The Power Vertical Podcast by Brian Whitmore
Aug 7, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min · 12 segments
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with military analyst Michael Kofman, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a senior editor at War on…
Michael KofmanGuest
Brian WhitmoreHost
First, I think a lot of commanders in Ukraine are waiting till the fall when train cover disappears.
And then they think a scaled up strike campaign against Russian logistics, command control munitions will be much more effective.
I think this year we'll see the Russian offensive peter out sooner, not in December, but probably earlier in the fall.
I suspect that actually as they go into the winter, typically Russian casualties spike.
Russia has been recruiting still roughly at the same rate that they have been losing people.
Their unrecoverable losses are somewhere there in the 35K range or so per month.
But They increasingly have more killed in action as a composition, as a larger share within that ratio.
Last year, it might have been 50% killed in action, 50% seriously wounded.
This year, increasingly, 60% killed in action, maybe 40% seriously wounded of those within that category of irreplaceable losses, not including everybody that's slightly wounded.
There is a question hanging out there, Brian, and I'll kind of leave you with this.
On the one hand, Russia still does not have a significant structural manpower problem, but also increasingly their units are coming up against deficits of assault-capable infantry.
Because just because they're recruiting the same number of people roughly that they're losing doesn't mean that it doesn't lead to force imbalances on the ground.
Like just because on Excel spreadsheets you have two numbers that are relatively equal to each other, it doesn't mean that the force in practice is actually getting the right people in the right positions, et cetera, et cetera.
So there is a serious growing concern that after the Duma elections in the fall, Putin may conduct another partial mobilization.
He does not need to announce another mobilization because mobilization never ended legally, okay? And there are different ways that they could do it.
First, I think a lot of commanders in Ukraine are waiting till the fall when train cover disappears.
And then they think a scaled up strike campaign against Russian logistics, command control munitions will be much more effective.
I think this year we'll see the Russian offensive peter out sooner, not in December, but probably earlier in the fall.
I suspect that actually as they go into the winter, typically Russian casualties spike.
Russia has been recruiting still roughly at the same rate that they have been losing people.
Their unrecoverable losses are somewhere there in the 35K range or so per month.
But They increasingly have more killed in action as a composition, as a larger share within that ratio.
Last year, it might have been 50% killed in action, 50% seriously wounded.
This year, increasingly, 60% killed in action, maybe 40% seriously wounded of those within that category of irreplaceable losses, not including everybody that's slightly wounded.
There is a question hanging out there, Brian, and I'll kind of leave you with this.
On the one hand, Russia still does not have a significant structural manpower problem, but also increasingly their units are coming up against deficits of assault-capable infantry.
Because just because they're recruiting the same number of people roughly that they're losing doesn't mean that it doesn't lead to force imbalances on the ground.
Like just because on Excel spreadsheets you have two numbers that are relatively equal to each other, it doesn't mean that the force in practice is actually getting the right people in the right positions, et cetera, et cetera.
So there is a serious growing concern that after the Duma elections in the fall, Putin may conduct another partial mobilization.
He does not need to announce another mobilization because mobilization never ended legally, okay? And there are different ways that they could do it.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
