George Barros

the Russians have been very clear that they're actually not really interested in negotiating.

They're not interested in making any kinds of concessions.

And Putin is actually, I think, insisting that he's going to seize all of this terrain.

But look, as we look at a 2026, I'd like to see you try.

Because the terrain that the Russians demand, it's the most heavily fortified and guarded terrain.

It's terrain the Russians have been trying to take for 10 years since 2014.

And

Look, we look at the rate of advance, we look at the terrain analysis, it seems like it's going to take the Russians under multiple conditions two to three more years to take this terrain in the east, in Donbass.

And I don't know that the Russian military actually has...

two to three years worth of steam left to go on.

I mean, the one thing that no one's been paying attention to that has been very consequential in 2025 is just how the compounding effects of the war have been affecting Russia.

And I don't want to go out there and say like, oh, Russia's on the edge of economic collapse.

I think that's been really hyperbolic, but there are real mounting costs.

The Russians this year had to start selling their bull reserves for the first time.

The Russian inflation rate, as the Treasury assesses it, is around 20%.

The Russians just started importing Indian migrants from India to start offsetting the labor shortage.

Putin gave a speech the other day saying, oh, Russia's labor unemployment rate is so great, it's 2% or 2 point something percent.

That's actually a bad thing.

When you have a labor pool that's that small and that stretched.

So I'd like to see the Russians try to continue this.