229. How Assad's fall reshapes the Ukraine conflict.
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Learn more at phrma.org/ipworkswonders. Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David.

Shockwaves following the fall of Bashar al-Assad are still reverberating and will do for some time, we reckon. We'll be looking at the way this profoundly important event has reshaped the Ukraine conflict and the global order generally. We'll also be asking whether this brings the prospect of peace closer or pushes it further away. And we'll be looking at the battlefield and the future of the Ukraine.

I'm trying to get a feel for how much trouble Ukraine might be in as Putin's forces move ever closer to the strategically important Donetsk city of Pokrovsk. But first of all, Saul, how much damage do you think the overthrow of Assad has done to Putin?

Well, it would be easy to underestimate it, but I think that would be a mistake. I think it has done a lot of damage. It's, you know, the really obvious points are it's overturned this narrative that Putin's been pushing a long time, that Russia is going to become a world power under his leadership. It weakens his relationship and his standing.

with his fellow authoritarian leaders in Iran, North Korea, and China. And it really leaves him in the end and now entirely dependent on achieving a victory in inverted commas in Ukraine to shore up his rule. Now, we're probably going to talk a little bit later on in the podcast about the threat that his economy is under, certainly when we get to questions. But there was an interesting piece

addressing just that in the Daily Telegraph this week by Ambrose Evans Pritchard. But there was an

extra bit where he talks about the effect of Syria and he writes Putin's strategic victory in Ukraine was far from inevitable a fortnight ago and it is less inevitable now after the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards and then he quotes Tim Ash a regional expert and a Chatham House fellow who said the limits of Russian military power have been revealed as a result of this the

This event, of course, is of great significance for more than just Ukraine, though, isn't it, Patrick? It truly is a hinge moment for global power politics. Yeah, I mean, this has been a massive humiliation for Iran as well as Russia, remember, and its own imperial ambitions, which mirrored Russia's in some ways, projecting its power via proxies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, of course, Syria, Gaza, Syria,

Iraq, and Yemen. Well, that dream is now in ruins, isn't it? And so what they're really concentrating on is circling the wagons to try and protect the regime. If they're looking at those images of Damascus and Shivers must be running down the Mullahs' spines, it could be them next. This is a fear, of course, that haunts all autocratic countries.

setups. And it's spreading across that axis of autocrats, what Roger Boyce, who we often quote from the Times, great savant of the Times, calls the cranks as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. That axis is pretty feeble looking at the moment, isn't it? So in Iran's case, they're actually potentially facing the end of their rule. And their response to that

It seems there's a lot of evidence they're accelerating their nuclear weapons program. Now, I think that may be a pretty desperate reaction because any way you look at it with Trump in the White House, if they do forge ahead with trying to get a nuke as quickly as possible, then it's only going to bring closer the day of retribution when Israel gets the green light from the U.S. to finish off the job of emasculating

the theocracy in Tehran with a concentrated assault on their nuclear weapons development sites. And they'll probably get a lot of US assistance to carry out that mission. But you've got to look for the positives in all this. And there are lots of them, I say. I've mentioned before that, you know, I think it's a great opportunity for the West to move in a positive fashion in the reconstruction of Syria, not just physically, but also to try and sort of shore up

democratic institutions or at least stable institutions in the aftermath, but also for the Arab surrounding countries. So, you know, Syria has been a very malign influence on neighboring Lebanon. This may be a breathing space for Lebanon to try and sort of reconstruct some kind of civil society, some sort of political structures, which aren't completely at the mercy of big brother Syria next door.

which aren't exploited by Israel to the south. But to get back to Ukraine, Saul, how do you see these huge seismic changes affecting peace moves, those peace moves that have been in the air, in the wind for years?

couple of months now, haven't they? Well, it's hard to see if there's a direct link between what's going on in Syria and the, you know, the peace moves for Ukraine. But relations between Zelensky and Trump, which at one stage, you know, earlier this year were pretty frosty. It was quite clear that Zelensky was trying to talk to Trump, but he was finding it very difficult to get any response from the Trump camp at that point. Well, those relations are

seem to have taken a significant turn for the better. I mean, and we've only got to have a look at the warm encounter, the pretty warm encounter between the two of them at the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at the weekend. It was, of course, President Emmanuel Macron who took the diplomatic initiative by inviting both of them to a trilateral meeting at the Elysee in the afternoon before the main ceremony. Zelensky emerged from that saying all the right things

He wrote on X, I reiterate my gratitude to President Macron for organizing it, as well as my deep gratitude to President Trump for his strong resolve to bring this war to a fair end. We know that America has the capacity to accomplish remarkable things, things that others have not been able to achieve. I mean, there's double speak there, first of all, Patrick, because that's really an underhand comment aimed at President Biden. And the fact that, you know, for the last couple of years, they haven't really backed

Ukraine in the way that they should have done. But it's also a sign of optimism, I think, that maybe Trump might be the man to make a breakthrough. Well, of course, the danger is Trump will make a breakthrough, but will leave Ukraine with something that is in effect a defeat. Zelensky is trying to position himself so that he's the guy who looks like he's prepared to do a fair deal, whereas Putin is not. Yeah, and I think that's absolutely right. I mean, Zelensky is brilliant at pushing all the right buttons, isn't he, when he

He comes up against the people with the real power. Of course, Trump is going to be that man in a couple of weeks' time. And at the same time, he's done a very good job of placing Putin into the role of the intransigent one. You know, Trump's desperate for a deal. He states a lot on this. And it's now Putin who isn't playing ball. He's the one who's being made to look as if he isn't remotely interested in peace, which is interesting.

The reverse of the way things looked around the time that Trump won the election. Of course, we haven't the faintest idea how this is going to play out at this point. But the language that Trump's using is a little bit more nuanced, I would say, though still hard to interpret. So commenting on the Syria situation at the weekend, he was tying it into Ukraine, saying that Putin had lost all interest in Syria after funneling resources into the Ukraine conflict.

Instead, quoting him here, there was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. He says they lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started and could go on forever. Well, I think he's being underestimating the numbers there, probably closer to a million now. And he went on to say Russia was now in a weakened state.

And that it'd be very, I think, significant. He says, Ukrainian President Zelensky would, quote, like to make a deal and stop the madness. So there you have it. You know, he's saying that it's,

Zelensky has stepped up to the plate, but we're now waiting for you, Vladimir, as he calls him. He says, I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting. Well, that puts the ball in Moscow's court, doesn't it? And at the same time, interestingly, opens the door to some sort of Chinese involvement. So the pressure is now on Putin to make some

conciliatory gesture. And just before I finish on this point, I was very struck, I don't know if you saw this or not, with the very negative comments that are coming out of the unofficial Russian media about what's happened in Syria, whereas the official media is always saying, well, it wasn't a big deal anyway. We've got to concentrate on Ukraine. That's where our real interests lie. A complete contradiction of the narrative that they've been spinning

for the last sort of 10 years, roughly, you've now got people, quite senior people, not just mill bloggers, coming out and saying, this is a disaster for our international standing and saying that this is basically because we were preoccupied with Ukraine and we couldn't properly...

prop up our ally, and so on and so forth. I mean, one commentator says, this is a guy who's actually the head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a proper official think tank in Russia. He says, lessons of intervention in the Syrian war are obvious. The first and most important one lies on the surface, demonstrating the great limitations of Russia's pretensions to be a great power and its interventionist policy abroad. This is a guy called Ruslan Pukhov.

So he goes on, Moscow doesn't have sufficient military strength, resources, influence or authority for effective interventions by force outside the former Soviet Union. That's complete nonsense.

you know, challenge to the official stance of Putin in the last 10 years or more. So, yeah, I mean, those are rumblings from below. It's pretty rare for people to speak out in this way, particularly someone who's a sort of, you know, public figure, member of the establishment, essentially. So, yeah, what does that mean? Is it just a

Is he just being allowed to let off steam or is that an indication of something more serious below the surface? Yeah, I mean, I think it might well be. And interesting enough, I mentioned the article by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, which is headlined, by the way, Putin's regime may be closer to a Soviet collapse than we think. And he quotes a number of senior people in positions of sort of economic authority in Russia, banks and various other organizations who

who are, you know, making these dire warnings. So clearly people who you would have thought would be on the inside of the regime or who are on the inside of the regime actually beginning to get very concerned. Quick point on casualties. You mentioned Trump talking about 600,000 Russian casualties. He also mentioned 400,000 Ukrainian casualties.

Now, that may have just been an estimate from him, but immediately afterwards, or at least in response, Zelensky himself then admitted there had been 43,000 Ukrainians killed. This is the first time we've had a specific figure of dead from the presidential office, and also a total number of 400,000 casualties. So he's basically confirmed what Trump mentioned. And it's the first time we've got a real sense of the

damage, frankly, done to the Ukrainian manpower, given that it's a much smaller country than Russia. They are losing more men proportionately to their size. Now, you might not be particularly surprised about that, but it is quite significant, isn't it? And if we consider that the events on the battlefield have been going very much against Ukraine's way recently, it all comes into much sharper relief.

In particular, the attempt to take Pokrovsk by the Russians, which has really been going on all year. And I think I mentioned last week or the week before, it's pretty remarkable that they haven't taken it yet. So an incredible kind of defense story, a bit like Bakhmut in 2022 and early 2023. But it does seem now that the Russians are closing in from three directions. There are shortages on the Ukrainian side of manpower.

Biden's administration has recently said, you know, why aren't you recruiting people from a younger age category all the way down to 18? Zelensky's come back with quite a sharp response, which is, you know, it's not manpower. That's the problem. It's kit. We need more of it. So that's clearly a kind of another slap against the Biden administration. But it is worrying that things aren't going well in the Donetsk region more generally. Yeah, and it's not actually looking much better on the Kursk

front, the Kursk incursion area. Is it, I mean, since that began in August, 40% of the territory that was taken then has been clawed back by the Russians. And I was very struck by a BBC report, which appeared about a week ago, which

And the reporter had been, Paul Adams, I think it was, had been talking to, by social media or picking up social media reports being sent back, you know, messages and texts and so forth to Ukraine, to family and friends in Ukraine.

and he wrote, the tone is dark, even angry. The situation, and this is some quotes, the situation is getting worse every day. We don't see the goal. Our land is not here. We're fighting on foreign territory, not defending our own soil. He went on that after four months after they've actually seemed to have had a sort of lightning success, the text messages are painting a very dismal picture of a battle that they don't really understand and they fear they may well be

And he quotes various people. They're not using their real names, obviously. And they talk about dire weather conditions, chronic lack of sleep caused by Russia's constant bombardments, which includes, of course, the use of these massive 3,000-kilogram glide bombs. And they're also pretty much in retreat on all fronts. A guy called Pavlo wrote at the end of last month, this trend will continue. It's only a matter of time before

He went on to talk about the immense fatigue, the lack of rotation. That's something we hear a lot about, isn't it? The fact that people are kept in the front for far too long. And when they do get fresh troops coming in, they're made up largely of middle-aged men who've fought directly from other fronts. And they've had very little or no time to get a rest in between. And the picture seems to be all right, the picture that they're

They're seeing from their dugouts and their trenches is that they're being told their orders are to hang on to this small sliver of Russian territory until Trump arrives in the White House with new policies at the end of January. And Pavlov finishes by saying the main task facing us is to hold the maximum territory until Trump's inauguration day.

and the start of negotiations in order to exchange it for something later. No one knows what. Well, there you have a pretty grim picture. They're just hanging on in there. Well, we're going to be better flag this up now. We're going to be in Ukraine when Trump takes over on January the 20th. It's obviously going to be a huge moment. So we wanted to be there when it happens. We're heading off in good time to be on the spot for 20th of January.

So make sure you keep listening as we approach what could be the decisive days that will decide not just Ukraine's fate, but will also shape the direction of our world, for good or for bad. Okay, that's it for this half. Do join us after the break when we'll be answering listeners' questions.

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Hey, it's me, the Quenchies. I'm that late afternoon craving you just can't shake. Wait, what's that? Welch's Grape-Aid? No! Made with real fruit and no added sugar, nothing answers the call of the Quenchies like Grape-Aid. Got the Quenchies? Grab a Grape-Aid in your juice aisle.

Welcome back. Before we start on listeners' questions, I just want to read out quite a heartwarming story we got from former Captain David Dickinson, who listeners may remember wrote in some time ago telling us about how he found the ID card of a fallen British soldier in the Mount Tumbledown area of the Falklands. Now, young Second Lieutenant David Dickinson, as he then was, was posted there just after the conflict.

And while doing a bit of a battlefield tour around the Tumbledown area, he came across a very withered and worn and faded MOD-90 identity card. Looking closely, he saw that it belonged to a certain guardsman, James Reynolds. So he put the ID card in a safe place, forgot all about it, then thought he'd lost it. And many, many years later, 39 to be precise, he was moving house when he came across it again.

Now, he then did a bit of research on the identity of Guardsman Reynolds and found him being killed in action on the last day of the war, 14th of June, 1982, and posthumously been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the DCM. The citation shows that he was a very brave man indeed. It reads, on the night of 13th, 14th of June, 1982, on the island of East Falkland, the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards attacked well-entrenched enemy

enemy positions on the craggy ridge feature of Tumbledown Mountain, seven kilometers to the west of Port Stanley. During the attack, Guardsman Reynolds' platoon came under fire from a group of enemy snipers. His platoon sergeant was killed instantly. A confused situation developed and his section became separated. Guardsman Reynolds immediately took command. Having located the enemy snipers, he silenced several of them himself. That done and showing a complete disarray

Disregard for his own safety, he moved forward to render first aid to a wounded comrade. He himself was wounded in the hand by enemy sniper fire, but continued to aid his colleague. Whilst doing so, he was killed by enemy snipers.

water fun. Tell the listeners what happened next, Sorks. It's a really fascinating and, as I say, rather kind of nice story. Yeah, and we should add, Patrick, DCM, I mean, it's second only to the VC, isn't it? A couple of VCs were one, of course, in the Falklands, famously, but...

This is the next in rank in terms of the gallantry shown by a soldier. It's extraordinary action, really, isn't it? And it does, I suppose, explain a little bit why the ID card was lost because, of course, Reynolds was killed and his body would have been recovered and they probably...

knocked it loose either then or during the action of him dying. But in any case, after David Dickinson found the ID card after nearly 40 years, he wondered what to do with it. He remembered that the Scots Guard CO at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Scott, had been interviewed by Patrick, who he discovered was a war correspondent and historian from our podcast.

Patrick, as he writes, was reporting on the Falklands in 1982 and with Saul. They produced a brilliant 40th anniversary series of the Falklands War. So with some trepidation, I emailed Patrick in the hope that he would be able to reach the now Major General Scott to see if the ID card could be returned to the regiment. Patrick, you pick it up because obviously this came to you next. What happened? Yeah, well, I know Mike Scott. He's a great guy and I knew he'd be fascinated by this. I got in touch with him.

And he said, well, this is, you know, very serendipitous because they were just about to unveil a bridge of war, a war memorial. And so he got in touch with David and,

got hold of the card and I think it was on the 18th of August that Garsman Reynolds DCM, his name was added to the Bridge of Weir War Memorial in a formal and fitting ceremony and later on the ID card was placed with Garsman Reynolds' medals, Jim Reynolds he was called,

His DCM citation in a photo at the regimental headquarters in Wellington Barracks in London, where his memory, says David, is honored and cherished quite rightly. And he finishes by saying, finally, for me, I see it as a journey completed with a card being returned to perhaps where Guardsman Reynolds would have wanted it to be completed.

with his adopted family, the Scots Guards. I should just say here that Jim Reynolds was an orphan, and it seems that he was a much appreciated and much liked member

of the regiment. So, you know, a rather touching story and one with a nice ending. Yeah, that's very good to hear. Okay, we're moving on to questions. Lukasz in Krakow, Poland writes to say, I listened to your last podcast with great interest, but regrettably, I'm not sharing your optimistic view about Russia's economy going under anytime soon. It'll be interesting whether Lukasz knows something we don't. He writes, I think we could use North Korea and Iran as a benchmark for how

effective Western sanctions can be. They will certainly make living harder for ordinary citizens. However, even though both those countries are pretty much cut off from markets of the developed world, they are still able to create a headache for the West. Now, consider the fact that Russia has a far larger population, developed industrial base and significant natural resources.

On top of that, even if the combination of high interest rates, lack of labour force and inflation caught up with Putin, the bleak period of 1990s is still in the living memory of many Russians and it taught them to be self-reliant.

with even the most basic things such as growing their own vegetables he also adds i'm polish so it's only natural that i wish all the worst for russia well i hope he means the russian regime rather than russians more generally but in any case he adds but ultimately it's for their own good every society has a breaking point and we should push harder to help them reach it only then maybe and that is a big maybe something good will come out of it

Well, I mentioned earlier, Patrick, didn't I, this piece by Ambrose Evans Pritchard and the fact that he quoted a number of significant people within the Russian regime. Just a couple of paragraphs that Evans Pritchard himself has written. Russia's overheated military Keynesian war economy looks much like the dysfunctional German war economy of late 1917, which had run out of skilled manpower and was hold below the waterline after three years of Allied blockade.

as the logistical failures of the Ludendorff offensive would later reveal. I'll come on to those quotes in a second, Patrick, but what do you think about that historical parallel? It's quite a good one, isn't it? It is a good one, yeah, it is a good one. And as we've said before, you know, if you just look at it as a sort of academic exercise,

Russia is on the verge of economic collapse, isn't it? Now, I think Lucas's point is quite well made that, yeah, well, they still got quite a lot of resilience just in the nature of the Russian character. He says that, uh,

He said, I've been to that country a number of times, and I didn't go to Moscow either, i.e. without the provinces. He says, there's something very dark about them, and they will let you look into their soul only after a few bottles of vodka. They feel more relaxed to tell you frankly what they really think. Well, that's what we want to hear, isn't it? But I think, yeah, I mean, even the Russians...

fabled ability to soak up punishment, even revel in it, has its limits. So I think we're about to see them. But, you know, the end, I think everyone does agree that when the end comes, we won't get much warning of it. It'll be sudden for

very dramatic, and possibly very bloody. Yeah, just to quote a couple of people, as I mentioned in the Ambrose Evans Pritchard article. I mean, first of all, he mentions Anton Babushin from Riddle Russia, who says that Donald Trump imposed 40 rounds of sanctions on Russia, belying his bonhomie, this is, of course, in his first term, belying his bonhomie with Putin before the cameras. He has since warned that Putin will not get all of the four annexed but unconquered oblasts

of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. The Kremlin had banked on a contested election outcome in the US, followed by months of disarray that would discredit US democracy across the world. The polite interregnum has been a cruel disappointment.

Going on to some of the points about the economy, Babushin says that if Putin drags his feet, the US will up the military ante and carpet bomb, as he puts it, the Russian economy. That economy held up well for two years, but this third year has become harder. The central bank has raised interest rates.

to 21% to choke off an inflation spiral. The economy cannot exist like this for long. It's a colossal challenge for business and banks, said German Greft, Spare Bank's chief executive. That's a major Russian bank. Sergei Chemetsov, head of the defense giant Rostec, said the monetary squeeze was becoming dangerous. If we continue like this, most companies will essentially go bankrupt. At rates of more than 20%, I don't know of a single business that can make a profit

not even an arms trader. So pretty strong stuff there, Patrick. He goes on to quote other senior people in Russia at the moment. And clearly, as I said before, they're pretty worried. Yeah. So it's all part of that same chorus, isn't it? That mounting chorus of people in responsible positions.

raising their voices, sticking their heads above the parapet, which we speculated before. This may be just like the regime letting them blow off steam, but it sounds to me like it's a bit more significant than that. Just going on to a specific question here from Luke in Scotland. So we've gone from Lucas to Luke. Thanks for a super podcast.

He says, I have a question regarding what's going on with the use of Western-supplied missiles. Now, this is something that's probably occurred to you as well. So, since permission was granted for Ukraine to fire into Russia, I haven't heard of any recent updates of strikes. Has the West balked in the face of the latest Russian threats, i.e. nuclear threats, and are they possibly restraining the Ukrainians, or is it simply that supplies are running short and every strike is...

has to be calculated in its usefulness. Well, my thoughts, just for what they're worth, is the latter, that there's not that many of them. No one knows how many there are, of course. And of course, there haven't been any reports, have there, sort of, of any strikes since that November 21st

very effective storm shadow missile strike on a command center in Kursk in this bunker in Marino, which apparently killed dozens of Russian soldiers, according to some reports in general, as well as several North Korean military personnel.

Well, all we know is that Britain only had about 600 workable storm shadows, I think, when it was announced back in May last year, or I think a bit earlier than that, that they first began to arrive in May last year. And there is speculation that it's 100 plus, maybe 200.

France is very tight-lipped. They've sent their scalps as well, although all we know is that at least 20 were delivered in the first tranche. But, you know, they've got to be used very sparingly, haven't they? They were used at least a dozen times before the

the November attack in Kursk. So my feeling is they're only going to use them when they really know, they're pretty confident they're going to do maximum damage. Yeah, I think something else might be going on here, actually, Patrick, fitting in with our points about negotiations, the relatively warm exchange of words between

Zelensky and Trump, and that is that the Americans are advising the Ukrainians to keep a low profile, basically. Keep your heads down. Don't do anything to provoke the Russians unnecessarily. And that's going to put you in a reasonably strong position when we begin negotiations. It would fit with this idea, you know, the line that's coming out of the Trump administration that, you know, there's absolute madness on both sides. This needs to stop.

And clearly, I think from some certainly from some people in the Trump camp, the use of American weapons or Western weapons more generally into Russia was a bit of a provocation. So I suspect this might be it might be for the reasons you say, Patrick, but it might also be because he said, look, just keep a low profile for the moment.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I'm glad to be sore with that. I think that's a pretty shrewd reading of the situation. Got another one from James. He says he's a Brit residing slash hiding in the French Turinese, which are probably pretty wintry by this time of year. He says, hi, both. I've been listening since pretty much the beginning. Good for you. And I've decided that when I'm making my Christmas donations this year, I'd like to send help to

to the Ukrainians, a small drop in the ocean, but it makes me feel better. And that, of course, is the whole point, that exclamation mark. Yeah, that's a rather modest way of putting it. Good for you, James. So he says, where do I send it? Maybe you could take a minute or two to point out anyone listening who might be of the same Ebenezer Scrooge mind as me and give us what you think are the most effective places to send it.

donate. What's your favourite Ukrainian charity, Saul? Well, there are lots, aren't there, Patrick? I mean, the official website of Ukraine, Donate to Ukraine's Defenders, is an obvious one. You could also go to Support Red Cross in Ukraine. That's donate.redcross.org.uk. You know, a quick internet search is going to find a lot of places where you can, but make sure it's an official website

There are a few charlatans out there who are trying to get their hands on people's money. They think it's going to go to the right place. But yeah, I mean, obvious places like the British Red Cross and the official Ukraine donation website would be the places I would have thought. Yeah, I'd like to put a word in, James, for my favourite place.

charity, which is a very simple operation delivering medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. And it's run by a guy called Julian Evans, who you may have heard the interview I did with him a couple of weeks back. Really, really fascinating guy. He's written a brilliant book called Undefeatable Odessa in Love and War. Now, he's spent many, many years in Ukraine. He was married to a Ukrainian

And he's set up, and he's very engaged and he's very committed to the place. And he's set up with a Polish journalist called Anna Husarska, who I also happen to know. And it's called Assist Ukraine. And its website is www.assist-ukraine.org. And it says on the website, very simply, that it's direct aid, no overhead, proven delivery. So very, the whole enterprise is, it's

It's small, but it's effective and it's heartfelt. It's the best kind of sort of charity, no big bureaucracy, no BS about a broader mission. It's just simply doing the simple things to help the people at the front with humanitarian aid and with medical aid particularly.

And Julian has said to me that he's very happy for his email address to go out. And that's julianevansatblueyonder.co.uk. julianevansatblueyonder.co.uk.

and it's Assist Ukraine. Look at the website. It's a good, simple website that tells you everything you need to know. That's my Christmas charity. I'm going to be making a donation, and anyone else who's listening, I think that's a very good, if you're thinking of making a charitable gift at Christmas, that is a pretty good place to send your money.

Okay, really a comment, an email from Austin in the Cotswolds. I listened to your thoughts on reporting about Russia's use of the Oreshnik missile on the 21st of November. Much has been said in the wider media about Putin using this strike as a warning to the West. However, the similarities of its use and those by Hitler, maybe so-called wonder weapons, V1, V2 and Me262, that was the jet fighter amongst others, makes me suspect that the messaging was actually aimed at his own domestic audience.

not really the West. He's desperate for a good news story and the strike provides it. It's all about maintaining the facade of strength and keeping the electorate on side. Keep up the great reporting and especially the interviews with those in country. Thanks, Austin. I think he's got a point there, hasn't he, Patrick? It's as much about the domestic audience as it is about the international one.

Yeah, but it is good to think back to the actual role of those V-weapons, the V-1 and the V-2, you know, the flying bomb and the gigantic rockets. They were classed as V-weapons, which stands for Vergeltungswaffe, revenge, retaliation weapons, but they were also seen as wonder weapons. And it's amazing how many diaries you read, you've probably seen this sort as well, from senior officers who actually believed in these things. They thought that the

The war, even though it was going terribly badly at that point, was suddenly going to do a U-turn and Germany would emerge victorious because of these, you know, they never quite said what they were meant to do, but anyone looking at them realistically would

would see that these were not going to turn the tide of military events and that all they were going to do was kill some civilians in Britain and possibly the hope was that that would turn into some sort of political anti-war movement would underseed the government. It showed how desperate the thinking was at that point if there were any real serious belief was

Putting that, so an interesting point. Okay, Petter from Norway makes the point that he's a friend who, though he sympathizes with Ukraine, he's also quite open to the Russian narrative of NATO expansion as a reason for the war. Now, Petter, you know, has been arguing with this guy about this. And his friend says, well, you know, you've relied, or at least the West relies heavily on reporting from the ISW, but are they a reasonable source themselves? Yes.

To me, they seem to be reasonable, reliable on facts, says Petter, but they might curate their information to fit certain agendas. Any thoughts on ISW as a source, he asked Patrick. To me, they seem to be reliable on facts, but they might curate their information to fit certain agendas. Yeah, well, there is always that danger. If anyone looks at their reporting, it's very factual. It's always quoting the sources. They've got...

pretty good researchers. And so everything is sort of pinned to a source that you can believe or disbelieve as you wish. But certainly from the left or from left-leaning media, there's been a certain amount of criticism or it's not so much criticism, it's sort of observation saying that they come from that sort of ideological underpinnings. They're pretty vague about pinning a label on them, but they're kind of designated as hawkish

Now, as if that's kind of a bad thing necessarily, the ISW was actually instituted for the study of war, of course, was founded quite a while ago now, back in 2007 by a military historian, Kimberly Kagan. It's headquartered in Washington, D.C., and it does research and analysis of current wars, wherever they may be. So not just Ukraine, but also Afghanistan and Iraq and, of course, now Syria.

etc. Well, you know, my reaction to this is that it depends where you actually read the reports. They don't seem to be ever to be trying to push a policy as a result of their observations. And I think that they're as sound as any factual reservoir, if you like, on the Ukraine war as any. Now, various kind of left-leaning publications,

have again made this point that they seem sometimes to lean towards a hawkish US foreign policy, and particularly in the case of Syria. So in the past, this is before the overthrow of Assad, they've been criticized for calling for a more interventionist approach. And they point out that in other publications, so the researchers then have their own

their own articles elsewhere. And there does seem to be a pretty uniform line that was taken against Syria or against the Assad regime calling for a much more interventionist approach and basically hitting Assad much harder than the various democratic administrations

administrations had done. Well, that seems to have been pretty good thinking as it turns out, doesn't it? So in that context, I think being hawkish actually is being rather sensible. So that for me doesn't sort of undermine my confidence, if you like, in the ISW as a source.

Okay, we've got one here from Dennis. The Russian invasion has shattered countless Ukrainian lives and erased generations of potential. History shows that post-war trials rarely bring true justice. Consider German General Heinz Lameding, who ordered the massacre at Orador-sur-Golan in France. Though sentenced to death in absentia, he was never extradited and died peacefully in 1971, leaving a family behind. True justice demands that the legacy of those who destroy Ukraine end

ends with them their actions should condemn not only themselves but their descendants deterring future regimes from waging genocidal wars i'd like to hear what you think about this sounds to me like it's going a little bit too far patrick um you know holding the the children of perpetrators responsible for their actions a bit like the germans did of course after the july bomb plot when they went after whole families and slung them behind bars some of them some of them never came out again i mean what's your feeling about this

Well, I think you're right. It's a basic principle of justice, isn't it, that the sins of the fathers are not visited on the sons. But it is fascinating, isn't it, how these butchers, these German butchers got away with it. So Lameding, Ordeus, Jurgland, particularly Garstley,

massacre, 650-odd women and children and non-competent men murdered in this one village. Virtually the entire village wiped out just as a reprisal for some Maquis attack. And as he said, died in his bed in 1971. Lammerting, who was the commander of the Das Reich SS Division,

But I'm thinking of another one, you know, one of the authors of the mass murder of civilians in Warsaw, Heinz Reinefarth, who was another SS commander. He put down the Warsaw Uprising back in August.

1944, with unbelievable savagery. Now, after the war, he just sort of waltzed away. He ended up being the mayor of the town of Westerland on the island of Silt and a member of the regional council, which led to Holstein Landtag.

Now, the Poles tried to get him extradited numerous times, but this was always rejected by the post-war German governments. It's something we should all remember. They were not remotely helpful when France and victim nations of the Nazis

tried to get these war criminals brought to justice. So Reiner Fass was never convicted of any war crime at all. He died at age 75, once again, peacefully in his mansion in Westerland. So yeah, these are examples we ought to learn from. And insofar as it's going to be possible, make sure that the main figures responsible for

all the atrocities that are committed in Ukraine do actually meet some sort of justice. Okay, we've got one here from Oliver. And this sort of in support of an argument we've made over the last couple of weeks, and also this week, that Russia may be in serious economic trouble. And he writes, it's interesting to read a recent article in Foreign Policy about the dire state of the Russian economy and its war machine. The Russian army's ammunition stocks are so low that half the artillery shells

Its troops are firing in Ukraine from North Korea, given that most of these munitions are from the 80s and 90s and have a 50% dud rate.

This is not a well-oiled military machine. I also mentioned previously that Russia is running short of tanks and artillery barrels, and the article talks about Russia losing around 320 tanks and artillery pieces a month, and it can only produce 20 new barrels a month. So these losses are not sustainable. But the most shocking part is actually not the hardware losses, but the horrific use of ethnic minorities on the battlefield. Eugenics through ethnic cleansing.

pundits in Russia are openly talking about racial purification. I mean, this is pretty shocking stuff, isn't it, Padraig? Did you have a look at this? Yeah, I did, but I was struck by this. I've been meaning to bring it up for a couple of weeks now, this amazing...

intercepted telephone conversation, which has been made public by opponents of the regime in Russia. Now, this is a conversation between a Russian parliamentarian called Alexander Borodai talking to an unknown person when he's just talking about what's going on in Ukraine. Borodai was a prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk.

People's Republic, which was set up in 2014. Now, in this audio recording, he talks about the people dying on the battlefield as, quote, spare people. And he says that from a social perspective, they've got no value at all. And I'll just read out a bit of the transcript.

because it is absolutely chilly. So this is what Borodai had to say. This is a private conversation, so he's speaking with his mind. He's saying they're seen as second-rate infantry. In reality, they're positioned on the front lines as defensive units set to hold the line. But their real task

is to draw attention and exhaust enemy forces as much as possible while others in the rear prepare for the main offensive. Just wear them down, you understand. No one expects these forces to achieve some fucking incredible or even small victory. They're simply cannon fodder. And he goes on to say that actually this is

completely reasonable. He says, we're paying them. They're actually getting much more money than they could ever make at home. They probably wouldn't even have jobs at all. He says, what's the problem? They're generally older, right? They're not productive members of society. None of them are going to become accomplished researchers. And then he goes on to say, this is a very interesting point. By the way, the enemy is falling for it because he says they're sending the young, the strong, the healthy, the people of reproductive age,

So that's really the best in the nation that are going forward to fight these people that he considers to be expendable, to be useless, to have no social value whatsoever. So this is a pretty appalling insight into the workings of the Russian regime mind, isn't it? But it's something that we've always suspected. But to hear it spelt out in quite those stark terms...

still has the power to shock. Yeah, that's pretty grim stuff, but fascinating too. So thanks for that contribution and your explanation, Patrick. It's grim reading, I must say. All right, that's all we have time for. Do join us on Wednesday for yet another episode of Battleground 44 and also on Friday when we'll be returning to Ukraine. Goodbye.