Zelensky interview, Oreshnik missile, and the frontline

In this newsletter, I want to do something slightly different from what I usually do. I am going to cover a couple of shorter stories that I think deserve attention, rather than diving deep into just one of them. 

Zelensky hints at willingness to compromise on territory

The first story is that President Zelenskyy gave an interesting interview with Sky News, where he hinted that Ukraine might be willing to compromise on the question of territorial integrity in connection with peace negotiations. Zelensky's statements received a lot of attention from the Western media and were generally described as a groundbreaking new direction in the Ukrainian position on negotiations.

In reality, what Zelensky said was not that spectacular. He basically just reiterated the same arguments that I mentioned in my video about how to understand the Ukrainian plan for victory. The basic point is that the Ukrainians are much more willing to compromise on the question of territorial integrity than most people in the West assume. However, they are at the same time much more determined on the question of security guarantees.

This is a shift in Ukrainian rhetoric that has occurred over the last year since the failed counteroffensive of 2023. The first time I recall hearing Zelensky say that Ukraine does not necessarily have to get all their territory back before the “hot stage of the war” (i.e. what people in the West would probably just call “the war”) can end, was this BBC interview in the summer. The Sky interview is interesting because it is probably the first time Zelensky has presented the argument as a complete package, clearly laying out that the short-term priority is security guarantees over territorial integrity. But it is telling about the state of the strategic discussion in the West and the journalists covering Ukraine that most of them had totally missed that Ukraine was developing on this issue. They are now surprised that Zelensky would suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, present such a dramatic change in policy.

I think there are two important things to take away from this. First, while Ukraine is prepared to accept that they won't get control of all territory at this point, they are absolutely not prepared to acknowledge that these territories formally belong to Russia. That would be politically impossible for Ukraine. It is probably also something that Russia would demand in connection with peace talks, because it is a way they can apply pressure on Ukraine. I think it might be difficult for the American negotiators, especially Donald Trump himself, to understand why this would be an important issue when it seemingly is just a question of semantics. So the question about the formal recognition of the occupied territories as part of Russia could be a deal breaker in negotiations.

And the second thing is that the West really needs to start thinking about the question of how we will provide security guarantees to Ukraine after the war. Frankly, we are still stuck in a superficial understanding of what the war is about, where it is just a question of territory. That is a convenient perspective because it implies that it is only up to the Ukrainians to compromise, and then there can be peace. The moment the discussion moves into the question of security guarantees, peace will necessarily require Western governments to take on new responsibilities and make commitments that they haven't made before.

Putin’s Oreshnik missile

It has been interesting to follow the aftermath of Russia's use of an intermediate-range ballistic missile on the city of Dnipro. The attack itself was underwhelming. The missile caused almost no damage, and questions have been raised about whether the missile actually contained only dummy warheads, and thus no explosives whatsoever. Such a missile is not a precision weapon. The warheads will hit within a couple of hundred meters of the target, but one would still assume that it would be possible to detect the location of the explosions on satellite images if warheads with hundreds of kilograms of explosive material had actually gone off.

There has also been a discussion about whether the Oreshnik is actually a new missile or if it's just a new name for an old Russian missile. I think the most likely scenario is that it is a new name for the RS-26 missile. The RS-26 is a controversial missile because it is one of the missiles that led the United States to leave the INF Treaty, which set limits on the development of intermediate-range ballistic missiles. RS-26 was a quite blatant violation of the treaty. According to the INF Treaty, an intermediate-range ballistic missile is defined as a missile with a range of up to 5,500 kilometers. Russia tested the RS-26 on a range of up to 5,600 kilometers, which pushed it outside the scope of the treaty. However, during this test, the missile was only equipped with a single warhead. Subsequently, they modified the missile to contain three warheads, and the increased weight would reduce the range of the missile significantly. The development of the RS-26 missile was later put on hold, and it's likely that the Oreshnik is just the same missile that they have resumed developing.

It is a ballistic missile designed to deliver nuclear warheads. It is difficult to shoot down because of its high velocity, and for that reason, it is difficult to defend against. Patriot might be able to do it, but otherwise, you would need systems that Ukraine currently does not have such as THAAD.

But ultimately, Oreshnik doesn't do anything new. Russia has had this type of capability for decades, and it's just more of the same. They demonstrated that they have a ballistic missile designed to deliver nuclear weapons, but this missile is not particularly useful in the current conflict. Everyone knew that already, and for that reason, no one seems particularly impressed by Russia's demonstration. It has not particularly sparked fear in Western countries or energized the debate about nuclear escalation.

The interesting thing is that the Russians themselves clearly expected this missile to be a significant development. Putin has been talking a lot about it, and it has been top news in the Russian media. A small test that I personally use is to see what talking points the trolls in my YouTube comments like to focus on. It is clear that they have been told to push the narrative about the invincible Oreshnik missile.

I think the Oresnik missile is an interesting case study in how the Russians sometimes have a very different understanding of world events, and how this can translate into very wrong ideas about how information operations will work when they reach the Western audience. 

The front line

The Russians are still pushing hard along the entire front line. They are gaining ground, especially in the southeastern corner of the Donetsk region. However, it's important to note that they are making these gains at the cost of record casualty numbers. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the number of Russian casualties in November reached almost 46,000. This number includes the dead, wounded, missing, and prisoners of war. It's an absolutely mind-blowing number, and there's no way that Russia can sustain this in the long run.

However, they seem determined to make as much progress as they can before Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Everyone expects that there will be some kind of negotiations after that. These negotiations will probably not end the war, but they will have to take place because the new American administration will insist on it, and they can influence the level of American support for Ukraine going forward.

Russia is currently making the most progress in the Donetsk region, but I think that, politically, it is the Kursk region that is most important. If Russia can take this, it will allow them to promote the idea of freezing the front line during the negotiations. Ukraine obviously knows this, so they will do what they can to hold on to the Kursk region. However, I think it's questionable whether Russia can increase the pressure in Kursk more than it already has. They will probably continue focusing on making attacks almost everywhere along the front line in order to gain as much as they possibly can over the next month and a half.