What Britain learnt from the Ukraine war & Germany's east-west election divide
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The absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we step by step also truly achieve independence from the USA. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe?

At the moment, Zelensky wants to make a deal. I don't know if Putin does. He might not. I don't know. Israel and Hamas have finally agreed to a ceasefire deal after months of delicate negotiations. I'm Roland Oliphant, and this is Battle Lines.

It's Monday 24th February 2025. Today marks three years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Later we'll have a special report from Venetia Rainey, who's been speaking to Ukrainian and British soldiers about the battlefield lessons from that conflict.

But first, on Sunday, Germans went to the polls in a general election that was watched carefully around the world. As America withdraws from Europe, pressure builds on Ukraine to settle with Russia and the far right make gains across the West. The direction of Europe's biggest economy has profound implications for Europe and the rest of the world. For the latest from Germany, the outcome of the elections and the implications for the rest of us, I spoke to James Rothwell, our Berlin correspondent.

James, welcome to Battlelines. First of all, could you just give us the results? Where are we? Who won what? Hello, Roland. Yes, the centre-right CDU party, Friedrich Meyers' Christian Democratic Union, has emerged as the victor from this election, capping off a very rancorous, bitter two-month campaign where mass migration and border security was a major issue. The AFD, the far-right party of Germany, came in second place,

And that makes them, for the first time in Germany's post-war history, a far-right opposition party, which inevitably has caused a lot of controversy. Even though the polls largely predicted that this was going to happen, the polls actually remained very stable throughout this campaign. So it's a big win for the CDU, but also a very strong result for the far-right AFD. Could you give us some...

some numbers there. Who took what kind of percent? So the CDU has won about 30% of the vote thereabouts, whereas the AFD won just over 20%. It was an appalling night for the centre-left Social Democrat Party, the SPD. They only got 16%, their worst result in the history of their party. And the

the results so far also show that the FDP, an economically liberal party that was in Olaf Scholz's coalition, has failed to meet the threshold of 5% of votes, so they're out. And a pro-Putin party, BSW, which was brand new for this election, also, according to those results, failed to get

over the 5% threshold as well. So what we're probably looking at, Roland, is a new German government led by Friedrich Meyers of the CDU in coalition with the centre-left SPD. And that's because all German parties rule out coalition talks with the AfD. They say that that party is too extreme for government.

Let's dig into this. There's two questions. One is about what Friedrich Meyers is going to do and one is about the AFD. Let's start with the first. New Chancellor, what do we know about him and what do we know about his plans? I have seen he's made some pretty strong comments already this morning regarding NATO. Yes, that's right. So Friedrich Meyers is...

big job in terms of his in-tray is probably going to be one of reforming migration rather than security and defence in Europe. That's a really important issue. And he did late last night basically say that he wants to make sure that Europe is independent of US security amid concerns that President Donald Trump is no longer engaged in that.

But his main sort of mission, as it were, is to deliver quite significant reforms to Germany on border security and migration. During this election campaign, we saw a series of terrorist attacks committed by rejected asylum seekers, which, of course, really kind of upped the temperature on the migration debate. But

The other kind of big story of this campaign is that Friedrich Meyers was trying to fend off the far-right AFD. And one of the ways that he did that was by almost mimicking some of the more divisive rhetoric of the AFD on migration. So there's a very heavy expectation of when he eventually takes power, which will probably be a few months away because the coalition talks can take a very long time,

that he will start imposing big reforms to migration. He pledged during the campaign to impose a de facto entry ban on illegal migrants on day one of his leadership if he's elected. So that should give you a sense of what the expectation is of this new incoming chancellor. Tell me about this...

I mean, Chancellor Schultz talked about the sight in the Wendland, the changing times, the turning point in history after the invasion of Ukraine. I suppose critics would say not much actually changed in German defence policy.

Friedrich Mers has talked about, as you said, European security independence from the United States. He's already said we may not be talking about NATO in its current form by the time we get to the NATO summit in June. America is basically uninterested in European security. He says this is big stuff. This is a major Atlanticist power turning away from the Atlantic alliance.

I suppose my question is, what exactly is he going to do with it? And has he announced any spending plans or anything else that makes that rhetoric more concrete? Well, on spending, a huge issue with Germany is that in order to significantly increase its defense spending, it would probably need to get rid of something called the debt break, which is this long running policy that imposes strict limits on government borrowing.

Friedrich Meyers' party as of right now, because we've just seen some new quotes from the party leadership, doesn't seem to be in favour of reforming or getting rid of that debt break, which raises immediate questions about where they would find the money for a significant increase in defence spending. Mr Meyers, by the way, has said he's obviously in favour of increasing defence spending, but he refused to put a number on it when he was asked during the campaign trail.

And he will also, he's lining himself up as probably the head of a coalition that's backed by the SPD, Chancellor Scholz's old party. As you point out, this was the party that introduced, or rather, this was the Scholz-led government that introduced the Zeitenwende, the turning of the times, we were told, on German defence and security policy. But

Critics would say that the hard facts on the ground didn't change very much at all, even though there was very generous financial support for Ukraine and military support for Ukraine.

Could he find, if he forms this government soon, that the SPD turned out to be quite a reluctant partner on major reforms to defence? Yes, I think that's likely. And so can he back up this strong rhetoric about the transatlantic relationship and moving away from it? That, I think, is the question. It sounds like from the bottom line of what you're saying...

We have yet to see whether this election result means the big shift in in German and by extension European defense spending that Donald Trump has demanded, which is really at the center of this rift with Washington. I think that's right. I think we've seen a lot of bold rhetoric on defense, but there's this huge question about whether the mayor's government has got the political will to,

follow through with it. As I said earlier, it seems unavoidable getting rid of this controversial debt break if you're serious about massively increasing defence spending. The latest comments from both the CDU and now the SPD have been

very, very lukewarm on that idea. It is difficult for me personally to see how you can reconcile those two positions, not removing the debt break, which frees up money for defence spending, and a transformation of European defence policy.

Well, in that case, I mean, the big question, I suppose I was trying to get at is what does this election mean for all the rest of us in Europe, everybody outside of Germany? Because the big question for all of us right now is, is this security future? Is this future in which, you know, Donald Trump's America is is turning away from Europe and we've got to stand on our own two feet? It sounds like from what you're saying that potentially this election doesn't mean that much.

If you look at the rhetoric, he is signaling that he wants to change the shape of this relationship, that he wants to have an independent Europe that can defend itself without leaning on the United States. And one other point I bring up is that Mr. Merz has said he's floated the idea of becoming part of the British-French nuclear umbrella. Now, that's a sort of throwaway remark that Mr. Merz gave on the campaign trail. We haven't seen much more detail on that. There

There are questions as to whether Germany is even allowed to change the status quo on nuclear weapons. It currently hosts US nuclear weapons. But we've been hearing at a think tank briefing this morning about some kind of Cold War era treaty that might prevent changing that arrangement. So we will have to wait and see. On defence in general, I think we've got to temper our expectations. This is German politics. This is the German centre winning another election.

We saw what happened with the Scholz government and Zaytenwender. It was carried out somewhat half-heartedly. Is the surge of the AFD enough to push this centre-right government into taking bolder, drastic action, getting rid of the debt break?

jacking up defense spending to 3% or even 4% of GDP, becoming independent of the United States on security and deterrence. Is it ready to do that? Is it ready to go beyond the strictures of conventional centrist government?

We'll have to wait and see. All right, then let's wait and see and judge him on his actions, I suppose, in that case. Let's move on to the other big story out of this election, which is the remarkable performance of the AFD alternative for Germany. 20% of the vote, you told us. Where does the AFD go next?

From here, what does it mean for them? The AFD will use this result as the beginning of a process, a process of becoming a quote-unquote mainstream party in German politics, even though they're considered extremist by their rivals. Their true goal here is to become the winners of the 2029 election, and now they are going to lay the groundwork for doing that. They are

are a party which on the issue of migration

is actually quite similar to the CDU. Both parties want major action. They're in favour of closing the border to illegal migrants. They want to significantly reform German asylum seeker rules, which have allowed asylum seekers to remain in the country even after the application was rejected. And a very small minority of those asylum seekers have then committed some of the terrorist attacks we've seen over the last few months. But on Russia, on Europe, on defence, on energy policy, particularly Russian gas,

The CDU and the AFD could not be further apart. And I think what the AFD is going to do now heading into the Bundestag's opposition is start to relentlessly hammer the CDU on those policies with a view to, they would hope, emerging from the 2029 election as a kind of pro-Trump, pro-Biden.

sort of organization, regardless of what the leadership might look like in the United States by then. So that, I think, is their goal. They want to become a credible opposition force and they want to transform themselves into a potential party of government now. What does this say about

where Germany is as a country and as a society? Well, what's interesting is that if you look at the German electoral results on a map, what you will see is that the parts of Germany that used to be under the GDR, the communist regime, have voted AFD. And when you look at West Germany, the Germans there have voted for the CDU. And so this reflects a long-running schism in German society.

However, the AFD has really managed to capitalize on anger in Germany about mass migration and

and in particular the German stance on Ukraine and Russia. Germany has faced a lot of criticism under Chancellor Olaf Scholz for being a bit too soft on Russia, but he did cut off the supplies of cheap Russian gas. He did at least declare a Zaytun vendor. He has shown some seriousness about arming Ukraine, such as the deliveries of Patriot missiles, Leopard tanks and so on, and that really annoyed

East German voters who are basically quite nostalgic about the Russians because of their history under the GDR. And I think those policies, even though the overall narrative is that Ola Schultz is not viewed particularly favourably by Europe on supporting Ukraine, that

That has led to a sort of exodus into the arms of the far right, which really campaigned hard on this issue. The end of the cheap Russian gas, the fact that that's made energy bills go up for normal Germans. That's something I think that really resonated with voters and is a significant reason behind their doubling of their election result from 2021.

Is it that simple, this division, that it's about nostalgia for the good old days and nostalgia for the GDR? Is that simple? I think so. It goes against the grain of typical analytical practice, right? You know, we kind of instinctively seek nuance and we want to be able to say, you know, there's more going on under the surface. But I spent a lot of time in West Germany and a lot of time in East Germany reporting

reporting, you know, sort of all over the campaign trail. And I really picked up on a very, very intense East-West divide in German society that largely maps onto the old communist-capitalist divide. And that is reflected in the parliamentary arithmetic. When you look at that map of the results, you will see that East Germany has gone blue for the AFD and the West has gone black for the CDU.

You wrote this piece from an old GDR icebreaker, I think, about that. Tell us about that just quickly. What kind of things are people saying? I was in Rostock, which is a town on Germany's northern Baltic coast. I was speaking to voters there.

I had encountered a lot of very sort of reticent voters, perhaps because it used to be part of the GDR. You approach people with a notebook in former communist East Germany, they look a little bit scared. I think that sort of perhaps triggers traumatic memories of notebook-wielding bureaucrats from the communist days or some such thing. But I saw this boat on the horizon that was moored at Rostock Port and I went and knocked on the door.

And it turned out it was this ship, this icebreaker ship called the Stefan Janssen, which was constructed in what was then Leningrad by some of the finest engineers of the Soviet Union and given to East Germany as a sort of gift.

as a symbol of Rostock's maritime past and what would be its, I suppose, proud communist future. And this by some retired volunteers, most of them ex-German Navy men, who were really very nostalgic about the GDR in the abstract. But we got onto the topic of Russia while we were sitting...

on board and talking about politics and they were just completely horrified by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And it's really led to many East Germans having to wrestle with their past and try to reconcile their nostalgia for the GDR days with the sort of grim reality of modern Russia. Even so, when you look at the results from East Germany, I mean, I think 30% of voters, at least according to the polls, ended up choosing the AFD in the Rostock region.

So while these guys on the ship were wrestling with it and struggling with it, and they refused to say which party they were voting for, so it wasn't quite clear what side of the divide they'd ended up on, the AFD is really, really strong among...

Among those East German voters, there was some speculation early on in this campaign that swathes of West Germany might go blue, that is to say, vote AFD. And I certainly picked up on some anecdotal evidence of that. I even went to Friedrich Maes' hometown, Brilon, in prosperous West Germany, and I found some AFD voters there.

there who were voting AFD, even though they'd obviously known Mr. Mez for many, many years. But it hasn't broken that East-West divide. I mean, that divide is looking really, really stark now. And I think to some extent, that's kind of the story of this election. That communist era East-West divide in Germany has been brought back in very stark fashion by the war in Ukraine. And you can see it on the electoral map.

James Rothwell, thank you very much for joining us. After the break, since Russia invaded Ukraine, Britain and other NATO militaries have put a lot of effort into training Ukrainian soldiers. But what have Western soldiers learned from the Ukrainians?

Welcome back.

As mentioned, today marks three years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Our sister podcast, Ukraine the Latest, has been covering the war every single weekday since that happened and does have a special anniversary edition out today. So do check that out if you haven't already.

Also on today's episode, with the help of AI technology, Ukraine the Latest is launching in Ukrainian and Russian. This will allow the show to reach millions more people in both Ukraine and Russia, as well as the large expat populations of both countries around the world who are concerned about the war and how it affects them. It is...

A groundbreaking step, the Telegraph is the first paper to use AI in such a way and we are very excited to share it with you. So if you know any Ukrainian or Russian speakers who would prefer to listen to Ukraine the latest in their own language, send them our way. Here on Battlelines we also wanted to mark this three-year anniversary as well but in a slightly different way.

As Europe prepares to boost its defences in preparation for a future possible war with Russia, we wanted to know what has the British Army learned from the Ukrainian war? To find out, my co-host, Venetia Rainey, has been to visit one of the host camps for Operation Interflex, the operation that's seen the UK and 13 partner nations train up tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers since June 2022. Here's her report.

I'm somewhere in the depths of East Anglia watching dozens of Ukrainian soldiers get a lesson in trench warfare. I can't tell you exactly where I am for security reasons. Obviously, this is not something the Russians are very happy about. Now next, I'll give you a ten minute break.

This is Operation Interflex, a British-led multinational programme to train up Ukrainian soldiers in everything from basic infantry skills and first aid to platoon leadership and how to deal with chemical weapons attacks.

More than 50,000 troops have been through the five-week course since it launched in June 2022. And it's working. Four in five recruits say they feel better equipped to survive on the battlefield afterwards, according to the MOD. This morning they're running through tactics of attacking a trench. Lieutenant Chalmers is running today's exercises. First what you can see here is a mine-taped area of a layout of a trench.

The demo troops from my battalion have demonstrated how we would attack a trench. We've then asked the Ukrainians to demonstrate how they would attack a trench and then we will go through a hot rehearsal and then this afternoon they'll move into the woodblock where there are some shallow but quite extensive trench systems and they'll spend the afternoon conducting section and then platoon level attacks onto the trenches.

What kind of differences were there between how you would attack a trench and how they would? I would argue that our tactics are potentially more methodical, but that also has a cost of taking longer as well, whereas the Ukrainians' momentum and speed appears to be the main objective.

And do you adjust your training methods according to how the Ukrainians do it and how you think it might actually work in the theatre of war? Absolutely. We recognise, especially with trench warfare, this is something that they have a lot more experience in than us. So what we do and we see our job as is equipping them potentially with more tools, which is our own tactics. And then we listen to the way that they would attack the trench or in any other military circumstance, we listen to the methods they use.

The mood is pretty relaxed here. This is just a drill out in a field after all. But when the exercise moves into the woods, where there are real trenches to practice on, things become a bit more serious. So I'm standing right now in a heavily wooded area. I'm right next to a big sandy trench that's been dug out with lots of trees covering various parts of it. Sandbags creating little bunkers.

And there is a group of Ukrainian soldiers making their way through the trench and they're fighting against another group of Ukrainian soldiers who are coming through the woods. As you can hear, lots of blanks being fired. Like I see lots of smoke grenades being chucked everywhere. The idea is to make this as realistic as possible. And they're learning how to capture a trench, how to lead the rest of their unit, how to go on the offensive, but also how to be on the defensive and how to keep each other's fighting spirits up.

Overhead you can hear lots of planes roaring from nearby US air base and RAF bases. And it's pretty realistic. Smoke running through the trees, sound of bullet fire, lots of shouting. It's cold. It's just incredible to think that in a couple of weeks these guys will be on the front line using this.

for real against the Russians, trying to take back parts of Ukraine that Russia has occupied since the invasion of 2022 and wants to make part of its territory for good. This may be a training exercise, but the stakes couldn't be higher. And you can tell from how seriously these guys are taking it that they know that. Soldiers appear to have captured the trench in this exercise. They're now setting up machine gun positions and stop has been shouted. That is the end of the exercise.

Everyone's now climbing out of the trenches, smiling. Mission success. The emphasis at Operation Interflex is on practical training. Britain works with 13 partner nations: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Kosovo, Romania, Estonia and, as of today, Albania. All these countries know that the Ukrainians don't have time to sit in a classroom given the ongoing war.

When the programme started, the people who arrived here were often civilians with no battlefield experience at all.

But these days, many of the soldiers here have already been on the front line. And they come to Britain to learn advanced tactics and leadership skills. As another training exercise gets underway, I catch up with one such Ukrainian soldier. My name is Yevgen. I'm from the city of Zaporizhia. And how have you found the training here? What have you been learning? I learned the tactics that British Army use. And it's also an exchange of knowledge of...

Ukrainian warfare and also like British way how to deal with war. Can you tell me a bit more about that exchange? What have you taught them? At the moment, Russian army uses drones on the front line

As we know, British Army had an experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, but at that time the drones were not so common as they are now. And we are explaining how to defend ourselves and how to deal with drones actually.

I'm guessing you've been on the front lines already fighting? Can you tell me where? What's been most useful, given you've already been on the front line and done so much of this already, what's been most useful from this training for you? It's really good to get familiar with British tactics because, well, we live in different countries and different countries have different approach and different tactics. That's why it was useful for me.

Drone warfare is one of the most obvious areas where the British Army and its partner nation armies is learning as much from the Ukrainians as the other way around. Over in another wood, a Danish company is running a drone drill with a batch of Ukrainian soldiers. Christian is the Danish commanding officer in charge. This is a battle lane where they have to act against enemy drones.

So we have been teaching them or trained them as a single soldier, but now they try them in an eight-man section. So it's a tactical situation and then they go on the battle lane. There's three different types of drones they're trained actions against. There's reconnaissance drones, there's an FPV drone and then there's a dropper drone. And they have to show us that they can take the actions against those drones.

What kind of actions do you teach against these three different types of drones, very broadly speaking? So the reconnaissance drones move slowly and easy, go into cover, no quick movement. The FPV drones... The what drone? What is that? FPV kamikaze drones. Get away, get up fast, go into the forest. And then the dropper drone, the drops and grenade, is to lay down on the ground and look up, observe, and then move out of the area. So basically that is it.

Have you found that the international forces here have learned a lot from Ukrainian soldiers, from their experiences with drones that have then changed your teachings? Yeah, definitely. We are not good at using drones in Denmark. We haven't had much experience. It's a whole new thing back in Denmark. But we got training by the Ukrainians up here.

and then train us in how to use the drone and we are providing that training to trainees right now so it's been really good cooperation okay so the ukrainians trained you guys and now you train the ukrainians exactly okay so my drone operators they get much better into using the drone out of this

So it's just perfect. This has been three months of free training for my soldiers too. Standing behind the soldiers, watching, understanding what the TTPs are. Why are we using the TTPs? What's a TTP? Tactical Training Procedures. So why are we using the standards? And they understand that and we can go back and actually I'm planning to do this training program with my own soldiers. Just to get in depth with things.

That's also true for the British Army. The lessons learned from the constant rotating influx of soldiers is passed directly onwards and used to inform training of British soldiers. Colonel Boardman is the British head of Operation Interflex and he spoke to me remotely about the benefits of the programme for Britain. The British Army is, like all armies, trying to keep as up to date as it possibly can and this is a real opportunity for us

to provide a very current up-to-date warfighting feed into the British Army. So we share all of our lessons with the British Army's Land Warfare Centre. There's a cell there which sort of captures lessons and works out what to do with them. And we feed a lot of our understanding in. We're very fortunate to have access to hundreds of experienced, combat-experienced Ukrainians at any one time. And that's a valued feed, I think, for the British Army.

Something like fighting in trenches, for example, quite a lot of them have done it for real. So we'll teach them a theory, we'll teach them some of our thoughts on it. They'll then come back with some of their experience from real life. Drones are something that's become a real sort of symbol of current warfare. The technological advances, the kind of readiness with which both sides can get hold of them has meant that all militaries now are working very quickly to try and incorporate drones

them into our offensive toolkit and also our defensive toolkit. But we are learning quite a lot from the experience Ukrainians have of how they use them and how the Russians are using them against them. In terms of chemical warfare, there is quite a lot of reporting coming from, again, from the trainees that we're exposed to.

of the amount that the Russians are using chemical weapons against, against the Ukrainians in sort of violation of, of the law of armed conflict. And we are introducing into our training ways for the Ukrainians to counter it. So we've, we've recently added a chemical warfare as a package that,

teaching them how to use gas masks, how to respond to chemicals such as gas grenades being dropped from drones, which is often something that we see happening, and teaching them how to do their best to counter the Russian use of that.

Other areas we've recently added are a sort of relatively basic understanding of electronic warfare and understanding how they can use jamming to their advantage and how to counter the Russian use of jamming against their equipment. So quite a lot of the tweaks and changes we've made over the last few months have been responding to technological advances, which, I mean, this conflict is particularly rapid in terms of the technology changes. And we're doing our best to keep up with those changes.

Back in the woods of East Anglia, where the light is starting to fade, I get chatting to Lieutenant Colonel Erwin Clark, the commanding officer for this particular training delivery unit. His face is smeared with camo paint and he's waiting for another drone drill to begin.

I ask him how you equip soldiers for a war that's ongoing and ever-evolving. Yes, it's a bit like building an aeroplane in flight, I suppose. I would say, first off, that it's made easier by the fact that what we're teaching is generally an approach rather than a specific way of doing things or rather a specific technique. Often it is just an approach, particularly when it comes to the leadership and the instructional techniques.

because then it's adaptable and it's resilient. We are not standing at the front saying this is the only way to do stuff. We're asking for input from the trainees throughout and therefore sometimes coming to them and saying we don't know the best way to do this, you're more up to date than we are or you've got brilliant ideas, let's learn together. How much do the ebbs and flow of the actual war on the ground affect what's going on here in terms of training?

So that's a great question. It isn't an immediate and tight loop. And that is because you don't know what a pattern looks like until you've had enough data to take in and realise whether what you're seeing on the ground has become a trend and something we need to respond to, or whether it's just a blip. You know, the frontline is enormous and very varied. The tactics being employed, the weapon systems being used, the vehicles being used, etc.,

all hugely varied and are all changing all the time. So yes, we respond, uh,

on a regular basis. I wouldn't say we're responding on an hourly or daily basis because if we were to do that we would be flick-flacking between different things, the program would be quite hard to keep even and the standard would be quite hard to maintain across the whole of Operation Interflex but it is definitely something which is live and as I mentioned that sort of lesson learning process is constantly happening and we're constantly updating what we're teaching.

One of the main tactics used by the Russians is just a war of attrition. They can just chuck so many bodies at them and we know that some soldiers receive as little training as 10 days before they go to the front line. We know North Korean troops have been sent to the front line, prisoners. How do you prepare Ukrainian soldiers for a war of attrition? How do you train them for that? So I think it comes down to resilience and I think a lot of that comes down to the human aspect. So less the tactical and procedural or technical, although of course one has to be first tactically and technically proficient.

But I think that comes down to things like resilience and that is more to do with the moral component of fighting power than the conceptual and the physical components of fighting power. So that's where I particularly am excited and engaged in what we're doing because as we move and focus more into the leadership and instructional side of stuff,

That, I think, is where the real value is added and where we can really prepare Ukrainian trainees for dealing with what has been and could continue to be a very long, drawn-out process. How do you keep the politics of the war out of the training camp here? Things are changing constantly, particularly since Trump has come into power. We've now got peace talks between the US and Russia. Things are constantly in the news. How do you deal with that? Are you able to keep it out? Well, for one thing, I think we all focus...

laser focus on what our job is. And you're talking to someone who wheels the spanner, not the guy who draws up the blueprints. So it's actually quite simple. I've been in the army for 20 years. I've been given a mission. I'm going to carry it out to the absolute best of my ability. And so are all the soldiers from the different partner nations within Op Interflex. But do you guys or the Ukrainian soldiers ever worry that

I don't know, might be for nothing that you're fighting for land that is going to be given away by people who have nothing to do with it? Personally, no, I don't worry about that at all. I focus on the mission at hand and the hypotheticals or the sort of maybes or may not bes aren't my responsibility. But although no one will address it directly with me, these hypotheticals and politics clearly loom over the troops here in one way or another. Before I leave, I exchange a few words with Andri, a Ukrainian soldier from Dnipro.

What more do you think Ukraine needs, the Ukrainian army, you as a soldier need to help you win the war? I think that I'm not that competent to answer this question because I believe all these questions or issues, they are solved on a higher level.

Some of those higher-level discussions are happening at the moment. Do you think Ukraine should have more of a seat at the table? We are really grateful for our partners and allies for their help, but we will stand for our country, and it doesn't matter with help or without help from our partners. For the foreseeable future, at least, help from Britain and its Operation Interflex partner nations is assured.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged not just to continue it through 2025, but also to expand it. And as part of that, in a sign of just how valuable the programme is for the British Army, officer cadets will soon be able to attend training colleges in Ukraine to learn firsthand about how to fight Russian troops.

As the UK and Europe prepare to ramp up their military readiness in the face of a belligerent Moscow and an increasingly isolationist Washington, such an exchange of skills and knowledge could well make all the difference in any future war. Phineas Charaney reporting there from Operation Interflex. That's it for Battlelines today. We'll be back on Friday. Until then, goodbye.

Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. To stay on top of all our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest.

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