The Sprint Becomes a Marathon: News from Russia's War

By John Carpenter

(A Note to the Reader: Last week I was at a dinner attended by people of some influence, including certain politicians. Among them, some expressed a growing fear that Ukraine could not defeat Russia, and that a quick truce turning the current front into a border was the best hope for long-term peace. A careful “leak” from the Kremlin fed hopes that Putin would agree.

I contacted John Carpenter, a Restoration contributor. John’s response came just before the news that Western powers, including the United States and Germany, have given the Ukrainian army permission to use their weapons to attack Russia directly. John, as you will see, is adept at finding people to interview with first-hand knowledge of the front. I think you will read his response as breathlessly as I did. It’s essential. Хай живе, вільна Україна!

—Ayaan)

Russia does not want real peace. Let’s start with the facts on Russia’s other borders: 

• Last week, Estonian buoys marking the riverine border between Estonia and Russia had been removed unilaterally by the Russians in an overnight provocation.

• Also last week, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it will need to revise its current maritime borders around Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg in the Baltic Sea. Those borders, they claim, are due to inaccurate Soviet calculations from 1985. The revisions, of course, would be to the immediate detriment of Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, and by swift extension to Sweden and Latvia — as well as any other nation doing business in the Baltic Sea. 

• Meanwhile, civilians in the Baltic States are being told to prepare go-bags and set up bomb shelters. That advice, I’m told, is a rare point of agreement between local patriots and the local Russian parties: patriots want people to be as safe as possible in case of invasion, but Putinists hoping for reunion with Moscow benefit from the climate of fear and the instability that such preparations imply. 

As the Hamas war proceeds, it’s crucial that Iran’s terrorist proxies be defeated and that our universities remain places of free speech and learning. But it is also vital that we not lose sight of what is happening in the European war to stop Iran’s biggest ally.

So I want to share with you some thoughts from Mykhailo Lavrovskyi, a remarkable young man who is the CEO of the Institute for Economic Leadership, a free-market think tank. Lavrovskyi has been serving since the start of the 2022 invasion as a CASEVAC driver in a combat medic unit of the Ukrainian army. He has seen awful things at the front. But he is just as committed in May 2024 as he was in February 2022. I wanted to know how things look from Ukraine, and Mykhailo was kind enough to oblige.

A long six months, and a long two years

In 2022, says Mykhailo, Ukraine was united. Everyone was volunteering selflessly. Thousands of men stood in line to enlist. Two years in, the war has taken its toll, on both soldiers and civilians. Soldiers who have been on active duty, even on the front lines, for two whole years are seeing their terms of service extended. While the professional soldiers are holding up better, the volunteers are exhausted. 

Things have been worse since fall of 2023. “Six months without U.S. aid was hard,” says Mykhailo. “A lot of people died because of that. Some of them were the most motivated among us — the people who volunteered first.” Ukrainians are grateful for the new aid package, but they struggle to understand why support only seems to come when they are in the most desperate straits. If the West had been proactive from the start, Putin might have been checked for good. Instead, “our leaders have had to waste so much time going around begging.” Even so, Ukraine only secured the aid “at the cost of so many brave soldiers’ lives, and at the loss of so many towns. We spent our most motivated brigades needlessly.”

Soldiers from the Ukraine’s 95th Airborne Brigade. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soldiers_from_the_Ukrainian_Armed_Forces_95th_Airborne_Brigade.jpg

Meantime, Mykhailo argues, the new conscription drives have not been well managed by the government. Many civilians have accepted the story that they will immediately be sent to the front and killed if they enlist. So they are understandably scared. But this is not the case: the overwhelming majority of soldiers serve in logistical and support roles, and they are absolutely necessary there, too. That’s not to deny the real possibility of death and crippling injuries. But the reaction is disproportionate. 

Mykhailo traces these fears to the success of the Russian information war. “You can see the social media accounts have all been made since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. And when they post in Ukrainian it’s clearly not native.” Still, sharing the right clip out of context — an arrest of a man who fails to report even for medical screening — with claims of fascism and oppression can go a long way to weakening the solidarity needed to win a war. And the government hasn’t managed this well. “We need to see our president on TV saying, ‘Guys, let’s be honest. We have to go and fight, or else Ukraine will cease to exist.’” Ukrainians, as Mykhailo sees it, need to adjust their mindset. “At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, it was a sprint. And we did the best we could with that. But now it’s more of a marathon. It’s a completely different kind of run. And we will see who falls first.”

A twenty-first century war: new technologies, old dezinformatsiya

One of Russia’s biggest advantages right now is in its glider bombs. These amount to old Soviet “dumb” bombs that are mounted on modern gliders. They can be launched from far away — including from inside the Russian border. Currently, “the US is not allowing us to use Patriot missiles to hit these things as they take off.” Once airborne, they’re hard to stop. 

Meantime, remote-controlled FPV (first-person view) drones have “completely redefined war.” Ukraine was the first to use them, but the Russians adapted quickly, and are now outproducing the Ukrainians. “I was on the front lines around Avdiivka in 2022 and 2023. At that point it was easier to get to the front with the medical team. I mean, it was possible. Now it is all but impossible to get to there because of all the drones.” The drones are chiefly deployed against vehicles, but, horrifically, they are also used chase down individual soldiers. 

But more important than this kind of battlefield technology is the sort that every teenager has used for the last generation: social media. Russia has been extremely successful in manipulating the American information sphere. Just as in Ukraine, so in the US, there are plenty of accounts that have opened in the last two years to push the Kremlin narrative in English. “The Russians have poured literally billions of dollars into the information war.” By now, they have been so successful that “Americans have been repeating the lines perfectly.” Democracy is beautiful, Mykhailo says, but it has a weak spot: is “vulnerable to exploitation by totalitarian regimes that it does not understand.” At home, the Russian totalitarian regime knows how effective that exploitation can be, so it protects itself from such subversion. If they have even tried, the US and its allies have not played an effective social media game in Russia.

Instead, some of you may have seen that a notable American reporter with a supposedly conservative following now has a weekly show on Russian state television. “It is frustrating. These people are always talking about freedom. But why can’t they see Russia for what it is?” Mykhailo, who has spent time at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., knows how divided America is, and can only lament it bitterly. “I sometimes wonder whether, if Biden had supported Russia, the Republicans would now be supporting Ukraine.” A sad comment on how our divisions at home have hurt our friends abroad!

What Ukraine needs from the West

With the aid starting to arrive, says Mykhailo, Ukrainians need three things from the West in order to have some hope of victory. 

First, they need permission to use US supplies to hit the launch sites within Russia that are currently being used to bombard Kharkiv, or else their resistance on the ground will be pointless. Like Elon Musk’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use Starlink to hit Russian ships, these arbitrary and unrealistic restrictions only increase casualties. [NOTE: As mentioned in the introduction, this has just been granted.]

Second, they need F-16s. They were promised a long time ago, but they have been slow in coming. Air control is essential to any modern conflict. Without it, the Abrams tanks and other costly donations are exposed and risk becoming liabilities. 

Third, they still need long-rage rockets and artillery. The arrival of HIMARS earlier in the war made a huge difference in buying time and even turning the tide in Ukraine’s favor for a while. They need more.

Trump or Biden?

With the American elections looming, many assume that Biden would be the best for supporting the Ukrainian cause. But that’s far from clear. “No one knows what’s going to happen with Trump. But if Biden stays in office, is it any clearer what’s going to happen next? Saying he’s going to help ‘as long as it takes’ is bad for the US and bad for Ukraine,” especially if help trickles in and only after months of delay, and with impossible strings attached.

“Of course, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are crazy,” Mykhailo says of the pro-Russia faction in the GOP. “But remember it was Trump who supported Ukraine during his presidency. Obama was actually the worst.” The West’s few toothless sanctions after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and orchestration of the Donbas War merely emboldened Russia. “If in 2014 the West had taken a real stand for Ukraine, the full-scale invasion would not have happened.” There were other badly botched opportunities: “[Biden’s withdrawal from] Afghanistan was one of the other things that encouraged Putin.”

Ukraine and NATO

Rumblings from the Kremlin can’t be taken too seriously. It’s hard to know what the dismissals of old Putin chums Patrushev and Shoigu might mean. “Any shake-up in personnel he can use to make it look like something meritocratic or democratic is happening.” It won’t make a difference. “I haven’t been interested in Russian politics since they killed Prigozhin. We all had such hopes for that one day of his rebellion!”

 As for Putin’s “leak” about peace, Mykhailo isn’t convinced, either. It could be a sign that Russia is not doing as well as it would hope. “It’s no secret that we are short on manpower and that we have inadequate fortifications and air defense in Kharkiv. But even so, the Russians are struggling to take it.” Even Bakhmut and Avdiivka were extremely costly for Russia. If they aren’t concerned about the men they are sending to their deaths (many of whom, after all, are Central Asians, not ethnic Russians from relatively prosperous Petersburg or Moscow), there is a huge cost in materiel. Putin has already drawn on Chinese and North Korean aid, sending something like one million North Korean shells on Ukraine this winter, but he would have to lean even more heavily into these sources if he wants to push on as he is doing. “Of course it’s bad on our side,” says Mykhailo. “But it’s really not much better for the Russians. Remember, they are using tanks from the 1950s.”

At any rate, a simple peace now would merely give Russia time to regroup to finish the job a few years down the road. “Russia could promise anything. But we all know that Russian promises are worth nothing without guarantees.” Real guarantees, that is, and for Ukrainians — who remember keenly the disastrous 1994 Budapest Memorandum — this means NATO membership. 

He and many other Ukrainians are increasingly willing to consider losing some territory for this option. “I used to say that I don’t see this war ending well for Ukraine unless we recapture all of our territory.” Now, however, he doesn’t see them getting their land back. If NATO is willing to admit a sovereign Ukraine, and if NATO is really an alliance that can be counted on, Ukrainians might be willing to part with the ravaged Donbas and even Crimea. Short of that, however, they have absolutely no reason to think that Putin means it when he talks peace.

The Ukrainian army could even be a boon to NATO. “We are the only army with experience of full-scale twenty-first century warfare — I don’t mean targeted strikes and counter-insurgencies like Iraq and Afghanistan, but full-scale war.” Western European armies frankly need Ukrainian experience. A friend of Mykhailo’s went to a training exercise once in Western Europe. During a house-clearing exercise to simulate urban warfare, he and his men took measures to check for anti-personnel mines. A Western officer chided them and asked, “Why are you wasting your time with that? Those kinds of mines are against the Geneva Convention.” 

The Ukrainians paused in shock, then burst out laughing.

If Ukraine falls

“You have to understand how the Russian army works. As soon as they take a territory, they take the men and sent them to the worst part of the front. This is what happened to all the Ukrainians in Donbas.” Mykhailo often reminds civilians reluctant or scared of the prospect of conscription that they really don’t have a choice of whether to fight or not. If Ukraine falls, there will be, of course, some obligatory “denazifaction,” and we can only guess how many lives that will claim. But for those who survive it? “Ukrainians will be forced to the first lines of troops sent to march against Warsaw. So we risk death freely fighting Russians for our own survival, or we are sure to die being killed by another people defending themselves against the Russians.”

What about the Baltics? “It’s hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure it is in Putin’s plans to invade the Baltics. I mean, it would be a disaster, but he is stupid enough, just as he was stupid enough to invade Ukraine, which was the worst decision of his career.” It’s not inevitable, Mykhailo adds. “But all of this will be determined by what happens here in Ukraine. If we fight well, if we have the resources from our allies, then the Russians won’t have the resources to invade the Baltics. If we lose, or if the war is frozen, Russia will have the time and it will find the resources to invade the Baltics.”

But what about the famous Article 5? Wouldn’t that protect Poland and the Baltic States, and now Finland, as members of NATO? “It all depends. If Putin senses that the West is weak enough, he will probably try to invade the Baltics just to see whether NATO will stand. If he’s wrong, and if the Western Alliance sticks together, it will be a disaster for him. But if it works out for him, if he doesn’t get scared out of his mind by NATO, then he will win the biggest prize of his life. Of course, first of all he gets the Baltics back into his sphere of influence. But secondly, and much more importantly, if he does that he also shows that Article 5 is worthless. Everybody knows that Article 5 is the only reason people want to join NATO. And if it turns out to be worthless, NATO is done. And that will initiate an age of chaos around the world.”

A last thought

“I always tell my American friends to be careful with the information they are getting. The Russian influence inside the US is tremendous. Don’t forget the literally billions of dollars they are spending on their information war.” You can hear the betrayal when he notes again that “people who say they value freedom are supporting genocidal maniacs like Putin.” Insultingly, “sometimes Americans try to teach me on Twitter about Russia. They always use the standard Russian lines.” We need to steer clear of the “sick” voices being amplified by China and Russia.

But for all that he and his friends, family, and nation are facing, Mykhailo strikes a hopeful note before hanging up. “We should value our unity in the West, and prioritize it. It’s what will keep us afloat.”

* * *

I’m really grateful to Mykhailo Lavrovskyi for sharing his thoughts. I hope to hear from him again soon. My takeaway from what he shared this week is that we need to get our act together. If we want peace in Europe, if we don’t want a worse war and a dangerous test of our alliance as it currently stands, we need to put aside our ridiculous distractions and find the moral fiber to keep NATO strong.

Let us remember Mykhailo and his brave compatriots. They are in an existential fight for their survival — and for the survival of our civilization.