Russia’s Long-Game Strategy | Stas Krapivnik

## Introduction: Situation in the Donbas & Avdiivka The war in eastern Ukraine is not a frozen tableau of trenches and attrition; recent weeks have shown a dynamic front and a palpable shift in how the struggle is unfolding on the ground. The conversation with Stas Krapivnik recounts first‑hand observations from Donetsk and Avdiivka that challenge common narratives of stalemate. Avdiivka, long described as the linchpin of Ukrainian defence in Donetsk oblast, has been fought over as a carefully prepared fortress. Its capture—or the clearing of Ukrainian forces from those positions—has translated into meaningful westward movement of the front, measured in kilometers rather than inches. What emerges from the exchange is a layered picture: cities razed and awaiting reconstruction, civilians who refused or could not leave, and a frontline where the nature of weapon deployment matters as much as the hardware itself. Krapivnik’s account highlights contrasts in air‑defence doctrine—Russian systems positioned on outer rings versus Ukrainian placement closer to civilian sites—and the grim arithmetic of falling debris and collateral harm. The human dimension is stark: people live amid broken glass and boarded windows; some cling to place as an act of stubbornness or identity, others have been evacuated or killed. That on‑the‑ground reality clarifies why shifts in territorial control feel consequential even as both sides keep trading blows. ## Zelensky, Corruption, and Internal Politics The conflict’s military momentum cannot be divorced from Ukraine’s internal political fault lines. The conversation turns to corruption scandals that have begun to resonate beyond Kyiv’s domestic politics and into Western policy calculations. Revelations about elite networks and accountability—or the lack of it—have created leverage for foreign actors who were already deeply engaged in shaping Ukraine’s security and governance apparatus. Stas frames this as not merely an ethical expose but as realpolitik: Western patrons can press Kyiv’s leadership on reforms without relinquishing control over vital military and intelligence support. This is also a narrative about political entrepreneurs and institutional capture. Key figures embedded across ministries and regional administrations illustrate how patronage networks survive wartime. The dynamics described evoke a long history of opportunistic alignments: loyalties that shift with patronage, not principle. The practical consequence is a fragmentation of decision‑making and a proliferation of internal “wars of the rats” that sap strategic coherence. International backers, dependent on the "Project Ukraine" investment, now have incentives to discipline domestic actors—both as a way to manage reputational risk and to secure the flow of aid and contracts tied to war economies. ## New US Security Strategy & "Project Ukraine" The conversation reads the new U.S. national security strategy as a turning point in policy rhetoric and resource allocation. The United States, according to this exchange, has recalibrated toward making European allies shoulder more of the direct burden of confronting Russia while preserving an American role as enabler and manager of outcomes. Krapivnik suggests a sobering interpretation: Project Ukraine has shifted from an abstract commitment to a structured investment, one that needs returns—or at least the appearance of control and political leverage. This reframing places Ukraine within a broader geostrategic ledger: a theater where arms, contractors, and reconstruction contracts intersect with intelligence and political objectives. Making money out of “a losing war,” as the conversation bluntly puts it, does not reduce the human costs but clarifies why some policies endure even when battlefields change. The United States’ public statements on urgency—using language that signals a desire to end the conflict quickly—are juxtaposed with practical incentives to sustain a managed conflict that consolidates Western industrial and military interests while offloading frontline risk to European partners. ## NATO Article 5 and the Risk of Direct Conflict A central anxiety threaded through the discussion is the danger of escalation. NATO’s mutual defence clause, Article 5, remains an existential red line that constrains Western intervention. The exchange underscores how proximate incidents—stray missiles, downed aircraft, cross‑border shelling—can become catalysts for dramatic escalation if they involve NATO territory or personnel. Yet the strategic logic of both sides, as the conversation suggests, has been to avoid crossing that threshold deliberately. The current posture is therefore one of calibrated deterrence: support to Ukraine that is robust but not overtly escalatory, coupled with messaging designed to reassure allies and warn adversaries. Still, the fog of war and the presence of mixed forces—regulars, volunteers, foreign contractors—raise the probability of miscalculation. The conversation implies that policymakers must balance two contradictory imperatives: providing enough military support to influence outcomes on the ground while preserving a firewall against direct confrontation with Russia. That balance is precarious and politically fraught, especially as battlefield developments accelerate. ## Did Russia's "Go Slow" Strategy Backfire? 00: 36:39 Europe Doubling Down: "Death by Neighboring Bear" One of the more provocative claims in the exchange is that Russia’s deliberate, incremental approach—often dismissed as “go slow”—may have miscalculated strategic effects. Far from conserving resources and avoiding blowback, a prolonged, grinding campaign appears to have hardened European resolve. The analogy used in the conversation—“death by neighboring bear”—captures an emergent European security psychology: proximity to an aggressive and revisionist power compels rearmament and political realignment rather than capitulation. European states, once split on ambitions and costs, are now undertaking accelerated remilitarization and industrial mobilization. Germany’s rapid reindustrialization for defence production and the surge in procurement among NATO partners are practical symptoms of a regional consensus that coexistence with unresolved aggression is unacceptable. So, if Moscow hoped attrition and patience would erode Western will, the outcome has been the opposite: sustained aggression has catalyzed unity among many European capitals and increased the material and political costs to Russia of lingering hostilities. ## Historical Context: Russia’s Attempts at Security Structures The conversation situates the present conflict in a longer historical reckoning over security architecture in Europe. Russia’s recurring project has been to construct—or at least influence—regional security arrangements that insulate its strategic space from what it perceives as Western encroachment. These efforts range from formal treaty proposals to informal spheres of influence that blend hard power with institutional engineering. Understanding these patterns helps explain why contemporary Russian strategy is not merely territorial but systemic: control over land, transportation, and influence equals leverage in negotiations over broader security norms. The discussion suggests that Moscow’s approaches have often aimed to create buffer zones, client regimes, or federative structures that serve as de facto security guarantees. Western responses, conversely, have vacillated between containment and engagement, with the post‑Cold War order repeatedly shocked by the limits of normative frameworks when states opt for coercive revisionism. ## Future Peace Conferences and the Role of BRICS Looking beyond the battlefield, the conversation probes the contours of any post‑conflict settlement and the institutions that might broker it. BRICS and other emerging blocs are cast as potential venues for alternative peace processes—p

Russia’s Long-Game Strategy Over the past weeks, something has changed about the war in Ukraine. Although the fighting is still raging, it feels as if we have crossed a tipping point. Zelensky is under fire even in the West for corruption, the American’s once again said they want to end it A.S.A.P. in their new national security strategy, and the battle field losses seem to be getting faster. Here to help with the developments is once again, friend of the show, Stas Krapivnik. Links: Stanislav Krapivnik's YouTube Channel: @MrSlavikman Stanislav Krapivnik's Telegram: https://t.me/stastydaiobratno Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall. com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction: Situation in the Donbas & Avdiivka 00:16:21 Zelensky, Corruption, and Internal Politics 00:20:13 New US Security Strategy & "Project Ukraine" 00:25:23 NATO Article 5 and the Risk of Direct Conflict 00:31:09 Did Russia's "Go Slow" Strategy Backfire? 00: 36:39 Europe Doubling Down: "Death by Neighboring Bear" 00:39:10 Historical Context: Russia’s Attempts at Security Structures 00:46:59 Future Peace Conferences and the Role of BRICS 00:50:17 Russia’s Long Game: Betting on Western Collapse #Pascal Over the past few weeks, something has changed about the war in Ukraine. Although the fighting is still raging, it feels as if we’ve crossed a tipping point. Zelensky is under fire, even in the West, for corruption. The Americans have once again said they want to end the war as soon as possible in their new national security strategy, and the battlefield losses seem to be accelerating. Here to help us understand the developments is, once again, a friend of the show, Stas Krapivnik. Stas, welcome back. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Great having you back, because you actually just visited the Donbass region. What was it like? What did you learn over there? And what’s your impression of how the battlefield is changing at the moment? #Stas Krapivnik Yeah, we came into Donetsk from the east. The last time I’d been in Donetsk was in May, so it’s been a little over five months. There were buildings in eastern and central Donetsk—a couple of buildings we saw that had been destroyed. They hadn’t been destroyed before. So we’re probably talking about attack-based missiles, maybe Storm Shadow missiles hitting civilian buildings. There’s no military in Donetsk. There are soldiers walking around here and there, but they’re mostly people on leave visiting their families. That’s still something I’ll focus on next time I’m there. There are still plenty of men walking around who aren’t in the military, because the story you hear is that everybody in Donetsk—all the men—have been killed, since Russia is supposedly losing millions upon millions of people. But you see a lot of men here, doing different jobs, with their families, even though Donetsk does get hit. Where I was staying—one of the hotels—you could hear the Pantsir -- 1 of 17 -- working at night, because something had come in, gotten through the outer rings, and was heading toward the city. So there are anti-aircraft systems inside the city as well; it’s the final ring of defense. The missile systems, though, Russia doesn’t place inside the cities. Unlike in Ukraine, the Ukrainian forces place their missile systems—like the S-300s and S-400s—on the outskirts of cities. The reason they do that is because the Ukrainians use their own population as human shields. So if you destroy their anti-missile systems and they’re by schools, near hospitals, or in residential areas, you’re going to have splashback from that explosion on the surrounding buildings. And, B, they’re firing missiles from inside the city. Well, everything that goes up—physics is still physics—comes down somewhere. So even if it takes out a Russian missile over a Ukrainian city, all of that debris falls right back down on that same city. You get civilian casualties, and then the Ukrainian and Western media are screaming, “Ah, the Russians are targeting civilians.” They’re not. But metal still comes down—metal comes down hard. The Russian missile systems are all on the outer ring of any city. Moscow has them too; all of these areas do. And on the inside, you have more point-defense systems like the Pantsir, which uses autocannons and short-range missiles that can take out a large drone or airplane-style drone, what have you. And when it falls—because, you know, pieces will fall, of course—it causes minimal damage. Of course, it could kill somebody if a chunk of metal falls on your head. It's not exactly pleasant. But you're not having those, you know, five-meter-long missiles or chunks of missiles falling down all over the place like you do with systems such as the S-400 or the IRIS. The IRIS is, I guess, about three meters long, but still, that's a pretty big piece of metal coming down. Now, when we got into western Donetsk—the Kyiv district of western Donetsk—that area is damaged, and it continues to get hit. The tube artillery and the mortar systems are no longer within range; they've been pushed out. There’s some tube artillery with a rocket-assisted shell that can reach western Donetsk. Mostly it's rockets or missiles, and the city's damaged. People keep living there—they just won’t leave. There’s a lot of damage farther west, on the edge of the city. The farther you go, the worse the damage gets. And then we went to Avdeevka. Now, Avdeevka is a suburb, but not a directly connected one. I guess a better word would be “satellite.” There’s about six or seven kilometers between the edge of Avdeevka and the edge of western Donetsk. For American audiences—because most Europeans already understand this—there’s no major urban sprawl. The city just ends. You’ve got one or two streets, and then it’s fields. That’s where the city stops. Like most Europeans, really. You can’t say that about Moscow or St. Petersburg—big cities like that— because now you have massive urban sprawl. The little satellite villages have all been sort of absorbed, and the city just keeps going because people are building single-home communities. You don’t have that in Donetsk. You don’t have that kind of investment, partly because of the war, and -- 2 of 17 -- before that because the Ukrainian government was mostly taking money out and not investing anything in. So the city just ends. It’s about six kilometers from Avdeevka to Donetsk—open fields— so you can understand how difficult it was to advance through those areas. And Avdeevka—Avdeevka was probably the major fortress city of the Ukrainian line that they’d been preparing for eight years. They were planning, you know, they were massed to attack from that area into Donetsk when Russia preempted the attack. About half the Ukrainian forces were piled up there. In Lugansk, they were in jump-off positions that weren’t really fortified, while in Donetsk they were in jump-off positions that were fortified. So while Lugansk got cleared very, very quickly—Lugansk Oblast, Lugansk Province—Donetsk was a slug match that’s only now beginning to end. And, well, you know. #Stas Krapivnik Stas Krapivnik here—go on. #Stas Krapivnik Hello. Yeah, I dropped my VPN, so they’ll probably hear it. #Pascal No worries. I lost you at the point where you said Avdeevka, you know. #Stas Krapivnik Yeah. Avdeevka, you know, was the major fortification along the line. So taking it was a slug match. And it was—well, it’s cleared now, fully cleared. The front has moved about 30 kilometers to the west. So much for this idea that it’s all a stalemate, that nothing’s moving. You’d have to be blind not to see that it’s moving—or absolutely deluded. But the city’s gone. I mean, there’s that one church in the video that survived and looked like it survived absolutely intact, thank the Lord. Because the Ukrainians these days, by the way, are droning churches. They’ve been doing that for the last year. The older the church, the more it draws drones. Fighting God never works. But that seems to be one of the targets, because they’re not posing any strategic threat. It’s only a cultural attempt to wipe out the culture and the religion—which never works. So the city itself, I mean, it’s going to get razed, and it’s going to get rebuilt. It will be rebuilt, just like Mariupol has been rebuilt. It just can’t be done right now because it’s still within drone range. There are drones that show up—there aren’t that many—and some people have come back. There isn’t much of the population left. Part of the population was evacuated west by the Ukrainians. -- 3 of 17 -- The people who refuse to leave—the Ukrainians call them, or in Russian they’re called *Zhduni*, “the waiters,” the ones who stay behind, the people who don’t want to move. In this case, because they’re Russians and they’re waiting for the Russian army. So the Ukrainian military has a policy of murdering them. They’ve tried several “Bucha 2.0” operations, creating corpses, but a lot of times they haven’t had a chance to publish the videos when the Russian forces move in and record all the bodies everywhere. There was an old woman who was shot in the head while sitting on a bench, and a year later her body was still there when the Russian army came through and cleared the area. She was just left there by the Ukrainians—or maybe by Ukrainian mercenaries. They're even worse than any of these... well, as bad as any of those SS-type units like Azov, Tornado, and the others, Da Vinci’s Wolves. Most of the bodies have been cleaned up over the last year, but there are still bodies under some of the rubble. The rubble just has to be cleared out. The city is so damaged it has to be rebuilt; very few buildings are salvageable. Some people have come back and are living there. If you see my videos, you’ll notice windows in some of these badly damaged buildings—on the first floor especially—have been boarded up because there’s no glass left. There’s no glass. I saw very few panes that were still intact. In most areas, there aren’t even panes— just shards of glass, or nothing at all. The whole window frames have been taken out. Some people have boarded up the windows and are living there. It’s the apartments they have, and they don’t want to leave. But the city has to be rebuilt. It’s like any of the big battlefields of World War II—you look at those cities, minus the firebombings from the Americans or the British or the German cities— but any of the cities that were fought over, it looks like that, because that’s exactly what happened. #Pascal Have you talked to any of the people over there? I mean, how did they manage to survive this? This region has been fought over for about two years now, and of course, it goes through quieter and then very, very hot periods. I thought people would all just leave. But as you’re saying, there were people staying behind, even in Bakhmut. #Stas Krapivnik There were civilians who climbed out of basements in Stalingrad when it was all over. You know, the Russians were kind of like that—we’re stubborn. But, you know, in Germany, if you look at Germany, the only areas where civilians didn’t survive were the ones the Americans and the British firebombed. Everybody remembers Dresden, but it was every single German city—without exception, they were all firebombed. And that was meant to exterminate the population. But in those areas where it was just conventional combat, civilians survived. They hid. Now, the Ukrainians killed a lot of those civilians as they were retreating out. So again, when they say, “Oh, these are our people”—yeah, except that you’re murdering your own people. They’re your people. You want the land; you just don’ t want the people there. -- 4 of 17 -- Even right now, if you look at Miragrad and areas like that, there are a lot of videos showing Ukrainian drones killing civilians. The Russian drones are leading them out, and you can hear the Russian drone op