In this podcast let’s talk about the concept of attrition. We can see it in the framework of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. At the beginning the Russian forces told us that it was possible to invade Ukraine in a few days or maybe in a few weeks but after many months we realize that this objective was in fact a strategic error and now we have a Russian failure. They wanted to use the attrition or to be more precise the attrition-based combat against Ukrainian forces. But the problem is there is also attrition in Russia, in Russian forces. There are many frictions, we see the problem at the level of the battlefield, but we see it also at the level of the Kremlin. The idea is to use a concept against your enemy when this concept is already against you. We see in all these battles that the attrition which was made by the Russian forces was not relevant in this struggle because at the beginning they wanted to do this very quickly, like a Blitzkrieg. They failed and they use after that the concept of attrition to have some benefits at least at the tactical level but the problem is that their strategy has structural errors and when they apply this strategy at the tactical level, obviously it’s not efficient. So we can see that the attrition concept was an error as a choice for the Russian forces because they did not think that it was already present in their forces. We see that at the first level in time, the velocity of the invasion avoided the concept of attrition but after that, at the second level we see that this attrition is a problem in the structure not of the invasion but also the war. Now we can use it especially in the winter to force them to stop not only the invasion but in fact the war.  So how can we use it? Attrition is a rather subversive concept in ideology but we can use it in strategy and we mean by that  that in strategy if you convince, persuade, your enemy that there is a very big cost to continue the battle for him after that there is a choice and the choice is in fact, how to lose. The problem is Russian forces have already lost the war. It is how to announce this to the Russian people, to Russia and to avoid a big problem for Kremlin and of course for Putin. The idea is to convince Russian people that it’s not exactly a failure. It’s not exactly a defeat but rather the end of an attempt to change something that was only the first step of the same ideology. They have to convince them that Time is with them. Of course it’s wrong but it’s already something as an exit from tis war. They did the same thing in Afghanistan and this didn’t provoke any change. So the idea is they want to keep the power is to convince their people that they are continuing the struggle but not in the same battlefield. At the end of the process, Russian forces have to withdrawal from Ukraine and we know that this is the future. But how can they explain this future in their strategy.  They have to create a new model with a bigger duration in time to avoid the problems with their population and we think they have already started this.