23. Sir Mike Jackson
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Hello and welcome back to a new episode of Battleground Ukraine with me, Patrick Bishop, and Saul David. Well, the big news this week is the announcement by the US, Germany and France that finally they are sending armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine that can be used for a spring offensive.

There are also reports that Britain might be about to supply Challenger 2 battle tanks. Well, once again, we've seen little movement on the battlefield, though there is some indication that Russia is at last making some ground in its attempts to capture Bakhmut in Donetsk. But we have to ask, to what effect and at what cost? And where might the war be heading in the coming months?

To answer this and other questions, we're delighted to have as our guest General Sir Mike Jackson, a former head of the British Army and a man with a unique insight into the Russian military mindset.

Before we hear from Mike, let's drill down into the details of these new announcements on military hardware and their significance. Patrick, what have you heard? Well, let's get down to details. The U.S. has promised to send 50 Bradley armored fighting vehicles. Germany is promising 40 Marders and France Marders.

an undisclosed number of AMX-10 armoured combat vehicles, as well as Bastion armoured personnel characters. Now, the first three characters, they're all wheeled armoured cars with cannons. So they're not tanks, but they're quick and effective, particularly the American Bradleys and the AMX-10s. The really significant news is that Britain might be about to send

Challenger 2 main battle tanks. That's, you know, real big, heavy bits of kit. I remember them very well from the Gulf War. I mean, they're old, but they're still excellent and better than anything that the Ukrainians currently have. So the relevance of all this is that, as we mentioned last week,

the West doesn't seem to be bothered about, you know, tweaking the bear's tail. Do bears have tails? I'm not sure. Anyway, by antagonizing the Russians. And there are,

And so they're unconcerned, it seems, about the possibility of escalation. Yes. Well, President Zelensky has been lobbying for tanks since the beginning of the war. And this announcement might open the door, not just, of course, to the sending of challengers, but to the US sending their tanks, the M1 Abrams,

and Germany sending leopard tanks. And there's been a lot of chat about that in recent days. And as for those who say the West is eventually going to lose interest in the war and stop supporting Ukraine, the lie was given by our Ministry of Defence, which has just announced that it plans to match

or even exceed last year's funding for military aid to Ukraine and will, and this is a quote, continue to build on recent donations with training and further gifting of equipment. Now, the UK has already provided over 200 armoured vehicles to Ukraine, including Stormer vehicles with Star Street missiles. This follows on from a similar US announcement of almost 3 billion of new military aid. So it seems, Patrick, that for the time being, the West's support for Ukraine is holding firm.

Yeah, it's not all going Ukraine's way though, is it, Saul? You mentioned at the top that...

Russia making some headway in their very vigorous attempts to capture Bakhmut in Donetsk. We've long puzzled about why they're actually trying to do that, given the town's relatively insignificant strategic value. We decided that it's really a kind of propaganda thing, proving they can still capture territory. Also worth reporting that this week, Yevgeny Prigozhin, someone who's often appeared on this

show the head of the Wagner mercenary group, whose men are said to be doing most of the fighting and dying for Backmuth. His motivation, apparently, is to get his hands on the salt mines that surround the place. There's a town just to the north of Backmuth called Soledar, which is a mining town which has minerals and salt. And the thinking is that if Soledar falls, Backmuth might follow.

How serious do you think this is, Sean? I'm not convinced it's that serious. As you say, Patrick, I think it's a propaganda issue. There are some analysts saying, well, this could open the door to further advances and, you know, it could all be a disaster for the Ukrainians. I'm not buying that for a second. Of course, Ukraine doesn't want to lose any more territory if it can avoid doing so. But Bakhmut is not a vital strategic prize, as we keep saying.

The bigger picture to look at here are the offensives from both sides that might take place in the spring. Now, we got an insight into the Ukrainian possibilities from Major General Kirill Budanov, the Ukrainian chief of intelligence, who's just said that his country is indeed planning to launch a major offensive then. We know, of course, that there's always the danger of misinformation to deliberately deceive the Russians, but he didn't talk about anywhere specific. He just said that he expected the fighting to be at its hottest here.

in March when he anticipated the liberation of territories and the final defeats of the Russian Federation. It will, he added ominously, happen throughout Ukraine from Crimea to the Donbass. Of course, if the Ukrainians have Western battle tanks by then, their chances of success will be all the greater. But what about the Russians, Patrick? What might they be planning?

Well, just before we get onto that, Saul, I've been talking to people in Ukraine about the mood there, and it is pretty upbeat. I mean, something that we've been concerned about is the relative imbalance in manpower reserves. Now, we all know Russia's got a kind of inexhaustible supply, it would seem, whether they're willing to fight or not is another matter. But on the Ukrainian side, they've got far fewer. But it seems that there's confidence there that they can move

not only hold the line, but actually carry out an offensive in the spring, their own offensive. And of course, you know, this possibility that we've talked about before, that the Russians might try and force them to fight on two fronts by advancing from Belarus with Belarusian troops, it doesn't faze them at all. In fact, they're kind of saying, bring it on. The intelligence analysis of Kiev is that if the Belarus was actually forced to fight,

The soldiers, there'll be mass desertions. There might even be people coming over ready to fight on the Ukrainian side.

and the entry of Belarus into the war might actually hasten the demise of the dictator essentially Lukashenko which would then create a huge problem for the Kremlin because they would then be facing a sort of crisis on two fronts so just to deal with that I think you know the mood is pretty sanguine in Ukraine at the moment on the Russian side what are they going to do well you know we keep coming back to this mass mobilization they're talking about up to half a million men the

the possibility of a mass attack in the spring. Looking at history, Russia does have a, in the Second World War, history of going from near disaster and defeat onto the front foot quite quickly after the Battle of Moscow and culminating, of course, in the annihilation of the Germans on the Eastern Front. That was a very different situation, I think. You had the monolithic power of the communist state, which was able to

able to bring every resource in Russia and its dominions to bear on the problem of defeating the Germans. We're not in that situation now. As we keep hearing, support for the war is dubious. It may not actually translate into demonstrations on the street, etc. But, you know, no one really wants to fight in this war.

No, Patrick. And the other point about the Second World War is that Russia had Western economic support. And of course, in this conflict, it's completely the opposite. And that Western economic support, as we know from recent research by people like Phil O'Brien, who's appeared on the podcast, made a massive material difference to victory in the Second World War.

But let's talk about another issue the Russians have got to resolve, and that's their dwindling supply of artillery shells. We've mentioned this before and the fact that they've been trying to replenish their shells from sources like North Korea and elsewhere. Well, that clearly isn't working because the number they are firing, according to official US sources, is down by 75% from the height last summer. They could, of course, be husbanding them for a big push or they might just be running out.

And on that point of external aid, another area of concern for Russia is China's attitude. We're hearing from a report in the Financial Times that China is now trying to reset its economy and win back its friends in the West. This is trying to actually repair some of the damage done to its economy by the surging deaths told from COVID-19.

So from an economic perspective, China's got to try and get on better terms with the West. And that, of course, means not doing anything that could be construed as support for Russia. Well, and now for something completely different, as they used to say on the old Monty Python show, and that's Harry. We've got to talk about Harry. I know it's not directly Harry.

related to Ukraine. Well, it is in a way, it's about, you know, warfare, how it's conducted. And my feeling is that he really did cross a line there. We'll be hearing Mike Jackson talking very eloquently about this later on. Mike is not at all happy about what Harry said earlier.

And this is him, Harry, saying that he killed 25 Taliban in his service in Afghanistan when he was air crew on an Apache attack helicopter. Now, I must say that it did strike me as a very bizarre thing to say. You've been around soldiers a lot. So, I mean, have you ever heard any soldiers speak like that?

Not in public. And that's the real key point here. Would they talk like this in the confines of the barracks? Probably. Would they talk like this to people who weren't soldiers, family, friends, journalists, even historians? No.

Not much. I mean, every time I've heard someone I've interviewed, Patrick, and these are, of course, veterans from the Second World War and earlier, give me a kind of body count that's, I killed five, I killed 10, I killed 15. Almost always my antenna goes up and I think, did you really? There seems to be an element of boastfulness about this, that

almost always means that they didn't actually kill that number. It is quite difficult to kill that number of people, maybe not so much in an Apache helicopter. But I think the broader issue here is no, it almost never happens in public. And therefore, this is just another aspect of the murder that the military quite rightly tends to pursue. What about you?

Well, you know, I've been like you, I've been around soldiers a lot, you know, not just in a kind of formal situation, but, you know, drinking with them when you'd expect things like this to come out. And I've never heard anyone speak like that. I was also in Afghanistan in 2008, so around the time that Harry was doing his first tour. And the thing that struck me about it was that it really was a grotesquely one-sided conflict. You know, there's a military term, asymmetrical warfare, and this was about as asymmetrical

as it gets. You know, one side has the most advanced killing technology ever developed. They go out encased in body armor with world-class medical facilities on hand if they get hit. And the other side are basically sort of almost medieval warriors carrying AK-47s

and wearing flip-flops. I remember when I was there, I was up in Kajaki in Helmand province and going out on patrol. I remember on one patrol when the insurgents, I won't call them Taliban because I think a lot of the guys that were doing the fighting were just young men, tribesmen, doing what young Afghan males have always done when armed strangers arrive, which is to defend their territory.

Well, we were out on the patrol. The insurgents fired a few mortar rounds in our direction. We took cover. And then someone sort of calmly gets on the radio and calls in an airstrike. So a few minutes later, there's a massive explosion on the hillside where the fire had come from. Went up in a kind of great ball of flame and smoke. We later heard from two satellite guided bombers, which had been dropped from, I think it was, I can't remember what it was that dropped. I think it was actually a B-1 bomber.

So the risk levels were extremely imbalanced. So, you know, Harry talking about taking pieces off the board and all the rest of it makes it sound like it's a real contest, but Harry was in virtually no danger of,

I think there were only 15 helicopters lost in the entire war to enemy fire, and none of them were Apaches. So presenting this as if it's a kind of, you know, bold military act, it strikes me as pretty sort of uncool, actually, grotesque almost. It's really a story of a privileged white man

white guy flying above the action in very little danger, wiping out village boys carrying rifles. That doesn't strike me as being particularly brave. And it also strikes me as sitting rather oddly with his claims to be a passionate humanitarian. I don't think any

good soldier feels comfortable about the taking of life. Do you remember when we had David Morgan on, Saul, who was a pilot in the Falklands War? Do you remember what he told us about his experience of shooting down enemy aircraft? Yeah, you're talking about Mog, you know, famous pilot, Harrier pilot, and he was involved in one of the most extraordinary pieces of air combat. In fact,

I think the last time a British pilot shot down an enemy plane in air-to-air combat, this took place during the Falklands, just after the rather savage bombing of the Sagalahad. And some of those planes that carried out that bombing were taken out by Mog. But the striking thing about that, quite apart from the incredibly dramatic description of the air-to-air combat, which you can, of course, listen to if you go back in the earlier episodes of the podcast,

is him talking about his anguish after shooting down the Argentinian aircraft. They were, as he said, pilots like him, and he felt crushed knowing he had taken their lives. So that, I think, is a much more natural and genuine reaction to killing the enemy in combat. Okay, now it's time to hear from our guest this week, General Sir Mike Jackson. Mike is probably Britain's best-known general since the Second World War. He served in both the Intelligence Corps and the Parachute Regiment and was later the British Army's Chief of General Staff.

With relevance to his knowledge of Russia, he took a degree in Russian studies at Birmingham University and later almost came to blows with the Russians during the Kosovo crisis. Yes, well, this was in June 1999.

I was covering the events there as a journalist. NATO had been bombing the Serbs in an attempt to get them to withdraw from Kosovo, where they were killing and expelling the Albanian population. And Mike was commanding NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. While he was there, he did two outstanding things. I remember waiting with bated breath in a field outside Kumanovo, a little place called Kumanovo, Macedonia,

While inside this great big sort of marquee, Mike was sitting down negotiating with the Serb generals who are not the easiest people in the world. And he managed to persuade them reasonably peacefully to withdraw from the areas of Kosovo they held and to allow NATO in. And this they did, thus averting a major conflict. But the second thing he did showed, I think, huge moral courage when he stood up to his boss, the US General Wes Clark,

Now, Russian peacekeeping troops were nearby in Bosnia as part of a kind of force there that had been sent in after the Bosnian conflict was sort of settled. And they decided to take over Pristina Airport in Kosovo.

And Wes Clark ordered Mike to send troops in to block the runway to stop them flying in reinforcements. Now, this, we've got to remember, was at the beginning of the honeymoon period between the old Cold War adversaries following the collapse of communism. So relations were very delicate. But Mike told Clark in what was apparently a rather heated discussion, I'm not going to start the Third World War for you.

Well, it all ended amicably over a glass of whiskey and a cigar and an even bigger bust up with the Russians was avoided. And the point is that General Jackson is one of the few British senior officers to have had any direct dealings with the Russians. He's also studied Russia and speaks the language. So we asked him what his experience had taught him about the Russian army.

Mike, what did that tell you about the Russian military? And from your knowledge of that, has the Russian military changed since those days?

I'm not sure it has. One of the characteristics which came over to me and my fellow commanders was a rigidity in the Russian approach to commander control in particular, very top-down. And connected with that, and part of the reason for it being top-down, I surmise, is

is the Russian army does not have a senior non-commissioned officer body in the way that the British army and other Western armies do, where your company sergeant major is a bedrock figure in an infantry battalion or whatever. They are creatures of authority, and you don't see that in the Russian army.

It's a lacunae in my view, which doesn't do them any good. In some ways, Mike, you could see your experience of Pristina Airport as a kind of high point of NATO relations, or at least the West's relations with Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. I'm exaggerating a little bit there, but things have come to a pretty pass, haven't they? When by the beginning of 2022, Russia's government, Putin, effectively is portraying the West as Russia.

the enemy attempting to destabilize Russia. And this is used as a pretty paper thin excuse for invading Ukraine. How do you think we got to that point? And is this just an attitude that's at the senior level of Russian politics? Or do you think it permeates all the way down into the military too?

I think you see evidence of both of those characteristics. There is no doubt, whether we like it or we don't, that certainly at the beginning, Putin's

decision to basically occupy Ukraine, that would have been his strategic objective, I'm sure, that had very considerable, probably majority support in Russia. And then, of course, as things did not go quite as well as President Putin had forecast to himself, I think you see a

public support going down significantly. I mean, pen and poles in a country like Russia are dubious at best, but there is, in my view, sufficient evidence that this war does not have the wholehearted support either of the Russian nation or indeed Russia.

the Russian army, which has had to go to almost bizarre means of keeping its manpower going. The autumn conscription didn't go very smoothly, as I recall. Are you surprised, Mike, given what you've said about the sort of...

almost institutional weakness of the Russian military, the lack of effective command and control, the fear of really operating in an autonomous level, something the British Army has been very good at, certainly since the early 90s, possibly earlier. And this weakness of the senior NCO, which we know is so important to

to armed forces. I mean, given that you knew all of that before the war, were you surprised at the relatively poor performance of the Russians since the invasion in February 22? I think my answer is a yes.

Guarded, yes, I was surprised by the opening gambit. As I think we know, had Kiev in its sights within a week or thereabouts spectacularly failed. I thought before it actually happened that there were weaknesses in the Russian army, but mass matters are...

something perhaps in this country we don't always emphasize enough. Mass matters and whatever else the Russian army on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine had mass. I expected a stout defense, but I also expected mass would eventually overcome that stout defense.

Well, in reality, I needn't have been so concerned because the failure to capture Kiev in the opening gambit was tactically not impressive. But strategically, they failed at the outset to match their performance to their objective. And it was that mismatch in capability against Kiev

design that in some ways we have seen throughout. Now, Mike, you say mass matters, and it seems that's Putin's thinking as well. In his New Year's speech, he made it clear that he's pinning really his political future on the success or something he can call success at the next phase of the war in Ukraine. That depends very largely on numbers. It seems there's a lot of talk about another round of elections

troop raising maybe is to the level of 500,000 new troops. What difference do you think that will make to the course of the war? Do you think that this really just throwing huge numbers of troops at Ukrainians stands a chance of succeeding? A chance? Yes. Likelihood? I'm less certain. I mean, there are vast reserves of manpower in Russia.

But to turn 300,000, you said, Patrick, 500,000, to turn that into competent, well-armed, well-trained maneuver units is going to take a hell of an effort.

and not a little time. Because if you don't get that right, you are just sending these youngsters ill-trained, ill-equipped, not really knowing what they're doing. And that is a recipe I would suggest for defeat. Can they do it spring, summer, this year?

I don't believe so in those numbers, no. By the same token, Mike, do you think this could be a hinge moment in the war where resounding defeat of a Russian spring offensive could bring about a collapse of the whole military structure and moving on from that, perhaps the end of Putin? It's a possibility, is it not? I mean, there are many possibilities as to how the war may or may not develop.

The difficulty for us here is working out which is the more probable, the less probable. I find that more difficult. There is talk of a spring offensive on both sides. I'm more inclined to put my money on the Ukrainians. If the Ukrainians use this winter to re-equip, train new forces,

use their now great depth of battle experience, get their thinking right. It's the higher level thinking, the use of manoeuvre, which probably will give Ukraine the opportunity to get really on the front foot. Well, that's all very revealing. Do join us in part two when we'll hear more from Mike and answer listeners' questions.

Welcome back. We're now going to hear the second part of our interview with General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British Army and a noted Russian expert. This is what he told us. Looking at the biggest possible picture, Mike, and that's the West's sort of global strategic imperatives over the coming years, but obviously moving from this point onwards,

How important is it, do you feel, that the West stays firm in its support of Ukraine because there's a bigger picture to be had in relation to China and elsewhere? I would say strategically it is vital for the West to remain as one and to show this unwavering support for Ukraine itself.

in its hour of pretty desperate need. The recent emphasis from Russia on bringing down energy infrastructure. And let's remember that Ukraine winters minus 20 is not unusual. So for me, the West has to stay as one in its determination

that Putin's aggression will not be rewarded by success. We have to make it clear that this is not the way. And it's a wider message, as you say, Saul, not just to Russia.

Mike, a question about the conduct of the Russian soldiers. We all know that they've got a long history in the Second World War, particularly of brutal behavior. Were you taken aback by the extent of the indiscipline and the atrocities that are very well documented, that seem to be going on and on? There doesn't seem to be any such thing as progress.

in their conduct, historically? No. As you say, shades of Berlin, 1945. I'm afraid I wasn't surprised. I was saddened by these reports of, quite honestly, bestial behavior by Russian soldiers. It goes back to what I said as we opened this discussion. There is not a proper...

corpus of senior non-commissioned officers whose job it is in any army to ensure that discipline is maintained and that these awful behaviors do not happen and i think two sides of the same coin here

Can we end by talking to you about a not direct connection to Ukraine, but something, you know, very dear, I'm sure, to anyone who's a former soldier. And those are the reported comments. I think they're pretty clear that they have been made in the book by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, about his time as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, in which he talks about the body count, Mike, and the fact that he was taking chess pieces off the board. I mean,

Are you, as a former soldier and a former commanding officer of Prince Harry and his brother, saddened to hear those? And are they quite unusual comments to make for former soldiers? I'm very saddened. It reduces the battlefield to an impersonal level. In my experience, soldiers do not indulge in a body count competition.

Killing is, yes, is part of soldiering if you have to, but it's not something, in my experience, soldiers take any particular satisfaction from for its own sake. I was very saddened to hear that comment, which I believe to be very ill-judged. It's not the action or the words of the British Army I know.

Mike, just before we go, what's your feeling about how this is going to end? I'm not asking for a specific prediction, but are you optimistic that it will end in a good result for Ukraine and a defeat that will have consequences for the future of Russia? Good consequences. Big consequences. And we have not mentioned so far the nuclear option, both literal and metaphorical. I don't think Putin...

Is this a thought or a hope? It's certainly both. Would be so crassly stupid as to open the nuclear Pandora's box. Put that to one side. I'm not sure outright victory is open to either side. At the moment, Ukraine seems to have the upper hand.

But I have spoken earlier about Russian mass, which could outnumber Ukraine's proven tactical agility. Will Russia accept a compromise? I think they're going to have to in the end. Is Ukraine willing to compromise now? No.

But as time goes on, as the damage, both human and structural, goes on, the pressure to bring it to a halt, even if neither side has achieved its full objectives, I think will grow. And sooner or later, there has to be some form, I suspect,

of negotiated settlement with strategic guarantees for Ukraine. And one strategic guarantee, of course, is your membership of NATO. That would...

enrage Moscow and really would. So it's not a good answer because I just don't know. One has to try and one's hopes in one compartment and one's judgment in another here because the first may lead to a distorted second.

Well, that was great stuff as ever from Mike. What stood out for me? Well, a number of fascinating points, but the first bit was actually, this is the first time we've had a proper assessment of the essential, almost institutional weakness of the military. Mike talked about the little autonomy that officers had at each rank

how they rigidly followed orders. There was no proper command and control. And here's the real kicker and the real insight, I think, into the nature of the Russian army. No effective cadre of senior NCOs, non-commissioned officers. And the latter point, of course, contributes to poor discipline and atrocities, as he went on to say. And

And yet, knowing all this, Mike was still surprised at how poor the Russian military has performed since the invasion. That big gap, as he talked about, between aspiration and capability. Yes, he wouldn't rule out Russia turning the tide, nonetheless, just on that gap.

issue of numbers. You know, as he says, mass is important. And if they really can raise 500,000 recruits, that is one thing. Of course, the other thing is they've got to turn them into effective soldiers in a matter of a few months. Spring isn't that far away. And on the other hand, you know, their adversary, the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be much more adaptable and flexible on the battlefield.

Yeah, overall, like us, he thinks that Ukraine has got a much better chance of winning the war than Russia. And that also, like us, it's vital the West continues to show unwavering support for Ukraine. And that seems to be what's happening with the various bits of news that we've announced today. But

ultimately, and again, I think both of us might sympathise with this point of view, both sides are going to have to compromise a little bit before peace is possible. Of course, the Ukrainians certainly don't want to admit that at the moment or don't want to even suggest that that's a possibility. And he talks, as we have done, about the strict security guarantees Ukraine is going to need, including probably membership of NATO.

Well, his remarks about the Duke of Sussex, I think, speak for themselves, but I don't think they will be very welcome to Harry.

Okay, let's move on to listeners' questions. The geographical spread is really quite remarkable this week, Saul. I think we've only got one from the UK. We'll kick off with Darby Field from Waltham, Massachusetts. And he says, we often default to World War II analogies, even when there may be more recent or analogous ones, particularly

Yeah, I think we plead guilty to that one. But he goes on to say, what about going further back, actually, and seeing if there are any useful lessons from the Crimean War, where Imperial Russia was defeated by a coalition of Western powers supporting a war?

regional actor. Well, that's one of your special subjects, isn't it, Saul? So over to you. Yeah, I'd like to address both those points, actually. You know, of course he's right. We have been talking about World War II a lot, but there's a reason for that. And not just World War II, actually, World War I as well, but World War II in particular, because that's the last time, frankly, Russia fought a major war at

And so you can understand a lot about the techniques and methods. We talked about deep battle that Russia used in that conflict. There is a lot to learn, frankly, from making analogies with the Second World War. But he's also right. The Crimean War is an important conflict. Can we learn anything from it? Yes, we can a little bit, actually, because as Darby makes the point, this was...

a war in which the West supported a regional actor. Of course, in the case of the Crimean War, the regional actor was Turkey, not Ukraine, and the opponent was Russia. So what happened and what can we learn about it? Well, the big difference, of course, between the two conflicts then and now is that in 1854,

France and Great Britain supported Turkey, not just with economic and military support, but actually with boots on the ground. And that made a massive difference. And of course, you had the British Royal Navy, which is the real key to the whole story, because the fighting in the Crimea was really to knock out the Russians' naval base at

in Sevastopol. And of course, that has current relevance, doesn't it, Patrick? Because ultimately, given that the naval base there has been such an important part of the Russian military history, it's one of the reasons why the Russians were so determined to get their hands on Crimea again. But the end of the war is very interesting because

course, having been isolated diplomatically in a way that Russia is again being isolated, they had imposed on them a very brutal peace, which in a nutshell meant the neutralization of the Black Sea. Now, if you consider that up to this point, Russia would have thought of the Black Sea as its own lake, and of course, it had a very powerful military presence there operating out of Sevastopol. This was an

utter humiliation for the Russians. So if there are any lessons to learn there, one, don't get isolated diplomatically. Well, they have been. And secondly, you have to be a little bit wary about imposing the sort of draconian peace terms that are going to lead to long term resentment. And those are the things we've mentioned before.

Fascinating stuff. One here from George. George doesn't say where he is. And he says he's interested in the video of the Wagner members complaining about lack of supplies. And he asks us, do you have any insight into

on the structure of Wagner. Well, you know, it's amazing that we know so little really about how Wagner works given the prominence it's getting in the story. And I'm afraid, George, I can't really offer you anything except more questions. You know, why do the Wagner guys actually fight? They're mercenaries. No matter how much they get paid, surely it can't compensate for the risks they're taking of death and

or being maimed. Why are they being used in this apparently sort of pointless battle around back work? These are all things that we don't really have any answers to. Have you got any thoughts on that at all?

Well, yes. One thought is they've got no option. I mean, they've come out of prison. They've been told that if they try and retreat or they surrender to the enemy, they're going to be shot. I think this is classic. Going back to our earlier point, this is classic Second World War tactics. You know, there's a gun at your back and if you don't fight, you're going to die anyway. So you might as well fight. But

You know, there's another interesting thing here, which is that how does Wagner, which is the point of George's question, fit into the command structure? And the answer to that, of course, is going to be not very well. There is no place for mercenary groups to fight in a modern army. Of course, they are doing it and they're fighting quite effectively insofar as that they're losing a lot of soldiers and they're making some gains on the battlefield.

You know, a lot of these guys, these mercenaries are ex-soldiers, so they've got military experience and they've probably got a lot more military experience than, of course, the conscripts who are coming straight out of civilian life. But nevertheless, how do you fit their commanders into the overall military structure? And there is no insight that that's happening that smoothly. And of course, there's a lot of criticism from senior Wagner characters, including Prikovkin, as to the inadequacy of the effort made by the regular Russian military.

Okay, we're going to jump to one here from Andrew Hayes in South Uist.

Now, I know South U.S. I go fishing there a lot because my family have access to a house there, indeed, where Andrew Hayes is often to be seen. He's actually my brother-in-law, Andrew Hayes. Anyway, he asked a very good question. A second mobilization is inevitable if Putin is to have any chance of offensive capability, let alone holding his front. Given the widespread internal trauma of the first partial mobilization,

which he was anxious to avoid might the second one trigger a more dangerous challenge to the venture in the Kremlin.

And on the streets. Well, my immediate reaction is I think inside the Kremlin, that probably my feeling would be that they're going to be biding their time, see how this new offensive goes and then make their move depending on or not, depending on the result of that. On the actual question of how it's going to go down in Russia, I've been talking to people, to Russians living here who have contact with their families here.

In Moscow, one particular person has been visiting their family recently there and

And they were telling me that even though it's quite hard to kind of read the mood there, people are being very tight-lipped about what they think about the war, they are actually taking practical steps to get their young men out of the country in order to avoid getting caught in the dragnet that will be thrown out any day now. One particular story of an 18- and 19-year-old lad who's been got out to Europe, and I think there's a lot of that going on. So now that the actual...

mobilization is spreading to areas that were previously relatively ineffective, like St. Petersburg and Moscow, I think you're going to see not necessarily, again, like we said before, mass protests, but what you will see is sort of passive resistance. And that obviously is going to be very troubling for Putin. Okay, moving on to a question from Mark Harris from New Zealand. Kia Ora, Patrick and Saul, he says, really enjoying your podcast series. I'm

I may have missed it in one of your earlier episodes, but has there been much coverage and discussion of the Holdemore in the 1930s that saw up to 10 million Ukrainians die of starvation as the Russians imposed collectivization and eradicated the kulaks, who, of course, were the old sort of landowning class that kind of, you know, the smallholding peasant class.

Seems to me, says Mark, that this would still have a major bearing on the Ukrainian psyche and attitude to this current war. Well, we have had mention of the Holden by a couple of our historians, I think, in the past. Certainly, we've been aware of it. And yes, the answer to your question, Mark, is it certainly will have a major bearing on the Ukrainian psyche. I think a couple of the Ukrainians we've spoken to have also talked about it as part of their resentment, you know, their sort of underlying resentment about

to Russia. So it is an important factor. We have mentioned it before, and I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point.

It's a massive element in creating a Ukrainian national identity, isn't it, Saul? It's kind of Nietzschean, that which does not kill me makes me stronger. And I think it's very much part of the kind of national psyche. So, yeah, it could be something we could revisit down the line. Now, we've got one here from Roger King, living in Adelaide in South Australia. His question, he says, is a simple one. Are the Allies unarmed?

of Ukraine sending the wrong message to Russia by not allowing Ukraine to fight on equal terms i.e. they're not giving them all the kit that might actually increase particularly their offensive capability well we're seeing a change of stance there aren't we we've been talking about it throughout the show about this new armor that's that's heading in their direction there is of course more that could be done do you think that now is the time to do that Saul?

Yeah, I do. I mean, we've been calling for this for a while. We absolutely agree with Roger. There are two other vital areas, of course, that the West can supply modern weapons. It's interesting, he talks about equal terms with the Russians. We don't believe, frankly, from what we've seen so far of the war, that NATO weapons, even up against the best Russian kit, is equivalent. It's

obviously far superior. But nevertheless, if we support Ukraine, we should be giving them everything they need to fight. And of course, the other key areas are combat planes, more sophisticated combat planes and more of them, but also longer range missiles, which could be a real game changer because they can attack the sort of store areas and concentration points and command and control centres deep to the rear of the front lines.

Well, that's all we've got time for. But before we go, we must mention a major milestone the podcast has just passed, and that's its one millionth download. And that, of course, is thanks to all of you. So do keep listening, do spread the word, and do send any questions you have to battlegroundukraine, that's all one word, at gmail.com. And do join us next week when we'll be talking to another fabulous guest and discussing the latest news. Goodbye.