Hello, welcome to Roosie in London. I'm Neil Melvin and this is Global Security Briefing, the podcast devoted to providing insights on contemporary regional security developments around the world and on how the UK can best navigate a fast-changing international environment. In today's episode, I'll be hosting a bonus edition of Global Security Briefing to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After protracted negotiations stretching back for over a year, Ukraine, its European backers and the United States appear to have drawn closer to agreeing a blueprint for peace, but various significant questions remain. How should Moscow's demands for Ukrainian territory be treated in the Donbass and beyond? Are the United States and Europe committed to the security measures necessary for an effective backstop to a peace agreement? And what is to be made of Russia's opposition to security guarantees for Ukraine? Can Russia really be trusted to stick to a potential peace agreement? And is the United States a credible guarantor of any such agreement? In this bonus edition of Global Security Briefing, we hear from a panel of Russi experts on the prospects for peace and for a continuation of the war four years on from Russia's invasion. Their remarks were recorded during a live Russi event in the Institute on the Tuesday, the 24th of February, 2026. In the discussion, the RUSI panelists, including me, Neil Melvin, Director of International Security, together with Matthew Savile, Director of Military Sciences, Dr. Marina Vorit-Nyuk, Associate Fellow, and Dr. Jonathan Isle, Associate Director, tackled a wide range of questions, including what would a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine look like? What is the role of the rest of Europe in supporting Ukraine and applying pressure on Russia? As well as, what are the prospects of a further year of fighting if the current negotiations fail? The full hour-long recording of the event is available to RUSI members on the Institute's website, where you can also sign up if you are currently not a RUSI member. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Jonathan Isle. I'm the Associate Director here at the Institute. It's a pleasure to see you all here on this day, which otherwise is not very pleasurable in terms of what it marked. It marks, of course, the fourth anniversary since the all-out invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an event of seminal importance that you hardly need me to explain. It is one of these oddities of history that Russia by today would have been at war in Europe for longer than during the Second World War. I don't think any of us dared assume or think of that on that day in 2022, but here we are. Now there's of course enormous amount of angles to this story, to this tragedy, to the bravery of the Ukrainian nation that has fought, to our governments, to their contributions, to their determination, to their errors and to where we are today. Let me start with my colleague Matthew Saville who runs our military sciences team here at the Institute. The team that has been on the ground I should say even before the war began and provided a lot of us with some of the best to my mind and I'm partial to this but some of the best analysis of the military situation on the ground. I think that Matthew will give us a snapshot of where we are now. Matthew. Jonathan thanks. Yes I'm wildly biased and therefore also agree that my team provide excellent research and analysis actually working with a number of teams across Rusi on both what's happening in Ukraine but also the implications for defense and security, the development of European militaries. I think the starting point when we are describing the progress of the war is that we are not talking about a static conflict, although that is often the impression that is given. The ground war is a slog for both sides at the moment. 2025 has been characterized by the Russians making the most advances if that is what you choose to measure but at a frankly astonishing cost If measured by territory they have only increased the ground that they notionally control by between 5 and 6 square kilometers That is barely 1% of Ukraine's territory. In fact, I think by some calculations, 0.8%. and that has come at the cost overall of I think around 1.4 million casualties of various types over 400,000 in the last year alone but when we are evaluating the course of the war we need to understand their strategy is not really about taking territory at the moment rather it is making Ukraine suffer in terms of their own casualties and damage to the country, attacking their will to resist, freezing them during the winter, undermining the country's ability to be economically viable in the long term, grinding them down. So depopulating Ukrainian cities and towns is as damaging as capturing the territory. The Russians are increasingly bringing some areas within range of greater volumes of different types of artillery and achieving fire control, as we know it, over Ukrainian logistics routes. It's also worth noting that the measurement of territory is an increasingly fraught challenge, as the past 18 months have seen... Someone did not pay attention to the silence your electronic devices. The past 18 months have seen an increasing blurring of what we might call the front. So we do not have a First World War type network of trenches abutting each other. Rather, what we have actually is clusters of infantry positions, often interspersed with attempts being made to infiltrate beyond them, outflank or isolate pockets. Genuine breakthroughs are incredibly rare. It is hard to mass people and equipment to exploit any breakthroughs that take place. And this is where we get onto this issue of the contact zone, as you call it, or some people call the grey zone, the pervasive nature of surveillance and technology, the use of drones. If we had to try and characterize what's been happening, that contact zone was, for a large part of the conflict, and particularly in 2024, focused over Russian positions. What the Russians have done is been able to move that away from them, to push it back through improvements in electronic warfare, their own drone systems, volume of fire, first over a kind of more equal distribution, and then more recently over Ukrainian positions. And this is what we're talking about when we look at how they have been able to establish fire control. They're attacking Ukrainian resupply, the ability to evacuate the wounded, which is why in some cases Ukrainian units are now performing 100% of both resupply and medical evacuation through uncrewed ground units. Indeed, whilst we'll come back to things that fly, uncrewed ground vehicles, UGVs or ground drones, whatever you want to call them, are likely to be one of the breakout technologies of this year because their use has rapidly expanded over the past 12 months and a lot of Western industries and Ukrainian defence industry are focusing on them. Both sides suffer from uneven density of their forces across the front, which means there are weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And for the time being, that is disproportionately affecting the Ukrainians because of issues that have been plenty identified and covered in terms of their ability to mobilise and train people. And that's why they're relying very heavily on drones to provide surveillance and strike capabilities and trying to pick off infiltrating Russian units. Thank you very much. And let me now turn to my colleague, Dr. Neil Melvin, who heads our international security team at the Institute, the team that looks at various geographic parts of the world for his assessment. Thank you, Jonathan. I think Matthew has very clearly highlighted the centrality of Russia's war against Ukraine for understanding contemporary military affairs. But there's another dimension, which is, I would say, equally important of the war, and that is the discussion of the Ukraine war lies at the heart of thinking through what European security is today and what it will become and this has animated this debate about the Ukraine war from its beginning it been a discussion about what the norms and rules of international understandings of security are in Europe what the valid institutions are of European security what the geographic scope is where European security lies when I began my career working on what was then called European security, we were part of a system that was from Vancouver to Vladivostok. European security has now collapsed to something much smaller and Ukraine is obviously lies in that grey zone, not just in the military sense but in a political military sense as well and the war is at the heart of determining that question. But also of course as we've seen particularly under President Trump, the whole debate about what is the nature of extended deterrence in a European context today. And this has really been I think the questions that have been lying behind the past year which we've called a peace process but actually hasn't been a peace process at all. It's been a diplomatic dance around these core questions of European security and how the Russia-Ukraine war fits into that matrix of issues. And I say it's been a diplomatic dance rather than the peace process because it's been, it hasn't, the peace process hasn't come from the parties to the conflict. There hasn't been a demand for a peace process from Russia and Ukraine. This has come from the Trump administration and that means that what we've seen has been shaped, the political processes have been shaped by that dynamic and the core dynamic then has not been actually necessarily coming to agreement on what a peace process looks like it's been about negotiating relations with the United States around a number of and differing core interests so for Ukraine particularly since of course the car crash of the first meeting between Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office last year it's been about trying to maintain good relations with the United States to stop the US pivoting fully to Moscow, as has been on the cards a number of times, and of course in the worst case scenario trying to avoid actually US coercion against Ukraine to force it into unwanted outcomes. For the Russians it of course has been about decoupling United States from European allies, it's been about trying to keep US engagement away from Ukraine and we see that today in which we have a large number of European politicians in Kiev but a conspicuous absence of senior US officials as the Trump administration continues to try and signal some kind of equidistance in this in this process and for the Europeans it's been about trying to protect Ukraine often from US pressure but also through things like the coalition of the willing to maintain a relevance in a peace process or a political process where the Europeans have often been overlooked or even forgotten and put to one side and to find ways back into influencing that discussion. Thank you very much Neil, thanks for setting out quite a number of questions. Our last contributor is Dr Marina Vorotnyuk who used to work with us and is still an associate fellow of ours and who has specialized a great deal in Black Sea security, Southeast European security. Over to you Marina. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Today is the fourth anniversary of full-scale Russia's invasion against Ukraine, but it's 12 years since the war started and I think it's quite noteworthy how today we recognize how consequential this war is for the European and global security at large while in 2014 when it started I think to some it seemed like a marginal or even temporary sort of deviation in the European security and I agree with assessments made before that despite the negotiations that we see now that that we are not closer to the prospect of peace now. We are not closer than we were before. I think we need to face the reality that peace as a result of the ceasefire is not a policy option unfortunately at the moment. So there is not only little hope that these negotiations will lead to some sort of ceasefire or peace, but in fact what we see at the moment is the intensification of Russian attacks and this period has been the deadliest period for Ukrainian civilians since the start of the full invasion So one of the main challenges I see, and the colleagues mentioned it, is about the coalition of the villain and the whole arrangements, which I think is reassuring when I hear that it's important to have the arrangements in place for the time when the ceasefire happens. you know, but what do we do in the absence of the ceasefire? And I'm afraid, and this is my major concern, that I haven't seen much discussions on what do we do when, basically, not if, when we realize finally that there is no ceasefire in this year or later. So, because I think, I mean, we see that the assurance force is designed in a way, I mean, it's contingent on the ceasefire, and we understand that Russia will never agree to this scenario, because it's exactly the scenario that it's sought to prevent by starting this war and that's why I mean it didn't want to have you know Western troops in the territory of Ukraine that's why it started this war so of course it doesn't have incentive to reach this is fire with Ukraine so I think I mean that's what I see sort of hesitation to brace this difficult topic So what do we exactly do? How do we deploy? How do we engage in the situation when there is no ceasefire? Then another point is, I mean we talk about the evolution of the change of the nature of the warfare in Ukraine but I think it's important to note how unchanged the strategic objectives of Russia and Ukraine remain. remain. For Ukraine it's a war for survival, existential war and you know it views it as a genocidal war and for Russia this war has an eliminator nature you know so elimination of Ukrainian statehood and nation is the goal here and I think that you know it's framed the whole you know Russian narrative is framed around the need to address the root causes of the war So its objective is, as they say, is to resolve the Ukrainian question. And the second Russian objective vis-a-vis the West, I would say, is there is an expectation that in its confrontation with the West, it can outlast the West. And the support to Ukraine will dry out, and then it can use Western structural vulnerabilities very smartly, as they already demonstrate they do. And regarding the US particularly, I think there is a change of rhetoric on Kremlin's side, a very noteworthy one since summer last year, since the meeting in Alaska. It's interesting how they talk about, this term exists only in Russian political lexicon, they talk about Anchorage spirit, so something which is akin to Yalta spirit or Helsinki spirit they say. So, sort of restoration of the great power coordination. You know, Russia was sort of elevated from international isolation and talking to the US. Two presidents, Russian and American presidents, talking to each other after a long period. And so they claim and they sort of believe that there was a set of understandings, they say, say, that was achieved with President Trump as a result of this meeting in Alaska. This brings us to the end of today's special episode of Global Security Briefing, a discussion on the prospects for a peace agreement on the Russia-Ukraine war and the likelihood of a continuation of the war into another year. I'd like to thank this week's guests, Matthew Saville, Marina Vorotnyuk and Jonathan Eil. Global Security Briefing is available on all major podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. And if you like our podcast and would like to help us reach even more listeners, a great way to do so is by sending this episode to a friend or colleague or by leaving a review wherever you listen to us. For further information about the work of the international security team at RUSI, please follow us on X, formerly Twitter, at ISS underscore RUSI and on LinkedIn at International Security RUSI and find out more about the IS team's research on regional security issues around the world together with the other teams at RUSI at our website. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Neil Melvin at RUSI in London.
