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Pyotr Kurzin @PKurzin , host of The Global Gambit podcast,...
Anton Gerashchenko@Gerashchenko_en
8 views
Aug 21, 2026
~6 min read
Pyotr Kurzin @PKurzin , host of The Global Gambit podcast, published an interesting interview with Peter Zeihan @PeterZeihan about Russia's war against Ukraine. I found it quite compelling, so I decided to share its main points:
▪️ "[Putin] has another seven million people he can mobilize if he wants to. Granted, that is the last generation of Russian men under 30. That obviously comes at a huge cost. But the Russians really have not put their shoulder into this war yet. They have tried to treat it as what they've said - a special military operation. We have not seen the full economy mobilized. We have not seen the industrial plants receive the investment necessary for a mass expansion. And we certainly haven't seen the population mobilized in a way past wars involving either the Soviets or the Russians have. We are starting to see that now. It is not risk-free. There's no guarantee they win this anymore. But to think there's going to be a political break in Russia without a significantly greater economic dislocation than we have seen so far is being over-optimistic."
▪️ "For the first time, we're actually seeing the Russians on a military economic footing. While that is, from the capitalistic point of view, wildly inefficient, that doesn't mean it can't work. It means that for the first time in 5 years, the Russians are actually fighting like this is a real war as opposed to something that's a sideshow. That does have consequences. It means we have to have, among other things, a full mobilization. But to say that that's going to break the system, I don't know if I buy that. It just puts stresses in different places."
▪️ "We have to have a much sharper break. And that means the apathy has to end. The best example I can give you is when Prigozhin led his rebellion. He marched his people 1,500 kilometers to Moscow. No regular military commanders joined him, and no regular military commanders tried to stop him. That really underlined just the huge degree of apathy in Russia, even among the security services, about what was going on. While that means it's really difficult for Putin to motivate people, it also means it's very difficult for Putin to be motivated against. Until we have a situation where we don't just have defectors on the front, but actually people shooting their commanders, I don't see Putin in significant domestic danger."
▪️ "Five years on, and Ukrainians are not simply still fighting, but they found new ways to give the Russians a bloody nose and actually change the mechanics on the ground. With the new military technology we've seen this year, that eight-to-one ratio is being achieved regularly. For the first time in this conflict, we are finally at an even fight. That doesn't mean the Ukrainians are going to win, but for the first time, they're not losing ground. And that matters immensely."
▪️ "The Ukrainians are trying to change the math of the war in a very intelligent way. The [drone] technology is innovative. Since the Ukrainians are launching hundreds of these a day, we're in a situation where the entire Russian system is running out of anti-aircraft capability.
It changes the math because now the Russians have to defend every square inch and absolutely cannot.
Putin has redirected air defenses to concentrate around a few specific areas, most notably Crimea and Moscow, and everything else is kind of open.
What we've seen in just the last couple of weeks is that the mid-range strikes that the Ukrainians have been doing since March, basically destroying the logistical tail of the military forces within about 300 or 400 kilometers of the front, have had such an impact that the Ukrainians are actually able to go on the offensive in zones that are mined and win. For the first time, the Russians just can't get more drones, more men, more fuel, more food within the battle zone at all. And that's now affected their ability to hold the line."
▪️ "The amount of economic damage that the Ukrainians cause is really deeply immense.
We've had over 140 attacks now on 'shadow fleet' tankers in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in just the last six weeks. We are looking at the end of Russia's ability to export through the Baltic or the Black Sea. Conservatively, that's three to four million barrels a day of oil and product. They'll still be able to use, for now, their Siberian export route, but collectively, rail and pipe there is less than a third of what goes west.
Long-term impact. This is the end of Russia as a significant energy exporter.
Once this physical infrastructure is destroyed, the wells will be shut in, and most of them are mature wells that require foreign technology for their development. The Russians will have to re-drill them, and they can't re-drill them until such time as the sanctions are gone. The Chinese don't have the technology."
▪️ "Strategically, there is no version of an independent Ukraine that can function unless Crimea is part of Ukraine, or at least neutral, because it commands the access to the rivers that are the lifeblood of the Ukrainian economy for their exports of steel and especially grains. And if the Russians control Crimea, they basically control the north half of the Black Sea and can project power west and south very easily. But that assumes that they can resupply Crimea successfully, which is no longer for sure. With the mid-range drone strikes, it basically turned Crimea into an island that the Russians can't support, which means it turns from a springboard into a sandbag.
The Ukrainians don't need to make a push in order to drain the Russians. They're just forcing the Russians to use all of their logistical capacity to try to reach someplace that they really can't defend anymore. It's a good strategy."
▪️ "For the Ukrainians to win, they don't just need to get Crimea back. They need to make sure that the Russians lose the military capacity to threaten them. And that means neutralizing or occupying the two Russian cities that are the logistic hubs that enable the war - Belgorod and Rostov-on-Don. We're nowhere close to that right now. But if those two cities are removed from the equation, it's not just that Russia loses the ability to project power west; it loses the ability to project power into the Caucasus. And then you're talking about the entire southern rim of the Russian state falling.
And all of those barriers are then completely up in the air, and the Russians are too far from all of them and can't defend any of their territory. And whatever vector a future threat comes in from, the Russians just can't deal with it at all."
▪️ "At this moment, it's a question of whether or not and how soon the Russians can copy what the Ukrainians are doing with drones against two other developments.
Number one, the Russians are finally putting huge investments into their ballistic missile capabilities because that's a technology that the Ukrainians have no defense for. The first large numbers of those missiles will probably come online in about six months. That's about the same time that these joint facilities that the Ukrainians are building with the European NATO allies and a number of countries in the Persian Gulf will also come online. So, we're going to have many more Ukrainian memory drones at the same time we have many more Russian ballistic missiles. This war is changing month by month."
▪️ "[Putin] has another seven million people he can mobilize if he wants to. Granted, that is the last generation of Russian men under 30. That obviously comes at a huge cost. But the Russians really have not put their shoulder into this war yet. They have tried to treat it as what they've said - a special military operation. We have not seen the full economy mobilized. We have not seen the industrial plants receive the investment necessary for a mass expansion. And we certainly haven't seen the population mobilized in a way past wars involving either the Soviets or the Russians have. We are starting to see that now. It is not risk-free. There's no guarantee they win this anymore. But to think there's going to be a political break in Russia without a significantly greater economic dislocation than we have seen so far is being over-optimistic."
▪️ "For the first time, we're actually seeing the Russians on a military economic footing. While that is, from the capitalistic point of view, wildly inefficient, that doesn't mean it can't work. It means that for the first time in 5 years, the Russians are actually fighting like this is a real war as opposed to something that's a sideshow. That does have consequences. It means we have to have, among other things, a full mobilization. But to say that that's going to break the system, I don't know if I buy that. It just puts stresses in different places."
▪️ "We have to have a much sharper break. And that means the apathy has to end. The best example I can give you is when Prigozhin led his rebellion. He marched his people 1,500 kilometers to Moscow. No regular military commanders joined him, and no regular military commanders tried to stop him. That really underlined just the huge degree of apathy in Russia, even among the security services, about what was going on. While that means it's really difficult for Putin to motivate people, it also means it's very difficult for Putin to be motivated against. Until we have a situation where we don't just have defectors on the front, but actually people shooting their commanders, I don't see Putin in significant domestic danger."
▪️ "Five years on, and Ukrainians are not simply still fighting, but they found new ways to give the Russians a bloody nose and actually change the mechanics on the ground. With the new military technology we've seen this year, that eight-to-one ratio is being achieved regularly. For the first time in this conflict, we are finally at an even fight. That doesn't mean the Ukrainians are going to win, but for the first time, they're not losing ground. And that matters immensely."
▪️ "The Ukrainians are trying to change the math of the war in a very intelligent way. The [drone] technology is innovative. Since the Ukrainians are launching hundreds of these a day, we're in a situation where the entire Russian system is running out of anti-aircraft capability.
It changes the math because now the Russians have to defend every square inch and absolutely cannot.
Putin has redirected air defenses to concentrate around a few specific areas, most notably Crimea and Moscow, and everything else is kind of open.
What we've seen in just the last couple of weeks is that the mid-range strikes that the Ukrainians have been doing since March, basically destroying the logistical tail of the military forces within about 300 or 400 kilometers of the front, have had such an impact that the Ukrainians are actually able to go on the offensive in zones that are mined and win. For the first time, the Russians just can't get more drones, more men, more fuel, more food within the battle zone at all. And that's now affected their ability to hold the line."
▪️ "The amount of economic damage that the Ukrainians cause is really deeply immense.
We've had over 140 attacks now on 'shadow fleet' tankers in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea in just the last six weeks. We are looking at the end of Russia's ability to export through the Baltic or the Black Sea. Conservatively, that's three to four million barrels a day of oil and product. They'll still be able to use, for now, their Siberian export route, but collectively, rail and pipe there is less than a third of what goes west.
Long-term impact. This is the end of Russia as a significant energy exporter.
Once this physical infrastructure is destroyed, the wells will be shut in, and most of them are mature wells that require foreign technology for their development. The Russians will have to re-drill them, and they can't re-drill them until such time as the sanctions are gone. The Chinese don't have the technology."
▪️ "Strategically, there is no version of an independent Ukraine that can function unless Crimea is part of Ukraine, or at least neutral, because it commands the access to the rivers that are the lifeblood of the Ukrainian economy for their exports of steel and especially grains. And if the Russians control Crimea, they basically control the north half of the Black Sea and can project power west and south very easily. But that assumes that they can resupply Crimea successfully, which is no longer for sure. With the mid-range drone strikes, it basically turned Crimea into an island that the Russians can't support, which means it turns from a springboard into a sandbag.
The Ukrainians don't need to make a push in order to drain the Russians. They're just forcing the Russians to use all of their logistical capacity to try to reach someplace that they really can't defend anymore. It's a good strategy."
▪️ "For the Ukrainians to win, they don't just need to get Crimea back. They need to make sure that the Russians lose the military capacity to threaten them. And that means neutralizing or occupying the two Russian cities that are the logistic hubs that enable the war - Belgorod and Rostov-on-Don. We're nowhere close to that right now. But if those two cities are removed from the equation, it's not just that Russia loses the ability to project power west; it loses the ability to project power into the Caucasus. And then you're talking about the entire southern rim of the Russian state falling.
And all of those barriers are then completely up in the air, and the Russians are too far from all of them and can't defend any of their territory. And whatever vector a future threat comes in from, the Russians just can't deal with it at all."
▪️ "At this moment, it's a question of whether or not and how soon the Russians can copy what the Ukrainians are doing with drones against two other developments.
Number one, the Russians are finally putting huge investments into their ballistic missile capabilities because that's a technology that the Ukrainians have no defense for. The first large numbers of those missiles will probably come online in about six months. That's about the same time that these joint facilities that the Ukrainians are building with the European NATO allies and a number of countries in the Persian Gulf will also come online. So, we're going to have many more Ukrainian memory drones at the same time we have many more Russian ballistic missiles. This war is changing month by month."
