The HIMARS are changing the game on the battlefield. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and other longer-range weapons supplied by the West are enabling the Ukrainians to hit high-value Russian targets, reduce their own casualties, and mount a counter offensive in the East and South.
Russia meanwhile is playing a long game, hoping to wear Ukraine down with indiscriminate shelling of civilian centers to enable a slow grinding advance in territorial gains; and it is hoping to wear the West down by provoking an energy and food crisis.
In this sense, the war in Ukraine is becoming a battle of endurance and sustainability. How long can Russia maintain its assault before running into a manpower shortage and domestic opposition? And amid high inflation, high energy prices, and fears of the war escalating and metastasizing, how long can the West sustain its willingness to keep giving Ukraine the support it needs to resist and reverse the Russian offensive? The stakes could hardly be higher.
On this week’s Power Vertical Podcast, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Maria Snegovaya, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Virginia Tech, a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, and a Nonresident Fellow at the Center for a New American Security; and former U.S. State Department official Max Bergmann, director of the Europe and Russia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.