Transcript of NewsX World interview, 6 October

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLoEkNyU4vw

NewsX World: 0:00
Systems used by Ukrainian forces are performing rather poorly in intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. The system has failed to intercept Russian missiles in recent attacks, attributed to the fact that Russia is continuously modernizing its weapons to circumvent American systems. Ukraine has recently received Patriot systems from Israel and is expected to receive more from other European partners. Meanwhile, Moscow’s mayor has stated that Russian air defenses have destroyed drones flying towards the city. Overnight, Russia claimed to have downed around 251 drones launched from Ukraine. As the attacks intensify, the significance of defense systems become more prominent in order to counter the missile and drone threats.

0:45
With us on the broadcast is Gilbert Doctorow, international relations and Russian affairs expert, joining us from Brussels in Belgium. Sir, at the outset, I’d like to ask you what you make of these fresh reports coming in regarding the effectiveness of the Patriot missile systems. They say that it’s not as effective on the ground as interceptions are not as common. What sort of weight would you attribute to these reports?

Doctorow:
Essentially, this is simply confirming what we knew more than a year ago, that the Patriot system is not adequate to stop hypersonic missiles and to stop other missiles which have been redesigned to take into account its capabilities. Therefore, the defensive value of the American patriots, which has been widely discussed when [it] was considered to ship them or not to ship them to Ukraine, this has been vastly exaggerated. The problems that Ukraine faces are more complicated, both at the high end and at the low end of incoming Russian attacks than one would have imagined a year ago.

NewsX World: 2:04
Indeed. And in the meantime, Zelensky, President Zelensky has made a request with the US administration for the procurement of Tomahawk missiles. In your assessment, how long would this procedure take and would it really help Ukraine in the short term?

Doctorow:
There’s been a lot of discussion in the United States and globally, and it was a central issue that came up in Vladimir Putin’s widely televised speech and question-and-answer session in the Valdai discussion group gathering in Sochi last Thursday. The issue of Tomahawks is complex. It is unlikely that the United States has available Tomahawks to move to Ukraine. More likely it would tap its European partners, for example, Spain, to dispatch their Tomahawks.

3:03
The actual range of the Tomahawks that could or would be shipped to Ukraine is debatable. Some say it’s 2,500 kilometers. Some say it’s substantially less, depending on the model of the Tomahawk that’s made available. The issue is much bigger than that. This really is a stress test for Mr. Putin’s government. How do they respond to what could be a very serious escalation of the war by the United States? Mr. Putin himself waffled on this issue last Thursday. At one moment he said that America dispatching the Tomahawks to Ukraine would destroy U.S.-Russian relations, meaning move it to war.

At a later moment, he caught himself and said, no, this dispatch of Tomahawks would do damage to the budding relationship. Well, which is it? The point is that Russia seems undecided, and that has put in question the value of Mr. Putin’s deterrence to the United States and NATO.

NewsX World:
Indeed. And where do you think, considering the fact that tactics have been evolving on the battlefield, on the ground, where do you think hybrid warfare is going to be factored in the short term, especially considering now tanks are being used to launch drones. We’ve seen certain sightings also, we’ve discussed this as well. Where do you think this is headed?

Doctorow: 4:33
Well, the nature of warfare has evolved enormously in the three years of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. At the outset, Russia appeared to have a massive advantage. And I’d say this in terms of not just the manpower, which remains the same. The correlation of populations of the two countries has worked to Russia’s advantage in the course of the war, as so many people have fled Ukraine, making the population up to 40 million, as it was at the outset, but something more like 25 million, while Russia’s population has stood at 145 million and probably has risen to 150 million, keeping in account all of the Ukrainians that are now in what is Russian territory.

5:13
So on the manpower side, not much has changed. On the hardware side, from the very beginning, Russia had something like a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery shells, artillery tubes, in what was initially, in this war of attrition, an artillery war.

In the meantime, drones have come from nowhere to become the real arms of this war. And in drones, Russia and Ukraine are much more closely matched than in the artillery, which defined the conflict for the first two years. Essentially, I mean, you see this very frankly stated on Russian state television when their war correspondents interview soldiers in the field, and the soldiers say, “Oh, well, all those birds, we have to be very careful what we do.”

Those birds, of course, those are Ukrainian attack drones. Men are dying from these drones on both sides. But as I say, The reduction from expensive tanks, armored artillery, armored personnel carriers and so forth to very cheap drones has changed the nature of the war to Ukraine’s advantage. So the signs are more balanced today than they were a year ago.

NewsX World: 6:35
Indeed, sir. And speaking of Putin, apart from, you know, sending a direct warning to the United States, he’s also sent a warning to Europe. He has stated that European nations are trying to seize ships that carry Russian oil to global markets. [It] would amount to piracy and could trigger a forceful response while sharply destabilizing the global oil market. This is something that we were discussing yesterday with regards to the French government’s action against a ship that they claim is a part of Russia’s shadow fleet that was in fact detained by French authorities.

In the meantime, the situation is also becoming tense in the Baltic Sea, as you were pointing out earlier. So could the war protract on this front factoring in Putin’s recent statement?

Doctorow:
There is no reason for the war to be protracted, if Mr. Putin would use the conventional weapons at his disposal. It is entirely within his power to end the war tomorrow by using Oreshniks, hypersonic missiles, to destroy what they call the decision-making centers of Ukraine.

That could happen tomorrow. Mr. Zelensky’s regime could disappear tomorrow if Mr. Putin had the nerve, shall we say, to end the war. Instead, he is protracting the war unnecessarily, causing deaths on both sides.

So this is the issue of the day. Does Russia have determined energetic leader as it seemed to have in the past, or does it have an over-aged and waffling leader, which appeared to be the case last Thursday at Valdai?

NewsX World: 8:16
All right. So with that, I would like to thank you for taking out time sharing your