DEFAERO Daily Pod [Dec 16, 25] Bendett and Rumer on the Latest Russia-Ukraine Headlines

On today’s Land Warfare program, sponsored by American Rheinmetall, Sam Bendett of the Center for Naval Analyses and Dr. Eugene Rumer, the director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, join Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian to discuss prospects to end the fighting in Ukraine as Western powers including the United States suggest security guarantees in exchange for Kyiv renouncing NATO membership as Russia rejects foreign troops on Ukrainian soil and continues to demand Ukraine hand over all of Donbass; the dynamics on the battlefield as Volodymy Zelensky visits Kupiansk that Russian forces say they occupied and how Ukrainian forces continue to defend Pokrovsk; whether the Vladimir Putin’s regime is as vulnerable as Western analysts suggest; Kyiv’s use of unmanned craft to strike Russia’s “shadow fleet” at sea and a Kilo-class conventionally powered submarine in Novorossiysk; stories in 2025 that didn’t get the attention they deserved; and the storylines to track in the coming year as the Ukraine war entered its fourth year.