red Square and in reality turned out not to be that good.
That means also in that economy so far Russians try to keep it under the lid. We know they have high interest rates. They try to make counter-pressure to that. But that cushion is shrinking and those markets are also shrinking.
Compensatory Strategies
They try to compensate somewhere in Africa, but that lucrative West, that’s what sustained them long-term and those reserves in the fund will run out one day.
On the other hand Russians still have great raw material potential. They can still place their production somewhere. So it will also depend on how strong those sanctions will be.
Positive signals
We can see that India, for example, is moving away from oil products from Russia. It is not possible either overnight or technically, but it is gradually happening and it is being replaced by other sources.
That is, there is a quite realistic assumption that despite the size of Russia and despite the numerical superiority, with good measures, it is far from guaranteed that Russia will win this war of attrition. On the contrary, Ukraine has a better chance if the support of the West endures.
Conditions for success
But, of course, this is also conditional on political support and we see that the Russians are intensively trying to influence the political events, to divide us in some way, to undermine that unity, because this is what actually keeps Ukraine alive and makes it a disadvantageous position for the Russians.
Moderator: We believe that the more positive words from this will fall on fertile ground and that Russia will not really win this war. In any case, it will probably take a while and we will certainly not see each other for the last time. Thank you very much for taking the time.
General Macko: Thank you for the invitation. I would very much like to come up with a different topic. Here it is only necessary to say that let’s hope that the Russians will understand that they have nothing more to gain in that war, that some few square kilometers for the next years of fighting will not pay off for them.
Moderator: Thank you very much. My guest was Lieutenant General Pavel Macko, retired. Thank you again for taking the time to follow us for four years.
General Macko: Thank you for the invitation.
NASPAŤ