Episode 382: Re-release – Inside the War in Ukraine: Strategy, Technology and the Future of Security with Elizabeth Bullock

In this re-released and condensed episode of The International Risk Podcast, host Dominic Bowen is joined by Elizabeth Bullock, a UK-based adviser specialising in Russia’s modern war, hybrid warfare and strategic risk. This episode examines the lived reality of modern conflict in Ukraine, drawing on Elizabeth’s three years providing frontline humanitarian aid. From evacuating civilians under fire to navigating the evolving threats of drones, hypersonic missiles, and weaponised infrastructure, Elizabeth provides an unflinching look at how war shapes both society and strategy and what it reveals about the future of global security.

We discuss:

• How technology from drones to hypersonic missiles is redefining the battlefield
• How civilians survive and adapt under sustained attack
• What Russia’s tactics reveal about modern conflict
• How Ukraine has developed its defence under extreme pressure
• What this war means for the future of global security

This is an unfiltered look at contemporary warfare and the lessons it holds for the world ahead.

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders.

Episode 382 Transcript: Re-release – Inside the War in Ukraine: Strategy, Technology and the Future of Security with Elizabeth Bullock

Dominic Bowen: Today’s episode goes beyond the headlines of the war in Ukraine to examine what modern conflict actually looks like on the ground. From frontline evacuations to the realities of advanced military technologies. Today, we’re going to explore how war is fought, how civilians survive it, and what it means for the future of global security.

I’m Dominic Bowen, and I’m host of the International West podcast, where we discuss the topics that really matter. And today, we’re joined by Elizabeth Bullock. Elizabeth spent three years working full-time on the frontline areas of Ukraine and after leaving her career in technology just days after the full-scale invasion. And today I’m really excited about exploring what is the lived reality of modern conflict and war and how does technology impact it, where does tactics combine with the technology of today and what does it look like on the ground and what this might reveal about the future of modern warfare and and what are the important considerations that we all need to understand.

Elizabeth, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

Elizabeth Bullock: Thank you so much, Dominic. It’s a pleasure to be on here.

Dominic Bowen: Now, and I understand it, just a few days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, you left your great job. You had a great job, a great life, and you picked it all up and you started providing humanitarian assistance, emergency aid in Ukraine. Can you tell us what made you take that first step?

Elizabeth Bullock: Well, I was actually fortunate I wasn’t in a full-time role at that time. I had actually just returned to the UK three days before the full-scale invasion from traveling in the Middle East for four months. So I was free to go in a way that many people were not.

And I, like everyone else, was just horrified by what I saw in the news and felt I should just do something, however small. And i packed my little Peugeot hatchback with winter supplies and drove over. And I just thought it’d be a few weeks driving women, children, elderly people across the border from Lviv into Poland.

But it did progress quite quickly from there. That was, as it turned out, just the first two, three weeks of my time there. I quite quickly met some other British people like me, normal people.

And we started off running medical supplies into Kyiv when the Russians were trying to take it unsuccessfully, I’m happy to say.

And from there, by mid-April, we were in the Donbas, as someone who became a wonderful Ukrainian friend asked us if we would evacuate people out of a town called Lysychansk before it fell.

And these were people who could not escape the Russian advance. So bedridden, disabled, amputees, people without a car, people who would be trapped. And again, that was nothing that I ever intended doing. And it wasn’t a decision I took lightly. And I felt it was very important not to be a foreigner running around doing irresponsible things in Ukraine and the implications that has for Ukrainian people and particularly Ukrainian soldiers who are operating in that theater. So it was a measured decision.

But yes, I would say an unexpected one. And it just progressed from there. We spent all of 22 working in the Donbas. We lived in Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk. We’d evacuate people every day, take them one hour back from the front line, put them on a train that would take them to Western Ukraine. And then, sort of 23 and 24, we spent more in the south.

So the Kherson-Mikolayev area, for those who are familiar. which was, some of it was evacuations. You know, Kherson City and the villages along the riverbank had gone straight from being under occupation to becoming frontline because the Russians simply withdrew to the South Bank and started shutting the North Bank very heavily. But of course, there was a huge amount of liberated territory. And with that, there was a huge prevalence of mines, destruction, trauma, interrogation centers, you know, all of the things that come with that post-occupation environment. So that, our work there encompass several different things, you know, some of it was evacuation, some of it was drinking water, and doesn’t sound particularly interesting, but Russians are amazing at weaponising civilian infrastructure, which is I’m sure something we’ll touch on later.

So they had blown up pipelines feeding water into Mykolaiv. I couldn’t even feed my dog tap water because it would make you that it was sort of giving everyone skin conditions and things um they when they blew up the nova kakovka dam when there was a huge amount of flooding in the summer of 2023 actually unsurprisingly to all of us the great upshot was the loss of drinking water because the drinking water in her son had been so good and so overnight that’s gone and then for the last year we moved more into reconstruction of villages that the russians had just raised to the ground and again just seeing what the Russians had left behind, couldn’t really stand by and just not try and do something about it. So yeah.

Dominic Bowen: Very much. No, it’s interesting. I’m glad you called yourself a normal person. I think for for most of my career, I think I’ve worked in all of the major war zones over the last 20 years. And I think generally the labels of the missionary, misfit, or mercenary have generally been applied. So I’m glad that you didn’t fit into any of those when you were there. But three years is ah is a long time to spend in in any conflict zone and and anywhere affected by some sort of disaster. In this case, Russia’s a legal invasion.

Can you tell us how the war changed during your time there? And I think the country really has changed. I was blessed to be there in January and February, just before Russia’s invasion. And, you know, it really was a blessing to be able to see cities like Avdiivka, Kharkiv and Mariupol that have now been destroyed and taken over by Russia. But even in Kyiv and Lviv, you know, the country, from what I’ve seen, has gone through a really amazing transformation and such resilience. But what did you see during your work? How did the country change over the last three years?

Elizabeth Bullock: It was so impressive to see how quickly Ukraine adapted. You know, in early 22, of course, there was though there was huge amount of fear. There was mass movement of people. There was huge disruption to supply chains. I remember in spring 22 being in supermarkets in Pokrovsk and all of the shelves being bare.

And a little bit like during COVID, but much more extreme. But within a few weeks, it was all back. And, you know, one example, like that I loved of this was, and and i won I won’t go into the depth of this now, but the time that that we almost that we were the closest to losing our lives, we had seven S-300 missiles come in on us in Mykolaiv in the summer of 22. So, when we were living there, it was when the Russians were trying to take the city, and they were occupying a huge amount of territory in Kherson Oblast and indeed also in Mykolaiv Oblast. So they were trying to take the city, and Mykolaiv was being very heavily hit. Just by misfortune, even though we were only there for, I think, five days at that point, we happened to be there for the heaviest night that Mykolaiv’s ever experienced during the course of the war.

We were targeted, and these S-300s came in. But we had these hits coming in between and a.m. in the morning.

And when it finished, you know, we sort of bunkered down for a moment and then we drove two of our friends to hospital. They had minor injuries in their feet from all the glass on the floor. But we were very lucky no one was seriously hurt.

When we got back from the hospital, call it, think by 8 am, there were already Ukrainian people out measuring the windows to replace the glass and just getting on with it.

And that was such a wonderful if you’ll excuse my language, you know screw you to the Russians. It would be one of my favorite things in Bakhmut, which was, but for those who aren’t familiar, which I’m sure many of your listeners are, it was the major battle of 2022.

And sadly, it is now under Russian occupation. And that was the area where we spent most of our time working during 2022 evacuating people. So we were seeing the city get progressively more destroyed. And yet, in the mornings when we’d be driving in to sort of go and and evacuate people and you know you’re trying to be fast you know the the easiest way stay alive is to move fast and do your job and get out but we see people sweeping the streets and pruning the roses and taking that pride in their home city and not letting the Russians destroy that so um you know resilience is a word that’s bandied around a lot with reference to Ukraine and hugely justly so.

But it is also their choice to do these small acts of bravery. A lot of it is also not their choice. And I’ve also spoken to Ukrainian people who’ve actually found it a little bit difficult that you get Ukraine’s allies talking about Ukrainian resilience as if it’s almost a given when they don’t have a choice and they have to keep going every day because they have to be right for their family members or for their children, or they just have to keep going. They don’t have the luxury of that choice. But your point about how it changed, I mean, of course,

The theatre and the way that things were in 22 is hugely different from how they are now. We were evacuating people up to one kilometer sometimes to the Russians; obviously, now, in the age of drones that could never happen.

So it changed of course from having, you know, the odd reconnaissance drone and then you might be worried about an artillery hit being called in to sort of a greater prevalence of reconnaissance FPV drones and then of course a place we are now with very high prevalence of armed and kamikaze style drones and indeed what’s known as the human safari and Russia Russia for example it’s been reported sends its trainee drone pilots to the south bank of the Dnipro opposite Kherson city and tells them to train themselves by hunting Ukrainian civilians in the city.

So that of course has changed hugely. I mean, with the rest of it, you of course, have the frontline area where the risks are, of course, artillery and now also FPV drones and rocket systems that are more in range, et cetera. But you sort of know where that is.

For the rest of the country, It’s funny, you can be just as safe in a small village in eastern Ukraine if you are out of drone range, if you’re out of FPV drone range, as you are in in a village in western Ukraine. Because of course for the whole rest of the country, and it is the biggest country in Europe, you have the major cities being struck, you have energy infrastructure being struck. But if you’re in an underscirt village, it doesn’t really matter where you are. So for the last year we were there, we were doing reconstruction, and it was really odd because we were renting a house in Mykolaiv. We were mostly sleeping and staying in the city, sorry, in the village where we were rebuilding homes, but we did split our time a bit.

And it was the first time we were safer where we worked than where we lived. Because of course the city of Mykolaiv was getting hit a lot more than a random village in the middle of nowhere.
Even though being in the village, of course, had other risks because you have mines, you have unexploded ordnance.

Occasionally you have Ukrainian air defense batteries posted nearby, which are of course a valuable asset to potentially become a target. So it’s a different thing. And of course the entire growth of Shahiq Jones happened during our time there. I remember when it first started to be a thing; it wasn’t a thing in 2022. And I remember that feeling of vulnerability in 23 of hearing them coming, and what was horrible about them in particular was that, just by chance, they sound just like the engine of a moped, and we happen to live right near a main road where there will be a lot of mopeds, so you’d hear this incredible…

And your brain, and it’s it’s funny, you know, but we’d hear them a lot. So normally with most sounds, you get pretty good at identifying, you know, is it incoming or outgoing artillery, or is it this kind of thing or that kind of thing? None of us could ever crack that.

It was too similar. So you’re lying there in your pajamas at night with your dog there, and you don’t know if it’s a moped and you don’t know if it’s a Shahid. And in Mikolaev, we were under one of the major Shahid flight paths for Shahid drones that were being launched from Crimea to then head to Western Ukraine.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the S-300, you mentioned the the the Shahids. I mean, I was in Kyiv in November, and that was when they sent 430 drones to the capital along with a lot of ballistic missiles. And it was, you know, it was just phenomenal, the sort of number. And before they reached Kyiv, you know, as you know, there’s all the apps and Telegram channels that talk about what’s coming.

You know, it talked about hundreds of drones heading towards Kyiv. And then, of course, you know, you can hear them, and then you see the Ukrainian response to that. But it was quite interesting. And I liked how you said that, you know, Ukraine got on with it the next morning, you know.

We had to be out and up to work and we’re on the streets by about 7:30 and I had two phones with two different carriers deliberately trying to do navigation I had my electronic watch and everything was useless my phones the navigation so the Ukrainians were obviously still working with their their electronic warfare, but as we were sort of pulling out of the hotel and you know Iwas madly trying to you know plan plan the routes.

We stopped for a young kid and it it was about the age of my son and just crossing the road completely oblivious to the traffic completely oblivious as to what happened before, he’s obviously playing a game in his head with I don’t know who or what but it see he was having the ball of his life and it was sort of a bit of a giggle moment and then you know and then you could see all the you know beautiful women in there how you know fantastic outfits heading to work and heading to high school and life was just going on as usual, you know, and if you didn’t have the problems on your navigation devices and on your watches, you wouldn’t realize what had happened the night before. But that resilience was just or that determination to, yeah, we’re going to go to school. We’re going to look great. We’re going to make sure our streets are taken care of. And, you know, society keeps functioning was just something that always impresses me.

But, you know, the Russian military technology from the S-300s, from the hypersonic missiles that we’ve heard more about, and some of these have been talked about as game changers, but I’m not sure that they really are when we look at how much territory has been taken.

And then, of course, Ukraine’s response to Russia. And Russia is a very advanced technology and technological power globally. What are your thoughts about the experiences and the realities of the technology that you saw and how different weapons are being employed in Ukraine?

Elizabeth Bullock: Well, that’s a really good point that you make about missiles, Dominic, and I’d love to dwell on that for a moment, if I may, in particular with regards to the Oreshnik missile.

Now, there has been a lot of coverage about that in the press, and this has been a deliberate tactic of Russia’s to try and strike fear into the hearts and minds of European people.

And there are just a few things very key that… I would like to debunk, but also some valid threats that I would like to highlight because this is a capable weapon system, but not for the reasons that it is being covered in the press.

So the first thing to dispel is the fact is the idea that this is a new weapon system. Russia is trying to tout it as this new capability, technologically advanced all of these things. It’s actually a cannibalized version of the RS 26, which they have simply reduced in size. Um, for those who are familiar with rocket terminology, they’ve reduced it from a three-stage to a two-stage. And it is slightly smaller; it has a slightly smaller circumference, but they have cannibalized many things from that.

It is not a new system. The second piece is the fact that it is described as a hypersonic weapon. Now this has been a really clever piece of Russia using very easy confusions in linguistics.

So this is a ballistic weapon. Every single ballistic weapon, by definition, is hypersonic. And always has been, including the very first one, the Nazi Germany designed during World War Two. So describing a ballistic weapon as hypersonic is purely to try and induce panic and again, to try and describe it as new. What is confusing is that un international terminology, if a missile is referred to as a hypersonic missile, what it is actually referring to – and this is where it’s not very clear, and I indeed had to educate myself on this – what it’s actually referring to is that it is a cruise missile traveling at hypersonic speed. What that means is that rather than it following a ballistic trajectory, which is linear, easier to predict and therefore easier to intercept. It is following a cruise trajectory, which is low altitude and hard to predict, and it can manoeuvre at hypersonic speed, which means it is very difficult to intercept. So Russia is deliberately using that confusion because, yes, to make it easier for people to follow, you would ideally just refer to it as a hypersonic cruise missile, but it’s not. A hypersonic missile is specifically supposed to refer to a cruise, not a ballistic. So they’re using that confusion.

The fact that it is hypersonic is a given because it is a ballistic missile. So anyone who has described the Ereshnik as a hypersonic missile is unfortunately directly feeding into Russia’s desire to create panic and fear.

What it actually is is an intermediate-range ballistic missile. That is the term for it.

The other piece is if you talk about hypersonic, you think, oh my gosh, it’s really fast. It’s going to be really hard to intercept. That’s scary. That’s dangerous. It travels at approximately three and a half thousand meters per second. It is fast. And for those who are familiar, that’s about Mach 10.

But ICBMs, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, travel at double that speed. So this is not faster than the world is already familiar with and the world is already trying to protect itself against. It’s nothing revolutionary. It is fast, granted, but not a cause for panic.

Now, what are the genuine valid threats around this? So yes, it is hard to intercept.

But really, that is not so much because of its speed. Its speed is a contributing factor, but not the main factor. What makes it difficult to intercept is the fact that these missiles are designed to dispense separate components. So in pure layman’s terms, when it is at very high altitude above the atmosphere, it is a single missile in one piece. The issue is that that altitude is too high for air defense to be able to take it down.

When it gets to a lower altitude, it separates. First into six vehicles, for those who are familiar with MIRVs, multiple independent reentry vehicles. Each one of them then also splits into six sub-munitions. You go from a single missile to six MIRVs to 36 sub-munitions.

So it is not impossible, but it is of course very challenging for air defense systems to take out that number of targets that are arriving simultaneously, yes, at a high speed. That is a genuine risk.

The other piece is around what the missile is loaded with. Now, it is first and foremost a nuclear-designed weapon.

We are all hoping, of course, that it will not be deployed in that way, but it is nuclear capable, and that is a threat.

But it isn’t the only threat. So the way it was reported when it was used, and it’s only been used twice so far, is that it was used, it was deployed using dummy warheads. So everyone was saying dummy warheads, limited damage; it’s a purely political statement by Russia to try and intimidate. That actually wasn’t accurate.

Just because they were not nuclear did not mean they were dummy, they were not. There is a weapon system, a US one referred to as Rods of God, which is essentially where you just get very heavy metal and fire it down, and the sheer amount of kinetic energy it has means it is very destructive.

That is effectively what the Russians did. They had very heavy tungsten metal. In one of the instances, when they struck Dnipro, they apparently also had it laced with thermite, so it did have a slight incendiary element to it.

So this was not a harmless dummy set of warheads being fired down and purely as a political statement because it was the right choice of weapon for the targets, because a purely kinetic weapon in that way is much more effective at destroying underground targets than a more conventional high explosive warhead.

So, and the two things that they struck, one in Dnipro and one in Kyiv, were both underground. One of them was the largest gas storage site in Europe. So what does this mean that we have a genuine threat of? It means that you have a weapon that is very good at striking underground things. So you start thinking NATO command bunkers.

You start thinking anything that is trying to be protected underground. And this is where the valid threat that Oreshnik has a greater range than its other weapons. It has a range of up to five and a half thousand kilometers.

It also has a minimum range. It can’t go below 600 clicks, which is also something to be remembered. So it can, again, not cause a mass panic. There are, of course, interconent intercontinental ballistic missiles as well.

But yes, it can reach all of Europe essentially. It could certainly strike London, for example. And we are talking in around, you know, 10 to 15 minutes from Russia or sub 10 minutes if deployed from Belarus.

But again, one small clarification on that. There has been panic in the headlines about, oh, now a Roshnik is stationed in Belarus right on NATO’s doorstep. And this fear. What Russia has actually done, and it’s again, you sort of almost have to laugh. They’ve actually put it five kilometers from the border with Russia, just inside Belarus, just to be able to say it’s there.

Just to create that panic, just to create that fear. And actually, the increase in range it has, bearing in mind the test and development site for Oreshnik was in southwestern Russia, very close to the Kazakhstan border, in Kasputin Yar.

The increase in range it now has from having been moved from Kasputin Yar to this aerodrome called Krzyk 6 in very far eastern Belarus, the difference is very small. It does not actually put Europe more at risk, and actually it makes Kyiv safer because it puts Kyiv below the minimum range for this weapon. What it does do is that it makes it safe for Russia because no one is going to start striking targets inside Belarus.

This entire piece around this is a new weapon, it’s hypersonic, it’s on NATO’s doorstep. Actually, that and this is where you get the issue of, of of I hate to say it, but quality of journalism, because there are too many errors. The threats are, yes, it has an increased range.

Yes, it is hard to intercept. Yes, it has non-nuclear warhead options that can be hugely damaging. Those are the things we should be talking about. If anyone is talking about it as a hypersonic weapon, they are completely missing the point.

Dominic Bowen: And what about the technologies that aren’t being discussed or the tactics that aren’t being discussed? As ah as a humanitarian worker, civilians they’re feeling the impact of many of these. You touched on landmines a couple of times.

But are there things that we should be talking about more in Europe, especially as you know NATO defence spending is increasing, the Nordic countries alone will be spending another $34 billion by but twenty thirty four, you know. So what are the things that we should be talking about when it comes to Russian technologies, Russian tactics and their war machinery?

Elizabeth Bullock:
I actually think that people quite often focus on the technological innovation piece more than they should.

So as far as I see it, priorities for Europe, first and foremost, critical national infrastructure. Russia is not going to start dropping missiles on London or Paris or Berlin.

We are a good way off that situation. We are not, however, off a situation where Russia, which it already is, will attack our civilian population. And this is what I lived through in Ukraine, seeing the very real implications of that. So when you have no fresh water, when you have no power, and people sort of know this from the news- they know there have been a huge amount of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, for example – and things are particularly bad in Kyiv this winter. And Russia has really weaponized that winter.

But it being extended over a huge amount of time has been used as a weapon to try and destroy Ukrainian resilience as we were talking about. But for somewhere in Western Europe, if suddenly, somewhere in the UK or somewhere in France or somewhere in Germany or Poland, suddenly there’s a crisis, a civilian-based crisis where suddenly the water is gone or suddenly the undersea cable is gone or suddenly no one can do any financial transactions, then things very quickly fall apart because we do not have the mechanisms in place to protect ourselves from these things in the first place and then to recover from them in a way that is quick and without it having a very significant impact. So the entire piece around protection of our critical national infrastructure is absolutely key. And it’s difficult because these are often either government institutions or private companies that may be very large; they may be quite antiquated; they probably cannot protect themselves from cyber attacks, hugely, hugely vulnerable.

Even the landing stations of subsea cables, you know, we all, I think we’re all quite familiar now with the concept of russians Russian ships dragging anchors and potentially destroying our subsea cables, although I don’t think people necessarily fully grasp quite how horrific the implications would be but of course those subsea cables do at some point have to pop up on land and those points where they go up onto the coast and you have these huge bundles of undersea cables right there that are often not protected at all is terrifying so the only thing that’s different between me and anyone else in the UK, for example, is that I’ve seen what Russia is willing to do and what they have been willing to do to Ukrainian people and how much more they hate Western Europe. And I would argue, potentially even particularly the Brits, just going off how they talk about us in Russia today and across their media and propaganda, you know, in Western Europe,

People are starting to see a threat from Russia, but in general, nobody actually cares about Russia. Nobody thinks about Russia day to day.

The amount that the UK and Western Europe has been talked about on Russia Toda is, it’s almost amusing to see in the beginning. And it’s this really, really bizarre, sensationalist language that we’re just not used to. And they’ll say, you know, the UK is a dying old man, and it’s post-imperial, and they are stealing people and harvesting their organs, and they are stealing young women and taking them into the country so they can give birth there. You know, and and and it sounds like a joke, but they genuinely are saying these things that it’s so extreme. It’s very hard for us to get our heads around.

So the vulnerabilities of our civilian population is the first piece. The second piece. In terms of more conventional defense, to me is air defense.

31:54.90
Elizabeth Bullock
Again, we are not at the point where Russia is about to start rolling tanks across into NATO territory. Have they already sent in Shahi drones? Yes. And for example, the time when there were around 20 drones, i think it was 19, around 20 drones that went into Poland, NATO collective air defense, we managed to shoot down four.

32:21.94
Elizabeth Bullock
And one of them got 500 kilometres into Polish territory. And all of that air defence was air-based. It was F-16s and in Italian it works.

32:34.65
Elizabeth Bullock
There was no ground-based air defence that it was successfully deployed at all. So if we cannot even protect our skies as a first step, The entire piece around protecting ourselves against a ground-based invasion is later down the line.

32:51.13
Elizabeth Bullock
I do not see enough of a focus on air defence. And my my fear, actually, of a scenario

33:00.70
Elizabeth Bullock
is not so much necessarily around Shahids. It’s around technology developing, which it is not too far off now, of there being the ability for drones to swarm,

33:15.48
Elizabeth Bullock
and to have autonomous targeting. Because to me, what is a potential scenario of that? You look at the Baltics, it’s a small territory, and you are trapped by water on the other side. If there’s one thing I did not like during in Ukraine, it was water. I did not want to be trapped between Russians and water.

33:35.60
Elizabeth Bullock
You want to be able to get out. So if you imagine a mass swarm of drones with the ability for autonomous targeting being sent in, so you create mass panic, mass fear, mass movement, clogs clog up of roads and therefore military ground lines of communication,

33:56.41
Elizabeth Bullock
And an emptying of that territory that’s then very hard to take back. Now, it’s a hypothetical scenario. I’m not saying I necessarily think it will happen. But these are the sorts of things that concern me.

34:09.20
Elizabeth Bullock
That to me is far more likely as a scenario than tanks rolling into Estonia, for example.

34:15.67
Dominic Bowen
Yeah, very much. I think you’re you’re totally correct. And I don’t think it’s it’s hyperbolic ah at all. And we’ve had plenty of guests come on the podcast. And this is something I see when working with corporate actors and and state actors across Europe. We’ve seen hospitals go offline for months.

34:29.34
Dominic Bowen
ah Local governments go offline for weeks. We’ve seen ah in Norway, one of their major dams was opened up. Literally, the floodgates were were opened up. We’ve seen telecommunications cable in several countries dug up and cut. And of course, we’ve all seen the the the energy and telecommunications cables in the Baltic being attacked. So these aren’t hyperbolic. These are things that are occurring today. And that’s over on top of the state-sponsored espionage that’s occurring on corporate and state actors across northern Europe.

35:00.66
Dominic Bowen
And i think when we see this was going on, you know, we we have to sort of ask o ourselves, now Ukraine is an amazingly adept country, that the population is largely educated, know, population of about 44 million people, so it’s not a tiny country.

35:15.16
Dominic Bowen
But nevertheless, if you compare Ukraine’s size to the size of Russia and their military spending on Russia, I think, you know, we’re we’re justified in going, how did Ukraine do this? How has Ukraine been able to put up such an amazing defense? And of course, noting that Russia’s special special military operation was something that was meant to occur in just days. And of course, it’s now a costly war of attrition.

35:40.02
Dominic Bowen
How do you think, is it is it technology? Is it tactics? You know, what is it that has enabled Ukraine to to stay in the war for so long and be so effective in their defense?

Elizabeth Bullock: I mean, there are, of course, the factors that we all know well. One being that someone defending their home and their home country is always going to be worth more than an invading force.

There are, of course, also the cultural elements where within Russia, there is a much higher culture of punishment for mistakes.

So one of the reasons there was a lack of agility in Russia’s command and control is that there was not that empowerment, and more junior officers officers you know, smaller groups were not given that autonomy in that agency to be able to operate. They were constantly having to have commands go up and down the command chain. So they were not able to quickly adapt to, as you say, a very unexpected scenario when they thought they were going to be going through in three days. And indeed, happened to drive out of Kyiv the first day that the E40, which is the motorway that runs between Lviv and Kyiv, the first day was open, and it had been literally fought over. And there was this very famous convoy of Russian tanks that had been advancing on the city and had been destroyed. And we drove past that. You just still had glass everywhere. You had a Ukrainian ambulance that had been shot through the windscreen. You had all of that there.

But, you know, Ukraine adapted very effectively to that. And those Russians apparently had their ceremonial uniforms in those tanks because they were expecting to be doing a victory parade in Kyiv that quickly.

Whereas the Ukrainians quickly were able to get hold of RPGs, of Javelins, of N-laws and adapt and take out those tanks, whereas Russia, for example, did not have infantry support for those tank convoys, so they were just easily getting picked off, and they did not adapt and try to create and change that. The other thing, of course, is that Ukraine knows full well that it just does not have the manpower to expend that Russia does, so it drives this need and desire to innovate, to keep the edge on this very, very close competition on technological advances, and things have moved back and forth in sometimes devastating ways. Ukraine was dominating what’s known as the kill zone in terms of drone dominance. But then when they had made the successful incursion into Russia, into Kursk Oblast, the Russians got the edge on the innovation and created fiber optic drones, which, for anyone who is not familiar, was what was interesting about that: it was almost like a backwards form of innovation, because rather than it being more technological, it was less. It was basically like attaching a fishing line to this drone, which meant that it could not be interfered with by electronic warfare and jamming because there was a direct cable link between the drone and the drone pilot.

Which is how you now end up with these bizarre images of fields and fields across the front line that are just laced with these wires from these drones. So it’s a very odd form of innovation, but it just shows the different directions these things can take. But Russia did successfully get the edge on creating those first, which was a contributing factor to them retaking territory in Kursk away from the Ukrainians. It unfortunately also coincided with the United States turning off intelligence access to Ukraine, which was, of course, a travesty.

But it is this constant back and forth. Ukraine has done a huge amount of innovation in the area of UGVs, unmanned ground vehicles, because it means that they can do CASIVACs, casualty evacuations of injured soldiers without more soldiers getting injured. After all, Russia has been creating these loiter drones that they will just park in a field and leave. And then if they successfully hit a soldier or a vehicle and then other Ukrainian soldiers come to try and help them, they will then launch these loiter drones from where they are nearby and use them to conduct what is effectively the most modern form of a double tap strike.

So these are all things that are constantly changing. So Ukraine has done very well at deliberately creating these UGBs, not only for Kasevaks, but also to deliver supplies, whether it’s munitions, whether it’s food. There was a story the other day of a Ukrainian soldier who got trapped on his position for, I forget the figure, perhaps you know, but sort of 250 days or something akin to that. And they eventually, on their fourth attempt, managed to get him out with a UGV because no other soldiers could physically reach him there.

Dominic Bowen: That was an amazing story, amazing story, and you know what a hero being able to live and survive in that environment for so long.

I’ll just take the moment to remind our listeners, Elizabeth, that if you’d like to watch our podcast, the International Risk Podcast is always available on YouTube. So please do go to YouTube and search for the International Risk Podcast. Remember, please subscribe to and like our content really is critical for our success. And Elizabeth, I wonder, now you’re back in the UK, you’ve got this amazing experience, and you’ve seen so much and experienced so much. You know, what’s the hardest thing to communicate? If there was one thing you could really convince business leaders and politicians and policy advisors, what would be that one thing you’d want to change in people’s understanding about the conflict in Ukraine, but also the threat from Russia?

Elizabeth Bullock: I would tell them to forget actually, in the best way and most respectful way possible to forget about what people call the war in Ukraine, because it is a complete distraction from the fact that Russia is trying to attack Europe.

And by calling it the war in Ukraine, it means it limits it in people’s minds to it being a conflict over there, not going to affect us. And that it is just Ukraine’s problem, when unfortunately, the opposite is true. And the message that people are trying to get out is the real shocker.

If there is a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, which is highly unlikely because Russia has no interest in doing so. And that is also an issue with media coverage, that there is this talk of a peace deal when Russia is just playing for time and effectively stringing Trump along to appease him and not have more harsh treatment from Trump. But Russia has no interest and no incentive in ending this conflict. And indeed for Putin personally, were he to suddenly end it, his tenure, his hold on power would also fail. So there is not going to be a peace deal that Russia is going to suddenly agree to unless it is put under sufficient economic pressure that it has to acquiesce.

But even if there is a peace deal, which everybody hopes for, the situation for the rest of Europe becomes more dangerous and not less because Russia will rearm.

It will increase its hybrid warfare tactics, which is already happening and already increasing. The most important thing that Russia is trying to do is to divide us and to distract us.

And in some ways it sounds very obvious, oh, Russia wants to splinter alliances. But I prefer to bring it down a level from that because it’s all easy for us to think about, oh, EU, Brexit, macro.

Russia is trying to divide our societies from within. They are trying to polarise us. They are trying to have us focused on anything but the threat from Russia. Whatever is the most potent and will serve that purpose the most well, whether it is frustration with current governments, whether it is immigration, whether it is any form of discontent and anything that creates an emotion of outrage.

Because that’s the most powerful emotion that Russia can manipulate. And it is very good at doing so. And my fear is that we will not realise how successfully this has been done until it is too late.

We are all seeing what’s happening in the States, and the huge threats to democracy and liberal values that are happening there. We should not be so arrogant to assume that it could never happen in Western Europe if we do not fight to protect those values and those democratic ideologies that we have, because ultimately, any form of democratic ideology is the biggest threat to Russia. And that is why they will keep attacking us and trying to dismantle that as much as they can.

Dominic Bowen: That was really thoughtful and helpful. So thanks very much for that, Elizabeth. And maybe just in the last 30 seconds, but one question that we ask all our guests, and I’m very keen to hear your opinion. When you look around the world, Elizabeth, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

Elizabeth Bullock: The power of disinformation and how it is so easy to hide. We, many of us, heard recently how with the internet blackout in Iran, 25% of online accounts saying that they were pro-Scottish independence suddenly disappeared overnight.

That’s just Iran. Russia has formed for this as well. This threat that we cannot see, for many of us that we cannot understand.

In some ways, it’s a little bit like COVID. it’s a threat you cannot see, you cannot touch. There’s nothing tangible about it. So it’s very hard to really grasp but the potential gravity of what this could be. Having foreign powers being able without visibility, let alone accountability, to paddle around in our countries and severely damage our societal values and cohesion, that is my greatest concern.

47:13.85
Dominic Bowen: Yeah, I think that’s very valid, very valid. And Elizabeth, let me take the opportunity to thank you very much for your time. And thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast.

Elizabeth Bullock: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure to join you.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a fantastic conversation with Elizabeth Bullock. I really, really appreciated hearing her thoughts on how the technology and tactics of the war in Ukraine and the lessons that we can all be learning across Europe and, of course, North America. Today’s podcast was produced and coordinated by Fairley. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host.

Thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak again in the next couple of days. That was great. Thank you very much, Elizabeth.