302. America First, Ukraine Last?
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Hello and welcome to the Battleground Podcast with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. Our special guest today is Eddie Scott, a 28-year-old British volunteer who lost a leg and an arm in a Russian drone attack while he was evacuating people from the frontline town of Pokrovsk in February,

But first, before we get to that incredibly moving and inspirational interview, let's look at the news this week. And it's been, I have to say, Patrick, a week of mixed fortunes for Ukraine. It started out brightly enough with an encouraging meeting between Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump on the fringes of the NATO summit in

in The Hague, but it ended with the shocking news that the US is halting supplies of key weapons systems to Ukraine as the White House puts America's interests first. Yeah, that's a very worrying development, which we'll come on to later.

But just to get back to that NATO summit, while the members agreed to raise their spending targets by 5% of GDP on core defence requirements, as well as a wider category of defence and security related subjects.

spending so that sounded like a positive development but as I said last week there's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in arriving at those figures that goes for all the countries involved and the UK for one is using a lot of creative accountancy to match the pledge nonetheless this pleased Donald Trump

which was arguably perhaps the key goal of the European NATO leaders. And it seemed to work. So at the summit ending press conference shortly after he met Zelensky, Trump said Europe stepping up to take more responsibility for security will help prevent future disasters like the horrible situation with Russia and Ukraine. And hopefully we're going to get that solved. And

Unfortunately, he went on to say that he believed that Putin wanted peace too. I think a delusion with both agrees. Yeah, that's right. It's fascinating, isn't it, Patrick? And really quite chilling that Putin,

You know, we might have imagined, particularly given the situation with the Israel's attack and then U.S. joining in on Iran and him sort of coming out of that smelling of roses, that he might then turn back to Ukraine and think, OK, let's get this now done, which is what he said, as you mentioned, hopefully going to get that solved.

But actually, they've done almost the opposite. Now, it's interesting that Zelensky's take on his meeting with Trump at the time, that's last week, was reasonably positive. We discussed how to achieve a ceasefire and a real peace, said Zelensky. We spoke about how to protect our people. We appreciate the attention and the readiness to help bring peace closer. But these are all words, aren't they?

Trump, interestingly, then had quite an odd exchange with a Ukrainian reporter whose husband he discovered is serving on the front line. Now, she asked the direct question we now know the answer to if he'd send more patriots to Ukraine. And he replied, we're going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. That's the important point in this. We're supplying them to Israel and they're very effective. 100%.

percent affected. Now fast forward six days and the news as I said at the top is that the US is halting supplies of all key weapons including Patriots, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire and other missiles that Ukraine launches from F-16s as well as drones and given the background with what's happening at Ukraine it's particularly hard to believe it's come to this isn't it Patrick?

It is. I'm scratching my head. I mean, last week I was being rather complimentary about Donald Trump's performance on the world security stage, but I'm afraid this is more kind of in character. It's more in keeping with his character.

usual behavior. Above all, it's very erratic. It seems to be contradictory. Stepping back and having a look at this, it's quite slightly hard to see where it's coming from. This is apparently an initiative by the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but he wouldn't have done it, of course, without the approval of the

So what's basically happened here is that Hegseth has ordered a pause in sending shipments of missiles and other ammunition to Ukraine, apparently prompted by concern about the U.S. military's stockpiles. Now, this comes from authoritative U.S. media reports, and it's been confirmed basically by Pentagon spokespeople today.

And so he basically doing a review of how US munitions supplies have been run down following the decision to send weapons to Ukraine, as well as the other operations that we tend to overlook, like the actions against Houthi rebels in Yemen, all the kit that's been sent to defend Israel, etc., etc. So there won't be any more munitions being sent off until the assessment of Ukraine

inventory is complete. Now, no one said how long that's going to take and what happens when the actual assessment has been done. Now, this is all put down to the doctrine of putting America's interests first.

So this, of course, couldn't come at a worse time, could it? It's all for Ukraine. This is when Russia's ramping up drone and missile attacks on cities all across Ukraine. So as Kiev has forcibly pointed out, this can only encourage Russia. Of course, one of the points of these attacks, these mass drone and missile attacks, is to force Ukraine to burn through its supplies of anti-air missiles. And so Ukraine

The US move is only going to accelerate that process, I would have thought. Pretty cold-blooded, pretty sinister move. And Americans are saying this. Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia under Barack Obama, described the decision as disgusting and embarrassing and said that the designation of America as being the leader of the free world, well, he said, I guess we're done.

with that i've got to remember of course or how many that ukraine's offering to pay for these patriots this is not they're not looking for a handout they're actually going to be uh buying these things so what do you think is do you think this is a permanent decision or do you think there's some kind of diplomatic strategy underpinning this or is it a case of trump really washing his hands of ukraine yeah and that's the big fear isn't it i i my instinct tells me we're not

quite at that point yet. And we know, Patrick, that he's as capable next week of changing his mind as he is to sticking to his guns on this for a little bit longer. Obviously, from the Ukrainian's point of view, it is a serious concern. I mean, you mentioned the

uptick in missile and drone attacks in recent days. I mean, on Saturday, for example, there was the biggest attack ever with more than 500 Russian drones, missiles and glide bombs launched into Ukrainian cities. And there was also the

tragic news that a Ukrainian fighter pilot in an F-16 jet who just shot down seven missiles, apparently, in attempting to knock down the eighth, his plane was hit by debris, probably from that missile. And in attempting to steer it away from a built up area, he wasn't able to eject in time and lost his life. So it's having an

both on their ability to knock out missiles using the F-16s, but also, of course, the Patriots themselves. I mean, this is seriously bad news from Ukraine. So serious, in fact, that there hasn't, at least as far as the moment we're recording this this week, Patrick,

We haven't actually heard an official response from Zelensky, which I think is quite concerning because they're clearly trying to decide how to respond to this and how not to presumably irritate Trump even further so that he really does, you know, turn the taps off for good. And this is going to be particularly concerning, isn't it? Because, uh,

Russia is making small but steady progress on their ground offensive. They've just announced the complete capture of Luhansk area.

one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Russia unilaterally annexed in the summer of 2022. Of course, we've heard this before from them, so we should treat the news with some caution. But it does underline the fact that Russia is continuing to make slow, albeit costly, advances online.

on the battlefield. Now, if it's confirmed, that would mean that Luhansk would be the first Ukrainian region to fall fully under Russian control since the annexation of Crimea back in 2014. But there's also reports that Russian forces have seized their first village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Now, this has been very much a focus of the campaigning in recent years.

And up until now, Ukraine's never had to previously defend it from invading ground troops. There are more reports of troops massing around Sumy and opposite Kharkiv. And of course, these are two regions which weren't included in the 2022 annexation. So it all looks interesting.

There's absolutely no let up in the tempo and indeed a kind of a widening of the battle zone. Yeah, and it is concerning, Patrick, because these attacks are coinciding with rhetoric coming out of Moscow that indicates they're not even going to be happy with the attack.

annexation that they've already declared, of course, of those four provinces, including Crimea. So, for example, last week, Putin announced that all of Ukraine is ours. Wherever the Russian soldier treads is ours, he told an economic forum in St. Petersburg. So the chat coming out of Moscow is changing, and it's changing because

they are making gradual ground as far as territory is concerned. And clearly, they can see which way the wind's blowing as far as America's interest in this conflict. So it's incredibly concerning. I mean, for example, the official Russian response to the news that America was stopping supplies of weapons to Ukraine is, you know, that's a very good thing, because it'll mean the conflict will end sooner. Well, it'll end sooner, as far as Moscow's concerned, on Moscow's terms. Those are nowhere near the sort of terms

that the US was hoping America would agree to. So we come back to this basic question, which we've asked ourselves so many times, Patrick, why is Trump given Zelensky has done everything to get on board with the idea of peace negotiations? Why is he not putting more pressure on Russia? Yeah, I mean, one possible explanation is it's just he's it's dawned on him that it's just too complicated. If you look at the

Iran-Israel situation. That was something where a quick fix, albeit perhaps a temporary one, was possible. So, you know, you have a dramatic, tremendously dramatic military operation. You stand back and declare that Iran's nuclear weapon project is now literally in ruins.

And you take the plaudits and then you move on. Now, this clearly isn't going to happen in a Russia-Ukraine conflict. It requires proper diplomacy, lots of thought, lots of political capital, lots of energy. And those are not really Trump's strong suits. I think it is possible in his mind for it just to be

shunted to the edge of his agenda and he doesn't really care one way or the other for the simple reason there's nothing much in it for him and he of course would say there's nothing in it for America but in his mind America's interests and his interests are the same thing so I think he just really hasn't got the bandwidth for it I think that's

one possible way of looking at it. Yeah, that's right. I mean, just to go back to those recent Russian gains, they need to be set into context. They're still, comparatively speaking, quite modest, Patrick. I mean, for example, in June, the Russian army is said to have taken 588 square kilometres. That compares with 507 in May and 379 in April. So there is a slight uptick there. But according to the Institute for the Study of War, the Washington DC-based think tank,

It's going to take 70 years for Russia to take the whole country if its advances continue at the same rate. So, you know, these are small, tiny incremental advances, comparatively speaking. The elephant in the room, in my view, again, something we've come back to a number of times, is the overheating Russian economy with high inflation and particularly high interest rates. So does this explain

why we heard something that hasn't been reported that much, not least because Ukraine's been off the agenda with the Iran conflict recently. But does it explain why Putin said last week that he was actually planning to reduce defence spending? What he said is this, we are planning to reduce defence spending...

But us next year and the year after, over the next three year period, we are planning for this. Europe is thinking about how to increase its spending on the contrary. So who is preparing for some kind of aggressive actions? Us or them? And that was obviously in response to the news from NATO that there was going to be this increase to 5% of GDP. So is he serious about this, Patrick, do you think? Is this a sign that he can't continue to spend on the war at the rate he has been, as we've long suggested?

Yeah, that's a classic piece of Putin double think, isn't it? So NATO increases its spending because of the threat presented by Russia, and that's turned on its head, and it now becomes NATO aggression. That's very Russian-type thinking, I think. The answer, I don't really know what's going on here. It seems to be completely contradictory, doesn't it? One thing, it may simply be

to try and sort of calm down fears domestically that the economy is about to collapse. It's also a sort of statement of confidence, isn't it, that the war is going their way, there won't be any more spreading the net wider on the recruitment front or the conscription front. So I think it's a bit of an opaque statement. It doesn't apparently...

make much sense. But I think they, given the increase in operational activity, it seems to be rather at odds with what we know about

And also the fact that there have been a steady stream of reports that they're actually running out of kit and having to rely more and more on mothballed old Cold War armoured vehicles in particular, etc. No, I'm afraid I can't really shed much light on that. OK, as we mentioned at the top, we're now going to speak to 28-year-old Eddie Scott, the British volunteer who lost an arm and a leg in a Russian drone attack in Pokrovsk in February.

So, Eddie, could you just start off by telling us something about your journey, how you came to be in Ukraine? I think a lot of our listeners would have thought they'd like to do something to help Ukraine and have balked at what that actually entails. But you actually got up without any military experience and set off. Tell us something about your motivations and what drove you to do that and what you were doing at the time.

Yeah, so I was actually in the Caribbean. I was on a sailing yacht in the Caribbean. Not my boat. I was there for work. My old job before I changed career was sailing. That's my background. I wasn't really aware of the Donbass War, but I was sort of aware something was happening in eastern Ukraine, but I didn't know anything about it. And then I started following a few British guys that were fighting. And this was sort of December 21, January 22.

and they were all saying something's happening. They were all saying that the intensity has picked up, this isn't just normal, there's something going to happen. So I was intently following it. And then January or February 24th happened, and the full scale happened, and I was sort of following these guys. And I started seeing people going over as soldiers. And so I was aware that there was something that, I was aware there was a capacity to go and volunteer

But I didn't know anything about my options. I didn't know anything about what I could do, particularly as someone without any military experience. And so I kind of followed along and was watching what was happening. And then I started following humanitarian volunteers, guys that were going over there, again, with no military experience and just helping out civilians. I started following a few of these guys and started chatting to them.

And then towards the middle of the year, I realized that this was stuff that I could do. These guys were doing stuff that didn't particularly require any specialist training, maybe some medical training. And I thought, you know, that's something that I can do. And so I spoke to a few of these guys and they all said that they needed people to come out. And so I asked what's the best way of doing this? And they said, buy a vehicle and drive over.

And that was it for me. That was easy. I had a bit of money saved up from my sailing. So I was like, yeah, I can do that easily. I finished out my season on the boat I was working on. I left that job in October 22, got back to the UK, bought a pickup truck. And then in the October, I met up with some friends, people that I'd been chatting to who were driving over at the same time. We all drove to Ukraine. We got on the ferry, crossed into Europe and then over two days, drove all the way to Kyiv.

dropped some supplies and some people off in Kyiv and then went down south to Mikolaiv. And so that was October, November 22. And yeah, I mean, it was very different back then. It was much more of a kind of everyone is coming over and we'll just sort of see what happens and kind of figure it out ourselves in its early days, where it's very much changed now. It's still...

carnage to a certain extent, but it's a lot more managed carnage and there's a lot more organization going on now. And so it's harder to sort of fall into that role of just helping because most of the needs have changed. The experience has changed. I mean, for a start, the warp has got incredibly dangerous, which is something funny to say about a warp, but it's got far more dangerous further back from the front, which has really changed the game.

It's a very different beast now. Eddie, before we get on to how you were injured, tell us a little bit about the organization that you were working for and what you were doing for them. Yeah, so I base UA. It's a Ukrainian organization that's been operating since the start of the full scale. They run primarily Ukrainians and Germans as well.

And they're incredible. They're absolutely amazing. They've been operating since the start of the full scale. The guys that have been running it have experienced other conflict zones as well. And they do everything from evacuations, which I was doing with them,

They also do infrastructure projects. So I started off repairing roofs or repairing buildings in liberated territories. And they also have projects that provide support to young people who live in Kramatorsk because there's no school, there's no formal system to keep them

out of trouble, I guess. And so BASE does a great job of providing a space for education, be that medical first aid training, be it art camps or art projects. And so it's just a very encompassing organization. They sort of cover all the bases with not just let's get people out of here. It's also let's make sure the people that are staying here are looked after, which is quite rare, I guess, for a lot of organizations.

And so it's, you know, very, very good teams, very professional and a very good aim as well. A very good goal that they are achieving. Well, that was all fascinating. Stay tuned. After the break, Eddie will be giving us an unbelievably dramatic and moving account of what actually happened to him on that fateful day.

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Hello everyone, it's Gary Lineker here from The Rest Is Football. Just a quick message to tell you all about the Club World Cup tournament that's taking place in the US at the moment. It's 32 of the best teams from all around the world battling it out to be crowned the best side on the planet. We've reached the knockout stages of the competition, which means all the big guns will be going head to head. Manchester City, Real Madrid, PSG, Chelsea,

and Bayern Munich are just some of the sides vying to lift the trophy. Join myself, Alan Shearer, Micah Richardson, our expert out in America, Alex Aljo, as we guide you through the explosive final stages of the tournament.

to make things even better if you're watching the video version of the show on Spotify or YouTube you can also watch all the goals and the best bits of the action as we discuss the games a first for podcasting just search the rest is football wherever you get your podcasts welcome back so just talk us through that day when you

underwent your terrible experience and sustained those injuries. What were you actually doing on that day? What was your mission? So we were evacuating people from Pokrovsk, which was our area of work. I'd been doing two weeks in there beforehand, and then we had two-week rotations. So two weeks off, and then I just started my second rotation going into Pokrovsk. And we went in in the morning.

So basically, we just go in. If we don't have any evacuation requests, we'll go into the city, drive around with leaflets and find people and offer to evacuate them. And so we were in the city and we met three people and a dog. They lived on the front line. And then that morning, their house had been shelled. And so they walked out four kilometers with one bag each through the war zone, essentially.

We met them at a bus stop and they were just sitting at this bus stop waiting for someone to pick them up. So we met with them, we organized a time to pick them up. We went into the city and completed a couple of other tasks and then came out, picked them up. So we had three people and a dog. We drove them out and then we dropped them off at our soft bus to take them onto the next step of the journey. And then we drove back in and then we picked up two people who we'd met in the city earlier that day.

And so with two people in the van, we were driving out. We'd just crossed over the train track to get out of the city. And we just saw two people on bikes. So I opened my door, I gave them leaflets, closed the door. And then as we pushed on, and then about 30 seconds after that, we got hit. We just got, you know, the van just got absolutely rocked by this explosion, sort of fireball in front of my face.

And I immediately knew that I was injured. I knew I was bad. I was kind of, I could see that my hand was sort of on the wheel. And I knew that my arm was injured. And I was thinking, don't look at the arm because it was just like, you know, it's going to be messy. So I was like, okay, I'll look at the leg. And I looked at my leg and my leg was just shredded. It was just, you know, from the knee up, it was just flesh. And so I knew that I was in a bad way.

And so in the first few seconds of it, I got a tourniquet out, but I was in a position where I couldn't get a tourniquet on.

And luckily, my team lead came around, he opened my door, and he got two tourniquets on me in about two and a half minutes, which saved my life. I had two incredibly serious hemorrhages. And luckily, he managed to save my life in the initial two, two and a half minutes. And then as he kind of finished putting the tourniquets on me, a military pickup turned up, which is about three minutes after the strike.

And so, you know, they had a working drone jammer on top. So we were kind of maybe protected as long as it wasn't fiber optic.

Because we were concerned about a second strike. Both my team lead, Pilip, had been hit by two drones about two months previously, driving a similar van. And so we were very aware that, you know, they'll hit you with one and then they'll hit you with a second one. So we were thinking about getting out of there as fast as possible. I say we, I was thinking about dying. And it was Pilip doing all the hard work. And so they got me in the back of the pickup truck. They put the husband that we were evacuating in with me.

And then they drove me out about 10K to Hrishna, which is just outside Pekrovsk. And then from there, they got me into an ambulance where I took my body armor off, did a secondary assessment. Then from there, they took me to a stabilization point, which unfortunately, they turned me down. They said that because I was a civilian, they couldn't take me because it was just for soldiers. And so we pushed on about 15 more minutes. And I got into the trauma suite in Dobropylia.

And my arm was off. It was being held on by my hoodie. And then my leg, they took my leg off in the trauma suite, packaged me up and then sent me to Nipro where I was. I was in Nipro for two or three days just going through the first steps of the surgery while I worked out my next options. So it was a pretty hectic day. Were you conscious during all this? How much pain were you in?

So I was conscious the entire time. There are a few bits that I don't really remember. So, I mean, you know, actually it was quite funny. The husband that we evacuated had been drinking. I'm in the back of the pickup truck and he's trying to get into the back of the pickup truck, but he's struggling because he's drunk. So he sort of reaches up to me and I just grab him and pull him into the truck on top of me. And yeah, I mean, I had no recollection of that.

But I have my GoPro recording, so my GoPro is caught everything. And it kind of, there are a few bits where you can kind of see, I think I fade out a little bit, but there's no, I'm not unconscious for any stretch of time. So I remember everything. Luckily, the level of pain, like I've forgotten just how painful it was, I know.

It was bad. Luckily, I'm not remembering that pain anymore. As far as the targeting of your vehicles concerned, Eddie, I mean, obviously everything anywhere near the front line is under threat from the Russians. Did you have any markings on your vehicle to indicate that you were humanitarian rather than combat? Yeah, so we were driving a white van. It's an old armoured money van that had been painted white and blue. It was clearly marked with evacuation, civilian and the NGO's logos as well.

And it was clean. One thing we always made sure was the van always gets cleaned. And so it was a white van. And then we don't wear any camouflage. We don't wear dark green colors. We don't carry weapons, obviously. And then we also wear white high-vis vests. And so if they'd been tracking us, if they'd been following our movements, it would have been clear throughout the whole process what we were.

The other thing is, while we were going on a stretch of road that was very bad, we were going about 15 kilometers an hour when we got hit. And they aimed for the left-hand side of the vehicle. And so putting all of that together, it was deliberate. And knowing how the Russians operate, it's systematic and it's a war crime. Attacking humanitarian workers, clearly marked humanitarian workers, is a war crime.

How have your family coped through all of this, Eddie? It's your personal decision, of course, to go out there and take the risk that you did. But at the same time, you've got a lot of loved ones who must have been quite worried about this whole process. How have they been able to deal with what's happened? Yeah, my family have been very supportive. As I was a sailor before I came out here, I went off and did sailing across oceans for the best part of 10 years. And so my family know that they can't stop me doing this kind of stuff.

And so there was never any question about whether we would go or wouldn't go. I think I didn't tell them how far forward I was going. And so I think it may have been a bit of a shock for them to find out that kind of stuff. But they've actually, my dad said he was happy because it means that I'm not on the front lines anymore. So there's that. But over, like, I think it's having been injured, my family, apart from my mom, have now been out to Ukraine and they've

I think my siblings certainly understood more what I was doing. But my father, he would call it the Ukraine and he didn't want to talk about it every time that I brought up when I was in the UK. And so, you know, I described it as apathetic confusion.

And then I get injured and he comes out to visit me and he meets all my friends. He meets the guy that saved my life and he gets to see Kiev. And he was shown around Kiev by people that were at the revolution who witnessed people being shot in front of them.

and who have had friends who have been fighting for a long time. And so being shown Ukraine, he did a complete 180. And now he's a very big supporter of the cause. And so, you know, I think what that showed me is the more people that come here, the more people that see it, the more people will see the truth. And it worked for my dad and my mom will come out to Ukraine once I get back.

So overall, they've been incredibly supportive. I think especially with me coming out of this so positive, it's been a lot easier for them to understand, a lot easier for them to go through because, I mean, I'm going through it so well. Now, you had the choice, presumably, Eddie, of coming back to UK for your trauma care and your rehab, but you chose instead to stay in Ukraine. Tell us about that decision and about the care you subsequently got.

Yeah, I was through people that I've met over my time in Ukraine. Once I woke up in Dnipro, I was offered evacuation to basically wherever I wanted to go. The obvious choice was the UK.

But they said, you know, Germany, apparently Australia was good for amputation. So they basically said, you know, I was picked up by the Weatherman Foundation, whose t-shirt I'm proudly wearing. And they basically said, you know, wherever you want to go, we'll pay for it. And I said, I want to stay here. I want to stay in Ukraine. And at that point, I didn't know my treatment options. I didn't know the rehab options. I just knew that I've been living in Ukraine for two and a half years. It's the longest I've lived in one place in 10 years. And

I was surrounded by my friends. One of the big decisions, one of the big things that affected my decision was the fact that in the first sort of three days I was in hospital, 45 friends, 45 people turned up to see me. And I don't have that kind of support in the UK. So for me, it was easy. It was, you know, as long as I'm, I said, as long as I'm not taking a bed from a Ukrainian, I'm staying in Ukraine. And I mean, at that point, I had no idea what to expect. And it all turned out incredibly well.

Once I said I wanted to go to Kyiv, the Weatherman Foundation set me up in one of the best hospitals. And then through them and through several other people, I was introduced to superhumans. And then once the medical side of my injuries were taken care of, I transferred to superhumans. Looking back on it from the point of view of five months down the line, it was the best decision I made. I was staying in Ukraine. It meant that

First off, the Ukrainians really respected my decision to stay. And so being a foreigner, especially being a foreigner with no ties to Ukraine, deciding to stay reinforced the decision that this is my country now and this is my home. I think a lot of people, particularly Ukrainians, realized that I'm serious about this. This isn't just me turning out to Ukraine for a bit of fun and then disappearing off when it gets tough. Ukraine is my home. And so...

you know it all kind of it all it all just worked out as they get them getting very very good treatment and getting looked after very very well in kiev and then arriving at superhumans tell us something about super humans because i think the listeners might be aware of it so it's um the center is two years old we just had our second birthday it is all privately privately funded and you know we don't have any don't have any funding from you know from the ukrainian government it's all it's all its own operation

And it's incredible. The CEO, Olya, and the founder, Andrey, have just had this vision of creating essentially the perfect rehab center.

And, you know, in a position to do that as well. They found this old hospital that had been half used back in 2023 and then built it up and opened this incredible center. They have connections with doctors and other rehab facilities throughout the world. There's connections with large donors. And so there's a very good pool of money coming in, which means that all of us get treated incredibly well with the best prosthetics, the best treatment.

the best options when it comes to going forward and sort of preparing ourselves for the real world. It's something that they focus on is not just here's your arm, here's your leg, good luck. It's, you know, here's a financial planning course. Here's how to start a business. Here's a mentor who can help you start your dream business once you've got out. And so the idea is you don't just survive in the real world. You come out of superhumans and you thrive.

And they're doing a fantastic job of that. And they've got one center that's fully operational in Lviv, where I am. They've just opened a center in Dnipro, which was opened about a month ago and has already got patients going through. And then they're building a center in Odessa. And there's plans for a rehab village as well. So it's expanding. It's expanding and having...

I'm certainly not an expert on the rehab side of things. I just know what I've seen. But from speaking to different people, it is arguably the best rehab center in the world. And it's doing incredible stuff. And I think it's an example of what other rehabilitation centers should look to for what they can do. Eddie, we should have mentioned that you're currently at home in the UK. When you return to Ukraine, what will you do when you get there going forward?

So I'm missing an arm, as you can see. And so once I get back to Ukraine, I'll get the arm sorted, which will be, I'm not sure how much work that'll be. I've just completely ballparked it at six weeks, which is, it'll probably be more, might be less, but we'll just get into that and see. But I've been offered a, I've accepted a job with Superhumans. And so once I finish my rehab, I will start a role as basically an ambassador for

My role is a senior media manager, which is something that I've never trained for, never done in my life before. So it's going to be quite interesting seeing how that goes. Going from the C to the front line to being a media manager is going to be an interesting career change. But that will be a lot of fun. And basically, my role is just being a public face for superhumans, being particularly a public face that speaks English natively.

Because unfortunately, while Ukrainians have the experience, they have the generational trauma, they have all of the understanding about what's happening here, you know, a personal understanding. But unfortunately, Western voices tend not to listen to Ukrainians. And so if I can be someone that has, you know, I've been here for two and a half years, I've been working at the front for the best part of two years.

And I've been through the experience of being injured, which is it's quite, you know, I don't think there are any other foreign humanitarian volunteers with my level of injuries. And so being a voice for the center, I can't do evacuations anymore. And so being able to go forward as an ambassador for a very different side of the war for the rehab side of stuff, that's a dream essentially came to Ukraine to help. I came to Ukraine to just to try and do good.

And I can't do, as I said, my role has now changed. I can't do what I used to do. But now I can do something that's very different, just as important and with boatloads of support through the centre and through the people I know now. And so hopefully we'll be able to do more good and I'll be able to have a wider reach with what I'm doing now. So it's going to be a very positive job and a very positive step in the right direction for continuing to help Ukraine.

Well, it's been a real privilege talking to you. You're a hero. It's an overused word. I prefer idiot with morals than hero. Thanks very much for coming on. Well,

Well, I found that incredibly inspirational and incredibly moving. Didn't you, Saul? I did. I mean, it's incredible the lack of bitterness that Eddie has. The kind of sense of, you know, why me? Why did it happen to me? He absolutely owns his decision to have gone to Ukraine in the first place. He felt that what he was doing was important.

And he's absolutely determined to go back. And I was also quite surprised at his family's reaction, actually, on the one hand, while he was there, not really wanting to hear anything about it. But since they've all gone over there, at least everyone but his mum, they, like us, Patrick, having visited the country a couple of times during wartime, totally buy into the idea that the Ukrainian people need to be back to the hilt on all of this. But just to see the spirit of the Ukrainian people is incredibly moving. And it really does make a difference.

Yeah, no, very uplifting. And hearing about the work of superhumans, what a great organization that sounds to be. We're going to try and visit it when we next go to Ukraine. And by the way, anyone who feels like contributing, it's an extremely good cause. We'll be putting up a link on the program description. So look out for it there.

Okay, we're now going to move on to listeners' questions. Again, we've got another update from our cybersecurity expert, David Alexander. I'm just going to read out one of the most interesting pieces. And he's flagging up a report in the Financial Times that Russians have been recruiting young spies in Ukraine. Now, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, Russian operatives reached out to minors on Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp and iTunes

other social messaging sites offering up to £1,000 for seemingly simple tasks.

including photographing military equipment, transmitting coordinates and setting fire to strategic sites. And one such case involved a 16-year-old boy in Dnipro. He was caught with photographs and location data on his phone, intelligence that was meant to guide Russian strikes. And the SBU said that since spring last year, Ukraine security services have detained over 700 individuals linked to espionage, arson and bombing plots.

coordinated remotely by Russian intelligence, alarmingly, about 175 of them, that's roughly one in four, were minors under the age of 18. I mean, there are no depths to which the Russians were astute to harm Ukraine. But it's also slightly scary, isn't it, Patrick, that Ukrainian youths are prepared to carry out these tasks for money?

Yeah, I know that is quite alarming. Can we move on to one that's slightly off-piste here from listener Sean Thomason who asks, are the Falklands safe? The Falklands Islands, of course, are UK possession of the South Atlantic. And he says, I wanted to go back to your original series. That's where it came in, wasn't it, with our

with our mega documentary. It was essentially about the Auckland's war marking the 40th anniversary. And Sean's been listening to Professor Helen Thompson talking about the US Western Hemisphere, Trump's sphere of influence. She

points out that America is now kind of threatening Greenland and references the Falklands. And he's shown he's speculating that Trump might actually help Argentina to regain or rather support their diplomatic efforts, so far diplomatic, but potentially military in the future.

to regain the Falklands, which of course for 200 years Argentina has been claiming as their own, the Malvinas as they call them. He says, could it happen again? Could there be a military operation? How prepared are we, the UK, and what is your assessment of Argentina's military capability?

Well, I suppose the background to all this is the decision, foolish one in my estimation, by the UK to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which as far as I can see was basically a shakedown playing on colonial guilt and a very spurious reading of history. Well, naturally, that decision was

has prompted some in Argentina to once again ramp up the cause for the Malvinas, as they call them, to be returned to Argentina. But interestingly, among those voices is not that of the president, Javier Millay. Now, he's usually presented as a sort of firebrand populist,

and he certainly is on a lot of issues, but not actually on this one. Only the other day, well, not the other day, April it was, which marked the anniversary, of course, the 43rd anniversary of Argentina's

attempt to forcibly take back the islands. He made a speech on that day in which he was, Tom was very much conciliatory, saying that he was hoping that one day the island's residents might actually take the decision that would make more sense to actually side with Argentina, give up their British territory.

citizenship and make their future lives as Argentinians. So it came as a bit of a surprise. A lot of people in Argentina, it's a big issue. They still say this is a terrible colonial crime that we've committed here. And just listen to the language that President Villers used. He said, we hope the

Melvinenses, that's the Falkland Islanders in Argentina, will one day decide to vote for us with their feet. And this was at a ceremony commemorating the war, which actually killed 649 Argentinian service members, as well, of course, as 255 British soldiers. So I think in political terms, there's no pressure from the top at the moment. And I think in military terms, even if they're

was some thought of having another go, if you like. I don't think it'd be very feasible. Okay, the UK's Navy is a shrunken force compared to the one that we were able to put to sea in 1982, but so too is Argentina's. Actually, launching a massive amphibious operation is pretty implausible.

the British presence on the islands and the force it could muster, the naval and air force it could muster, would be more than enough, I think, to see off what Argentina could throw at the Falkland Islands. Yeah, I think you're right, Patrick. If we go back to 1982, there was a small force of marines on the island, wasn't there? And they'd recently withdrawn the only Royal Navy ship in the area that could

act as a kind of early warning system. That was in the process of happening. Now there are up to 1,500 UK military personnel at any one time, including, and I think this is an important point, typhoon fighters that are based on the airfield that was built after the Falklands War.

They've also got some pretty effective air defence missile systems there too, the so-called Sky Sabre system. So it's not a similar situation to the scenario in 1982. Whether the Argentinians think they can negotiate some kind of settlement is a different matter, but the idea that they're going to take the islands by force, I think that's pretty unlikely. Now, we've been taken to task by Michael Whitson about...

Mark Wooter, the NATO Secretary General's kind of fawning overtures to Donald Trump. Now, Michael says, first off, I love everything you do and I get a lot of my Ukrainian information from you guys, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed how you reacted to the way other leaders behaved around Trump during the NATO summit.

He says, I'm not a Trump fan. However, what I think you've failed to see is the way that Mark Rutter used Trump's vanity and ego against him by buttering him up, i.e. Trump, the US president, is much more likely to agree to proposals and talks. So he concludes, I think Rutter and other leaders were playing Trump

Like a fiddle. What do you make of that? Do you think we were being unfair to Rutter and the other NATO leaders? Well, it's really a question of presentation, isn't it? I mean, I think that might be a solid point that actually what Rutter is trying to do is just butter up.

Trump. I don't think there's irony there. I think what the leaders of NATO realise is that he does need to be butted up. He needs to be flattered. He needs to be told he's important and what he's doing is making a difference. And if he gets all of that, you get something in return. I think it's

probably as simple as that. It doesn't look great, I have to say, with the so-called fawning. It doesn't look great at all. But Ritter might argue, if we actually had him speaking privately about this, Patrick, that, you know, he doesn't really care how it seems as long as he gets what he wants, which is the US staying firmly within the NATO fold. Yeah, I think the point was, wasn't it, so we were just having a bit of fun really saying,

at the levels of sycophancy. But, you know, realistically, they didn't have any other choice, did they, or any of the NATO leaders. That's the only way you're going to get anywhere with Trump, as you rightly say.

is by buttering him up, by flattering him. And as you say, maybe that will actually produce some positive results on the island. Maybe it won't, but not really any other way of doing it. So we weren't criticizing the decision to take that approach.

just marvelling at how enthusiastic it was. Now, we've got an interesting question here on NATO, and I think this is something that we often spout on about Article 5, but Article 5 is not nearly as cut and dried as it might seem at first sight. So we've got a question here from Simon Weathers in Sunderland in the UK, and he's been listening to the Sky-produced War Game pod, which is presented by their defence station.

editor, very excellent, Deborah Haynes. And I think we've referenced it and pointed listeners in the direction of it, I think a few weeks back, didn't we? So anyway, Simon's point is that we should have a good look at Article 5 of NATO actually works in detail, what is the process.

And he says that most people probably think that if a member is attacked, all members automatically pile in and attack the aggressor, which, as he rightly says, is not necessarily the case. And he says it would be instructive for us to clarify this matter, given the prospect of further aggression from Putin's Russia. This is something we've often speculated about, isn't it?

It's all about a not necessarily a full-blooded attack on Poland, say, but something like an incursion into one of the Baltic states. But everyone's minds, I think, have been focused on this by a remark that Trump made on his way to the NATO meeting last week when he was asked whether the U.S. remained committed to Article 5.

He told reporters on board Air Force One, well, that depends on your definition. There are numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right? But I'm committed to being their friends. Well, he's not wrong about that. If you actually read what it says...

It says, if a NATO country is the victim of an armed attack, each alliance member will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take such measures as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force to come to the aid of the attacked country. So, sure, that means that

you will do something about it, but that something will not necessarily be taking up arms against the aggressor. So,

It's a pretty sort of fuzzy commitment, isn't it, Saul? Yeah, I mean, it could be anything to providing intelligence or sending arms, for example, Patrick. So no, it doesn't mean you're going to order your armed forces to attack the aggressor. I think the broader principle still holds true, though. As an alliance, you are all going to act

together to somehow combat the common enemy. And if you think about the Second World War before NATO was created, the alliance meant that, you know, the Western allies were sending support to the Soviet Union to enable them to defeat the Germans. And for many years, there wasn't a serious attempt made to use armed forces to attack

the armed forces of Germany, at least Western Allied armed forces, as we've spoken about before, because they didn't think that an invasion of Northwest Europe was viable in 1942 and 1943, and they had to wait until 1944. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has got to pretty much survive on its own during that

period. And it does so partly because it's getting assistance from the convoys that are being sent to the Soviet Union, but also because, and we've discussed this before, Patrick, the air power that is slowly degrading the ability of the Germans to fight. So there were multiple different ways. And the only time Article 5 has actually been in votes, listeners, some listeners might know, of course, was following the 9-11 attack.

when on the evening of the 12th of September 2001, that's a day later, the Allies invoked the principle of Article 5. The native Secretary General Lord Robertson, of course, who was a former British Labour cabinet minister, subsequently informed the Secretary General of the

United Nations of the Alliance decision to do that. And then they took action in a number of different ways. And some of these were intelligence sharing, as I suggested before. In fact, there were eight measures to provide individually or collectively as appropriate and according to their capabilities, assistance to allies and other countries, which

are or maybe subject to increased terrorist threats. And of course, that was an invocation in assistance to the Americans, interesting enough, whereas in reality, NATO was set up really to respond to the threat from the Soviet Union against Western Europe. So yeah, so the truth is that the Americans are the only ones ever to have been the beneficiaries of Article 5, something they might actually care to remember.

Taiwan is up next. David writes, both of you keep mentioning that it's looking increasingly likely that China at some point in this decade may decide to attack Taiwan. If I was leading Taiwan, he says, I'd be looking at Ukraine and drawing the lesson that the use of drones is a key part of repelling a much larger opponent.

Have either of you heard whether Taiwan is ramping up massive productions of aerial and underwater drones to stockpile and position them in places around the island that would make a naval assault on the island virtually impossible? He says, surely they're not just sitting back and hoping nothing happens. Well, it's true that Taiwan's in a very good position to actually manufacture very good drones, possibly the best drones in the world, given their

terrific advantages in microchip technology, etc. And indeed Taiwan has set the target of producing 180,000 drones itself. This is through its own efforts by 2028, so in three years' time. But

It's actually struggling to get started. So as of now, I think they've only in the last year produced fewer than 10,000 in the last year. But this is definitely at the core of their defensive strategy. And they've got to think very fast, I think, because our warnings are not without foundations. I mean, there are lots of indications that there is a sort of a timeframe in Beijing for launching some sort of

aggressive military action against Taiwan. There's the modernization of the People's Liberation Army is meant to be completed by 2027. Taiwanese officials believe that that is really when things might start to hot up and almost certainly before Premier Xi Jinping's current term office ends in 2029. So this is a pretty urgent matter. Now, no one quite knows what form the

the attack would come in. But of course, it's got to be an amphibious assault with, of course, an air assault combined, followed by a full land invasion if they really want to succeed. So they've got to come up with a solution that's going to...

stop them in their tracks. There's talk of turning the Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland into a hellscape, it's been described, which would mean bombarding incoming Chinese ships and planes with swarms of uncrewed aerial and naval drones.

Now, the thinking is that this on its own is not going to actually necessarily destroy the invasion fleet on air and on the sea, but it would actually be, by time, it would frustrate the operation long enough for Taiwan's allies to then rally to its defense. Well, that's a big unknown, isn't it, Saul? Because we're not really sure how committed America is to advocating

actually going to the aid of Taiwan in those circumstances. No, no, we aren't. And going back to the drone manufacture, you would have thought, as you mentioned, Patrick, that Taiwan would have a big advantage in all of this, given that it's so successful, its semiconductor business is so successful. But I was looking into this, and apparently its semiconductors are the wrong ones. And in any case, it needs other vital components for drones to

most of which tend to be sourced even by other countries, including Ukraine, and we've talked enough about their drone capability, from China, believe it or not. And this includes the gimbals, optical sensors, and antennas. Now, obviously, Taiwan doesn't want to buy that

kit from China for obvious reasons. So it has to look elsewhere and the cost is much higher. So it's kind of trapped in this problem of needing to buy this stuff. But in some cases, these sensors are 10 times more expensive if they buy them from Chinese competitors and that's

chiefly the United States. So they're caught in a catch-22. Taiwanese companies can't increase production and reduce costs until they get more orders, but they can't get more orders because their costs are too high. What they basically need is the Taiwanese government to say, we need to spend a lot of money on this because this is in our national interest. But there's no sign of that happening as yet, and it needs to happen soon. Okay, that's it from us for this week. Do join us on Wednesday for Battleground 45.

and again on Friday, when we'll bring you all the latest from Ukraine. Goodbye.