Lawfare Daily: Defending Ukraine Outside NATO with Michael O'Hanlon and Andriy Zagorodnyuk

[Intro]

Michael O'Hanlon: Ukraine needs a strategy that allows it to keep this war going indefinitely. And I hope very much of course, that won't be the case, won't prove necessary, but the only hope for ending the war soon is for Russia to think that Ukraine could fight indefinitely.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: It's Lawfare Podcast. I'm Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Legal Fellow. Today I'm joined by Michael O’Hanlon, director of Foreign Policy Research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chairman of the Center for Defense Strategy in Kyiv, former Minister of Defense of Ukraine and a non-resident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: That's why we have to be very careful not to deviate from understanding what actually is the Putin's rationale and what actually their strategies and think this is about NATO. Putin is using NATO as a, as a rationalization of his actions, not, not at the reason for his actions

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Today we discuss ways of defending Ukraine from present and future rational attacks in the absence of NATO membership.

[Main Podcast]

The recent Alaska Summit intensified the discussions about the Ukraine's defense posture right now, including after the war and potential negotiated outcome. And at the end of the Oval Office meeting with President Trump, President Zelensky mentioned two components of Ukraine's defense.

The first one is robust Ukrainian army, and the second one, what he said, what our partners can do for us. And we'll start with what our partners can do for us, and it probably includes the concept of security guarantees. So, after the Alaska Summit, it's probably for the first time that we heard from President Trump and from Special Envoy Witkoff the word security guarantee and that they can be potentially, they can have wording similar to NATO Article Five.

So Andriy, I want to start with you. What do you think about that? What do you think does it mean? And can that be a credible deterrent for Ukrainian purposes?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Thank you and, thank you for inviting me here. I have to say straight away what I'm going to say is my personal opinion. So I'm not representing Ukrainian government and, or any, and, and I'm not talking behalf of any institution I'm associated with because I am very skeptical about the chances of the, A) security, real security guarantees, B) real ceasefire.

And, the, the reasons for that is because I don't think that. Putin is in a state right now where he will seriously discuss, a meaningful ceasefire, meaningful desire to end the war and give Ukraine any breathing time. We can discuss that. That's a hypothesis, so of course, I, we cannot like prove it, only time will prove, but, but that.

Basically at that state, the, the anticipation of the ceasefire, the anticipation of the end of war has built up a lot of, a lot of strategies and a lot of, discussions. Okay? What happens after Russia finally gives Ukraine some breathing time? And of course, many people started to say, well, it's also we give Russia breathing time because Russia right now is also exhausted. And they also need a, a time to reassess their strategies and their, their approaches, operational, concepts and so on.

But nevertheless, so, so lots of the proposals and lots of plans are currently done on the assumption of this, upcoming ceasefire or possible ceasefire, and I think we're a bit too optimistic about that. So that's the first thing.

Secondly, question. Okay. If, if, the ceasefire comes along and then Ukraine is provided with the Article Five security guarantees. Are they going to be, are they going to be enough, to deter? And that's a question of how do we read Article Five? If we article, if we read Article Five, literally how it's written, it's not going to be enough because it basically doesn't guarantee anything. It just says that the countries will do their best.

And we have seen in, many cases that that is very subjective opinion. And some people, some people may recall the shortage of weapons for, for Ukraine previously when all countries, most of the countries including U.S., were saying like, we're giving our best already. We're providing whatever we can because we need ourselves, weapons and so on.

As you know, that, U.S. government right now is focused on potentially other wars. They might be engaged in, and the, most of the, resources would be focused on those wars. At least that's a position from what I know of the current, leadership of Department of Defense. So there is a substantial risk that if Putin restarts, again, there may be not enough weapons for Ukraine to, to procure that Putin fails.

And as such, such guarantees will not provide the what we know as a effect of, either deny deterrence or denial and if these guarantees are not providing these effects, so basically they're not like showing evident perspective of Putin that he is gonna fail, then they will not be enough. They will not serve the purpose.

We can talk later about like whether the, any guarantees would create the, the deterrence effect. We don't know that because we don't know how Putin makes decisions and there is a substantial various hypothesis that he may not know exactly the, the shape of his own forces and the possibility of his own forces. So in this case they may be planning too much, but, but in this case, the, the, guarantees should provide a denial effect. And, there is a big risk that they won’t.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: And so Andriy, just, just a small follow up, but would you agree that if we have a deterrence part, the robust Ukrainian army, it's also better to have a security grantee on top than just a robust Ukrainian army and indigenous defense industry? Would you agree with that proposition?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Ukrainian Army is not going to be robust on, Ukrainian armed forces. That would be a correct, correct name, or defense forces even, even more correct term. Ukrainian Defense Forces will not be robust without the substantial support from the, from allies in any case. And we do need that support, and we need to plan that support. So, so that's why we need to have some kind of agreements in place. Well, actually agreements are in place. I mean, there's a whole bunch of agreements signed, but they need to be filled with the, specifics, so with specific support programs.

And they can be called guarantees or they can call be called assurances, or they can be called just simply military assistance programs for Ukraine. But they, they are absolutely essential,

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, what do you think about that? And in particular, it seems from the Russian reply, it seems what they mean by security guarantees that they discussed in Alaska is the Istanbul model of security guarantees to neutral Ukraine that was discussed in 2022. And actually back then Ukraine was proposing such a model under the circumstances at that time.

And you in the past you wrote a book “Beyond NATO,” which had some similarities with that, where there would be guarantees to neutral states outside NATO similar in nature to what Belgium had from the concert of Europe. So do you think this can work in any form or shape? And please add anything to to what, what Andriy mentioned.

Michael O'Hanlon: Thanks, Mykhailo, and greetings. It's an honor, Mr. Minister, Andriy, to be on with you as well, and I very much appreciated your opening answer. In fact, Mykhailo, if I could, let me just give a little bit of history, not about my writing, but about the creation of NATO, which I think backs up Andriy's point and illustrates what he's talking about because in 1949, NATO was created by 12 countries, which, by the way, did not yet include Germany.

And it was a concern about Soviet encroachment in Eastern Europe of course, that led to this and the Berlin blockade of 1948 to 1949 that the Soviet Union had created around the western occupation zones in the city of Berlin. But once they created that document, and as Andriy says, Article Five is not nearly as robust or clear in language as people sometimes think.

But once they had concluded that document, they still did not believe that they had done enough and for the next, really for the rest of the Cold War, but certainly for the next five to 10 years, the whole debate was how do we make Article Five real so that it would be credible so that an American, as well as British response and other country's responses would be more or less automatic if the Soviet Union ever attacked through Germany.

And it was not until we put U.S. forces, combat forces permanently on European soil, let West Germany join NATO and then re-arm Germany, west Germany, that we began to feel like we had a decent defense. In other words, it wasn't just the words, it was also the actions and the presence, the military presence.

And so I think that's a very good illustration that if you want to have a security guarantee, first of all, there are no guarantees in life, right, of any type. But if you even wanna make it particularly credible that you would try your best in a response, you need to probably have a presence, which is why in my earlier writing, especially the writing I've done with Lise Howard and Paul stares since the 2022 attack, we have been in favor of an alternative security architecture that might not be NATO, but that would include Western troops on the ground in Ukraine.

Not as combat units, because we think that would be too provocative to Russia and would guarantee the, you know, failure of any peace process. But as trainers, as observers, as technicians, and as a tripwire so that Vladimir Putin or any future Russian president would have to know that if Russia attacked Ukraine again, there would be a high likelihood of Western response and support for Ukraine on the battlefield.

So now we go to today and this last week. And I think what we're seeing of course, is the United States is not willing to do what Lise Howard and I recommended, or Paul Stares and I discussed. But it is willing perhaps to provide some rapid reaction capability or some aerial cover in case the European troops on Ukrainian soil got into trouble or were attacked by Russia and that's already pretty good.

Which is why I think Russia will not accept it. So getting back to Andriy's other point, Russia's not ready for peace for a number of reasons, including this one. But I think that from my point of view, as a student of history and as a student of deterrence, if we could have in a peace deal a promise of a strong Ukrainian military as President Zelensky and as Andriy have said, combined with the ideas that have been discussed the last week, a U.S. backstop to a European troop presence on the ground in Ukraine, that might look pretty good.

It's not perfect. It's not quite as much as I might desire. It's certainly not as much as many Ukrainian friends would prefer if their, you know, earlier wishes to join NATO had been honored, but it still to me would look pretty good. So that's where I hope we get. And I'm happy that even though, you know, president Trump doesn't want to have the U.S. role within Ukraine be any stronger than it has to be and doesn't involve American uniform personnel. I'm glad he's willing to talk about a backstop.

The last point I'll make and I'll and I'll finish, is that I would also like to see a lot of American technicians on the ground in Ukraine as part of any decision on a future presence, and we could be involved largely in air and missile defense and intelligence. And they could be civilians. It's not quite as good as having troops, but if they were known to be present in fairly decent numbers throughout Ukraine, I think that would add one more element of deterrence and also help Ukraine continue to improve its air and missile defense and intelligence capabilities. So those are my opening thoughts.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, I have a follow up on that. So I'm, as a lawyer, I understand the security guarantee as a legally binding commitment to come to countries defense with the military force, everything else support short of that provision of weapons technicians and everything, this is not strictly speaking a security guarantee.

So, and many people said that like it's logical if you wanna have a tripwire in Ukraine. And that would mean that it would start the chain of you being involved in a future conflict. Why then that's a problem to have in addition to that, a written security guarantee, which would mean that if tripwire is touched, the security guarantee would kick in. So that's the first question.

And the second one, if we have a robust Ukrainian army in addition to that, do you think just a promise on paper from the United States without military presence, that they would come to Ukraine's defense can work as a deterrent, because that would put U.S. credibility on the line, or you think that's a stretch to say?

Michael O'Hanlon: Well, I think that if the United States has stated that it's ready to help backstop European allies with air cover, possibly even with a rapid reaction force to go in and pull people out if they get in trouble or reinforce them. And then also to have technicians on the ground in Ukraine. I think that's pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

And, you and I have had this discussion before about the relative importance of a formal treaty versus the de facto message that's sent by a military presence on the ground. All I would say is that in the creation of NATO, when the Soviet threat was considered to be acute, policymakers in NATO decided they needed to have both, because neither one by itself, neither a treaty nor a presence, was adequate. And in fact, they still didn't feel that good even when they had both the treaty and the presence because the Soviets outnumbered us.

And even though the United States dominated in nuclear weapons capabilities in the 1950s, we still were nervous all the time, and we spent the Cold War, the entire Cold War, worried that the Soviets had superiority against U.S. in Europe. So we didn't consider a guarantee to guarantee anything. And the question was how could we make it as credible as possible, but also as strong militarily as possible?

And those two debates continued throughout the entire Cold War, even to the point where as a graduate student in the 1980s, I started to be, you know, involved in those debates and hear about them. They were still going on in the 1980s, just before the Soviet Union collapsed. So, you know, there are no such things really as guarantees. There are reassurances, there are reinforcements or, call 'em what you will, enhancements, and our job is to find as many of those as we can.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So, Andriy, going back to you. So right now there is a lot of focus on the so-called coalition of the willing, and so it looks like the plans that they have include certain limited trainers in Ukraine, control of the skies and naval domain after the ceasefire.

And so my question is to what extent that valuable to Ukraine without a binding security guarantee and considering, as you mentioned in your article naval domain, we already covered. So would it be more appropriate to build Ukraine own air force instead of having it covered by the coalition of the willing without the security guarantee? So what are your thoughts on that? Or you think those components that the coalition of the willing is discussing are crucial?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Most of the points are crucial and no domain is stable. And Russia is constantly thinking about how to destroy Ukraine literally in every domain, including non-kinetic, but the ones you mentioned.

So yes, right now, for instance, Russia is a, let's say they, they don't feel comfortable in a Black Sea at all. But at the same time, what we see from our intelligence and and overall observations is they're constantly coming up with a new ways to how to bridge that Ukrainian successful denial operation, which we, which we conduct.

So as long as their overall strategy is there, and as long as, as, as long as they can commit funds, enormous funds, to the, to the military complex, they would be trying to, to, to challenge every single domain. So we, we should discuss a cross domain situation and never, never forget about any of them because, because Russia is thinking that way.

So now regarding the, the air domain. Air domain is no longer exists as, as it used to be until recently because we now have echelons of air and the situation can be there completely different. So we may have the, the, the the echelons where the small tactical drones are working. Then we can be talking about the long range drones, where, how they work. And then we finally may be talking about the mid range, a new emerging class of drones, which can be all operating in, at the same time. So you, you can, for example, you can have a, a successful air denial among the, for the technical aviation, but you may missing be, missing completely missing two classes of drones freely operating at the same time.

We also have the missile defense problem, and that's the biggest problem of Ukraine at the moment because, clearly, a particularly against the ballistic missile defense, we don't have even, even a hint of the, adequate capability to defend ourselves. And there is no, there is no manufacturing power in the world which is available to us, or which can, in a foreseeable future, close that gap.

So Russia is planning to manufacture 1500 ballistic missiles a year. And, and, and then be absolutely free to throw them anywhere, like launch them against any goals, any, any, any targets around Ukraine. We clearly don't have a plan to deal with that, but I mean, deal with that, with adequate air defense.

Of course there are other ways to deal with that and, but, but essentially. And some of them could be discussed as a, for example deterrence by punishment. You know, in this particular case it may be, it may be a solution, at least partial solution. But, but generally the missile defense is so far, so far the most challenging part.

Regarding the presence of, western forces in Ukrainian airspace. So, there's been a, a concept of this, sky Shield, if I, if I'm not mistaken, developed by some analyst from Ukraine and the West. And the idea was that, western aviation takes, certain areas and tries to defend it against the against the Russian planes, but more importantly, against the Russian cruise missiles.

If that happens, if that, if that, if that is possible, and if there, there will be political decision to, to do that, that certainly would, particularly if they close even Western Ukraine. We can, we can already at that time, focus on the central and eastern and, if, if that, if that, if that shield grows, we can certainly focus on the, on the Eastern Ukraine and do and, and do much more.

The biggest, the huge problem of course as of now, is the, anti-drone defense particularly against drones, which we call Shahed, of all different modifications and, and makes and models. but I do believe that the solution is coming from Ukraine and it would be a purely technological solution in, in a way of intercepted drones and so on.

So we, we should discuss any plan assuming that that issue is closed, because if issue, this issue is not closed, we, we don't have a plan. So combined, efforts of internal Ukrainian efforts and the Western military efforts potentially can create. quite adequate protection in disguise, basically in the aerial domain, leaving us to focus on the, on the areas around the battlefield, around the operational area.

So, yeah, so that's, that's, that's where I would definitely, look first. The rest of the, the rest of the reassurance force plans frankly speaking, I don't think they developed enough for us to comment because we've been hearing, for example, of presence of troops without a specific mission. Just, like 10,000 troops, 30,000 troops. And I understand if the mission is training, I understand if the mission is. you know, some kind of supports, in whatever function.  But, but the mission has to be defined. Military cannot operate without the mission.

And, clearly, that number, which we heard like tens, few tens, they're not going to be a barrier. They're not going to create deterrent effect by themselves. A part of the tripwire effect, which we discussed just now, there, there, there, there's not much shells, but I'm sure that that discussion is in the beginning phase. It's not in the, in the end. And I'm sure that there will be, if we are serious about talking about, about the security guarantees, whatever we mean by that, there will be quite a lot of different ideas and, and we have to be open to all of them. And just to, you know, go through.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, what do you think about the European planning? Are you optimistic that, that they can come up with something that can have a deterrent value within the coalition of the willing?

Michael O'Hanlon: I'm hopeful, although I'll echo what the minister just said that we don't really know yet because we don't see the plans taking concrete form, and I'm skeptical about a number like 30,000 because as we know, European states don't really have tens of thousands of deployable troops available to just move around the global chess board, so to speak.

They struggle to even have a brigade here, a brigade there they can really send into a distant combat zone. We see this when we look at war games and analyses about the vulnerability of the Baltic states to a hypothetical Russian invasion. And we look at whether Europe could defend the Baltic states. And the short answer is clearly no. And so I don't believe the Europeans are gonna find 30,000 troops to put into Ukraine. I'm not sure they have to, but I don't think they will and we certainly haven't seen a plan.

What I would say though, more hopefully, is that I'm very impressed and I'd be curious if the minister agrees with me, but be very impressed with the performance of European allies this year in particular, during a Trump presidency that of course puts everything into flux. And you know, I think even President Trump's supporters would acknowledge that was his goal. I'm not using a loaded term to try to be critical, even though I didn't really like the approach myself.

But he put everything into flux, including even whether the United States would stay on the side of Ukraine in this conflict, and the Europeans had to figure out in that context how to maximize their own collective contributions; how to maximize the American willingness to stay engaged; how to support President Zelensky and the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian people in the meantime; and how to have a good NATO summit that would keep the United States engaged in European security going forward. And I think all those things have happened better than I would've predicted in the course of 2025.

So that's not quite a response to your question. But it does give me some general hopefulness that the European allies and friends are, are taking this matter very seriously, are locked in; realize that we're dealing with an acute threat to Europe, including their own security potentially, in a way we haven't for decades, and that this needs to be top tier in their attention, their policymaking effort. That's why they clear their schedules and flew over to Washington on Sunday so they could be here for the Zelensky/Trump meeting. So, they do make me somewhat inspired and somewhat hopeful.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Andriy, moving forward to your, strategy, that you coined, “Strategic Neutralization,” in a paper for Carnegie, and it rests on the pessimism about the chances of a ceasefire on negotiated settlement. Could you please unpack the concept and how is that different from the war of attrition that Ukraine was involved in in recent time?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Thank you. I, I, I, I written that not specifically about the pessimist because at the time it was published, there was obviously no li, no, kind of a light at the end of tunnel in this, in this situation. But what I was saying is that Ukraine has to have a strategy which does not necessarily rest on the, assumption that Putin will eventually decide to stop atrocities.

Because other strategies they are you know, they would depend on that decision. Putin can play with the, with, with their allies by basically seeing that they don't have any other plan apart from the from the plan where he needs to make a first move. So he would be not making that first move and everybody would be, would be nervous because basically he would be dragging this and so on. So we need to be comfortable as much as possible of course, to be independent of Putin essentially.

And that independence may come from the idea that if we block the effective operations of Russia in all domains at the same time, Ukraine can start. Kind of a breathing freely freer, you know, in, in, in these situations. So, for example, we rebuild the, trading corridor in the Black Sea. So Ukrainian economy can benefit from pre-war, volumes of shipment right now, regardless of any decision from, Russia.

So Russia haven't decided to, to give you, Ukraine session an opportunity. Ukraine did it by itself, of course, with allied help. We are, right now I'm working with some of the units on some other projects, which are currently maintaining what they call a kill zone in the, on the land domain, with the tactical drones and, that those kill zones allow, the line not to be moving and allow to reduce substantially, reduce the infantry losses and actually move away from the infantry war generally. Again, not completely, not a hundred percent, but as much as possible.

So right now, for instance, and by the way, that, that kill zone does not mean that it's not, harassed by Russians on a daily basis. It is. Russians are still sending people there, but they all die and they cannot cross the line. They cannot even approach, the the line of contact. And so in this case, we can, if we, if we think how to, expand that, zone, both in width and in also in depth, and there are many efforts and plans to do that as we speak, we can potentially block them in the land domain as well.

And then we can also look at the air domain, which we just discussed. So the concept of functional defeat, which means that the, opposition force is not destroyed, but cannot achieve any results, and cannot effectively run the operation, but it's not physically completely destroyed. That concept has been developed as it continuation of the, so-called effects based operations in United States military science, about 20 years ago, at least those are sources which we could find.

And there's been a lot of different publications about the functional, functional paralysis, functional defeats and so on back, back then. But then these discussions haven't been, you know, continued and so on. So, and then, minister of the, armed forces of U.K. re recalled that term when he was describing a situation now in the Black Sea. That in fact that Russia had a functional defeat in the Black Sea because the Black Sea Fleet exists, Black Sea Fleet is damaged, but it exists and the headquarters exists. So basically uncontrolled function exists, logistical function exists. So, so it's there, but it cannot do effective operations and it has to retreat in the eastern part of the Black Sea.

So, but what happens if we achieve the functional defeats and across domain and basically like, basically full, full, full spectrum domain, functional defeat effect, and that, that's what I call strategic neutralization for the lack of other term. But it would be, it would be essentially a full spectrum, functional defeat to the opposition force. So of course, that's more like a theoretical model because it's not gonna practically exist in a perfect shape.

First of all, it will be constantly harassed, and constantly challenged on a, literally on a daily basis, and it's not going to exist in a, in a sort of perfect environment. Secondly, it only, is possible if Ukraine maintains leadership in the innovations because it will be eventually all about the balance of power, particularly in a, in a, in a kind of changing nature of the war.

And as we see right now, we cannot maintain leadership all the time. We sometimes miss things and the Russians are inventing new weapons. They're inventing new operational concepts even. and, and, and so yeah, so they. So I don't think that would exist in a, like a perfect environment. But at least, that gives us some kind of a, a roadmap where we should be thinking, where would be potentially could be thinking, in terms of like, if Russia don't stop, how we can start rebuilding Ukraine.

Because if we don't start rebuilding Ukraine and no strategy is good. Because that potentially means that we are stuck in the war. And of course, the war will be draining.

Now, answering your question on attrition, attrition is not good. It's not good solution to Ukraine because, because attrition means to fight, Russia, enemies resources, and expect that resources will, dry up and, dry out. And then, essentially they, they, they forget about the idea of continuing the war. But in the resource game Ukraine and Russia aren’t comparable. And we don't know, how long the resources of our allies will be available and to which extent.

And, as actually Michael mentioned in the beginning, it was very, about the presence. The presence is a very, very important logistically because if you have troops or equipment or, or even money in, in other continent across the ocean. That presence there across the ocean is not necessarily going to play deterrent or the, the denial effect because it would take logistically time to deliver stuff, to commit to, to find it.

And we've been witnesses ourselves, like we, or the whole world as, the Congress makes a decision of, certain funds and then these funds are appropriated. And then DOD looks for the, weapons and then they ship them and they ship them with the time. So it's actually sometimes months until they actually arrive to the battlefield, and certainly Russians understand it amongst this are not going to play that effect.

So we need to be having that a clear working strategy in place and not try to drain Russia with resources. And I'm not even talking about their partnership with China, which is a huge question to which extent that partnership is, is going to develop, what China is going to do, and how are they going to help Russia with resources.

So yeah, so we need to get out of paradigm of the infantry warfare, because that's, that's immediately gets us to the, symmetric responses and to the war of attrition. And war of attrition is not going to be to Ukraine's benefit.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, what do you think about this logic? And so it's a logic for the continued war where it does not end, but I think it has some relations, it can be translated into the post-war logic as well. And I think your piece about Ukraine's defense posture outside NATO has some, at least some similarities with that. So, what are your thoughts on Andriy's strategy and what the policies that you proposed, about multi-layered Ukraine's defense infrastructure and system?

Michael O'Hanlon: Thanks, Mykhailo. Well, I liked very much the minister's basic central point, which is that it's important at a strategic level for Putin not to think time is his ally. And it's important therefore, to recognize the actual objective realities where time might currently be Putin's ally. And we have to try to change that, not just the perception, but the reality.

And of course, one of those areas is in demographics and manpower and the relative size of the two countries, Ukraine's ability to sustain this conflict. And I think Putin has to get to a point where he's concluded that Ukraine could actually sustain this conflict indefinitely. And only at that point will he be serious about peace and in the same effort to try to change Putin's sense of who side time is on, we need to put more pressure on Russia with various kinds of economic punishment strategies.

But the military part, the part that the minister is thinking about is absolutely crucial because if Putin thinks that he has a battlefield advantage with time, he's already proven his indifference to human life, even the life of his own troops, and obviously the lives of Ukrainian troops. So Putin has elevated this war in his own mind to some kind of grand historical showdown where the stakes are greater than hundreds of thousands of lives today.

That is a very twisted way to look at this war, but we have to conclude that's where Putin is, and therefore he's gonna be willing to keep fighting with relative indifference to the loss of life, even to Russian troops. And so Ukraine needs a strategy that allows it to keep this war going indefinitely. And I hope very much of course that won't be the case, won't prove necessary, but the only hope for ending the war soon is for Russia to think that Ukraine could fight indefinitely. So it's a little bit paradoxical, but I think it's true.

As to the specifics I like the ideas that that I've heard. I will simply point out that today at Brookings, August 21st, we had an event on the so-called replicator initiative of the Pentagon, which is our effort to try to field drones in short time periods, in large numbers, and frankly, to learn from Ukraine. And the number of times that Ukraine came up in conversation was probably double digits.

And we had the former Commandant of the Marine Corps General David Berger. We had two former leaders in the replicator office, T.S. Allen and Aditi Kumar, and they also said the rapidity of change within Ukraine's use of drones. Not just the hardware, but the software, the networking, the communication systems. These are the ideas the United States is trying to learn from right now, recognizing that Ukraine is becoming the leader on how to innovate and how to quickly field large numbers of weapons of this type.

So without commenting on the specifics of the minister's proposal, I would just say that with having this podcast with two Ukrainians, and me, we are hearing from world-class innovators in battlefield use of drones. And so there's nobody who's a better authority than a Ukrainian strategic or military thinker. So one of the things Ukrainians are doing right, by the way, is to continually change based on testing strategies and then modifying them as needed.

So the minister doesn't have to have everything correct right now because Ukraine has proven that it's capable of adjusting, and that's essential to how we think about military innovation.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, so again, following up on that, so you wrote this proposal about Ukraine, post-war defense posture. Could you briefly unpack it? What's the number of, armed forces? What are the necessary ingredients of that policy proposal?

Michael O'Hanlon: Yeah, we had a very simple way of thinking about this, Paul Stares and myself, and we basically said that Ukraine needs to be able to get a large force to the front lines if Russia ever violates a peace treaty or a ceasefire.

And what that means to first approximation is fairly similar to what they have on the front lines today because maybe that will change in five or 10 or 15 years with new technology. But in the short term, we have to take the empirical data that we have, and we know that Ukraine's current frontline positions are almost strong enough to hold the line, not quite.

So we basically propose a relatively small permanent active duty force at the front lines combined with the ability for Ukraine to mobilize very quickly and fill in those front lines, within a matter of days if need be. So that's one chunk of the force, and that's about half of the total proposal.

There are two more chunks. One is a rapid reaction force based more like central Ukraine that could go to wherever Russia was attempting a major effort, at a breakthrough. And you could imagine that rapid reaction force being itself able to break off into two or three pieces, but it would be designed to be a maneuver force. And to be able to attack moving Russian forces.

And then the third piece would be air and missile defense and other defenses for the homeland, for the cities, for the rear areas of Ukraine against Russian aerial attack, missile attack, drone attack, special forces attack. And so when you add all that up, you know, obviously the numbers are not gonna be exact, but something in the broad range of 800,000 to a million total Ukrainian forces, including reserves.

So it becomes a smaller force than Ukraine has in the field today. But still capable of rapidly restoring that frontline strength and having air and missile defense for cities and a reaction maneuver force to address any attempted Russian breakthrough.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Michael, if you would come up with historical analogies, what would be the closest one? Is a Swiss model during the Cold War, similar Finnish model, or Israeli qualitative military age, is more appropriate in this respect?

Michael O'Hanlon: That's an excellent question, and of course should probably try to draw from all of those models. But maybe the Finnish model at first blush strikes me as perhaps the most relevant because of course, the Fins, and this is not just the modern era, this is going back to the Winter War of 1939, 1940. They were able to put forces forward, but they also maneuvered very well, and they anticipated where Russians or Soviets at that time would attack, and they went out and met them, but they didn't feel they had to defend every inch of their territory necessarily.

They were a little bit more of a flexible, supple defense knowing that the key cities and the main population areas were a little further back, so they didn't have to have everybody up at the front line. And some of their best tactical victories were of course on those forest roads where they used their Motti tactics to seal off Russian advance points and then destroy the Russian units that were trapped inside the forest in detail.

To me, that was an interesting model. They could reposition units as they needed to. They had a certain amount of geography to work with, just like Ukraine does. And obviously, Ukrainian defense planners don't wanna concede any part of their country, but to the extent that sovereignty and survival are on the line, you have to be willing to use maneuver and you know, your strategic depth as an asset.

So for those reasons, I think maybe the Finnish model of the late 1930s and the 1939-1940 Winter War, strikes me as one very applicable analogy,

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Andriy. So in Ukraine, I think Finnish model has somewhat pejorative meaning. So there is an association with neutrality and people, people, at least a knee jerk reaction that they don't like it.

So what, what do you think about that? What are the challenges for building such a force, as Michael suggested? Are there, demographic challenges? Would that be based on a professional army or that would be a conscription element? So recently, I think former Prime Minister, but right now Minister of Defense Shmyhal said that that would be a professional army and not a conscription force. If we talk about Israel, so that's, I, I think that that was a sensitive question in Ukraine, so Israel conscripted women to the army, which Ukraine has never considered. So what are your thoughts on all of those models? Do you think it's feasible?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Well, just for the sake of, sake of, kind of being correct, Ukraine did conscript women, but it wasn't a full conscription, it was selective conscription or certain, like medical, medical people and so on. But, nevertheless, of course you know, I, I, I don't think anyone suggests to clone a model.

You know, I think everybody is talking about learning inspiration and then adaptation to Ukrainian, or to any other. You know, no country can clone somebody's model and think that it's going to be okay. And also Michael, reminded us very interesting historical, examples from the Fin, from the Winter War, which are very, very relevant. And some of them we actually did, ourselves like, like, in the beginning of so-called battle for in a, in a, in a north of, north from Kyiv, there's been a very lot of similarities to from between these wars because of the forest, because of the narrow roads, because of Russians decided that they can just simply move along those narrow roads. And Ukraine used that to the, to, to our advantage.

But Ukrainian, sort of, sometimes negative attitude to Finish experiences are based on the so-called Finlandization of the, of the strategies. So something completely different. And this is basically can be narrowed to a phrase, something like, well, Finland has agreed not to join NATO and has agreed to secede some of the territories. And now look, it has developed into the stable and, you know, and economically, successful and socially successful, country. So why can't Ukraine accept the same? And that's why every time when there's discussion about Finland, people remember about this kind of Finlandization suggestions.

Actually, what we also can learn from Finland is that. How they prepared for the potential war because right now a Finish sort of society defense, like, like a civilian defense, territorial defense approaches and how they build this shelters, for example, and, and, and many other things in order for to be ready in the case of the, of the restart of the war. That's a huge. should be a huge inspiration for Ukraine as well. So this is another, another thing which we should learn.

Regarding the Finlandization as a, so basically a land in exchange for peace. It's always a simplification. Finland had some historical conditions and some situation back then. We have completely different one, in our case, ceding territory for peace has enormous risks of actually making things worse because Putin will consider that as a victory. Putin will sell the idea of the further investments into the war to their population, Putin will explain that that was war, worth of losing all these people and, you know, moving economy to 40% of, you know, and into, sorry, 40% of economy to war, economy and so on.

And then they, they may go through the hardships, but seeing that you see. Russia is actually getting, Russia is actually winning, basically. I, I guess history never teaches us to clone, cases. You know, history always teaches us to inspire, get inspired by the cases to use them, but, but, but, never like you, you know, use them in a sort of like, exact, exact manner. I don't think that ever happened, and I don't think anyone seriously suggesting that.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Andriy, just a, a small follow up. So I agree with you on the territorial questions. And what do you think about Ukraine's NATO aspirations? So let's say if we can get a robust security framework that would satisfy the Ukrainian leadership and the Ukrainian population, that that is viable alternative to NATO. Is that critical for Ukraine to keep an opportunity to join NATO in the future, or you think that's something that can be discussed?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Okay, so there's a couple things to, to know about this, you know, extremely difficult subject. So first of all, this war is not, has not happened because Ukraine was trying to get into NATO. Ukraine, as, by the way Michael written in his paper, which is just discussed, but also, other people in other papers is that Russia attacked Ukraine when it had no NATO aspiration, aspiration. So that was done well before.

And, there was essentially, any promises to stay away from anything are not going to guarantee Russia not attacking Ukraine again. So essentially like we cannot trade NATO, NATO pathway for peace because none of those promises from Russia can be enforced unless they are, secured by something much more tangible.

So, unenforceable promises is a constant risk for Ukraine. That why we have to be very careful not to deviate from understanding what actually is the Putin's rational and what actually their strategies and think this is about NATO. Putin uses NATO to, to my kind of understanding and my, my, my, my sort of conviction that Putin is using, NATO as a, as a rationalization of his, actions, not, not at the reason for his actions.

So he explains his actions with NATO with something else. And lots of people buying that, lots of people thinking that, oh, yeah. Russia attacked Ukraine because Ukraine wanted to be in a NATO. Russia attacked Ukraine because it wanted to get rid of Ukraine and because it wanted to colonize Ukraine and turn it into this satellite, satellite state, or most likely collection of territories, not even a state, and destroy its, identity and, and, and, and cancel all, all its path is to success to become a successful, you know, western style democracy and, and and so on. So that's why he started it.

But also, but, but, but not, not, not, not because of NATO. All his explanations about that NATO is getting closer. Well, NATO is getting closer and NATO, NATO is getting more powerful because of his aggression. And that includes Sweden and Finland and so on.

Now, can Ukraine actually seriously promise never applied to NATO and, and, and hold that promise for decades? Any promises are as good as the, as as as a tenure of the government, which accepted them. And then a new government will accept new pro, will accept new policies and so on. So I don't think we should really be focusing on that as a way to prevent Russia for Russian aggression.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So Michael, going back on those two, so I agree with Andriy that the NATO was probably was not the main reason of the invasion, but I tend to think that Russians, they have both imperial and strategic reasons for their actions. We can debate what's more important in their calculus, but it looks like that. that's something like any state is driven also by strategic reasons.

And so the Soviet Union during the Cold War, considerate neutrality of some states like Austria, important for its strategic considerations. Do you think if Russia understands that it cannot subjugate Ukraine, this potential strategic carrot can be something that can lead to an acceptable negotiated settlement for Ukraine?

Michael O'Hanlon: What I would say is that if I were Ukrainian, I would want the option to join NATO. There's nothing wrong with that at a level of morality or strategy. And it makes sense to reinforce the security because even though we did all say at the beginning that there's no such thing as a real security guarantee, we know that NATO was ratified by two-thirds of the Senate in the United States, for example, and that tries to give a certain amount of political longevity beyond a given president, beyond, beyond a given Congress as to the seriousness with which the United States took that commitment.

And so NATO really is the gold standard, even though there's no guarantee. It's the gold standard for the closest thing you can get to a guarantee. And it's also a community of nations that shares common values and wants to cooperate in other ways. So if I were Ukrainian, I would wanna be in NATO.

However, I'm an American and I've done my writing at different times in this whole last saga of the last 35 years, and I've sometimes thought there were better options for stabilizing Europe. We don't have to re-litigate that right now 'cause it's not really relevant. What's relevant now is where do we go from here?

And I've done my writing recently, looking for other ways to try to make a security reassurance for Ukraine very powerful without necessarily using NATO membership, but I don't know where we're gonna go in the future. And at some point, if we were in a whole new era, maybe Ukraine could maybe join NATO, maybe a post-Putin Russia could someday join NATO. After all, we talked about Russia joining NATO back in the 1990s for a brief period. We're nowhere near that conversation right now.

But again, I understand why a Ukrainian would want to be in NATO. I don't think it's likely to happen anytime soon. So we need to have a discussion of a broader menu. But, you know, maybe Putin should worry that if he keeps fighting this war too much longer, Ukraine will join NATO. And maybe we'll get so frustrated with Russia, even in the United States, even in the Trump administration, that we change our mind on our previous position. So that's all I can say on that topic that.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Andriy, do you have any concluding thoughts on our discussion on maybe what you are looking for from the discussion about Ukraine's defense posture in the coming weeks?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: We, we have to, Michael mentioned that, about the drones and about other innovations. We need to understand that we're in the middle of probably what is going to be discussed by future historians as military technical revolution, you know, in the military technology and so on.

Because we are seeing some incredible changes in operational concepts in the, in the, in the way how to, how the war has been fought and so on. And so I think that we discussed the, you know, we discussed the guarantees as a, something like providing support. But also it could be providing support in a, in a, in a technology. And maybe that would be the most valuable part of the guarantees or, or military collaboration.

The West has enormous technological potential. It has enormous, enormous, powerful labs and, and and the companies and so on and so on. If we turn on that engine of the technological collaboration and jointly produce, you know, because we know operational environment very good. We know what's needed to be successful in operational environment, but, but the West has these, amazing tools. If we combine those resources, Russia will must have no chance.

And that actually because, because of sheer balance of power in a, in a term of technology, technological capabilities. So I think we should look more on that all over and over again and understand that if this basic, if this collaboration will be going to full fledged to, to, its, to its maximum power, there is no chance Russia can compete with that. And and then certainly we can build up that deterrent or denial effect.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Andriy, Michael, thank you so much for joining Lawfare podcast.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Thank you. Thank you, Mykhailo. Thank you, Michael. Great to see you.

Michael O’Hanlon: Thank you. Thank you minister.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Bruins Institution. You can get ad-free version of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter through our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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