Why the Ukraine War Won't End the Way You Think

Right now the Russians are hosting the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, one of the peak moments for Vladimir Putin in the calendar. And well, happens at a time when Ukraine has also just decided to join. Join in releasing a set of strikes across parts of Putin's hometown and one of the most important cities in Russia. And he demonstrates just how bold and willing the Ukraine is to take the fight to, not just Russia's borders, but within the heartland of Russia's economic, cultural, and historical centers. And it boasts the question, just where is this going to go exactly? Are we seeing a genuine shift in the balance of power and the momentum of the conflict? And what does it mean for how a conflict that has largely been quite stale at this point, a little bit of a war of attrition is perhaps becoming a lot more fluid? Well, these are the sorts of questions that I delighted to be speaking to with Dan Ridler, who is the senior analyst for Europe over at the economist intelligence unit part of the economist group. Now, Dan, it's delightful to have you on the programme. We've been waiting to do this for a little while, but I sort of want to frame some of the questions about what you do and the work of EIU by understanding sort of just how you saw the events of the past few days and how that plays into your work. Hi, yeah, it's great to be here. We have tried a couple of times to get this done. So, I mean, I think you framed it quite while it's indicative of frame has, has a bit of momentum at the moment and perhaps the drone superiority of a Russia. At least for the time being, and we have to see where that goes, you know, this comes alongside a bunch of other challenges for the Russian economy. Yeah, so absolutely. I think one of the things that obviously people have wondered about is when and if the Ukrainians would capitulate when the war first started, this whole idea that Russia were a steamroller, the country because of just the sheer difference in the demographic, economic and military capabilities and science. But what we've seen is the remarkable capacity for the Ukrainians to do quite a lot of not very much. And I'm just wondering like over the time that you've been following the conflict, mapping out where things go. How has it changed from the very early days to sort of now, and especially obviously since Trump returned? Trump introduces a huge variable into just about everything we do actually. I mean, I mean, Russia, Ukraine, but also we've had a huge amount of what to do with his trade policies. And I think in some ways that some of that variability is probably not as bad as it has been now. America's pretty much drawn down the support for Ukraine in terms of actually as far as it can. There's almost nothing coming through from the US. The European Union's taken over the vast majority of the load. What it's still doing is selling weapons, but strictly selling. So actually some of the variability starts to disappear there. I think last year, you know, the ability of Trump, the willingness of Trump to bounce, to try and bounce both sides into a piece. And certainly, you know, the focus is on Ukraine to try and bounce. You're creating into a piece because you've had the leverage. I think a lot of leverages, we, Kevin, it has been let's put it that way. So we're now, but I think that's, you know, indicative also of that is that we're talking more about European's getting involved in unleading negotiations with Russia and the need to kind of open those channels of communication, which I think is to definitely, directionally, probably what is required since it's Europe, it's going to be paying for the war going forwards. Indeed. And one of the things that obviously becomes very critical is being able to adequately sort of map out as I say the the different scenarios. That's something that you're doing quite in depth. But take me through a little bit exactly what that means when we're trying to forecast whether the Russians are going to conduct a spring offensive. I think I think I got a bit right away with these bring this point. What does that mean? And how do you make accurate assumptions or assessments, sorry, of whether an offensive is coming and is he actually going to make a big deal? It took, for example, just, you know, for a reminder of a view is it and listeners, it was what a 18 months to take back months and then it was about various other cities and towns, small towns which are what tactically, largely irrelevant, let alone strategically, right? Yeah, it's true. I mean, like I think that the idea that Russia was going to have another go at the front lines was fairly clear for a long time. And you know, you kind of expect in Windows not ideal. You expect an offensive to pick up and the only, maybe it was clear that the Russians wanted looking at manpower and military posture that they wanted to have. They were going to push on the front line again. It's also clear just from the diplomatic perspective that Russia thinks it can retake the Donbass and that's what it wants. So it was fairly obvious that was coming. I think I think, you know, one of the key things that we think about, aside from the small, like, aside from those tactical things, what other things we do at the IU really used to think about the bigger picture and the limitations, the abilities, but particularly those constraints that are on it when you're trying to think about whether the war end or where the war will go and whether or not, you know, how a piece deal might look. You have to take both sides reasonably seriously and what they're saying, which I think is at the moment, not looking like there's any key ground compromise. So thinking about that for a second, I mean, you know, Trump was saying at the end of last year, you know, we're 95% there, we're 99% there, we're, you know, it's got that kind of hegg Sethian, the straight-up hall moves is open apart from the people that are blocking it, feel about it. You know, like we're 99% of the way there, we've greed everything except for the things that we can't agree the territory and the shape of Ukrainian defense. Okay, so you haven't greed anything then, have you because that's all that really matters. And so, you know, I think this is this is how you can look at it and then longer term you have to start thinking about what are the constraints, you know, like actually, you know, Ukraine needs the economic support from the Europeans. If that dries up, then things get really, really tricky. Putin needs to keep his military running. He needs to, you know, how tight it's actually needs to be able to keep evading sanction or evading, avoiding dealing with the pressure of sanction. And those are some of the, you know, we need to look at the political situation within Russia where to think about the economic and political constraints that are with him. And so these are things you can't necessarily get around or to any limited extent, extent you can get around. You know, if you look at something like how the economy runs is, is what you can do economically or what you, and how the, the extent to which you can control the politics of the economics is limited. So we try and think about, sorry, go. No, no, if I may, and just, just curious then, because there's obviously a lot of speculation, people love to jump on speculation of what will be happening and people who are responsible, well, we mustn't speculate about the future. But can you explain to listeners why what you're doing is different or more comprehensive? There's a difference between forecasting and speculation or conjecture, right? Yours is based on mathematical data and proper assessments of empirical evidence, right? And so how do we, how do we distinguish between when we're just sort of guessing in the future about things based on what we prefer to happen versus actual substantiated analysis based on just the raw data and findings and maths and so on? Well, I think there's, so I mean, I will say that when you're dealing with something like thinking about a military conflict, there's, there's an element of science and there's an element of art, I think there is to all forecasting. And so there is plenty of data that goes into it, obviously, you know, that we get a huge amount of data on the Russian economy and it's slightly less than we used to, thank you to the to Rostat. But I mean, there and we get a huge amount of information. We always have huge amounts of information on Europe, we do, you know, huge cover heads of forecasts, we get those data, we're constantly analyzing something or another. But then there's stuff we can't get, there's stuff like, you know, there's highly classified military information, there's stuff that just isn't published, there's stuff that moves too quickly. And some of that stuff you talk to, you know, you get through discussions, you get through entering to conversations, you get through developing expertise, through talking to other experts, talking to people on the ground, we have people in country, and then you have to, you know, start with not historical knowledge, thinking about, I mean, you know, you go back to how these things end in the first place and you have that and try and have that culture. I think everything that we do, one of the things about the values we have a culture of like inquisitiveness and intellectual, like open intellectual discussion and everything is run through, like, everything gets run through a series of conversations and thought processes and we start off, so we're applying, what we try and do when we think about the end of the war is to apply, you know, some kind of number to the idea that, oh, it might end this way or it might end that way, you know, like, and one of the biggest things in the conflict of Russia, one of the hardest things actually, is not getting involved in it from an emotional perspective. It's very, you know, there's, there's always a bias, people always have some kind of sense of what they want to happen and that does, that that lends with which if you view the world, alters the way in which you think about things and we have to try and maintain a different, you know, a distance from this stuff, we have to try and keep ourselves as neutral as possible if you want to get to a good outcome. And it's kind of filtering the news as well. I just read an insane amount of news from both sides of the fence, they try and read stuff that's equally, you know, from the opinions of Russian Milbaloggers as much as the government, as much as the Ukrainian side, as much as the international press, as much as the Russian press as you can get. So, and try and take into account the different views and it's, not something that I think you know as a casual kind of down the pub conversation, there are some great points made down the pub if you're reasonably connected to international fairs as I guess the listeners to this podcast are, but I think having to do it full time looking at the data, you know constantly scanning historical precedent, constantly talking to people, constantly absorbing the different views, trying to approach it with intellectual honesty and keeping that open mindset. It's just skills that you kind of train and that's obviously every single day you get a new opportunity to hone your ability to try and maintain, to try and maintain a broad spectrum of views because it's not that easy, you're always going new information and there's always a temptation to kind of go and confirm what you already believe or what you prefer to happen, but it's that discipline of trying to keep mutual and I think is the sheer volume of information you get through that's different. Yeah, one of the things that comes to mind for me is just obviously the validity of the data itself, I grew up all from my time in the World Bank, there was a big scare, a big scandal if you like about the fact that the Chinese were directly forcing or coercing a lot of World Bank staff to to manipulate data to limit certain data points or alter the portrayal of certain things to make the Chinese economy and different metrics look more favorable. The point with that is that simply you get data from different sources, I'm going to guess you're a Russian government as well, but how can we verify a guarantee that this sort of thing isn't incredibly manipulated or just banned our right? It seems like we're going that way, we're delimited to amounts that are being released by the Russians publicly now, but how do you vet these sorts of sources and just ensure that what you're using to make assessments forecast and so on is as accurate as it can be? Actually, the absence is a bigger issue as far as I can tell than the accuracy and I think there's been a number of studies done on this. It's not just us looking at it, but a number of studies are looked at, I remember both of it doing a comprehensive, actually really comprehensive look at Russian data and there's no suggestion really that there's a huge amount of manipulation going on at that point. I think what there is and part of this is they just they just stop publishing stuff they don't want you to know. There's still a lot of data comes from Russia and there are I think more importantly, some of the one of the things that we have to think about is the fact that sometimes the data even if put together, without direct manipulation, cannot necessarily represent to what's going on under the surface. You can talk about the value of non-liquid assets in the National World Fair Fund in Russia, but what does that mean? This is chairs in the air if lot. I'm not lining up to buy them right now or an investment in a road or in Russian railways or those kinds of things. For instance, through the war, early on when we were looking at, particularly early around when we were looking at inflation figures, I don't necessarily think that they were whether or not there were being manipulated as part of the problem when I think the evidence for that is not particularly strong. I think what there is, good evidence for us, they're not necessarily representative. It's fine. A car, you have a car. It used to be a BMW. Now it's a Chinese car or it's a domestically made Russian car. Those turn up in the inflation data in similar ways, but that doesn't mean they have a similar value. Your computer, your iPhones and now who are always, what does the value, what does the value of implication of that mean? It costs more to get stuff in, but the measurement doesn't necessarily equate to the same thing. The idea that particularly while this was this adjustment was happening, it's calling me that inflation was probably running quite a lot hotter than implied and possibly still is. I mean, monetary policy is still really, really very restrictive in Russia and you saw 21% with official inflation running at 10, 11%, which is incredibly restrictive. The odds are under the surface, we're probably dealing with an inflation rate that at least for most people is higher than that. I think we, you know, there is betting, we do look at it, we do question it and you do question what you see versus what you get versus the reports within the country versus what's coming more widely. The data shows, for instance, in Russia that yes, the economy is doing last year, growth about 1% fine, that's not so bad. I mean, it's not so good either, but as anybody in Western Europe knows, 1% growth doesn't feel particularly spectacular. But I think like, you know, that actually relies the fact that the civilian economy is in recession or has been in recession and it's a military economy that's propping it up and you put this kind of two-speed economy that's developed in Russia. So, so I think that, you know, we've done enough, there is enough going on out there and we're not the only ones looking at it. The other thing is we always play off and talk to and read what else is out there and there's not a huge deal of evidence that something is being, that there's, and you're looking at different parts of the economy and how they interact. There's not huge evidence of strength. So, sorry, there's not huge evidence of, that the statistics are being fully manipulated. Whereas, and I think that when you've seen this in China and India where there has been, it is, it's just a vehicle, an manipulation, you kind of, this can be done in quite a sophisticated way. I'm sure that the apps isn't, but so far it appears, it appears that the minute you get, there's not huge evidence of manipulation. But then, then you have other problems on top of that. So, you're constantly kind of fighting this battle, but I think some of the stuff that's actually happened is we've lost some trade data, we've lost breakdowns, we've lost some detail and that's a bit trickier and you have to kind of go around and then replace that. So you have to kind of look at, okay, so trade data is very tricky now and the way to get it is really to monitor what's going on, what's at actual ports, what you can actually see being shipped, there's some great organisations doing this, we don't have to all do everything or thing ourselves, we can rely on other people's good work. We also can do a lot of work where we can look at trade partners and see what's coming in and what's going out and what's, what one side's saying, what another side's saying. So, if people, there are, there's a sudden uptick in exports from an European country to Kyrgyzstan and the United States, there's no really good reason for it to begin to Kyrgyzstan, unless it's going on to Russia. And we see this in other markets too, and very famously, Malaysia exports in one year were way above oil to China were way above Malaysian production of oil. So, what you're obviously laundering, there's always some laundering of oil statistics going on through these channels. When you look at what China's report, what Malaysia's reporting, and we look at what Kyrgyzstan's reporting, what Russia's reporting, and what you can get through that, through the kind of that the people who are probably reporting more directly. But, you know, any economic statistic, particularly where sanctions are involved, is always subject to some uncertainty and some attempts to hide the truth. I think that's part of the job is trying to get the most accurate view we can. And that's the same, I guess, as any economist has. Yeah, it certainly is, isn't it? All right, then, well, let's start beating around the bush. How, who's going to win? Right? You've forecast the future, right? What is the situation with the war? Is it a complete victory for Russia? Is it a marginal victory for Ukraine? Is it a, is there's lots of, even as me as a podcaster or a content creator, having to sort of come up with imagery to use when describing end game or endpoint, and there's lots of scenarios. People love discussing scenarios. So when we look at the war in Ukraine right now, what is the data telling you? What has the data been telling you? What has the research been telling about the scenarios of the end game, if you like, have been? I mean, I was really worried you're going to ask me a difficult question. This is, I mean, like predicting the end of the war is such a huge challenge. So at the moment, there doesn't seem to be no upper hand right now. I mean, Ukraine has the upper hand, but in so far as it's actually making Russia suffer and it's a blunting Russia's campaign forward rather than because Ukraine is retaking huge swathes of territory. There is some evidence that Ukraine has retaken some of our territory. There's always disputes about exactly how much. The Russian economy is under strain. Ukraine's economy is not, obviously, completely rely on external support. So it's stabilized by the release eventually of this 90 billion Euro loan, which has made a big difference in sort of stabilizing the situation, but that runs out eventually. That money runs out eventually and then you have to think about what happens after that. At the moment, things are, you know, pressure built in Russia. There are a lot of ways to continue a war that aren't purely, you know, the way that the war has been conducted so far, which is paying soldiers huge bonuses to sign on. Russia is obviously losing a lot more men recently because of the Ukrainian drone advantage. Political pressure is unquestionably building, I would say, there's more evidence, there's more discussion of elites and people in Moscow feeling the war more and elites getting a bit frustrated. They're not going anywhere. There's huge losses. The economy is increasingly under strain, bank, non-performing loans rising. And the Ukrainian long-range strike capability is, it's not something you can hide. You know, when you hit an oil refinery that's, you know, maybe a few miles from Sipitis burg or their strikes that, as you said at the start, when you've got the Sipitisburg economic form going on, it's pretty clear that, you know, things aren't going exactly to plan right now. I mean, there was an environmental catastrophe in the South on the Black Sea coast after the repeated hits on the refinery and to upstate, and there's been issues with strikes. And not what I see. and it doesn't, you know, so the pressure is on, but there's no clear, so the Koreans have this edge right now, but and that may bring the Russians back to negotiations, particularly if we can get, you know, the right negotiators involved, but there's no evidence right now that they're on the cusp, you know, of making any big changes, which is Lensky's offered a ceasefire, sorry, I don't think a ceasefire is going to work because a ceasefire, because a ceasefire doesn't work for the Russians at all, because as they quite rightly say, the Russians say this and you can believe them, they're if there's a ceasefire, you create a more just real, and that makes sense. I mean, the ceasefire will benefit the defender. So that's the short term picture. I think in the longer term, you know, does this, where does this boil down? Does this push them back to the table? Can what can we compromise on? What can't we compromise on? And how the war ends in the scenarios that we have, you know, a generally drawn from comparative history. So for frozen conflict, you know, it kind of simmering down eventually both sides just becomes too expensive. There's an economic, you know, in imperative that the war has to become less expensive, it's going to continue. Ukraine may be there, the ability of Russia to the Ukrainians continue the fight is eroded. I think that's looking less likely as it builds up some military defense, military industrial base, but but also the ability to keep the funding flowing, which is which is critical for the crazy economic stability and that is somewhat subject to the patients among allies to keep it going. There's kind of third party events that impact the war. So the Iran US War is a classic example of this where it's clearly weakened sanctions resolved towards Russia at least temporarily. I'm pimp my argument about the phrase sanctions resolve here. I mean, I think it's sanction resolved as weakened. I mean, we've seen new businesses turning up a piece of this year as well. So I think I think like, you know, you in a longer term, it gets more complicated, but you can talk about, you know, you can talk about potentially a negotiated piece roughly along these lines. Does Russia give up its claim to the Donbass or does it actually make any progress in the Donbass? The freezing along the current lines, having a peace treaty that allows Russia to move away from this. I think someone say it's politically unimpossible for Putin. I don't think it is politically impossible to to step this down and play it as a victory. Russia has taken, has achieved a lot of its war aims. But if I can just on that point, though, Dan, like how much weight do you give to political leadership versus military realities and to tack on to that? Like there's obviously scenarios which are more likely versus ones that have higher impact but lower probability. So can you take me through a little bit of those dimensions? Yeah, wait, I mean, when you say political leadership versus military realities, I mean, how are you thinking about that? I think like, do you mean kind of? Putin asks Shogu because the guy is completely inept as a military general or head of the Ministry of Defense versus when Putin is micromanaging the war operations on a seemingly daily basis and the fact that so many members of his senior military personnel do not want to give him information because they don't want to be falling out of a window something. So you know, that's what I mean by political versus military readerships as Shoguashvets said, you know, the war is politic by means. I mean, you're taking back to my student days for Karavan classmates. So in this situation, we have, you know, it's quite a personalized leadership and actually Putin will decide where the war goes or you know, assuming assuming something catastrophic doesn't happen and yeah, the dies or loses power catastrophic for him not catastrophic for the world by the way, just to clarify. I think like so, but there's we're dealing with leadership. You have to avoid psychologicalizing. I think trying to guess what's in Putin's head is always a bit a bit difficult. What's and I'm not sure that people can't see doing it with Trump. I'm not sure it's particularly helpful either because they're fundamentally operating within a system of constraint. So I think something you talked about we do know is that, you know, I mean, the Russians, so sorry, what we do know is that Putin is probably not getting all the information that he needs. He certainly wasn't in 2022. I think that's one of the things that was underestimated or misunderstood is how well informed Putin was of the situation. I suspect that he's still not fully informed. It's very difficult to be fully informed of the situation, as you say, but he's not going especially well. So, you know, as I say, I think the key thing is thinking of the constraints, thinking of what can and can't happen. You know, I mean, watching the developments, what could not, you know, could replacements of Valerie Gerasimov, you know, change the war. I kind of don't think so. I think it would change the Russians have changed their tactics already. I mean, we're no longer seeing huge cat mechanized advance, you know, attempts to flood positions. We're seeing small infiltration efforts and then try and follow up. You know, the, the, the ability to sustain even the kind of operations that they're using at the moment is questionable. Do I, do I think that you can more maintain the drone advantage? You know, these are these are questions that are very tricky to answer. Russia tends to be slower moving, but it has the ability to produce on a vast scale when it when it gets moving. So if, you know, and generally speaking, there's, you know, one side progresses, the other side catches up, you know, from our Ukraine starts blocking Russian drones. Russia develops drones with optic fiber direction. And then you'll, you move on. Ukraine develops some way of combating something or some new way. You know, I, I, I forget to say imagine Russian air defenses. I expect Russian air defenses will catch up to the current challenge of improved Ukrainian drone strikes and missile strikes, which is, you know, the, but and then can the Ukrainians evolve beyond that? Is this the next question? I mean, I mean, yeah, sure. I have a huge faith in the ability of the Ukrainians to keep, to keep evolving and developing new weapons to keep them in the flight and longer range ones. But, but in any given moment, things, there's nothing at the moment. And I think this is one thing that people, I try and avoid it. I don't think any single military advance one weapon. Throughout this war, we've heard this one weapon is going to change the war idea that like if they just had tanks, it would change the war. They just had f16s, they just had grippens. If they just had, what changed the war is the long term ability to provide this stuff and the ability to keep advancing and thinking and, you know, and adapting. And I'm not sure there's any one single thing, one, one change of tactic, one person who will do that over and above the fact that right now the Ukrainians are able to inflict huge casualties and and seriously, you know, they're now controlling and they have this drone advantage that the Russians have to get under control. They have to be able to get under control, if they continue, they to expect to make any kind of progress because they haven't to move further away from the front or the evidence suggests that they're having more difficulty resupplying that their roads are being mined, that they're finding it harder to, that's even before you think to account the deep strike capability, like really deep strike capability. So the Russians can't get a handle on that. Then they're going to have to rethink what they're doing or they're going to, or the losses just can be car unsustainable and they'll start going backwards. But I don't think that that will, or you have to go and completely re-approach to war. Now, so, so I guess politically here you think computing, computing, continue this war by means that are like less directly paying people to go fight. Do you go, do you go down a description route? That would be deeply, deeply unpopular in Russia and he's managed to avoid, mostly avoid that kind of thing so far through a number of other relatively minute-pulled means. But a lot of people there have just paid really, really well, who are fighting in Ukraine. So, so you know, if that runs out where do you go next and what's the political willingness to do that? And that's harder to judge for us. So, absolutely. So, what scenario do you think is most underappreciated as we sort of, maybe my, my penultimate question would be to sort of, what would you identify as an underappreciated scenario? What is a big misconception that people get wrong about the war and the direction that it's going and generally how things are on the battlefield versus what we see in the media and the general portrayal like that? I mean, it's tough to say what people are appreciating. I think this is such a good question, by the way. So, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being mean about the question. I think it's such a good question, but it's tricky to say what people appreciate appreciating. I think right now, you know, there's, there's a growing momentum of the sense that Ukraine is, is, so we go through phases, right? You know, in Russia is going to win in seven days. Oh, it's not one in seven days. Oh, Ukraine's going to lose eventually. Oh, actually, you know, you brushers going backwards because they made strategic tactical errors. They're going backwards, you know, in 2022. Oh, you crained on the front foot, they're going to win. Then we go through into the 23 offensive of Ukraine. Ukraine's going to push on their, okay, that didn't work. And then we go back and then we, then the Russians are on the front foot and they're taking towns. Now we're back to this phase where I think we're in a phase where it's like, oh, Ukraine now has an advantage and it has blunted Russian attacks and it's able to re-take some bridges and it's hitting Russia. Does that mean Ukraine's going to win only if it's sustained for a very long time. This advantage is probably, and I think we have to wait and see where that goes. And I think that, you know, so the appreciation of what's going on, it tends to follow this kind of cyclical whoever's winning at the moment. There's a sort of linearity of thought here. Whoever's on the front foot right now, that's the way the conflict's going to go. And I think that's proved on a number of occasions not to be accurate. The, my, my bet would be that though that we probably don't get a big break through and that the other thing I think is discussed a lot is the idea that this will just simmer down to frozen conflict. That's quite likely. I'm not knocking that. I don't think that that's a bad idea. I don't think that's a bad theory. I don't want to be critical of people who think that because I think that's a very valid point view and possibly one of my top outcomes for the conflict is definitely the potential for it to just sort of simmer down into a largely frozen conflict with no real peace deal other side but neither side really able to make any gains. But I actually think there's an underappreciated thing here is that that doesn't really work for either side. I mean it's pretty bad for Ukraine because you can't make any progress on, I mean it requires constant funding. You can't make any progress towards towards EU membership or towards any of its long-term political gains. It costs a huge number of lives and just money. This is not easy to simmer down unless this war, it's not showing real size. If it's showing size of stabilising the front but not signs of that that's incredibly expensive stabilization. It's not like something that's peripheral sort of and I think the possibility therefore that might be underappreciated is there is just a breakthrough with peace at some point. There is a potential here for at some point some kind of deal to be done. If we get to a ceasefire and no treaty I guess I'd consider that frozen conflict that's also a possibility but it was one of the reasons why I think the Russians don't want that is that once they get to a ceasefire you're kind of this unstable ceasefire line is probably that's it. So yeah I mean I guess that's that's the my mind I think that the opportunity for I think that within the kind of groups I talk to the idea that it will that's probably what will happen will get a ceasefire freeze and it will just be this frozen conflict and everybody goes anywhere is the main view. I think that my feeling is that slightly underpreciates the possibility for a breakthrough although I think that that's not necessarily going to happen immediately but I think there's a possibility for a breakthrough here because both sides could benefit from peace but it requires them to overcome some pretty big hurdles still not convinced that the political world had to do that. I think the last question really simply is about time for me. I look at this as a bit of a race of time about the capacity for the Europeans to fill the gap left behind by the Americans and pick up the pieces, pick up the mantle, there's a lot of pledges but not necessarily a lot of policy it is being made but it's sometimes rather inconsistent and obviously in that time Ukraine is ever more dependent. So it's a race against time for the Europeans to fill that gap versus the durability of the Russian economy. I think there will always be determined not by the battlefield itself I think anyone who follows it extensively will agree on that it's more as always about the political or in this case economic ramifications. So what's your view on that? What's the biggest thing that would potentially see a sizable shift in the war right not necessarily an all-out size of victory but not all that collapse of just a just a big shift in that we start seeing a big military potential movement or political movement towards peace deal right like the show in sort of the end of September 2022 and then the trigger of mass mobilization and fleeing by Russia and so on. Yeah so I mean I think there are so there's kind of the big breakthrough moments that could change things. There's obviously like either leader going would would would change the discussion immediately but aside from those kind of disx machina kind of events I think that yes we have to keep watching European funding I think above and beyond everything else because this is this is and that you know there's this point of view that this isn't actually a lot of money for the EU if you look at the size of the economies but that's not really the way that I think it's perceived within the EU and within Europe more widely this is perceived as being extremely expensive and it is expensive you know it's just how you how you think about that expense I think the ability of because you know the the incredible ability of the Ukrainians to innovate and keep things going and stay in this war and take the fight to the Russians is still dependent upon being able to fill huge twin deficits and that's you know that's being funded by Europe and allies and that subject to potential political and we saw it you know we saw earlier this year you couldn't get the loan out because of a veto from all ban okay all ban's gone you know that doesn't guarantee that you don't get the attitudes towards it don't change that would be something to watch I think I think yeah you've got to watch political stability in Russia the economic situation in Russia and sort of it's so much harder to get a judgment out of Russia because there's a certain tolerance is there you know the regime is given the levels of repression the regime is stable but the brittleness is high you know the ability the chance of something to just snap in Russia is so much higher which makes it really tricky to judge and there you know and nobody assuming that you've got a good judgment of what people are thinking and leadership are getting good for you're getting a good sense of how the mood is then you you'd assume that if they feel like they're pushing things too far they will stop but not necessarily the case it's so again I think those are probably the variables the variables that maybe in the background are ones that I'm watching and you know if there is a big mobilization in Russia and they and that would be an interesting step because the step the Russian leadership have absolutely avoided because it was so unpopular so you know that would show that they were they were taking the water at a different level and they were thinking it's in a different way and it would I think I'm not saying it's I think that would be something that would suggest to me that to watch closely for the way that plays out in terms of domestic pressure and what that means for how the Russian war effort is going but yeah I I generally agree with your assessment I think it's probably going to be decided on factors that are bigger than than individual military stuff and I think that's kind of always thus right like the the economics the industrial policy the ability to actually sustain the war effort manpower the ability to sustain the war effort is more important than in one day whether you you know lost all gained a particular village in Donetsk and the Donetsk I should say certainly the imaginations have been captured around the likes of Bacross, Bacmute and of course liberation of Hikeven others but it all would likely come down to factors off the battlefields that are the biggest determinants to the Russo-Krain War but Don Riddler of the Economist Intelligence Union, part of the Economist Group and part of this ongoing collaboration thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure and I look forward to having you back who we can have a deep talk in the future. Yes it was really really great to talk to you today and I hope to come back really enjoyed it thanks a lot. Thank you very much for your time thank you very much everyone for watching listening and be sure to always of course subscribe and provide your support by giving the podcast a rating and view it will help we'll see you in the next one take care