The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 08, 2026


PREVIEW： Realpolitik #54 ｜ Russia's Coming Struggles in Ukraine


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24 minutes

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3,290

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127

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.960 Hello, beautiful Monday to all of you. Welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your
00:00:06.940 host, Firas Maudad, and today we're going to be talking a lot about Russia-Ukraine. We're
00:00:12.680 going to be talking about the exchanges of missile and drone strikes between the two
00:00:17.260 countries and what they are telling us and what that is going to lead to. We're going
00:00:21.340 to do a bit of a battlefield update and discuss the territories that have been captured and
00:00:27.080 what that means going forward. And we're going to talk about, most importantly, the problem that
00:00:35.020 will be facing Russia as it continues its advances into Ukraine, and why that probably ends up
00:00:41.940 meaning that they're going to escalate against Europe, which is something that I've been
00:00:46.440 talking about for a little while, but it's worth describing this in detail in the context of what
00:00:51.460 is actually happening on the battlefield. And if we start maybe, as usual, with a map and look at
00:01:00.500 what has been going on recently, I've mentioned to you a bunch of times that the Russians, that
00:01:07.340 the Ukrainians, sorry, have this defensive belt in the Donbass. The Donbass is the area of Ukraine
00:01:14.200 that is predominantly and overwhelmingly Russian-speaking.
00:01:19.740 It is pretty critical for Russian national security
00:01:22.740 and for them to have achieved their political objectives in this war.
00:01:28.420 And it used to be the industrial heartland of Ukraine.
00:01:32.740 Obviously, much of it is now wrecked, but it can be rebuilt,
00:01:35.980 as is typical with these things, as has happened, say, in Germany with the Ruhr Valley.
00:01:40.240 And in this area, the main Ukrainian defensive line in this massive front between Russia and Ukraine extends basically along this axis from Liman here to Slovyansk to Kramatorsk and down to Kosyantinivka.
00:01:59.980 And this is often referred to as the fortress belt, because you have these clusters of towns and cities in close proximity to each other that form a major defensive line that the Ukrainians used as their very safe, rare area back when they controlled Bakhmut and so on, and were regularly attacking the Donetsk region, essentially.
00:02:25.540 And what's happening there is that the Russians are slowly clearing up Liman.
00:02:33.300 They are getting closer to Slavyansk, having taken the towns that were ahead of it here.
00:02:42.420 And they say, the Russians claim, that they fully captured Konstantinivka.
00:02:48.160 Now, this isn't fully accepted.
00:02:50.580 If you look at mappers that are on the Ukrainian side, they will tell you that much of the city is actually not in Russian hands.
00:03:00.160 But even according to the maps that are supported by the Ukrainian side, it is pretty obvious that the town is going to fall and that the Ukrainian position is an impossible one.
00:03:11.920 because they are relying on this one single transport link leading them into the midst of what is a massive Russian pincer.
00:03:22.820 So accept the Russian claim, don't accept it.
00:03:26.500 The conclusions that I'm going to get to in this episode don't really rely on that particular town very much. 0.54
00:03:34.960 what I think we should accept looking at the military reality is that if the Russians are
00:03:40.520 exaggerating and they haven't captured Konstantinivka, they will capture it in the foreseeable
00:03:45.140 future, in the near future, because this Ukrainian position here is not tenable, basically.
00:03:53.540 And the important thing here is that this defensive belt is largely oriented towards
00:04:02.800 the east. And now with the Russians advancing on it from the south through Konstantinivka
00:04:11.880 and from the north through Liman, although there is this big forest area that is going to cause
00:04:19.060 a problem for the Russians, but probably it won't be a problem in winter when there is no foliage 1.00
00:04:24.400 and no cover, we should accept that the Russians are going to be able to advance here quite 0.66
00:04:32.780 effectively.
00:04:33.920 And in this broader region, in the Donbass region, maybe 300,000 to 500,000 Russian soldiers
00:04:42.040 are present, out of a total estimated Russian presence in Ukraine of 700,000 to 800,000.
00:04:48.820 So the bulk of Russia's military deployment is really in this area.
00:04:54.400 and therefore the bulk of the Ukrainian deployment is also in this area.
00:04:59.760 This is the main theater of the war,
00:05:02.480 and what happens there is incredibly important and will be incredibly important.
00:05:07.560 So let's put a pin in the Donbass for a moment
00:05:11.040 and talk a little bit about other areas that are of interest in the Ukrainian geography.
00:05:17.240 The first thing that should be mentioned, I think,
00:05:21.040 is this ongoing Russian advance towards the town of Dobropilya.
00:05:26.400 Now, the reason that this matters is that it is deep behind the Ukrainian line
00:05:34.780 and allows the Russians to advance in a northwestern direction
00:05:40.420 to sever the line connecting Kramatorsk to the rest of the country.
00:05:46.440 So if you're Russia and you want to envelop the Ukrainian forces, advancing on this axis here is important, and it really makes a big difference. 0.65
00:05:57.420 And on the opposite side, from the north of this front, what really matters here is the town of Izyum, which serves the same function as the main logistics hub that leads into also Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. 0.88
00:06:17.420 So if you're Russia and you really want to complete this battle and defeat the Ukrainians, you have to advance towards these positions. 0.80
00:06:25.560 But as we've seen in the past, the Russian advances in this territory are insanely slow. 0.88
00:06:32.680 So, Bakhmut here was a battle that ended in 2023, and if you look at the distance that the Russians advanced since then, it's a few dozen kilometers.
00:06:44.180 It's not even a few dozen kilometers, you know.
00:06:46.880 every inch of this territory has been fought for incredibly hard and the Russian advances have been
00:06:54.340 incredibly slow very slow so the Russians are probably going to focus on just clearing out 0.55
00:07:03.600 these towns as best as they can if they can successfully outflank them and cut them off 0.98
00:07:08.340 good if not they're going to have to face the casualties and they're going to have to get
00:07:14.260 entrenched in urban warfare in areas that are incredibly well prepared and fight inch by inch
00:07:21.140 for this territory while getting slowly bled the ukrainians are bleeding and we're going to discuss
00:07:28.420 the casualties on the two sides and it's almost certainly the case that the ukrainians are taking
00:07:34.580 far bigger losses than the russians um but the advances are very slow and if you look at the
00:07:42.340 other fronts in this war, this is the Zaporozhye front. Zaporozhye is a city of 1.4 million people
00:07:52.180 on the Dnieper river ahead of the city of Dnipro.
00:07:57.940 There are several things to say here. The first thing to say is that this is highlighted better
00:08:03.140 by this map here, by the Suryak map, which is pretty good. The first thing to say here
00:08:10.100 is that the Russians basically are advancing along the two defensive lines
00:08:17.960 that are meant to protect Zaporizhia,
00:08:20.500 but these lines are oriented towards the south
00:08:22.820 and the Russians are advancing from the east.
00:08:26.140 So rather than taking these lines head-on, they are flanking them.
00:08:30.400 It's still an incredibly slow process. 1.00
00:08:33.660 And the Ukrainians are still attacking in this area 0.93
00:08:35.980 and they are attacking in the north of this salient that the Russians have 0.95
00:08:40.700 to try to push them back and cut off their logistics
00:08:43.500 and put the Russians in a more difficult position.
00:08:47.520 But the Russians are advancing at a very slow pace.
00:08:52.860 It will probably be another year or so
00:08:55.980 before the Russians are in a position to take the city of Zaporozhye
00:08:59.960 or to try to fight for the city of Zaporozhye.
00:09:02.700 And that is going to be an insanely difficult battle
00:09:05.360 Because of a city of 1.4 million people, the biggest city that the Russians took, I think, was Mariupol or Melitopol, which was maybe 400,000 people.
00:09:16.500 They've never attempted an offensive at this scale.
00:09:20.940 And in urban battles, fighting is prohibitively expensive, including for the attacking force.
00:09:28.540 And the only way to sort this out is to just destroy everything, which sounds easy enough
00:09:36.400 on paper, but a city of 1.4 million people is actually massive, and that takes a very long 0.50
00:09:43.840 and expensive and exhausting bombardment during which you have to shut down the other side's
00:09:48.760 logistics, during which you are taking serious casualties yourself, etc., etc. 0.84
00:09:55.300 So let's say that things go well for the Russians, and they advance, and in a couple of years, or in a year's time or so, they are very close to Zaporozhia and can launch an offensive to take it. 0.79
00:10:09.540 If the Ukrainians don't give up, and the Russians do basically break out of the Donbass, taking Zaporozhia in and of itself doesn't solve anything. 0.83
00:10:23.960 In the same way that the Russians are advancing here, slowly, again, in Kharkiv, and are working in the Kupiansk direction here, and they're trying to take the city and cross the Oskol River, the river in this province, and trying to draw closer to the city of Kharkiv, but if they take it, it doesn't solve anything. 0.89
00:10:48.900 That's the problem facing the Russians. And given how slow the advances are and how big Ukraine is, 0.55
00:10:57.860 for the Russians to actually be fully secure and to win this, they'll either have to make 0.71
00:11:03.300 the Ukrainian surrender or they'll have to take Kyiv or they'll have to fight for every single
00:11:08.500 city. And what we're seeing slowly is that, you know, the Russians are improving their position
00:11:16.820 on different fronts, like they're improving their position here in Sumi, where they're trying to 0.72
00:11:21.160 attack the city of 200,000 people. But because Sumi is surrounded by difficult geography,
00:11:28.300 and they're only advancing along one direction, this is going to be another major battle. 0.58
00:11:37.020 The biggest city that the Russians took since the initial massive advance that they made in 2022, 0.76
00:11:45.220 to where they took Mariupol and Melutopol and basically expanded from this yellow region 0.92
00:11:52.400 to most of the territory that we see here.
00:11:55.020 The biggest city that they took in that period, these were Bakhmut with 75,000 people
00:12:02.880 and Pokrovsk here somewhere with around 60,000 people.
00:12:09.060 And for these advances, they had to mass 50,000 soldiers, 100,000 soldiers,
00:12:14.580 depending on who you believe. Like all of the numbers in this war are highly inaccurate.
00:12:19.140 But the point that I'm making is this. If for a city of 50,000, 70,000, the Russians had to mass
00:12:28.020 100,000 soldiers or 50,000 soldiers, then you can imagine what number they would need for a city of
00:12:35.220 1.4 million, which is a much bigger risk for them and a much more expensive proposition for them.
00:12:44.580 And what looks like the most likely outcome here is that the Russians do break out of this defensive belt that the Ukrainians have, but then they go into the great Ukrainian wilderness, the great Ukrainian expanse, essentially, this massive territory where they're advancing incredibly slowly, and slow advances are expensive, by definition.
00:13:09.380 They will be taking a lot of casualties in that time. And so, if you look at this map, 0.61
00:13:15.540 it doesn't make sense for them to just try to rush in a straight direction westwards here
00:13:22.980 when they break through this belt. What makes a lot more sense is that they tried to capture
00:13:27.060 a city like Pavlokrad, which is, if I remember correctly, one to two hundred thousand people,
00:13:32.100 also expensive to take, requiring them to commit maybe two or three hundred thousand soldiers.
00:13:39.460 They'll have these soldiers released if they take this region, but they're still looking
00:13:44.580 at a very expensive battle. And the same for Kharkiv, again a city of a million people.
00:13:51.300 And the same for Sumy, two hundred thousand people. So the Russians are advancing, 0.56
00:13:55.700 but the key political objectives of this war, let's look at them. The Russian objectives as
00:14:02.640 they express them are basically to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, to keep Ukraine neutral
00:14:10.460 and away from NATO, and to expand the Russian strategic depth so that the Russians have enough 0.52
00:14:18.180 of a buffer between old Russia, shall we say, and Ukraine so that the Ukrainians can't attack
00:14:26.800 their territory. And as usual, we follow the same methodology across the board. We measure the 0.63
00:14:32.900 political objectives versus what's actually happening, and then we see. What's actually
00:14:38.920 happening is that the Russians are nowhere near expanding their strategic depth in Ukraine to an
00:14:47.540 extent that would make them safe from Ukrainian strikes. They're nowhere near demilitarizing
00:14:53.980 Ukraine, and as Zelensky's position becomes more and more desperate, two things happen. First,
00:15:01.540 NATO involvement in Ukraine deepens, and that throws away the third Russian objective, which is
00:15:08.160 to ensure Ukrainian neutrality. In fact, Ukraine becomes more and more dependent on NATO.
00:15:14.300 And in terms of denazification, things have gotten so bad with Ukraine celebrating the Banderistas, basically, or the OUP and the various Ukrainian militias that sided with the Nazis in World War II, that Ukraine is being more nazified from the Russian perspective, not less.
00:15:40.220 so when it comes to the russian political objectives yes the ukrainians are taking
00:15:46.420 a lot more casualties but the ability of ukraine to withstand russia
00:15:55.300 it's going okay and if the conflict ends now ukraine does fully become a nato puppet
00:16:05.780 it and the influence of nato over ukraine increases and so the russians aren't achieving
00:16:15.560 what they set out to achieve they're in the middle of this war um they are fighting quite
00:16:23.760 desperately for them to win this it makes it helps to look at the cities that they must take
00:16:31.040 for them to actually force Ukraine to surrender by taking Kiev.
00:16:35.480 They will have to take Chernihiv here.
00:16:37.920 I don't remember the population off the top of my head.
00:16:40.920 They'll have to take Sumy, 200,000. 0.75
00:16:43.760 Kharkiv, 1.4 million.
00:16:46.540 Poltava, I think it's 900,000, and the same for Dnipro.
00:16:51.140 Zaporozhye, again, 1.5 million.
00:16:53.660 And Pavlograd, which I think is a couple of hundred thousand
00:16:56.720 or a hundred thousand or in that range, basically, in that magnitude.
00:17:01.040 and Kiev, which is several million people. So the Russians still have an enormous amount of
00:17:11.540 fighting ahead of them if they can't force the Ukrainians to surrender. And even if they take 0.87
00:17:18.140 this defensive belt, that doesn't solve their problems. That doesn't actually necessarily end
00:17:25.660 the war, because what is keeping the war going is the fact that it's supported by NATO and that
00:17:32.520 Ukraine is constantly able to throw additional reserves at the Russians. And maybe as a result
00:17:40.440 of the Russian advances, the Ukrainians do break. But if they don't, the Russians face a very real 0.63
00:17:49.240 problem. The Russians need, essentially, to get to a position where Ukraine simply collapses.
00:17:58.720 That's what they're trying to do, and armies do rout, historically speaking. We saw the German 0.97
00:18:05.600 army that invaded Russia in the Second World War, that invaded all of this territory in the Second
00:18:11.080 World War, eventually rout because it suffered so many defeats. It is conceivable that a rout
00:18:18.820 of the Ukrainian military would occur if the Russians break through the fortress belt.
00:18:25.860 But it's not certain because the way that military's route is partly psychological
00:18:34.420 and it has to do with command and control. And so long as you can throw up more men
00:18:39.540 and establish more defensive positions, you could keep fighting.
00:18:43.780 so the russians are advancing but they're advancing quite slowly now if you look at the
00:18:53.600 casualties of the two sides um you can't believe what gets said by everybody uh especially by
00:19:02.900 western intelligence what i would suggest we look at is the exchanges of bodies that happen between
00:19:11.420 the two sides. And I've listed a bunch of the recent exchanges that have happened. And what
00:19:17.080 you see here is in December 2025, Russia gave Ukraine a thousand soldiers and received 26 0.68
00:19:24.440 soldiers, like dead bodies, essentially, which is a pretty favorable ratio from the Russian
00:19:34.440 perspective, because that means that these were the bodies that were available to exchange.
00:19:39.780 you could say that this is a one-off but then again in uh in january 2026 there was another
00:19:47.780 exchange a thousand uh ukrainian soldiers handed over by the russians and i think something like
00:19:56.460 50 or uh or 40 something russians that were handed over to the other side
00:20:02.980 so that doesn't look particularly favorable to the russian to the ukrainians
00:20:09.580 another exchange in may the ukrainians received 500
00:20:15.100 uh bodies of their own fallen and the russians receive 41
00:20:20.140 terrible if you look at it and the last one is in june where the ukrainians basically
00:20:29.360 received 550, sorry, 552 bodies, and the Russians received 33.
00:20:40.980 The arithmetic of it suggests that the Ukrainians are taking far more losses than the Russians.
00:20:50.900 But if you listen to the think tanks that are associated with the West, like CSIS,
00:20:56.240 which is very close to decision-making circles in the United States,
00:21:02.680 they estimate that basically the Russians have taken 1.4 million casualties in total,
00:21:10.820 including 450,000 deaths, which, you know, that doesn't look very, very promising.
00:21:21.080 and they estimate the Ukrainian losses as considerably smaller, essentially, than the
00:21:29.520 Russian losses. Well, why is that reflected in the exchanges of corpses? Why are the Russians
00:21:36.160 collecting a lot more Ukrainian corpses than the other way around? You could say that, well,
00:21:42.760 the Ukrainians don't care about collecting Russian bodies. Okay, maybe. But that only 0.84
00:21:48.320 skews the numbers to a certain extent and works so many times. It looks like it's the Ukrainians 1.00
00:21:56.320 that are taking the bulk of the losses. And so when you go back and think about the map and what
00:22:03.420 does that mean, you kind of wonder if a defeat for the Ukraine in these cities where the bulk
00:22:11.160 of their forces are concentrated will end up resulting in the Ukrainian military breaking.
00:22:16.060 but another scenario opens up which is that the ukrainians slowly withdraw the bulk of their
00:22:24.200 forces from here and just throw new defensive lines in the face of the russians on new defensive
00:22:30.700 axes they won't be as well prepared as the um as the remaining as the pre-existing ukrainian line
00:22:40.600 but this ukrainian defensive line here around zaporozhia was thrown up pretty quickly and it
00:22:47.860 is delaying the russians quite significantly even though they are out flanking it
00:22:55.840 so all of this despite the fact that the russians are inflicting a lot more casualties
00:23:01.900 on the ukrainians than the other way around which i think we can conclude if we look at
00:23:07.080 body exchanges, at least that's my view, because in this war nothing is fully visible, despite the
00:23:12.920 fact that the Ukrainians are taking a lot more casualties than the Russians, the Russian advances
00:23:17.240 are insanely slow, and slow advances by definition are quite expensive. That seems to be the most
00:23:26.520 logical, neutral thing to say about this. And if these advances have been quite expensive
00:23:31.880 against defensive lines in smaller urban areas and in rural areas,
00:23:40.120 it is safe to assume, therefore, that advances against cities
00:23:46.760 that can be turned into incredibly well-fortified positions,
00:23:52.560 partly because of the nature of Soviet engineering,
00:23:55.440 because the Soviet tower blocks were insanely over-engineered
00:23:59.180 and are incredibly difficult to bring down.
00:24:01.360 And even in a tiny place like Ugledar, somewhere here, it took the Russians such a long time and such intensive bombardment to take out just a small number of high-rise buildings. 0.78
00:24:15.220 And when you look at these big cities and the number of high-rise buildings that are there, well, no, this is going to be far more costly and far slower for the Russians to try to take on the major urban areas. 0.85
00:24:31.360 So the Russians have to bet on Ukraine collapsing somehow, and on that leading to a negotiated settlement that favors them. 0.91