Stephen Bryen: I see signs of disintegration in the Ukrainian army. The war may not last much longer

The West has virtually no ground forces capable of reversing the war in Ukraine. Only the air force could make a difference, but breaking Russia’s extensive air defences would be very costly. Washington is probably already looking for a replacement for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A likely candidate is General Valery Zaluzhnyi, whom Zelensky fired as commander-in-chief of the army in February. He is the only credible person who could cut a deal with the Russians and whom Moscow respects as a worthy adversary, says Stephen Bryen, a former senior U.S. Defense Department official.

On May 4^th this year, an article appeared in the Asia Times written by former high-level US Defense Department official Stephen Bryen, alleging that – based on sources he considers reliable – 100 French Foreign Legion troops had already been deployed to the front line in Ukraine, with more to follow. If true, this would indicate that the French had already taken a significant step toward escalating the war in Ukraine into a direct war between Russia and NATO. The French erupted with denials and denunciations. The reaction of the Russians – who took the allegations seriously – seems to have been further aggravated by certain alarming Western statements made around the same time: by the French president, who renewed his call for NATO troops to be sent to Ukraine, and by the British foreign minister, who said Ukraine was free to strike targets deep within Russia with British-supplied missiles. Russia’s response to all of this, which included summoning both the French and British Ambassadors in Moscow to Russia’s foreign ministry offices, seems to have had a major impact. The British quieted down, the French even backpedaled on their rhetoric, and the French Ambassador was given the green light to attend President Putin’s inauguration ceremony on May 7^th. In the wake of all this, I wanted to hear directly from Stephen Bryen – with his decades of experience in the field of US defence strategy, focused notably on the Russians – about why he wrote the contentious article, whether he still stands by it, and how he interprets the whole episode, including the Russian and Western responses.

In your May 4^th article you claim to have reliable information that about 100 French Foreign Legion troops are already present in Ukraine – not in the rear, as President Macron suggested French troops would be if they were deployed, but in Slaviansk, near the front lines. And you wrote that more troops are on the way, about 1500 altogether.

Well, that’s what the French openly stated, that they were training 1500 troops for this.

But some analysts, including for example John Mearsheimer, have expressed doubts about this story. Do you still believe this information is likely to be correct? And if so, what is the significance of these troop movements, against the background of the potential for escalation?

Good question. Let’s talk about definitions first. There’s no doubt there are French soldiers in Ukraine. What the Russians prefer to say is that they’re mercenaries, because they don’t want to get into a war with NATO. I mean, it’s straightforward. The Russians say: We killed X number of French mercenaries. This is not the first time – back in January they hit a hotel, also in the frontline area, and killed a lot of French soldiers who were there. The numbers vary, some say 50, some say 60. Now, the Russians never said they were mercenaries. They didn’t say it at the time, because it wasn’t an issue at the time – because they weren’t being threatened by the French with intervention. Now fast forward to March and April, and you have Macron saying that we’re ready to go in, and we want our friends in Europe to join us, to save Ukraine. And he was very strong about that. And there were French in Slaviansk, I think there’s a general conclusion about that. They were French. Now, were they mercenaries? The Russians say yes, they’re mercenaries. How many? That’s an open issue. The bloggers say about 100, others say fewer. I’m of the opinion that they were not mercenaries, in the classical sense. What’s the classical sense? In the classical sense, mercenaries are for-hire troops. A nation will pay them to come and help reinforce their military effort and that sort of thing. That doesn’t seem to be the pattern with these guys. We don’t have a lot of information, but it looks more like their governments have encouraged them to be there and are finding ways to backstop them, and that’s not a classical mercenary. They may be units of the Foreign Legion. Actually that’s the claim that’s been made by the Russian bloggers, but I don’t have any hard evidence.

But it’s also true that there are foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, correct?

Yes, that’s for sure. Not only mercenaries but even regular forces are there. I mean the Polish Prime Minister said this: NATO troops are there – they’re ‚advisors‘, they’re ‚technicians‘. They’re firing weapons, or helping to fire weapons – so what does that make them? They’re all over the place, and it’s not surprising. Look, when you send a Patriot missile system to Ukraine – this an example, but just one of many – first of all, you have to train their people, which is not simple. Then you have to figure out some kind of logistics to keep those systems running, and you have to have repair people that know the system. You’re not going to take a guy with three weeks of training and have him fix a Patriot. It’s not possible. So I think what we’re seeing is that a lot of these weapons systems have to be operated by NATO personnel, who are familiar with them, who’ve been trained over long periods of time and know how to maintain complicated and sophisticated weapons. That’s my training. I ran a large defence company for 10 years in the United States – Finmeccanica. Now it’s called Leonardo. I visited all the factories that produce this stuff, I watched people put them together, I talked to the people who designed them, who produced the software code to operate them. All of it requires huge amounts of support and maintenance. There’s no way out of that, not with a modern system. In fact it’s one of the criticisms of modern systems: they’re good for five minutes and then what do you do? So I think I have first hand knowledge of all this. And my opinion is that Ukraine could not survive without Western help, physical help, people on the ground.

It seems this has been sort of tolerated by Russia, up to a certain point.

You’re right, they have tolerated it, but not happily. They don’t want a big conflict, so what can they do? I mean they blow up some of this stuff. Western technicians disappear – killed – nobody says anything. It’s that kind of thing. They don’t want to be in a war with the West. First of all, they didn’t call it a war, they said it was a special military operation. That was very carefully chosen language, I think, to tell the West: Look, this is a limited operation, we’re not at war with you. And then the West keeps escalating: first there were no long range missiles, now there are long range missiles. At first there were no tanks, now there are very modern tanks – Leopard, Abrams, things like that. And at first there were no cruise missiles, now there’s Scalp, the Storm Shadow from the UK, ATACMs from the United States. They keep ratcheting this thing up. You can see the frustration on the Russian side, where some of their politicians – not Putin – keep saying: Hey, we’re at war with NATO! But that’s the language that Putin has particularly avoided, interestingly. And not surprisingly. He’s a smart guy.

Is he trying to avoid crossing a line which he wouldn’t be able to retreat back from?

That’s right. No one could, not either side. Which is why I’ve been concerned for some time that if you keep playing this game, of increasing the threat in the conflict – on both sides – sooner or later it’s going to spill over.

Do you think it’s inevitable that it will spill over, or do you think there are still ways to prevent that?

A lot’s going to depend on how this last phase of the war plays out. The Russians know what they’re doing, they’re proceeding with this quasi-offensive at the moment in the north, putting a lot of pressure on Kiev, and certainly a lot of pressure on the Ukrainian Army – which is stretched, very badly stretched, as the French have said. They’re not the only ones who’ve said it. The British have said it, the Lithuanians have said it, the Poles have said it – that it looks like Ukraine is going to collapse. That’s the danger point. I can’t tell you what will happen – although I think Washington doesn’t want it to happen at the present time. They don’t want any NATO intervention. Part of that is because President Biden is in an election campaign, and getting into a war in Ukraine is totally unpopular in the United States. Nobody supports that idea, or almost nobody.

So just to be clear on where you stand right now, as far as your article is concerned. You didn’t say in the article that you were sure French Foreign Legion troops are there, you’re saying that this has been reported by reliable sources. Do you still stand by the article?

I’m not backing off my article, not at all. Of course, I’m not on the ground there, this came from a number of Russian military bloggers. And actually TASS, the Russian news agency, ran an article where it listed them all in kind of a neat way, without saying that it agreed. ‚We’re just reporting,‘ you know.

After your article appeared, and also after French President Macron and British Foreign Minister David Cameron made some, let’s say, very provocative statements – that we might actually deploy French troops, that Ukraine is now free to use British missiles to strike deep into Russia – it seems there was a strong reaction from the Russians. They summoned both the French and British ambassadors in Moscow. We don’t know exactly what they told them, but afterwards it seems the West did a certain amount of backpedaling. What happened there?

Huge backpedaling. I think the Russians threatened them. Flat out threatened them. If you do this, then you know, we have long-range rockets and missiles too. And they don’t just have to land on Ukrainian territory. I think that was the message, and they told them loud and clear. We’re not going to tolerate this. And then Macron started to backpedal on sending in troops, and people quieted down about the long-range missiles. Washington also made statements – no NATO troops, no regime change in Russia, the usual stuff. So I think the Russian counter-threat was very strong.

Do you think the preparation drills they began for the potential use of their tactical nuclear weapons was part of that message?

It might have been. There were two parts to that. One was that they had already nuclearized Belarus, put nuclear weapons there. I think it was about a month earlier. Then they carried out a nuclear drill, which also included Belarus by the way. There’s a history here. The Russians have been concerned for a long time about tactical nuclear weapons in the hands of NATO facing Russia. Even going back before 2022, they were complaining that the Aegis onshore system that was being put in Poland and also Romania has a certain kind of launcher that can accommodate Tomahawk Cruise missiles, which can be nuclear. So the Russians thought they were being two-timed by the United States. And that’s in the background of this whole Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement issue. You remember, Trump cancelled that INF treaty. I think the Russians were pretty shocked by that. First the US said the Russians were cheating on it. Then they said: Well, actually we needed to be able to make these kinds of weapons in order to deal with China – because China was never part of any arms control agreement. But I think then the Russians said: Wait a second, they’re putting in these dual launchers – we’re being screwed over. And now the Russians simply don’t trust the West, and certainly don’t trust the United States.

Doesn’t this issue of trust go back a long way?

Well remember, there was this whole scenario with Boris Yeltsin, where the US said: Don’t worry, Boris, we’re not expanding NATO, don’t worry about that at all. Then they did it. And then when Putin got in: Don’t worry, Vladimir, we’re fine, we’re not going to add more countries. Then they added more. So I think the Russians simply consider us pikers – they don’t trust us, and they’re afraid that we might try some kind of pre-emptive military strike. It goes way back. I mean it goes back to the ’62 Cuban missile crisis when Kennedy’s generals wanted to nuke the Russians, and they actually pitched it to Kennedy. So the Russians know all that, and they simply don’t have any trust whatever, and that’s at the bottom of all of this. It’s this horrible problem of trust, that neither side trusts the other. And now neither side’s talking to the other.

Do you think when Putin first came to office in 2000, when he was talking to Clinton about possibly joining NATO – do you think at that time there was some genuine trust, that he really wanted good relations with the West?

Well, he was testing the waters, that’s for sure. Look, the Russians have a problem. Their problem is that they really need a relationship with the West – technologically speaking, economically speaking. It’s very important to them. At the moment they don’t have anything, they’re practically cut off. And so Putin really had no choice but to find a solution to that problem, which has largely involved China. But originally he was looking for a positive relationship with the US in particular, but also with Europe. And he didn’t get it.

So getting back to what’s happened recently – do you think the West has really backed down in the face of this strong response from Russia, or is this just kind of a temporary manoeuvring on the part of the West?

That’s a very good question. Everything’s temporary when it comes to war and peace. I think that at the moment, the biggest preference in Washington would be to stall this thing and have nothing happen. You know, leave it where it is, go away, come back a few years later – and then maybe see where we are. Nobody in Washington wants to take responsibility for negotiating a deal that’s going to give the Russians a lot of what they want. Biden already is holding the bag on Afghanistan. And to have a second bag with Ukraine in it, is not something that is very good for re-election purposes.

What kind of deal can the US realistically hope for at this point, based on the reality on the ground?

Well, they keep using the word ‚stalemate‘. It’s in a lot of news stories, even now. ‚Well this stalemate‘, you know. There’s no stalemate that I can see. I see the Russians grabbing territory, knocking off villages, challenging the Ukrainian Army in a lot of different places. It doesn’t look to me like a stalemate at all. Maybe the US wants an ‚under-the-table‘ deal with the Russians? The Russians won’t give them that now, because they’ve lost all their credibility.

Do you think that’s what Ukraine wants, an under-the-table deal?

I don’t know what the Ukrainians really want, because it’s very hard to be sure. Zelensky, of course – on paper at least – is an extreme hardliner against the Russians and has said: The only thing the Russians can do is leave, otherwise no talks – and by the way, we’re still going to put him on trial for war crimes. That’s his line. But he’s not really a free agent here, because he’s utterly dependent on the United States and Europe for his weapons, for his intelligence and for everything else.

Some NATO leaders are now talking openly about flying F16s – and also launching anti-aircraft missiles – into Ukraine, from military bases within NATO countries such as Poland and Romania. Russia has said that if this happens, these F16s and missile launchers will be attacked in those countries. I think they’re especially concerned about F16s, which are nuclear-capable. Would NATO countries seriously consider doing this?

Or, these are trial balloons, to see how the Russians will respond. Because there are real doubts as to whether the Ukrainians can handle the F16. I think there’s a good chance they’re going to try to stick NATO pilots into those planes.

And would there be any difference whether these NATO pilots flying in Ukraine took off from Ukrainian air bases, or from somewhere in Poland or Romania?

I think in either case, the first thing the Russians will do is try and shoot down the F16s. That part’s easy. And if they can shoot them down with relative ease, then they’re not going to worry much about it.

But I wonder what NATO leaders are thinking. Do they think that Russia will be afraid to attack a military base in a NATO country, and therefore the planes and missile launchers will be safer there? I mean, it seems like a big game of chicken.

That’s exactly what it is. In any case I think this may be more theoretical than real, because I don’t see the war lasting much longer.

Why do you say that? What do you think is going to happen?

Because I think the Ukrainian Army is on its last legs, and they don’t have enough troops to cover what they need. Now they’ve redeployed troops from very sensitive places like Chasov Jar to Kharkiv in the north, because they don’t have enough troops. And certainly not enough reliable troops. So I see signs of disintegration in the Ukrainian Army. They just fired their northern commander, named Halushkin, who was only put in the job in April. They said he didn’t prepare the north correctly. The Russians are making big gains – but more important than the territorial gains is the damage being done to the Ukrainian Army. So I don’t see that it’s going to last very long. And at some point, before the American election, Washington may decide it has to set up a negotiation, and the only question is: what, how, who? Will Zelensky still be there? I doubt it. I think Washington has been shopping around for a replacement. General Zaluzhny – whom Zelensky fired as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in February, and has now sent off to the UK as Ambassador – is a likely candidate. I think he’s the only guy with credibility who could make a deal with the Russians. And the Russians respect him as a professional. They consider him a worthy adversary.

So how do you see this playing out?

I think that if Ukraine wants to survive, it needs to cut a deal. If Washington wants Ukraine to survive, it needs to cut a deal. I think we’ve reached that point. I don’t think there’s a lot of time left, I really don’t. And it’s not just about territory. If the army breaks, then all the bets are off. Look, I think they fought valiantly, but you can only do so much.

What kind of time frame are we talking about?

I would watch very carefully the next few weeks because I think that’s going to tell the tale. There’s an offensive underway in the north, but I’m not sure what it is exactly. It’s around Kharkiv. Do the Russians want to capture Kharkiv? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Why would they want to get bogged down doing that? They want to get the Ukrainian army out in the open field and destroy them. They’re not going to be able to do that if they have another Avdiivka or another Bahkmut on their hands, but on an even larger scale in Kharkiv. It doesn’t serve Russia’s interests.

So you don’t think they’re going to try and take Kharkiv – or any other city, like Odessa?

Well, they’d love to. I mean they keep telling everyone, ‚Odessa is a Russian city.‘ But I don’t think that’s their goal. I think their goal is to break the Ukrainian Army so that a deal will be made, some kind of deal, obviously in their favour.

You wrote that if the war lasts until November – after which Biden will have a free hand, assuming he’s re-elected – he may very well give the order for US ground troops to fight in Ukraine. And here I quote you: ‚The Russians know this and are in a race to try and collapse Ukraine’s army before Biden returns to office, if in fact he does. If the Russians are successful, a bigger war in Europe will be avoided. If not, with the introduction of US forces, Europe will be plunged into World War III.‚ Terrifying words. Would Western leaders really think it’s worth plunging Europe into war in order to weaken Russia?

Well I don’t know if it’s really to weaken Russia or whether it’s to prevent Ukraine from collapsing.

So at this point, then, it’s a desperate situation, and they may take that kind of desperate measure?

Yeah, but I don’t know how they can do it. I don’t understand the military logic, to be honest with you. The only thing the West has that is formidable, and could change things, is air power. They don’t have the ground forces, they don’t exist. The 82nd Airborne is a great outfit but they’re not going to be able to work without logistics, without preparation, without all the things you have to do to be ready to fight in this way.

And US air power won’t be enough? They have used this air power to subjugate a lot of adversaries in recent decades. Why won’t it work in this case?

It might. I think, though, what’s different this time are the Russian air defences, which are quite deep and quite capable. Also the Russian air force is okay, but the real thing is the air defences. It would be costly.

You mean, costly for the US to try to break through that?

Yes. And then the real question is: Is the F35, which is a stealth fighter, good enough to overcome the air defences? I don’t have a good answer to that question. I don’t know.

Given the type of war this is – trench warfare, artillery, war of attrition – doesn’t all that speak against the US being able to win by pure air power?

Hard to say. I think the air power would set the Russians back. I mean, one of the reasons that most experts say the big Ukrainian offensive in the south failed, was because the Russians had air superiority through that whole fight. That would no longer necessarily be the case. But the real problem here is that the Ukrainian army is practically shattered.

So if there had been US air power involved in this war from the beginning, we could have had a different outcome?

Well yeah, but then we’d have been in World War III. So it’s a kind of game you don’t want to play. I don’t think the US will use its air power, but it’s a risk. That’s the one place I think we could have some impact if we wanted to. But again, at a very high price.

Which brings us back to my question: Is it worth plunging Europe into war in order to achieve Western objectives?

No, it’s not worth it at all. It’s a terrible idea. The whole thing’s a terrible idea, this whole war is a terrible idea. This mess in Ukraine should have been avoided. NATO had no business sticking its nose in there in the first place. And the Russians had no business invading. I’m really in despair over it.

You said you think the war could end soon. What do you think that end will look like? What will the West do in the face of what is essentially a NATO defeat by Russia?

Well, I think that if it looks like the Ukrainian army is going to disintegrate, then the government in Kiev will be overthrown, one way or another. And I think what Washington would want to do is to try and open a dialogue with the Russians, because I think that’s the practical thing to do. And I think the Russians would actually listen – which is what people in Washington don’t think. I think they will listen, because for the Russians Ukraine is not that important, in and of itself. What’s important to the Russians is the bigger strategic picture, and their ability to have an alternative to just being locked into the Chinese.

So the Russians really do want to have good relations with the West?

I believe so. Putin has more or less said so.

How optimistic are you that the negotiations would go well, and relations could begin to be normalised?

It will not be easy. This has gone on too long. There’s a lot of pride on the Russian side that’s gone into this thing, and it’s going to be very difficult for the Russians to make deals when they don’t have to. And even Putin has to be careful, because he’s also afraid of his army.

You mean that if he were to give away too many concessions, his army could say: After all this fighting, you’re giving away what we’ve died for?

Yes. He would have problem. You know: ‚We paid with all these bodies and all these guys have been killed.‘ It’s very difficult. Look, what he could do is just stand by and let the Ukrainian government turn into a peace government. Then sign a deal with them, take the territories he wants, they agree no more NATO, and walk away. He could do that.

And his army wouldn’t object to that?

That would be okay, because they would keep the territories they took. On the other hand, if a new government in Ukraine said: We want a better deal, we want to have some influence in the Donbass, and we want to go back to the Minsk agreements – in other words, the Donbass can have autonomy, but not become part of Russia – I don’t think he could accept that. You know, he held up the Minsk agreements and said: We agreed to this, and we were conned by Merkel and by others who sold us a bill of goods – which they’ve now admitted. We believed this was going to be real, and then it turns out they were just trying to cheat us, they weren’t serious. I mean, I think what Merkel said was like hammering a peg into Putin’s chest. Brutal, absolutely brutal.

You’ve mentioned that the consensus opinion among the US national security establishment today is that Ukraine is losing the war – in spite of what we continue to hear out of the Western media.

Well, they say so.

All of them, across the board?

No, but there are enough statements coming out from key leaders. For example Avril Haines, the current Director of National Intelligence, she came out in testimony to the US Senate, and said the Russians are winning. That’s the top security official in the United States. So that’s pretty clear.

And why doesn’t the media pick up on that?

Well, they report it, sort of, but that’s not part of the narrative. The media have been lousy on this whole war, because they just keep buying into whatever the Ukrainians tell them. So I’m an outlier, I guess. Look, I’ve looked at this thing up, down, right and left, and I said: This is illogical, it doesn’t make sense. It’s crazy. Why are we doing this? It just made no sense to me. I spent years in the Pentagon trying to stop the Russians from getting our technology. I mean, I know these guys, to that extent at least, and I also worked in the defence industry for 10 years, and I think I understand a lot of this stuff. And yet none of this made sense to me.

Does it now? Have you figured out what’s going on?

Well, I figured out what the US objective was, and I don’t agree with it. The original US objective was to screw the Russians and bring about regime change if possible. It didn’t work.