Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the latest episode of Battleground Ukraine with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. This week, all the concerned parties in the conflict seem to be catching their breath as they gear up for the next phase. Despite the lack of news, and there is an information blackout on detailed military developments on the Ukrainian side,
We seem to be entering a significant new period which could decide whether the war finishes before the spring or drags on and on. Yes, well, the Ukrainians have certainly been making optimistic noises, predicting that it's going to be the former. And earlier this week, the deputy Ukrainian defense minister, Volodymyr,
Havriliov said Ukrainian forces could be back in Crimea before the new year and the Russians comprehensively defeated by the spring. We shall see.
The Ukrainians may not be telling us about the battlefield, but we have our own sources, notably journalist Colin Freeman, the former chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, and for my money, one of the finest foreign correspondents of our day. He's just been on the front lines around Kherson, and he's given us a fascinating account of what he saw there and what's going on. But first, how do you see things going at the moment, Saul?
Well, Haverilov's remarks are very interesting, aren't they? I mean, in the interview, he gives some dark hints that the optimism is in part based on the likelihood of what he calls a black swan event in Moscow, i.e. an out-of-the-blue development, such as a coup of some sort to topple Vladimir Putin. And it's interesting that other indications are coming also from the Ukrainian side that
Putin is living in fear for his life as the army retreats. You know, this is all playing into the idea that someone or something is going to act against him. Now we know who the usual characters are, Patrick. But the question we have to decide is whether or not this is a Ukrainian led story or whether there really is trouble afoot inside Russia at the moment.
Before we get to that point, Ukraine has admitted that it's continuing operations in a big way to exploit its success in recapturing Kherson. They're now attacking Russian positions in the Kinburn Spit. I think this is a
a place, a location we're going to be hearing a lot about in the coming weeks, which is a gateway to the Black Sea Basin and the parts of the southern Kerson area that are still under Russian control. Do you know about this place? Have you heard much about this before? I think this is very significant, actually. There's a story coming out today about
that not only are operations planned, but they're actually ongoing and they're having a lot of success. And the reason this is so significant is if you look at a map, Patrick, the Kimburn Spit is actually on the south bank of the Dnipro River. It not only controls the entrance to this huge waterway that effectively divides east and west Ukraine, but it's actually on the south bank. In other words, if it's true, if these reports are accurate and Ukrainian forces have already got a foothold there,
All this talk about the difficulty of actually crossing this huge waterway, I mean, Colin mentions that, as we're going to discover in the interview later on, that's already underway, and they will have a foothold on the southern bank. So I think it's massively important. There are lots of indications that the Ukrainians are pretty convinced they're going to retake Crimea. Well, not everyone believes that, of course, and there's a long way to go there. But
The taking of this spit would be certainly an important marker along that road. All this sounds to me, Saul, as if the Ukrainians sense that they've got to finish the job quickly. They're pushing on. They're not letting winter hold them back. That's something else we'll hear from Colin later on. This notion that everything stops for winter seems to have gone out of the window in this upcoming next phase.
But I think behind it all is a sense that they've got to keep Western support high. And at the moment, it's a very high level, but they understand it's finite. And in overtime, it's bound to erode. So they want to
create the impression that imminent victory is a possibility in order to keep support high. If you think about it, the US is currently giving them everything they need militarily, which is a very expensive business. But you're getting voices on the left and the right who are wondering how long this is going to go on for. I also get the feeling that the shine's going off. President Zelensky, not surprisingly, he's been this golden boy since the beginning. But
But there's a bit of exasperation, I feel, in the White House following his insistence. Remember this story last week about the rocket that landed in eastern Poland, killing two farm workers. Well, he was insisting it was a Russian rocket, even when it became clear that it was actually a Ukrainian missile that had been trying to fend off a Russian missile attack. Now, this is the sort of thing that just encourages the doubters and conspiracy theorists,
who are a significant factor in shaping American public opinion. And they'll be saying, you know, how much is Kiev manipulating the narrative in order to drag the U.S. deeper into the war? You've just been in the States, haven't you, Saul? I think you were taking your yacht in for another refit. Is that right? Yeah.
No, not quite, Patrick. But I was over there for a history conference. And it was interesting to sort of pick up on the sense of support or not for Ukraine. Actually, the support felt pretty firm. But there was a very interesting story while I was there. And that is the news that the American journalist who broke the story for a wire service that it was almost certainly a Russian missile, he cited Ukraine.
one source in defense official who was pretty convinced that this was a Russian missile fired by Russian forces that had struck Poland. As you mentioned, Patrick, we almost certainly know now that that was a Ukrainian missile. It may have been Russian built, of course, an S-300, but it was almost certainly fired by the Ukrainians. And it's interesting that Zelenskyy
His insistence on that is, as you suggest, Patrick, really his first big misstep in the information war. It seemed that he saw it as a great opportunity to bring NATO in even more firmly on the side of Ukraine. And he's definitely overplayed his hand on that one.
Does this also feed into these suggestions that there's trouble afoot for Vladimir Putin? We don't know for sure, but it's very interesting. Just to go into a bit more detail about that story about him living in fear of his life. Well, this comes from one of Zelensky's chief aides, and he said...
this week, Putin is very afraid because there is no forgiveness in Russia for czars who lose wars. The man who says this was Alexei Arestovich. He's an advisor to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff. And he went on to say he is fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of Russians, it means the end, the end of him as a political figure and possibly in the physical sense. Now,
We know, Patrick, from history that there is a lot of truth in that. But the question is, is there really trouble afoot for Putin or is this the Ukrainians stirring up mischief? Yeah, and I think what's happening is that we are in a kind of reality check situation.
mode here. The US want to know that it's in their strategic interest to stay the course, and they're looking beyond the battlefield to what happens after whichever way the war ends. And I think all the scenarios are pretty pessimistic. Russia is not necessarily going to be a better place than it is now. It may indeed be a much worse place. This is a point that one of our listeners makes
later on. So we'll be discussing that further. But also, I think it's dawning in Western capitals, just how enormous the task of recovery is going to be in Ukraine. Are they ever going to get back to this pre-war state where everything was pointing in the right direction, i.e. westwards and towards openness and democracy against defeating the kind of grip of the oligarchs, turning it into a 21st century modern place? That's going to be an enormously daunting
to ask and a very expensive one so i think the idea that this is some sort of wonderful crusade has fallen by the wayside and people are asking some very tough questions okay well that's all from us now in this half the rest of it's going to be devoted to colin freeman who's just come back from curson i talked to him earlier this week and this is what he told me
Colin, welcome. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast. Now, you've been down on the front lines around Kherson. Despite all the kind of media presence and all the resources there are there to record what's happening, we still have a very sketchy view of what's going on actually on the battlefield. Can you describe for us the kind of sights and sounds of what you've been seeing?
So I spent about four days down there about two weeks ago with some British military volunteers, actually, who were part of an international unit of volunteers working alongside the Ukrainian forces. We were not right up on the front lines themselves, but we were kind of what you might call a sort of rearward operating base or something like that in a village,
about 50 or 60 miles north of Kherson. The front lines themselves, I think, were about a half hour's drive from where we were. But it's still very much, you feel like you're in the zone, as it were. It's not a part of the country that you're allowed to access directly.
just independently. You have to be there with military people as there's various checkpoints and so on that you have to go through. And you hear the sound of missiles coming in occasionally. But from spending some time up there, I got an idea of what the lie of the land is. It feels a little bit like somewhere like Norfolk, really. It's very flat, mainly farmland with the odd village here and there. And then up towards the real point of contact itself is
which I think locally they refer to it as the zero line, I think, or line zero. That's where you have the two opposing sides, usually several miles apart, but at certain points where they set up observation points, ascending in recon units, basically, to observe each other. They can end up pretty close together. So you've got the two sides there trying to take one.
what is effectively very flat and open land, which makes it difficult for one side to gain an advantage over the other. And a number of the towns and villages that were being referred to when I was there were the same towns and villages that were being referred to when I was previously in that same general region back
in July. So, uh, in some ways that had not been an enormous amount of movement. What tends to happen is you'll get a recon unit will head up pressing forwards, trying to observe where the Russian lines are. Uh, that is a hazardous procedure because there's no cover. Um,
The only ways of moving around really are through ditches, you know, agricultural ditches primarily, and tree lines, i.e. belts of trees which are built to protect the fields, usually quite narrow, you know, maybe sort of 20, 30 yards wide or something like that.
and occasionally the odd culvert as well. So you're really just using any cover that you can. Those recon units of which the Brits that I was with were one, they spend their time crawling up through these things, trying to get a fix on where the enemy positions are, which ones have moved, so on and so forth.
And then trying to dial in, I think, artillery strikes, et cetera, et cetera. And then occasionally there's a big push on a village or a town where you do tend to get quite intensive fighting. Some of the Brits told me, look, there's no other way of doing it. This is not like Afghanistan where you can game plan around things using air power or something like that.
and try and minimise casualties or have no casualties at all. In several of these terms, they have had to basically go steam in, I think, with artillery support, with lots of preparation, but still having to go in with several relative
narrow points of approach along the tree lines or wherever there's cover and then often sustaining quite heavy casualties. I was told that in one big battle back in September, which was really I think the last big battle they'd had, they lost, I think the Ukrainians lost something like about 150 guys
200 injured or something, and the Russians lost anything up to about 700. That was just to take one relatively small town. They were gearing up for another big push when I was there, but then, as we now know, the Russians pulled out of Kherson anyway, so that big push did not happen.
That's absolutely fascinating. So it's basically a lot of preparation and then a brief and bloody encounter, it sounds like, when they basically go in to a heavily defended area and just slug it out over a couple of hours until you either take it or you retreat. That's right, yes. The battle that I've just referred to where 150 Ukrainians were...
apparently killed. I've not been able to verify these casualty figures, by the way, but they were told to me by more than one person. That was referred to as a battle in a day. We lost that many in a day. I think it was all over within a day or certainly not much more than that. So, yes, it's a lot of crawling around, positioning, et cetera, et cetera, with artillery going on here and there, and then one big battle
burst of fighting, intense fighting to take a particular town or village. And then sometimes some of those towns and villages see saw back as well. Yeah. Tell us about the Brits you were with. I was with two Brits. I'm not going to name them at the moment, but they're both guys, ex-military guys. One's in his late 20s, another one in his early 30s.
And they are fighting with a mixed volunteer unit. There are Americans in the unit. There are other Europeans. And they liaise also. Also with them are a number of Ukrainians as well. The foreign volunteers, some of them have not fought before. They did not have previous military experience, although they had other relevant experience experiences.
as being men at arms, I suppose you could say. One was a policeman, a former policeman from America. So, you know, he had some relevant experience, for example, in house clearing, which, of course, policemen do quite a lot in the US with weapons, anticipating, you know, armed violence.
Somebody perhaps with a gun on the other side of the door or whatever. And mainly what they were doing was training quite a lot. We went down to a training range where they were training local Ukrainians in infantry tactics.
And that was quite interesting because certainly for a non-soldier like me, you realize that there's a great deal more to infantry tactics than meets the eye. It's not just a case of perhaps, you know, I'm probably typical in thinking that when I see a group of soldiers wandering through a battlefield, you see them all going, marching single file, maybe five meters behind each other. You think that's perhaps as much as there is to it. They don't, you know, don't bunch up too much.
In actual fact, there's all sorts of tactics like peeling and things like that, which means basically that if you come under fire, one group of you goes one way and one group of you goes the other. But it's done in a kind of choreographed, semi-synchronized fashion so that someone is always putting down gunfire and so on. So it was interesting to see that.
And you realise just the extent to which all that kind of thing has to be drilled and the extent to which so much of those tactics are organised around coping when you come under fire or your soldiers get injured. It brings home the sort of sense of,
danger to you a little bit. Then the other thing these guys were doing was, as I say, recon stuff. But in terms of their motivations, well, it was a mixed group of motivations, really. A lot of them are saying, well, we don't like what Vladimir Putin is doing and we want to help
Ukraine fend him off. And I suppose that Orwellian sense, really, following in the footsteps of George Orwell in volunteering for the Republicans in Spain in the 1930s, just trying to fight evil, really, and quite a lot of them
say, you know, Putin's invasion of Ukraine is merely fascism in another form. But there are other motivations there as well. For some of them who missed out on combat in Afghanistan or Iraq, for example, it's a chance to put their combat skills to the test.
For others, I mean, they're quite candid about this. They say, you know, civilian life back in the UK or elsewhere doesn't really offer for military people quite the sort of same sense of purpose and so on. And this is an opportunity to rediscover that and sometimes to put right some of the
to sort of address some of the angst and the boredom and just dissatisfaction they have with civilian life. I think a lot of them, they just say they miss the discipline of army life. They don't like being in the civilian world where people turn up late and people tend to complain about a lot of things that, you know, if you're in a battlefield, probably don't seem to be that relevant in life.
So there's a variety of motives. So could I just butt in that for the question morale, Ukrainian morale, you know, of course, we get a picture here of everyone's rock solid and everyone's behind the kind of war aims as stated by Zelensky and the government. Did you find that to be the case in your dealings with both civilians and Ukrainian soldiers?
Yes, I didn't find anything to suggest that it wasn't the case. Obviously, when you ask people that sort of question as a reporter about morale, they may want to give a certain answer to present a certain face to the world. But the soldiers I spoke to, both the foreigners and the Ukrainians,
all said morale was good and the civilians largely said the same thing. Certainly in the case of the soldiers, some of them, you're asking that question well aware of the fact that they've lost numerous comrades, but never did I encounter anybody saying, oh, you know, I can't stand this anymore.
what you do get a bit of sometimes, and I only really heard this second hand, I asked some of the soldiers, what do the others say to you? Some of the British soldiers, I said, what do the Ukrainians say to you privately about how they're feeling?
And they said, well, occasionally they'll say, oh, we're tired of constantly being in fear of our lives and so on. But I think generally speaking, morale is OK for the obvious reason that the battle and the war generally is going their way. So there is a sense that the sacrifices seem worth it.
And what are the conditions like when you're out of the line? The sort of distances you're talking about, it seems it might be possible to actually live in some degree of comfort when you're not actually out on patrol. Is that the case? Yeah, I mean, we were in a village where most of the soldiers were living in requisitioned houses. We weren't so close to the front lines that everybody was living in trenches or dugouts or foxholes.
In this village, they had electricity. It was a bit patchy. And they were living in mainly in kind of, you know, local farmers cottages. The place we went were in was was not terribly flash. It had a kind of, you know, outdoor hole in the wall toilet, etc. But other people had, you know, places that would not have looked out of place back here in the UK, really perfectly serviceable accommodation. It depends on what they can get from people, really.
Well, that was fascinating stuff. And join us in part two for the rest of Colin's interview and for the listeners' emails. Welcome back. Well, we've heard a little bit from Colin about life on the battlefields, but we also asked him, we were also interested to hear what was life like on the home front at Kiev? This is what he told us.
Can you say something about life in Kiev because you've been coming and going from the capital? Clearly, you know, it's tough with the blackouts and the rest of it. How are people coping and what is daily life like there? Well, I was there for several days the week before last year.
To be honest, I didn't notice that much difference. Kiev, generally, I've spent a lot of time there in the last nine months. And it's remarkable how quickly people have adapted to living as a city under war. There were quite a few air raid sirens while I was there, but I don't think there were any actually any bombs or drones.
And I was wandering around the city, eating in cafes and restaurants. And I also noticed that in the evenings, there were lots of people going out, frequenting bars and restaurants. The streets are actually pretty busy, you know, nine o'clock on a Friday night. So broadly speaking, it seemed pretty much as normal. Now, winter is coming. What's your view of how that's going to affect the future of the war or the tempo of the war? Well, it will certainly slow things down for a bit.
What tends to happen before the onset of the real hard winter is you get a lot of very wet weather for several weeks. I think we may even be going through that now, which bogs down fields and ground and so on, which makes it difficult for...
for heavy armor to move around. But then after that, of course, it all starts to freeze. And as I understand it, I think the ground kind of hardens up again. What I also do know is that during the Donbass war that's been simmering really since 2014, 2015,
Fighting often carried on during that period and you occasionally had a number of key battles that were waged in January and February. So for everyone who says, you know, everything's going to grind to a halt once the snows start, there are others who are saying, well, no, that's not going to happen. It will be tougher and it will be more unpleasant. But if one side or the other thinks they can spot an opportunity to
by pressing ahead during the winter season, they'll probably do so. Can I ask you about your own feelings about the war, Colin? You've done a lot of war reporting down the years. You've seen a lot of different kinds of conflict. What does this one mean to you? Does it have a special quality for you? I think to some extent, of course, it's interesting because it is a war on your back doorstep in a way that other ones haven't been. I was too young to cover Bosnia or any of the Balkans wars.
At the beginning, it was a bit scary when I was first in Kiev, sorry, in Ukraine at the beginning of the war. You sort of thought, right, you know, this is not like a war in the Middle East or certain parts of Africa. This is Vladimir Putin and the second superpower of the world. Everybody presumed that he would be, you know, almost unarmed.
and you had no idea where soldiers were going to land and what borders might be cut off, where suddenly paratroopers might turn up, where Russian saboteurs might appear and start causing mayhem and chaos without anybody really knowing who they were. It was pretty scary, but as time has gone on, of course, we've realized the limitations of the Russian military. What is also novel to me is being welcomed as a reporter by the Ukrainians of
A lot of conflicts are covered in parts of the Middle East where you're worried about kidnapping and things like that. That is not an issue for us here. I do also get the sense that it has been the making of Ukraine. That is not just a sort of bit of mythologizing. The country has come together in a way that it never had done before. You hear a lot of Ukrainians saying that they may not have been huge fans of President Zelensky prior to the war. They are now.
And my sense is that for certainly for Ukraine in the coming sort of decades, if things go the way they're going, this will be the making of the country and it will give them the most enormous lift.
I think perhaps comparable to the lift that Britain got after World War II, the sense of victory. And I think certainly Ukrainians will, with World War II, you can argue over who was the, you know,
who played the definitive role in bringing Hitler's rule to an end. But in Ukraine, they will be able to say, yeah, we did the fighting fair and square and we did the dying. And I think that will probably last them for at least a generation to come and give them the will to
to perhaps sort of fix some of the political problems that the country has had until now. Although many of them, I think, if you ask the average Ukrainian, have been caused by not being hitched to the European Union project that has raised most of the rest of Europe into some degree of prosperity, certainly by comparison with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
There have been lots of optimistic noises coming out in the wake of the victory in Kherson from the Ukrainian government. The one official, or rather minister, saying this week that they could be in Crimea by the new year and it could all be over by the spring. Do you think that's a realistic prophecy?
There was certainly talk of that, but there was equally talk that the Russians are well dug in. There are lots of natural boundaries that the Ukrainians would have to overcome to get from Kherson to Crimea, all sorts of bridges and rivers to cross, which would obviously be very, very difficult if they were contested.
There's also the question of just how much Crimea wants to be liberated, depending on who you speak to. Quite a lot of people in Crimea are pro-Russian anyway, although that may have something to do with the fact that it's long been a kind of retirement zone, a sort of...
of Slavic Bournemouth, if you like, for retired Russian military people who go there because of the balmy climate and so on, the warm summers and gentle winters. But it's very hard to say. I mean, I don't think anybody, until a month ago, nobody thought that Kherson would be taken without a very fierce fight
And of course, but that happened. So who is to say that it might not happen with Crimea as well? Certainly the Ukrainians are talking about it. I talked to somebody, an ex-defense minister last week, who was full of chat about some sort of move for Crimea in the new year. And there are also plans been drawn up for if the Ukrainians do take Crimea back.
to remove all the Russians who have moved there since Crimea was annexed in 2014. They're pointing out that that annexation was illegal and therefore those Russians had no legal right to resettle there. That's something like half a million people
So yeah, they do seem to be intent on doing it. But if they do do it, it will potentially involve a lot of fierce fighting. And then actually that sort of second half of removing all the Russians who moved there, that could be difficult and generate perhaps even some unfavorable stories for the Ukrainians. They seem to be turfing people out of their homes.
But I think they seem to be fairly keen to stick to their guns on that, that these people should not have moved there anyway. It's also predicted that if they did try and take Crimea and Crimea did fall, the majority of the Russians who've moved there since 2014 would probably have cleared off by the time the Ukrainians turned up anyway. Colin, that was great. Thank you so much for talking to us. You're welcome. Thank you.
Well, there were some great points made there, Patrick, weren't they? It's really interesting to hear, really, for the first time, what life is like.
on the front line, or at least very close to the front line. And more interesting than that, the nature of the fighting. I mean, he's been knocking around with some of these foreign volunteers. And the first point I found particularly fascinating was the motivation of these guys. You know, there were a few Brits there, Americans, in fact, all different nationalities, working with the Ukrainians. And the question is, why are they there? Well, some are there, of course, because they want to
do their bit for Ukraine in stopping Putin. But others are there for slightly more selfish reasons. We shouldn't be surprised about this, I suppose, when it comes to soldiers, Patrick. They missed out on combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they're also trying to fill in the sort of gap
in their lives, you know, the sort of boredom that sets in, particularly for soldiers, no kind of sense of purpose. So they've gone out there really to, and let's not kid ourselves, a lot of soldiers actually quite like the kick of combat, or at least the combat theatre. So all of these things swirling around in terms of why they're there.
Yes, I think that's something that civilians don't really get, is that soldiers actually like fighting or volunteer soldiers. People in peacetime armies actually want to go off and test themselves in a war somewhere, and they're certainly getting plenty of opportunities to do that. I thought it was a brilliant word portrait that he painted there. I just want to say something about Colin. Like I said, I think he's one of the best around. He's a self-effacing guy, but he goes to a lot of trouble to get to the story.
and takes a significant amount of risk. And for me, he's really what foreign corresponding, war corresponding should be about. He sees the big picture, which he really did describe for us pretty well there. One of the things that
I got from it was this attitude of the ordinary Ukrainians. I mean, morale seems to be very, very solid. And it reminded me, brought me back to Lebanon, the Lebanese wars of the end of the last century. And I remember being in Beirut in 1990, in East Beirut, which is sort of the Christian half of
And everywhere I saw these giant billboards with the words, Il est paré-t-il qu'une terre brûlée dont plus de blé qu'une mer effrayée? The translation, of course, this comes from the great Jacques Brel song, Ne me quitte pas. And the translation is, It sometimes happens that scorched earth produces more wheat.
than the best. April. Now, this is the kind of, that was the spirit of the Christians at the time. Okay, we're in the middle of this maelstrom of violence and destruction, but out of it is going to come this great new society. And I think that's what the spirit of the Ukrainians is now. Of course, you have to look at Lebanon now and see that that wasn't the consequence. It's a broken state, essentially.
And, you know, I'm afraid this week I'm in a bit of a gloomy mood about what lies ahead for Ukraine. Out of this destruction, are we going to see this sort of, you know, phoenix rise from the ashes? I don't know. I don't know. What's your thoughts, Will?
Well, there's been, there have been some suggestions. We mentioned Zelensky's first misstep and there've been some suggestions in, in the Western press, or at least better way of putting it, Western commentators on social media that Zelensky is heading for a fall. I'm not quite sure where this comes from. If you listen to Colin, Zelensky is hugely popular in Ukraine at the moment. You're right. Of course, Patrick, we can't predict the future. Um, Colin talks about the war, uh,
at least in the minds of Ukrainians, being the making of Ukraine in the same way that the Second World War in some ways has sort of been the making of the UK, at least in terms of its national identity. Some would argue that, you know, that's a legacy that's, you know, a bit of a misstep too. But
Of course, the danger of this absolute conviction that everything's going to go well is that you don't really see the reality of how you get out of a conflict like this. I think the real issue is at what stage the Ukrainians are going to accept they need to do a deal that's going to save their country, you know, really from being destroyed. We're hearing now that...
half of all the power and electricity in Ukraine has been destroyed. Now, whatever you feel about the morality of what Russia is doing, that's the reality on the ground. They're talking about evacuating people from Kherson because, you know, they literally can't live there without power, without heat. So, you know, the country is not in a good state, but it is fighting heroically. And some of the nature of the fighting, I think, that
Colin brought out was pretty fascinating. It sort of confirmed what we've heard, which is this slow methodical approach using artillery. But, and this was new, really, at least for me, this sudden violent assault by large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers and the
result, of course, quite heavy casualties. He talked about one battle in September where 150 to 200 Ukrainians were killed and maybe 700 Russians. I mean, that's in a single day. That's a pretty bloody type of fighting. So it's not just a question of using artillery to inch their way forward. They are actually making attacks on the ground and it's costing them lives. Yeah, but that's, you know, it still plays to a
of a very carefully husbanded approach to casualties. I mean, those are in inverse proportion to what you would expect there to be with attackers versus defenders. It should be the other way around. So I still think they're showing great signs of intelligence on the battlefield. Just to go back to what I was saying earlier, my sort of slightly pessimistic tone of what I was saying doesn't mean that
But anyway, I feel we should be slackening our support for Ukraine. I see it like they do as them actually fighting a proxy battle for our values. They're fighting on our behalf. They're spilling their blood on our behalf. So I think they're right to have this stick with this absolutist approach, even though it may not look very realistic if you're sitting in a think tank and writing about it. I mean, you know, if we adopted an ultra-realistic attitude in the Second World War,
we would have given up in 1940. So that's something that having a dream is a great motivating factor, I think, in conflict. Yeah, it was very interesting to hear. Sort of following on from that, Patrick, you're right. Why would they stop when they're winning?
Colin left us in little doubt that the fighting is going to go on deeper into the winter than many people expect. The ground freezes up and that, of course, is an opportunity to make advances. So they'll keep going while they can. They're threatening the Crimea. We'll see how that goes.
And on the other side of the coin, it was a fascinating portrait of what's happening in Kiev, where it's basically life as normal, where it seems to me, even with the air raids, you know, people are going out to cafes. And this is hugely important psychologically, that a huge city, cosmopolitan city like Kiev, is carrying on, even in the midst of war. I think it's pretty impressive, frankly.
Quite so. Well, we've got another batch of questions from listeners this week. People seem to be enjoying it and they're raising some interesting points. Here's one from Mike Millis, who says, Hi, guys. Fascinating podcast. Really enjoying it. My question is, why is Putin so against NATO and sees them as such a threat? Surely a defensive body would never be a threat to Russia.
And he's only concerned about Ukraine joining for the exact reason that it stops him invading other countries on Russia's border. Well, my take on that, very simply, Saul, I'm interested to hear what you have to say, is it's just part of that kind of paranoid mindset that whether out of conviction or out of sort of propaganda manipulation,
This is the narrative that is constantly stoked in Putin's Russia. Everyone's against us. Everyone hates us. They all envy us, not just our natural resources, but also our soul. They've got this idea that their culture is something that we envy. And whatever NATO says about being only a defensive organization secretly, it's a huge conspiracy to basically take over Russia.
Yeah, that's what they believe. Of course, we should look at this in the context of the end of the Soviet Union. I mean, if you think of Soviet Union times, Russia, that is heartland Russia, has an enormous buffer zone between it and the West, which is something it's been trying to create for three or 400 years. So you have to see Putin's mindset in relation to that, because that's what he grew up in. And pretty much since the end of the fall of the Soviet Union,
NATO has encroached ever closer towards Moscow. So it's not total paranoia. His argument is that it poses an existential threat, which, of course, all of us in the West, you know, wouldn't go along with. But you can see why he's got a little bit more paranoid. And and, of course, what this war has done, as we mentioned in previous episodes, is
is make it even more likely that NATO is going to encroach on his borders, because now we've got a pretty strong bloc in Scandinavia saying they want to join too with Finland and Sweden. So he's actually produced the opposite of what he wanted to achieve. Which plays into another question we've got from Ivaras Gulbinas,
who talks about an interview he saw on YouTube in which a Lithuanian military analyst puts the view that a NATO clash is inevitable with Russia because Russia in five or 10 years' time will spiral into pure fascism and you will really be into a direct confrontation. He says, is this your view? Do you think that this clash is inevitable? Well, I mean, from what I'm hearing from people
Russia, from what we see in Russia, there is no viable political opposition that's offering a different picture of the future to Russians than more of the same, really more nationalism, more centralization, more paranoia.
Even if this black swan moment does arrive in Moscow and Putin is toppled, as we've said before, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get anyone who's more to our liking, who thinks the way that we do, because there simply isn't anyone there who's free to actually say,
form some sort of pole for opposition to form around. Navalny, the only person who seemed to be offering a viable alternative vision, is well and truly in jail, and there is no sign that the regime is going to let him out anytime soon. Even so, he's not the leader of a mass movement. Again, as we've said before, basically civil society has been hollowed out in the Putin years, and it will take a long time before it's recreated.
Yeah, I think your pessimism is justified, Patrick. I wouldn't entirely rule out Navalny producing some kind of comeback. He's quite a remarkable character, actually. I saw an amazing documentary about him in the aftermath of his poisoning. That is one determined man, and he does have a lot of support in Russia. Of course, it has to keep its head down. So, you know, let's see how things play out. If the war goes particularly bad for Putin, and there is growing unrest among the
public, you never know, there may be a possibility he'll be released and some kind of political opposition will be possible. But maybe that's a little bit optimistic. Let's move on to some other questions. Here's Roland Howard. Hi, guys. Thanks for your podcast. Three questions. Why can't Poland use its HIMARS to protect Western Ukraine, particularly now that the casualties are spilt into
Poland. Well, again, I think we've sort of already dealt with that because we now know that this wasn't a Russian missile that hit Poland, in which case Poland has no kind of, you know, sense of using its own weapons, that is its own military to enter this war. We're not quite absolutely
at that stage, Roland. So I don't really think that's relevant at this stage. Your second question, it seems unthinkable that Ukraine can't attack missile batteries in Russia when they are showering Ukraine with debilitating civilian and infrastructure attacks. Could the West not change their stance on this as it means Ukraine is fighting with one hand behind their back? And I think by that he's asking the question, should we be giving them longer range missile systems, Patrick?
And also, should we actually sanction Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil? Well, there have been some mysterious incidents, haven't there, of
you know, fuel depots, et cetera, being struck. No one claiming responsibility for it, but it being fairly obvious that this was actually a Ukrainian operation. But clearly the West has told Ukraine, this is a red line that you can't cross. And they've by and large, they seem to have stuck by that. And that's obviously the price for the continued military support. That's the reason behind that, of course, is that the,
The West doesn't want it to escalate any further. They want to keep it as contained as possible. So I think that's the answer to that one. He goes on to ask about no-fly zones. We talked a bit about this last week with Phil O'Brien. But I think it's really the same answer is that if NATO had declared a no-fly zone, which is what our friend is asking us why they didn't, the reason that they held that was, again, because it would be a huge escalation. No-fly zones are...
are a bit of a sort of tricky area. They came in just after the first Gulf War when America and the Gulf War allies decided to impose one on Iraq, in the north of Iraq, to protect the Kurds and in the south to protect the Shias. And they went on for about a decade. And it was a sort of mixed story. They actually attacked targets on the ground and managed to kill quite a few civilians. So
So it was by no means an unalloyed success. And of course, the major difference there is Iraq had no real air force to speak of at that point. Whereas if we got into an air confrontation with Russia,
you would very quickly be into escalation territory. You are, in effect, declaring war on Russia. Okay, we'll move on to another question now. This is from Matt Walters. Hi, Battleground team. I've really been enjoying the pod since I discovered it a few weeks ago. Really insightful and informative, with great access to guests. One thing's been puzzling me since you mentioned it in an earlier episode, and this is the question of whether or not the Russian economy is going to nosedive
whether we're almost at a cliff edge. Well, he suggests that we mentioned this earlier. I don't think we did. I think one of our guests did. That might have been Owen Matthews, certainly one of our experts on Russia. And we do know from the latest figures coming out, actually, that the Russian economy is likely, its GDP is likely to shrink by 4% next year. So that may not sound like a cliff edge to you. But of course, this is a pretty significant contraction. And
And economically and in terms of military supply, the squeeze is definitely being put on Russia. Its ability to provide munitions, its ability to keep its population happy, frankly, in terms of rising prices and production is going to be a big issue in the new year. So I think there is trouble coming. Patrick, what's your reading of this?
It's coming slower than we anticipated, I think, but it's definitely coming. I mean, just in the last week, Moscow's issued £11.4 billion worth of debt. You know, it's selling its debt on the international money markets. You know, this is something...
That shouldn't really have happened. We were told at the beginning of the conflict that they had this huge war chest. They've been actually planning financially for this for some period. Well, that seems to have already run down. They've expended a huge amount of munitions. They've got two problems there. One is finding the money to actually buy replacements and more importantly, finding someone who's actually going to sell them the kit that they need. Figures coming out in the last couple of days have been suggesting that they've really...
got through a lot of their stockpiles. And so they're in a bad place. If they want to continue the war, it's going to cost them a hell of a lot of money, which is only going to accelerate economic decline. So yeah, I think there is going to be a steep downturn on the very near horizon. They're already feeling the pinch. I think Russia has got a big capacity to absorb pain like this, but it's not finite. Okay.
Okay, Chris Paffett, he's a longtime listener living in Kenya, and he asked the question, who's actually making the military decisions on the Ukrainian side? It strikes Chris that Zelensky, although obviously very clever and adaptable, is not an experienced military commander, and therefore, who's making the decisions? Well, Chris, you're almost certainly right. It's not Zelensky. I think it's a big mistake when...
Patrick and I know from history that it's a big mistake when a politician interferes with military decisions. We've mentioned this before, of course, most infamously in the Second World War with Hitler. But also, it seems that Putin has made a number of key military decisions and that his chief of staff and that his senior military people have not been allowed to run the war, at least publicly.
possibly until now. What does seem to be happening on the Ukrainian side is that their senior generals are running the war. They've got a particularly good chief of staff, but also a very good, and maybe this is even more significant, chief of military intelligence. They
are undoubtedly winning the intelligence war, hugely assisted, of course, by NATO, a point that was made by Phil last week. But generally speaking, the senior elements in the Ukrainian war have frankly been playing a blinder since the invasion.
If you look at a map of where Russia was in those first few days of the invasion and where they are now, enormous areas of territory have been won back. The question is, how much more can the Ukrainians win back? Because, you know, as they're saying, as we discussed earlier, they want to win everything back. And, you know, we sympathize in their attempts to do that. The question is, is it practically possible?
I think the other thing that's in play here is that it's been a very conscious decision on the Ukrainian side in their information campaign to centralize the whole story around the figure of Zelensky. And so the narrative isn't muddied by having these other figures who public attention will be diverted away from the terrific magnetic personality of the leader. So we don't know the names of
of key military commanders in the field. There's been no attempt to sort of build them up into heroes. This may be something that actually becomes an issue when the fighting stops. But for the moment, I think it's the right thing to do, even though we know Zelensky isn't making key sort of battlefield decisions. We see in him the personification, the incarnation of the struggle, and that's been very effective in maintaining support thus far.
Okay, a question from Peter Richards. He's from Australia. Why do the Russians not utilise their air capabilities, tactical aircraft or bombers? Where is the air war? Surely Ukraine cannot defend against strategic bombers. Well, we did address this actually in Patrick's questions to Peter.
Phil last week, and he made it pretty clear that in a tactical sense, the airspace over Ukraine is pretty neutral at the moment in that neither side is really able to use many of their air assets. It's simply too dangerous, which is why you've got a lot of unmanned air drone activity, both in the air and in the sea, actually, interestingly enough. But also, it should be pointed out that Russia is attempting to use its strategic capabilities to
A lot of these missiles that have been launched into Ukraine in the last couple of weeks have been coming from planes. So they're certainly doing that, but they are not, unless, of course, they use weapons of mass destruction, an attempt to actually win the war. They're an attempt to degrade civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. And, of course, they're having a certain amount of success in that sense, but it's not a war-winning capability on its own.
Okay, one more interesting email came in from Paul Gallagher. It's quite detailed, and I'm just going to refer to one specific part of it, and that's on nuclear weapons. The question keeps coming up. Would you agree that Putin has played the nuclear wolf card for the last time? Russia's disastrous campaign might be seen to have undermined their own nuclear deterrent. Given their poor showing on the battlefield, could they even pull off a strategic first strike or
or even limited tactical use? It's a really interesting question, isn't it, Patrick? Because, you know, I have the same feeling that Paul does. There's only so many times you could threaten to use nuclear weapons. Are you actually going to do it? And if you do do it, you know, does everything change with NATO coming in? I mean, it seems to me, I know people are still concerned about this, but it seems to me that actually the nuclear card can no longer be played. What do you think? I think that, yeah, it had its uses potentially changed
earlier on, a couple of months back, I suppose it all started and it even longer. And the West played a pretty good hand, I think, in calling his bluff. And I think it's diminishing returns, isn't it? You can't keep on rattling that nuclear saber. The effect gets weaker and weaker. And I think that's what we're seeing now.
Right. Well, that's all we've got time for this week. As mentioned in this episode, the information aspect of this war is very significant indeed. And next week, we're going to be talking to Dr. Ilya Yablokov, who's an expert in all this, how information is used in war. And he's particularly going to be talking about the Russian strategy in this conflict. Do join us then.