Ukraine's ceasefire plan analysed
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Toby Gillis, joined today by Laura Cook. Teams from Ukraine and the US have once again been locked in talks over a route to peace in the war with Russia.

On Monday night, before they began, Ukraine launched a huge drone attack on Moscow. They called it the largest in history. It was designed to remind the Kremlin of the threat they still pose and push them towards Vladimir Zelensky's idea for an initial land and sea ceasefire. That was described before the talks by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as having merit.

but it would leave the ground war ongoing. So can this double-edged ceasefire really come to be? Our guest today is Justin Bronk, Senior Research Fellow for Air Power in the Military Sciences team at the Royal United Services Institute. Justin, we'll do each element separately and start with the air, shall we? Was this Moscow attack on Monday night enough to persuade us that Russia hasn't got superiority in this area?

The current situation in Ukraine, as has been the case, broadly speaking, for the three and a half years of the full scale conflict, is that the air battle in the way that we in the West would look at a military campaign has not been won by either side, which de facto is a victory for Ukraine in that they have managed to hold

a significantly numerically and technically superior Russian air force, essentially at bay on the Russian sides of the lines. So the primary use of airstrikes, as people might call them, or long range precision strikes, as kind of boring military doctrinaires would say, has been the use of cruise missiles and increasing numbers of one way attack UAVs.

to attack essentially fixed targets, both military infrastructure and things like power. This sort of long-range strike campaign, historically, it's never been decisive in any war. It's quite an inefficient use of air power. It's not what you would do if you could establish air superiority because long-range munitions like cruise missiles, ballistic missiles in particular, are extremely expensive.

But it's certainly true to say that in those long-range strike campaigns, Russia has had an overwhelming firepower advantage compared to Ukraine. Over the past 18 months, Ukraine has significantly stepped up. And in terms of strikes against air bases, for example, the Ukrainians have actually had a lot of success in forcing the Russians to station far fewer fast jets in the airfields relatively close to Ukraine, so within several hundred kilometres.

And what that has done is significantly reduce, but not eliminate, the Russian ability to lob huge numbers of glide bombs, which has been a huge issue for Ukraine's troops on the front line over the last year and a half. So the long range strike campaign, it's by no means one sided.

But certainly Russia has a significantly greater strike weight, particularly in terms of cruise and ballistic missile production. The Ukrainians clearly trying to redress that balance, trying to cause loss and damage on the Russian side in order to increase the attractiveness or the perceived benefit, at least for the Russians, were they to accept some sort of aerial ceasefire.

Of course, over the last week, Ukraine has had no US intelligence. How has that impacted their air capability? And assuming they don't get it back, hasn't it killed off this ceasefire idea anyway?

I wouldn't say it's been killed off. I mean, for a start, a lot of the targets that Ukraine has been holding at risk with these one-way attack UAV waves are visible on Google Maps. You know, the big oil and gas infrastructure, they're not movable. They show up on Google Earth, let alone more higher resolution, more rapidly refreshed commercial satellite services.

There will be elements of, you know, mission planning and things that are significantly more difficult without access to certain US intelligence products. But, you know, the details of those are obviously probably too sensitive to talk about.

Suffice it to say that there'll probably be a reduction in efficiency, but it doesn't stop Ukraine from conducting these operations. The biggest impact of the cessation of US intelligence cooperation in various areas on the long-range strike campaign so far has been in the

reduction in efficiency for Ukrainian air defences, because advanced early warning where intelligence might have been available for the fact that strikes were being prepared, often deep inside Russia, beyond the range necessarily of Ukrainian national sensors, that kind of early warning and enablement of planning and pre-positioning of air defences will be significantly more difficult without US intelligence provision. And so

Again, because long range strike campaigns are almost never decisive, it's not going to lose Ukraine the war. What it will do is result in significantly larger numbers of Ukrainians being killed by Russian strikes. Fairly blunt truth of it. OK, so in brief, Justin, take the air element of this ceasefire idea. Who would it benefit if it were to happen in isolation?

Well, if you were to see an arrangement agreed where both sides stopped firing long range munitions, cruise ballistic missiles, UAVs and lobbying glide bombs, which, again, both sides also do, that would probably overall be of significant benefit to Ukraine, albeit it would make some aspects of Russian ground operations significantly easier. The big question, of course, for the Ukrainians would be, how is this being policed?

Because, of course, if the current approach of the US administration to pile pressure on the Ukrainian side without doing so on the Russian side were followed, the fear would be that Ukraine's ability to disrupt Russian attack planning and impose cost on Russia to try and force them to actually think about ending the war would be significantly curtailed, while the Russians might just continue to do a lot of particularly things like live bombing and just deny it.

Even though it's not plausible denial, what you've seen previously from Russian ceasefire agreements is very large numbers of ceasefire violations on the Russian side. OK, Justin, to the sea element now. And obviously, Ukraine's barely had a navy since Crimea was invaded, yet it's continually delivered huge damage on Russia's. How?

Yeah, I mean, in a sort of pithy summary, it's a combination of a lot of Ukrainian ingenuity in terms of leveraging the tools they have and incredible Russian incompetence in the naval arena. I mean, everything...

Everything from tactical operations to mission planning to patrol routes to damage control when they did get hit. The sinking of the Moskva being the most obvious example of where, yes, a great Ukrainian success, but equally that ship should never have sunk from that single impact. That was a catastrophic failure of damage control. It is worth, of course, putting some caveats on the Ukrainian success. So, for example, the uncrewed surface vehicles with explosives on them have failed.

had significant successes against a range of Russian ships, but they haven't sunk a single defended major surface combatant. So, you know, a destroyer or something or a frigate like that. They've sunk, you know, a range of smaller vessels plus landing ships, essentially, which have some defenses, but are not crewed and equipped with sensors the way that are in close-in weapon systems the way a warship would be. So, yeah,

Sometimes I think there's a little bit too much reading across of what Ukraine has been able to accomplish against the Black Sea Fleet to sort of suggest that, you know, blue water navies are obsolete in an era of these kind of capabilities. The Russians have, as ever, behind the scenes adapted pretty quickly and relatively capably to a lot of the innovative things that Ukraine has been doing.

On the basis of what you've said then, that feels like another win for Ukraine if a cessation of hostilities in the Black Sea came about. If you add that to the sense Ukraine wins with no air fight, why does Russia ever come to the table and why did Marco Rubio suggest the idea has merit? Yeah, I mean...

I think it's quite a good way of forcing a discussion in a US administration that doesn't seem particularly keen to engage with elements of reality that are inconvenient for the narrative they've decided to go with. By proposing things that are unequivocally ceasefires, you know, in the air and the sea is the easiest things, easiest low hanging fruit for de-escalating parts of the conflict.

Even though in aggregate, it would probably be more beneficial to Ukraine, as indeed a ceasefire would be provided it was durable and enforceable, which the Ukrainians have said all along. They're perfectly happy to get peace. They want peace. It's just it needs to be a peace that would actually last and enable them to stay independent as a sovereign country. It's interesting.

to see how the Russians react to this, because it probably will force them to basically say we're not interested. And if it doesn't, if the Russians are pushed down this route, then that would be a success from the US approach and from the way that the Ukrainians have engaged with it, albeit a relatively limited one. It is worth again restating that the vast majority of casualties on both sides are happening in the land domain. And that's where Ukraine is most under pressure.

OK, Justin Bronk, RUSI Senior Research Fellow in the Military Sciences team. Thank you.

Now, whether this ceasefire occurs or not, Europe continues to scramble to defend Ukraine's borders in the future. Last Thursday's episode, the 6th of March, security analyst Philip Ingram joined us to discuss if the continent really does have the power to defend against Russia. Do go back and listen to that. But for now, thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. We'll see you tomorrow.

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