A Front Line Frozen by Drones

Malik said the front line has barely moved in nearly five years. Drones have extended the “kill zone” to as much as 50 miles, and Ukraine is turning to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that commanders believe could replace up to 60% of frontline infantry. By his estimate, Ukraine needs about 500,000 a year and currently produces roughly 20,000. Each of Ukraine’s more than 100 combat brigades now has an unmanned battalion, he said, and those units account for about 80% of Russian casualties.

Cheaper Weapons, Changing Math

Cost is central to that shift. Malik said a Shahed-type attack drone costs between $50,000 and $150,000, while a fighter jet starts around $15 million and a Patriot missile can cost up to $4 million, which makes conventional air defense unsustainable against mass drone attacks. Ukraine answered with its own interceptor drones, he said, and builds a drone-missile hybrid called Flamingo at an unofficial cost of about $600,000, compared with $1.5 million or more for a Tomahawk. A high-intensity war, he argued, is won with cheap systems that can be made in large numbers, not with a few hundred advanced aircraft, and Ukraine’s private defense firms are finding new battlefield uses for the technology nearly every month.

The constraint, both speakers said, is money more than ingenuity. Ukraine spends about 40% of its GDP on defense, compared with roughly 10% in Russia, and 3.5% in the U.S. Vacroux urged Europe to disburse a promised €90 billion loan faster and to resolve the impasse over frozen Russian assets.

A War the World Is Watching

The speakers noted that Ukraine’s rivals are studying the war more closely than its partners. Malik said North Korea has supplied ballistic missiles and soldiers to Russia, and Vacroux said the country is bringing that experience home for a possible fight with South Korea. China, she said, is doing the same as it thinks about Taiwan. The Americans and Europeans, by contrast, are mostly not gaining firsthand experience, and cutting off Ukrainian partnerships cuts off the chance to learn without sending their own troops into that kind of war. Malik predicted that U.S. forces will soon face jet-powered Shaheds in the Middle East, and said neither the United States nor Europe has an affordable way to stop them at scale.

Pressure on Russia, and on Europe

Vacroux said sanctions and Ukrainian strikes on refineries are straining Russia’s economy, though economic pressure alone is “necessary but not sufficient” to end the war. She also described a rise in Russian sub-threshold attacks on Europe, including cyberattacks, arson and drone incursions, which she said test the credibility of NATO’s Article 5.

Peace Talks, Nuclear Threats, and the Will to Keep Fighting

When asked about negotiations, Malik was blunt. “Negotiations are one very big myth,” he said. Vacroux noted that some channels still produce prisoner exchanges. Both viewed Russian nuclear threats as deterrence more than intent. Vacroux said about three-quarters of Ukrainians want elections to wait until the war ends, and 62% say they will keep fighting “as long as it takes.” Malik expected another wave of residents to leave Kyiv this winter.

Vacroux closed by sharing her belief that Ukraine’s only dependable security guarantee is the one it builds itself. “It cannot rely on the United States. It cannot rely on companies like Starlink. It cannot rely on the Europeans.”

View a full recording of the conversation:

*This article was supported by research using Claude. All outputs were reviewed by humans, and the final expression was produced by the author.

Introduction and Contribution:

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has significantly undermined European security and Ukraine’s sovereignty, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and arguably solidified Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian grip on power. Aside from these more obvious consequences, around one million Russians have emigrated, changing the domestic politics of dozens of countries across Europe, Asia, and North America. 

Russian emigrants not only face discrimination, integration difficulties, and economic precarity in their host countries, but also the threat of “transnational repression.” This includes Russia seizing their property or revoking their citizenship, harassing their relatives who stayed behind, and surveilling them in their host countries. There have even been reports of activists and journalists being poisoned outside of Russia. What does transnational repression mean for the lives of ordinary Russian migrants?

In “Invisible costs of exiting autocracy,” Ivetta Sergeeva and Emil Kamalov show that these varied challenges and threats — especially fear of Russian repression and host country discrimination — have had a considerable impact on emigrants’ subjective well-being. Using original survey and interview data collected as part of the ambitious OutRush project, the authors draw our attention to the many psychological hardships faced by Russians abroad simply because they are citizens of a belligerent authoritarian state.

Data and Variables:

Surveys and interviews were conducted between August and September 2022 with over 2,500 emigrants. “Invisible Costs” focuses on Russians living across more than 60 countries, with interviews conducted in five popular destinations: Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Serbia.

Sergeeva and Kamalov draw on a standard conception of subjective well-being as having ‘affective’ and ‘cognitive’ components. Affective well-being is operationalized in terms of how often survey respondents have felt sadness, depression, and happiness over the last three months, and cognitive well-being in terms of levels of life satisfaction. Migrant experiences ought to affect these two components differently; for example, the threat of transnational repression may significantly reduce happiness while leaving life satisfaction unchanged. As prior research has shown the importance of economic and social variables for migrant integration, the authors also include measures of income, employment, and interaction with locals. 

Results:

The survey data paint a fairly bleak picture of the emigrant experience. Over 60% of respondents reported being somewhat or very afraid of transnational repression, while only 9% expressed no such fear. Interviewees often linked these fears to at least two factors: (1) concern for the well-being of relatives still in Russia and (2) awareness of the presence of Russian agents in host countries. The statistical analysis shows that fear of transnational repression had a statistically significant (negative) correlation with affective well-being. However, it is not a significant predictor of cognitive well-being, which makes sense, as the high risks of repression in Russia make emigration seem like a rational life choice. 

Meanwhile, 22% reported experiencing discrimination. This is much higher than the OECD-wide average of 15% for migrants — the highest single-country percentage in these surveys is just 21%. In Poland and Georgia — both having a history of violent conflict with Russia — 36% and 39% of emigrants reported experiencing discrimination, respectively. For example, one interviewee reported walking into a Georgian coffee shop, scanning a QR code, and then pictures with captions saying “you’re terrorists, go away” popping up on their phone instead of the menu. Self-reported discrimination is shown to have a statistically significant effect on both types of well-being.
 

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Figure 3. Effect of discrimination, experienced and feared, on subjective well-being. The index of affective well-being represents an affective component of subjective well-being, while satisfaction with one’s life represents the cognitive component. Variables are presented in their original scales without standardization. Models with original scales are presented in online appendix D.
 

41% of respondents merely feared discrimination. This fear appears driven less by migrants’ negative experiences in their host countries and more by the risk of discrimination leading to deportation. Interviewees seem to assess this risk with reference to the high number of visa rejections they observe. Not only does fear of discrimination have a large and statistically significant effect on well-being, but its effects on affective well-being in particular are nearly twice as large as those of unemployment.

Consistent with prior research, spending time with locals has a statistically significant (positive) effect on well-being, with these effect sizes being nearly as large as those of discrimination, suggesting that social intimacy can help offset its negative effects. And indeed, several interviewees attested to this. One described an encounter with Georgians who said, “If there are any conflicts [related to discrimination]…please call me, because we understand that this is wrong and such things should not happen.”

Finally, 49% of respondents reported feeling high levels of guilt over Russia’s aggression, while 59% felt some level of responsibility. These factors are both statistically significant predictors of affective, but not cognitive, well-being. The authors explain this in terms of migrants adapting to living with emotions such as guilt; their migration choices are still seen as justified in spite of the negative psychological costs. For instance, one interviewee said, “gradually, life somehow clawed its way back…and now it has entered into some strange routine of suspension and timelessness.”
 

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Figure 4. Effect of feelings of collective guilt and responsibility on subjective well-being. The index of affective well-being represents an affective component of subjective well-being, while satisfaction with one’s life represents the cognitive component. Variables are presented in their original scales without standardization. Models with original scales are presented in online appendix D.
 

These distressing findings have implications for the priorities of host country governments. For one, even economically successful migrants still need legal protections against discrimination and physical insecurity in order to thrive. Second, because fear is itself sufficient to undermine well-being, host countries must (a) take measures to deter transnational repression and (b) make migrants aware that these measures are in place, so as to decrease their fears.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

Introduction and Contribution:

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War has been one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine has experienced not only mass casualties but immense cultural destruction, as well as the forcible deportation and adoption of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families. Ending the war requires understanding its causes, particularly from the point of view of Vladimir Putin and other key Russian decision-makers. 

Some observers of Russian and global politics — as well as Putin and his allies — have claimed that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO caused the war. The argument here is that as a superpower, Russia could not tolerate the security implications of a country on its border joining a rival alliance. Russia’s war, then, was a preventive one — less a choice than a strategic necessity. Any superpower in such a situation would do the same.

In “NATO Did Not Cause Putin’s Imperial War,” James Goldgeier and Brian D. Taylor convincingly challenge the NATO hypothesis, showing it to be more a piece of Kremlin propaganda than a plausible account of Putin’s decision-making process. Instead, the authors draw our attention to Putin’s most deeply held and longstanding beliefs: that Ukraine is not a legitimate nation state, that Ukrainians would not freely associate with the West and its alliances (unless they were being manipulated), and that dominating Ukraine is essential to Russia reclaiming its status as a global superpower, one that is constantly disrespected by the West. 

As many social scientists focus on improving the causal power of their statistical inferences, Goldgeier and Taylor helpfully focus our attention on the beliefs and reasons of political actors who cause political outcomes such as wars and revolutions. More importantly, the authors provide a starting point for thinking about ending the Russo-Ukrainian war, one focused not on the distraction that is NATO arguments but on Putin’s imperial ambitions.

Pitfalls of the NATO Explanation:

The authors begin by noting that NATO enlargement clearly played a role in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West over the past 25 years. In part, this is because many Russian elites — owing to their imperialistic beliefs, more on this below — never accepted that former Soviet Republics were free to join the alliance. However, NATO enlargement was but one item in a long list of Russian grievances, some based in reality and others fictional. These include the 2003-04 Color Revolutions — mainly reflecting widespread domestic sentiment, not Western machinations — and alleged American support for the 2011-13 Russian protests in the aftermath of Putin’s rigged elections, which were similarly homegrown.

There is good evidence that Putin and his inner circle neither feared NATO aggression nor believed that Ukraine could realistically join the alliance. After George W. Bush’s failed bid for Ukrainian membership in 2008, no American president has seriously entertained or pushed for Ukraine’s admission. NATO took minimal action after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, before which time Ukrainians themselves didn’t support joining the alliance (likely because they anticipated the negative consequences for Russia-Ukraine relations). NATO itself has worked against admitting Ukraine; indeed, much of its security assistance has been designed to make it possible for Ukraine to defend itself without formal admission. What’s more, no country bordering Russia joined NATO after 2004 until Finland did so in 2023.

When Putin decided on war in 2021, his invasion plan was based on the assumption that victory would be quick and easy, evidencing his lack of concern for NATO intervention. Further, he knew that NATO lacked the troops and would be extremely wary of confronting nuclear Russia. 

Putin’s Imperial Beliefs and Goals:

For several decades, Putin has expressed the belief that Ukraine is not a genuine nation-state and that Russia both gave away and was “robbed” of much of its territory. One of Putin’s key goals is arguably to rebuild Russian greatness via imperial conquest. The West is not merely intervening in Eastern European politics but, according to Putin, actively working to downgrade Russia to a second-class country and undermine its sovereignty. Putin views the war as key to reversing Russia’s declining status.

Because Putin and his inner circle view Ukraine to be a natural part of Russia, the possibility that Ukrainians would freely tie their fortunes to the West is inconceivable — Ukrainian elites must have been tricked, co-opted, or bribed. Some Russian propagandists have even described the war as one of “Russians killing Russians.”

Putin’s imperialism is not only confined to privately held beliefs. During COVID-19, he spent a great deal of time reading historical texts to prepare a 5000-word article on the alleged historic inseparability of Russia and Ukraine. What could such an undertaking have to do with NATO expansion?

Russia’s wartime conduct also provides strong evidence for the imperialism explanation. As mentioned above, Russia has gone to great lengths to destroy Ukrainian culture. It has rejected multiple peace deals that would have prevented Ukraine from joining NATO. Putin saw these as failing to address the conflict’s “root causes,” arguably a euphemism for Ukrainian sovereignty. Instead, Russian conditions for peace include making Russian an official language, disbanding “nationalist” political parties, and ensuring the influence of Moscow’s Orthodox Church. These conditions smack of Russian chauvinism.

Of course, elites’ imperial beliefs do not necessarily lead to war. And indeed, Putin initially sought to control Ukraine through political measures, such as election interference. However, the authors argue that when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized the assets of a key Putin ally, Putin realized his position was weakening. Russian security officials then assured Putin — likely out of fear — that overthrowing Ukraine’s government would be easy. This flawed decision-making process led to war. Readers will come away struck by how many lives have been lost while policy and scholarly debates remained focused on the NATO hypothesis.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.