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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing in Russian).
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Russia's presidential vote over the weekend felt a bit like a carnival at times.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in Russian).
PFEIFFER: There were songs, gimmicks, even giveaways from the Kremlin, like iPhones, cars and apartments to draw out voters. One hundred and fourteen million people came out to vote across 11 time zones, and as expected, Vladimir Putin won an unprecedented fifth term.
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VLADIMIR: (Speaking Russian).
PFEIFFER: A pensioner named Vladimir (ph) said, "it's how it's always been done. In Russia, we vote for our leaders and will do so again." He declined to give his last name to correspondent Charles Maynes out of fear of reprisals. But there was also dissent at the polls.
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PFEIFFER: Dozens of Russians were arrested for protests that included setting voting booths on fire and pouring liquid dye on ballot boxes, all in apparent frustration that this election wasn't a free or fair election at all.
SERGEI: (Speaking Russian).
PFEIFFER: That's a voter named Sergei (ph), who was sitting out the election because he said he thought the whole thing was rigged. He said, "in reality, 75% of Russians are actually against the war in Ukraine and against a president who is leading the country to ruin." Consider this - Vladimir Putin is about to serve a fifth term as Russia's president. What will his leadership mean for a brutal, ongoing war in Ukraine?
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PFEIFFER: From NPR, I'm Sacha Pfeiffer.
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PFEIFFER: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Sacha Pfeiffer. Vladimir Putin has been in power for a quarter century in Russia, and this weekend's election results confirm that he will reign for a fifth term. Putin's hold on the Kremlin gives him control of the world's largest nuclear arsenal and a military that's been at war in Ukraine for more than two years, ever since he launched an invasion in February 2022. That war has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. But despite these losses, the Russian military is pressing forward and Ukraine is facing the stark prospect of a fight in which key U.S. military assistance is in question.
So what will six more years of Vladimir Putin mean for the war in Ukraine, and where do both militaries stand at this point in that brutal war? I put those questions to Dara Massicot. She's a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Dara, a big picture question to start. I'm wondering how much of an impact Putin's reelection could have on how Russia proceeds now in this war, if there may be any notable changes in direction or strategy or aggression. What's your sense of that?
DARA MASSICOT: I think that his concerns are the same now as before the election. He is primarily motivated by managing this war and succeeding without overheating his own economy or agitating his own population. I think we're going to see him continue along the same lines of getting men into service with volunteer methods and not mobilizing them, because that's a political risk. But of course, there is another course that he could take if he chose to, if he was feeling more risky.
PFEIFFER: Meaning conscription.
MASSICOT: Yes. Yes. That would be another round of mobilization. But I think he would only do this if he wanted to initiate another large offensive against Ukraine. And right now, I don't see them taking those steps.
PFEIFFER: You know that most experts expected Russia's victory in Ukraine to be pretty swift. They didn't expect that Russia would need to be rebuilding its military more than two years after the invasion. If you had to describe overall the state of the Russian military right now, how would you?
MASSICOT: Well, I would say that the Russian army that we're looking at two years into the war is very different quantitatively and qualitatively than what they began with. They've lost 14,000 pieces of equipment. Estimates range wildly, but hundreds of thousands of casualties since the beginning of this war.
So we're seeing older vehicles that are Soviet origin, that they're pulling out of Siberia, and we're seeing volunteers that they've either pulled in through various methods, recruited from the prison system or recruited fresh off the street with no military background. And then you do have a smaller core over time of those professional soldiers that started the war. So it is a mobilization-based army. The same thing could be said for the Ukrainian side, as well. They are all getting combat experience, so I don't want to say that they don't have a skill set. But this is a damaged organization and yet parts of it are learning and becoming lethal. So it's - it is a mixed picture, which is why I think that even though Russia has a lot of advantages on the ground and in the skies, they are still not able to translate those advantages into really decisive gains for now.
PFEIFFER: Besides reaching into warehouses and bringing out old Soviet equipment, as you said, are they also getting newer equipment from other countries?
MASSICOT: They are. So they - I probably would highlight two very important features of their aid that they're getting from abroad. Number one is the Shahed drones that they've purchased from Iran and now they are manufacturing inside Russia. Those drones are allowing them to strike targets all across Ukraine and help Russia stretch its inventories of cruise and ballistic missiles. The second type of equipment that's been very important for Russia has been the artillery that they've been able to purchase from North Korea and to a lesser extent, from Iran. That artillery allowed them to bridge a really critical gap in time when they had not yet fully ramped up their own domestic production from mobilizing their defense industrial base. There's also some additional support that does matter, whether that's ballistic missiles from North Korea or the type of support that China is providing them that is not necessarily quite so obvious, but they are contributing to the Russian war effort.
PFEIFFER: The U.S. is a potential factor here, because if Donald Trump is reelected and goes back to the White House, he might stop substantial aid to Ukraine, and Putin, as a result, may not have to call up large number of troops. How much do you think that possibility is part of Putin's calculus?
MASSICOT: I think it's a large part. I mean, if you look at this dynamic from the perspective of how the Russian military General Staff looks at things, they're looking at Ukraine thinking they are short on critical ammunition. They are also delaying mobilization decisions. So that means their units on the front line, at least for right now, are vulnerable. They're looking at the delays in Congress, and they're thinking that those delays have not been resolved for many months. Maybe it's possible it takes a few more months. And they're also thinking long term, you know, what happens after November to the United States? And if the United States' support from Ukraine falls away, what will that do to European aid? And all of these things to a Russian military planner look incredibly positive, and they have a lot of incentives from that perspective to move forward and continue to attack Ukrainian positions before these issues get resolved.
PFEIFFER: Based on everything you take into account of what may play out in 2024, how do you expect this year to end up for Russia and Ukraine? Could this be an end? Do you expect it to drag on?
MASSICOT: Well, this year is going to be decisive. The challenge for me in terms of forecasting how it will look on the battlefield is - so much is contingent on whether or not the supplemental gets passed here in the United States for $61 billion, which is mostly going to be converted into lethal aid for Ukraine. If that money is approved and those weapons and ammunition do begin flowing quickly to Ukraine, there is a very good possibility that next year is going to look better for Ukraine, because they can hold off Russian attacks now and rebuild and modify the force moving forward when Russia's advantages start to erode in 2025 and 2026.
However, the flip side of this is if the aid is not approved, then we are going to see a process which is already underway of Ukrainian units that are rationing their ammunition. That could give way to true depletion of ammunition. And if that happens, whether that's on the ground or in the skies, Ukrainian units are not going to be able to protect themselves and we're going to start to think about what a Russian breakthrough would look like later on in the second half of this year if that supplemental doesn't go through.
PFEIFFER: So when you said that this year will be decisive, you don't necessarily mean the war will end, it will just really pave the way for who comes out of this year stronger.
MASSICOT: Correct. Correct.
PFEIFFER: That's Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thank you.
MASSICOT: Thanks so much for having me.
PFEIFFER: This episode was produced by Jonaki Mehta. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Nick Spicer and Andrew Sussman. It featured reporting from Charles Maynes. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
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PFEIFFER: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Sacha Pfeiffer.
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