After the Ukrainian Counter-Offensive

A Ukrainian service member looks on in a trench at his position at a front line, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 5, 2023. Ukraine Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Serhii Nuzhnenko via REUTERS.

November 7, 2023

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Zoom Webinar

It appears that this year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive, while it has made certain gains, has fallen far short of the hopes invested in it both by Ukrainians and many in the West. This has enormous implications both for the future of the war in Ukraine and for the nature of contemporary warfare. Russia is attacking the town of Avdiivka in the Donbas, but so far is also making only slow progress.

To analyze the course, lessons, and likely consequences of the war this year, the Quincy Institute convened a highly distinguished panel of experts who have been responsible for some of the most insightful commentary on the war: Daniel Davis, senior fellow at Defense Priorities, Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities, and Margarita Konaev, Deputy Director of Analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute, moderated.

Download the full webinar transcript here.

Panelists

Daniel Davis

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities. Davis retired from the U.S. Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service. He was deployed into combat zones four times in his career, beginning with Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and then to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan twice (2005, 2011). He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor at the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, and awarded a Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan in 2011. He is the author of "The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America". His work on defense, foreign affairs, and social issues has been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, Fox News, NBC, BBC, The Guardian, TIME, Politico, and other networks and publications.

Rajan Menon

Rajan Menon is director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York. He is also a Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His books include "The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention" (Oxford University Press, 2016) and "Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order", coauthored with Eugene B. Rumer (MIT Press, 2015). In 1989–90, Menon served as special assistant for national security (focusing on arms control) on the staff of the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Asia-Pacific Subcommittee.

Margarita Konaev

Dr Konaev is Deputy Director of Analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) interested in military applications of AI and Russian military innovation. She is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security and a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council. Dr Konaev’s research on international security, emerging technologies and the war in Ukraine has been published by the Journal of Strategic Studies, War on the Rocks, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and a range of other outlets.

Anatol Lieven (Moderator)

Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and is author of several books on Russia and its neighbors including "Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry" (US Institute of Peace, 1999). He holds a BA and PhD from Cambridge University in England.