WASHINGTON — Russia’s campaign to seize Pokrovsk is nearing its end, but the expected fall of the eastern Ukrainian city will not mark a breakthrough, according to George Barros, Russia and Geospatial Intelligence Team lead at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
In an interview with Independence Avenue Media (IAM), Barros said the city’s inevitable capture would not unhinge Ukrainian defenses. After 18 months of fighting and “a tremendous number” of casualties, he said, Russia’s advance amounts to a slow, attritional effort with limited operational value.
Barros said that Pokrovsk had served as a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces, but Russia’s encirclement and artillery dominance had already stripped it of strategic significance months ago. What remains, he said, is symbolic — an example of Russia’s costly “grind” warfare, relying on small infantry groups rather than tanks or armored vehicles. Even if Russia succeeds, he said, Ukraine has fortified positions west of the city, making further advances unlikely.
Turning to the U.S. debate over providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, Barros described the policy stalemate as something that has been repeated with earlier weapons systems such as F-16s and Abrams tanks. He argued that Tomahawks could have meaningful impact not as a “silver bullet” but as a tool to strike deep Russian targets, such as drone production facilities in Tatarstan fueling Moscow’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Responding to claims that Tomahawks require long training periods, Barros said Ukrainians have repeatedly mastered complex systems in record time because “for them, this is existential.”
Barros also downplayed Russian warnings that U.S. involvement in intelligence support for such strikes would amount to escalation. He noted that China, North Korea and Iran already assist Russia with intelligence and weapons.
He praised the Trump administration’s recent decision to intensify intelligence sharing, arguing that it has made Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign more effective.
Looking ahead, Barros warned that Russia is entering “phase zero” of preparation for a potential wider war in Europe. Since September, he said, Moscow has stepped up airspace violations, drone reconnaissance and sabotage across NATO states to desensitize the West to provocations — a “boil the frog” strategy to gain advantage in future conflict. While he believes Putin has not yet decided to attack, Barros urged NATO to prepare to deter or defeat a conventional Russian threat “no later than 12 months after the war in Ukraine ends.” A ceasefire, he added, remains unlikely in 2026. The Russians haven’t changed their maximalist demands, he said, “so we are likely looking at longer fighting. ”
The following interview, recorded November 4, has been edited for length and clarity.
Ia Meurmishvili, IAM editor in chief: Let’s start from the sort of tactical overview of what’s happening on the front lines. Pokrovsk has been in the news in the past few weeks, mainly from the Russian side, I would say. What do you hear from the Ukrainian side? What’s happening in Pokrovsk? Is it going to fall?
George Barros, ISW Russia and Geospatial Intelligence Team lead: The tactical situation within Pokrovsk is very difficult. The city is going to fall. It’s a question of time, and it’s a question of time — if it’s whether days or weeks. But look, it’s very important to look at this not only within the tactical context but within operational context. Right now, the Russians are in the process of the culmination of an 18-months-long campaign to seize the town of Pokrovsk.
They’re doing street fighting now. They’re going building to building, room to room, street to street, that sort of thing. But this didn’t happen overnight. This didn’t happen over the course of the last month. It doesn’t even happen over the course of last six months. It’s our assessment that the Russians, after seizing Avdiivka back in February 2024, had been prioritizing the Pokrovsk offensive since then. And really, when you look at the map and look at the bigger picture, it took the Russians 18 months to advance about 40 to 45 kilometers to get to Pokrovsk now, which is actually a relatively small town.
The Ukrainians have actually traded space for time over the last 18 months. They have attrited a tremendous number of Russian casualties in that time period. And yes, the Russians will seize it. However, the Russians are not going to be able to leverage this eventual seizure of Pokrovsk into any kind of operational breakthrough. This doesn’t threaten to unhinge the lines or anything like that. They will be continuing to do positional fighting, and it’ll be a difficult but not critical situation for the Ukrainians.
IAM: Pokrovsk was very often looked upon, or at least when the military analysts would talk about it in the West, they would say that it’s a strategically important location for Ukraine. If Pokrovsk falls, then Russia opens up the path or the opportunities for Russia to continue and expand the offensive operation. So, are you saying that maybe that’s no longer the case? And do you know if the Ukrainians — or do think the Ukrainians — would fortify some other positions that would prevent Russians from expanding?
Barros: So, Pokrovsk was operationally significant for the Ukrainians in the last several months because it was a good logistics hub. There’s a railroad that led to Pokrovsk that doesn’t lead to other towns in the vicinity. There was a good highway there. And so the Ukrainians used it as a node in the artery system to get material and supplies to the surrounding Ukrainian tactical positions.
The Russians effectively already deprived the Ukrainians the ability to use Pokrovsk as a logistical line many, many months ago as they encroached upon its flanks and brought up drones and artillery and other assets around Pokrovsk. So that benefit has sort of been stripped away for a long time. And the Russians already achieved that objective. Now what they’ve done is they’ve impaled themselves to go by force, clear the terrain for a season, … and I’m not exactly sure what that gains the Russians.
In terms of whether or not it portends a larger collapse or a turning point for the Ukrainians, I actually disagree with that assessment. The Ukrainians have dug field fortifications that we can see from space to the west of Pokrovsk. There’s little reason to assess the Russians would be able to steamroll the Ukrainian positions. In fact, the main Russian tactic is dismounted infantry and moving in small groups of three to five people. The Russians largely don’t use tanks or armored personnel carriers for mechanized warfare at scale anymore because of Ukraine’s drone use, which has largely denied that tactic. They still do it occasionally, but it’s nothing like we used to see in the first two years of this war.
And really the Russian forces have reorganized themselves from very high echelons down to the smallest, most tactical units to be optimized for slow, grinding dismounted infantry positional warfare. So, when they do seize Pokrovsk, I expect they will continue a very slow form of maneuver after that.
IAM: Now let’s talk about the Tomahawks. Do you have a clear picture of what’s happening about Tomahawks, especially after we saw in the media that the Pentagon has authorized — or what exactly is happening?
Barros: So, it appears that we are back into a pitch policy debate purgatory about specific weapons systems, capabilities that we hem and haw and debate will we or will we not grant the Ukrainians. I really don’t have any unique insights to share with you other than this is sort of the same rain dance that we’ve seen about F-16s, about ATACMS [Army Tactical Missile System], about Abrams tanks, about the variety of the systems that we debated for a long time for Ukraine until we eventually decided to give them. Tomahawks is team tsunami going through that exact same process. It’s my hope that the Ukrainians do receive Tomahawks because the Tomahawks, they’re not just another weapons system. They are another weapons system, but they bring some very important capabilities which are necessary for defeating Russia’s war effort.
There is no silver bullet. There is no single weapons system that will prove to be decisive. I’ve never argued that is the case, but it can create some good effects. For example, the Russians have a singular factory deep in the Russian interior in Tatarstan that produces around 2,700 Iranian Shahed drones per month, which have been used to terrorize Ukrainian cities. Tomahawks are capable of taking that factory out.
And if doing so would, of course, give the time for the Ukrainians to build their drone interceptor program, it would alleviate the requirements for Ukraine’s larger air defense umbrella, and it would do a lot of good things.
IAM: President Trump said that one of the reasons the U.S. was not immediately giving Tomahawks to Ukraine was because it takes a long time to train people on it. What’s your understanding of that?
Barros: Any president over the last two administrations has given the notional timelines [on] how long it [takes to train on] a weapons system, those are citing the normal standard operating procedures for what a normal American operator of that system in peacetime would go through to go to school and get qualified and that sort of thing.
But what I’ll tell you is that the Ukrainian operators of any system that we’ve given them — we’ve given them truncated courses where they’re able to learn a year or two years-plus worth of material in normal peacetime conditions very quickly. Because, of course, the Ukrainians are not just going to class eight hours of the day or something. For them, this is existential. And so, they go to this, and they spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, focusing on these programs, and they take to it with a vengeance because they want to use these capabilities, and they’ve been able to incorporate and integrate these capabilities very quickly.
I think while it might take however long under normal peacetime circumstances for an American school, there’s absolutely strong reason to believe that a truncated program would be able to be done much more quickly with the Ukrainians. And that’s what we’ve done for the F-16s and other things as well.
IAM: The Russians are claiming that Ukrainians cannot use [Tomahawks] without America’s assistance, and if America goes to Ukraine, that’s a direct involvement of the United States in the conflict. So, what’s your understanding on that part?
Barros: So American intelligence support is critical for conducting these kinds of fire missions. We all know that that’s been openly discussed, but it’s really not that controversial. It really isn’t, right? Because the Chinese support the Russians with intelligence support for the Russian fire missions against Ukraine. The North Koreans enable the Russians to be able to conduct ballistic missile strikes into Ukraine, as do the Iranians with drones.
There was a great report that the Financial Times put out a couple of weeks ago where they actually talked about how the Trump administration green-lit and intensified American intelligence sharing to make the Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure more effective. And actually, the reason why the Ukrainian strategic long-range drone strike program has become more effective is due to American intelligence sharing.
And what’s really interesting is this: You can look at the Kremlin statements that were targeting the White House and the Trump administration before that Financial Times article dropped. And they were actually arguing, saying you can’t send Tomahawks because that would mean that you’d have American intelligence supporting the fire kill chain and that would be unacceptable and all that sort of stuff. Financial Times drops that report talking about how the Trump administration green-lit that after the failed Alaska summit. And then suddenly the Kremlin narrative changed immediately.
And what we have seen is the inflection rhetorically was now the Kremlin is claiming you shouldn’t give the Ukrainians the Tomahawks because that would be very detrimental to normalizing American-Russian relations. That would be detrimental to our ability to have normal talks and all that sort of thing. Because that talking point sort of lost any salience when they realized that this administration is much more willing to enable fire missions against Russia than the previous one was. So, I actually think the administration’s head is in a good place when it comes to these spurious Russian claims about red lines.
IAM: The recent threats exchange between Russia and the United States was a good confirmation of what you just said. So, after the Tomahawk conversation started in the U.S., it escalated into Putin threatening the United States with this new weapon that he was very proud of. To which then President Trump responded, “Well, we do have a very powerful submarine parked very close to Russia.” What do you make of all this? Is the rhetoric escalating, and do you see any dangers of this escalation?
Barros: Look, the bottom line up front is, when you’re thinking about nuclear escalation and these sorts of scenarios, it really boils down to, do you believe that deterrence works, or do you believe that deterrence doesn’t work? That is truly the bottom line.
Look, Putin can go out there and threaten us and amplify the supposed technical specifications of the delivery systems for these nuclear weapons. That’s really all he did is he went through the technical specs of what he claims these delivery systems can use. But at end of the day, you’re either nuking someone and inviting retaliation or you’re not.
President Trump, I think handled that very, very well. He basically said, “Hey, we have nukes too.” And I’m prepared to argue that I think that the same deterrence logic and theories behind mutually assured destruction that kept the U.S. safe throughout decades of even worse tensions during the Cold War, that fundamental logic is still valid today. And it binds and constrains us.
So, while I can never say that there is zero chance that escalation of that nature is not categorically impossible, I think the risk is very, very low. And the Russians, frankly, they weaponize our fear of that scenario in order to control our actions.
IAM: The last time we spoke a few months ago, we talked about the possibility of a larger scale or wider war stemming from the war in Ukraine. Are you still concerned about that? Has anything changed because we’re seeing this transformation of President Trump’s disposition toward Ukraine?
Barros: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think this has anything to do with how Trump has been responding to Ukraine, but the Russians have unilaterally escalated and accelerated their condition setting for a larger war in Europe… Starting in September this year, the Russians began what we at ISW assess is phase zero of Russia’s preparations for setting the conditions for war against Europe. Phase zero, that being the political and psychological condition setting. Specifically, what’s happened over the last almost two months now is, the Russians have been increasingly conducting airspace violations of NATO and European Union member states, most notably in September … over Poland, but then they’ve also been setting balloons from Belarus into Vilnius, manned aircraft flights into other airspace of NATO countries, drone reconnaissance missions over military bases in Denmark and Belgium, more cases of paid saboteurs conducting sabotage in various different European countries against military infrastructure.
Look, this is not an accident. This is actually organized, cohered, cogent activity that is subordinate to a larger operational effort, which is, boil the frog. Make it so that NATO member states become normalized to MiG aircraft violating Baltic airspace so that one day, when the Kremlin decides that they have sufficiently normalized that activity, they can actually have established a running rule of the road, which is, we don’t shoot down Russian aircraft when they enter our airspace. And then they will have an advantage for whenever they decide to begin the next wave of aggression.
This is a brand-new pattern. It’s very concerning, and we assess that Putin has not yet made the decision to conduct a war, but he is preparing for one. And I think we have to be prepared to deter and, if necessary, defeat a conventional Russian military threat against NATO’s eastern flank no later than 12 months after the war in Ukraine ends.
IAM: With all that in mind, do you see ceasefire coming up? Again, when we last spoke, you were thinking that maybe even at the end of this year, ceasefire was not possible. What do you think about the ceasefire next year now?
Barros: My forecast for 2026 is no ceasefire. I would be astonished if that were the case, but it’s quite clear that the Russian demands are all the same. They have not changed. In fact, Russian senior officials have gone in their own voice and said their demands are maximalist. So, when the duck says that they’re a duck and their demands are those of the duck, then you know that’s to be true.
This administration, with the Trump administration, they’ve listened to the Russian demands. And the Trump administration actually — they’ve not said this explicitly — but we know this in their actions: The Russian demands are not within the realm of the possibility for what this administration will accept. So, we are likely looking at longer fighting.
And it was a very interesting sign about a week or two ago, after President Trump sanctioned [major Russian oil companies] Rosneft and Lukoil for the first time, that he responded and said, “Well, Vladimir might not think that these sanctions are a big deal. Let’s see how he feels in six months.”
And that was very important, I think, because this was the first time that the president has discussed the timeline for policy and shaping the outcome for the end of the war in anything other than “we’re going to get this done as soon as possible. We’re very close to getting this done. It’ll be done within a month of my inauguration” sort of thing. He’s always alluded to the war being very close to being solved or at least that being the goal. And now he’s talking about “well, we’ll let them mature in the situation there, and we’ll see how they’re doing in six months.” And that’s a significant change. And it’s a good thing because we actually do have an upper hand. And if we allow the Russians to mature and the problems that they’ve put themselves into and how to resource this extremely costly war, that actually helps us get to an end that Putin would rather not see.
