47. The Big Interview: Phillips O'Brien on Intelligence Leaks, Ukrainian Resolve, and Managing Expectations.
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Hello and welcome to Battleground Ukraine's Big Interview with me, Saul David.

Today, I'm speaking to friend of the podcast, Philips O'Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. Phil is one of the most incisive commentators on the war in Ukraine and was last on the podcast in November.

Phil, welcome back to the podcast. I see from your blog that you recently visited the Ukraine. Can you tell us why you went on that trip and what you found when you got there? Well, I mean, I went as part of a St. Andrews delegation to basically learn and interact with the people

Ukrainian strategic studies community, some people in the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian military to learn, maybe give some advice about things like framing and the history of military production. So it was really, you might say, an intellectual trip by the St. Andrews group. We were very lucky in the sense that we had

extremely high level access to Ukrainian officials and very high access to the Ukrainian strategic studies community. So we spent a week there, and most of us were there a week, and really going from meeting to meeting to meeting. It was not what you would, you know, we didn't go tour any areas near the fighting or anything like that. It was more an attempt to learn about how Ukraine is

fighting the war from a grand strategic, economic, or social perspective. We met with a number of civil groups and elements like that. What did we learn? Now, that's a very interesting question because it went on from the most...

granular to the sort of larger grand strategic from the granular, they need a lot of ammunition. You want to say what comes across when you meet Ukrainians who have anything to do with fighting the war? The number one thing you're going to be told is get us ammunition. This war is consuming huge amounts of product and the battlefield just voraciously eats up whatever you can give towards it. So the Ukrainians are

just keen to get whatever they can get their hands on, particularly 155 millimeter ammunition. So that's a call. They really want F-16s. That's not a surprise. They say it over and over again. But when you're there, they talk about the need for F-16s to fight the war. That the Ukrainians absolutely believe they can win this war, particularly if they're properly armed. I mean, that's in some ways, there's an element of frustration for the Ukrainians.

That they believe that Russia can be defeated, that this Russian army has some significant flaws, but they don't necessarily believe they're getting all everything they need to defeat it. So it's sort of that there's there's an element of frustration to go along with an element also of.

you know, thanks for their partners. I mean, in some ways, you know, they're very grateful that they received this aid from primarily NATO states and others that have helped them fighting, but they're also frustrated in it. Emotionally, they are determined. I mean, the other thing is that very regularly stated by Ukrainians at all levels is they have no choice but to fight this war on. The Russians have made it clear that they don't want a Ukraine.

They don't want Ukrainians. This is very much what they've seen. So this is an existential war for them and that they have no desire to sort of

make a bad peace deal and allow Russia to come back with them in 5, 10, 20 years. This is not anything that they believe is possible. So they want to defeat Russia and guarantee their own security by joining NATO. That's also absolutely clear. So that's their determination.

On the other hand, they're tired. There was certainly a lot of mental... They've had a year and two months since the full-scale invasion, and now nine years since the fighting started. And that also takes an emotional toll. So you could tell that while being determined, they're also tired. So it's what war does. So we saw a lot of different things, but that was sort of overall impressions.

Did it confirm your views or your suspicions, maybe a better way of putting it, Phil, before you went out there as to the sort of attitude you were going to get when you arrived? Or were you surprised by, you know, this, as you say, this level of determination? There's bound to be a certain amount of war weariness. It goes without saying. But certainly when I read your blog, I very much got a sense of the fact

that there was an underlying element of confidence, if only, as you say, they can get the kit they need. I suppose the really big question, which I'll sort of come on to in a moment, is whether or not they've got enough kit to be able to move the story on. But let's come to that in a minute. But just more generally, did it confirm your feelings or were you surprised? I always like to ask the Ukrainians here how they think they themselves have thought and what happened. And

Not universally, but a lot of them said that we didn't quite know what was going to happen on February 24th, whether we would resist, not that they would throw up their hands and run away, but they thought they would fight. They hoped that they would fight, that they would do this well. But of course, they couldn't know because they were being told that Russia is this great power and Russia is going to steamroll with them. This is the second army in the world and Kiev will fall in a few days.

And so they themselves, I think what was fascinating is what happened after February 24th has made them more confident in themselves, well-tired, that all of a sudden they saw, yes, well-armed pretty poorly. If you go back to February 24th, 2022, you have to remember the Ukrainians were actually armed poorly.

Far below a NATO standard country. I mean, all they had received from NATO countries are basically handheld weapons, the famous MANPADS. But all their heavy weapons were Russian design, Soviet design materials, some of which they had upgraded, but was far below NATO standard. So they weren't armed terribly well. They had been told that Russia had this amazing army.

These armed forces that had been tried and tested in Syria, some of the best electronic and armored formations in the war. And so they didn't they believe they would fight and they actually believe they would do well, but they didn't know. There was sort of, I think, a voice in the back of their heads going, is this right? Is Russia this strong or are we going to be the steamroller? And the fact that they didn't and the fact that they fought really well and armed as poorly as they were armed,

fought the Russians back from Kyiv, held the Russians, convinced the West to arm them in a way better than they were. That has made a massive difference to how the Ukrainians see themselves. And that actually, I think, provided them the confidence to think they can win the war. So their resistance after February 24th was not a surprise, but it answered some questions, I would

Okay, now one of the key elements of the West's support, of course, has been intelligence. And in that context, of course, in the last couple of weeks, we've had the news of the Pentagon leaks, the leaking of top secret intelligence material by this relatively junior intelligence analyst for the Massachusetts Air Guard,

A lot of speculation about the effects of all of this. Phil, what's your take on how harmful these leaks have been for the Ukrainians? To the Ukrainians, it's a nothing burger. I mean, it's just one of these things. What is this supposed to do? I mean, what the evidence showed is two things.

One, that Russia is very well penetrated by U.S. intelligence capabilities. I mean, that's what it showed. That basically, probably through eavesdropping, this is not human intelligence, but just through eavesdropping and penetration of Russian systems, the United States knows what the Russians are thinking and doing, and they know the situation in Russia.

And the fact that certain people in the U.S. military are skeptical of what the Ukrainians could achieve. That's not new. That's been the case from February 2022 to today. There's always been some that are somewhat skeptical of what the Ukrainians could achieve.

So, yes, those are two things that have come out. How does that affect? This is the thing that I'm quite clear. People say, oh, it's a big deal to make a big difference to the counteroffensive. Well, it should make no difference to the counteroffensive. I don't see how. If the counteroffensive was just about to launch when the leaks came out and from the leaks, the Russians knew exactly where the Ukrainians were going to attack. Well, it could have made a difference. But that was already weeks ago. By the way, this information mostly was leaked January, February. This was not

the most up-to-date stuff that we have now. The Ukrainians probably have quite a fluid counter-offensive in mind. They're going to see where they want to attack depending on where the Russians are. So the Russians might know the numbers of certain units that should be part of the counter-offensive. That, if anything, allows the Ukrainians to play with their heads for a little bit by moving these units around and making the Russians think. So

Solidarity, you know, my own view on intelligence, can be incredibly important. But it's also, it's not so much intelligence what you get, it's how you understand it and how you analyze it and put it into action that really matters. What we don't know is what the Russians could take from this evidence and then act on. How are they going to improve their action? I just can't see it making any significant difference in the counterpoint. And by the way, people have stopped talking about it.

I know what he's talking about. Oh, this terrible leak that's going to harm the Ukrainian counteroffensive. I think that's just dropped because everyone realized there was a lot of overreaction at the time and now people are moving on. That's the way these things go.

Another subject, Phil, that you've written a fair bit about, mainly because there's been so much noise about this in the press and online over the last few months, of course, has been the fighting in Bakhmut. The decision by the Ukrainians to keep fighting there, there's been a fair amount of criticism of that, which you've addressed. But what is your sort of broader take on the sense of the Ukrainians fighting for Bakhmut?

Well, there's a certain thing about this war, even before February 24th, that bothered me, which was people acted like war is a war game. You just move units around on a map and you have breakthroughs and you draw lines and you have red arrows of Russians advancing here and there. As you know, so that's not what war is. War is a grueling process of constant generation of force and destruction of force. And that's what we're going on here. From the Ukrainian perspective,

They're faced with one fundamental problem. Russia occupies almost 20% of their country. They are going to have to try and liberate their country because the Russians are sitting on it. So from the Ukrainian point of view, what do they not want? They don't want the Russians resting up, getting in defensive lines, preparing themselves for this counteroffensive because it's coming.

And the Ukrainians are going to have to do it because right now the Russians are there. They're on Ukrainian territory. So the Ukrainians need to destroy and preoccupy as much Russian force as possible while they are preparing the counteroffensive. Otherwise, the Russians will just sit back, relax, and go on the defensive, which, by the way, Prokhorin is talking about more and more. So what the Ukrainians did is they needed to keep the Russians attacking. They needed to keep attritting Russian forces.

And what could they see? Well, they could see that Russia was willing to commit a massive amount to take a pretty unimportant town like Bakhmut. Same with Advika. There were a number of these small, really not important strategic places, but the Russians seemed to be desperate to take them, probably for political reasons as much as anything else, to show they could do something. In which case, the Ukrainians, their option is either to let the Russians take this, in which case the Russians might do that, declare victory and go on defensive, or make them fight for it.

Now, why I always believed making them fight for it was the right choice, and I was very skeptical of those who could say, oh, they should pull out, they should pull out and let the Russians have it, is one I didn't believe the Russians could encircle it. I don't see anything in the Russian military in this war so far that reveals the basic ability to do a breakthrough exploitation and encircle. They haven't been able to do it. And in fact, they are probably less able to do it now than they were on February 24th.

This is not the kind of military that can do successful large-scale combined operations. So I didn't believe that they could simply encircle the Ukrainians in Bakhmut and make a major victory. And in fact, they haven't been able to do it. And what they in fact have done is advanced incredibly slowly right through the center of the city.

They haven't encircled down. And so for months now, I don't know, basically from January 1st to today, they've probably advanced on average just over a football field a day. And that's both American football and soccer. Take your choice.

you know, 110 yards maybe or so like that a day. And they've done that at huge cost. That was one thing the Ukrainians said to me that, you know, the Department of Defense is on the whole, the attrition rate has not changed. There was a law where the Russians are not losing as many soldiers and as much equipment to the Ukrainians as they were. That was certainly argued against to me by a number of Ukrainian officials. So we said,

Russian losses have remained very high throughout this. In fact, in many ways, it was getting quite, they were just so desperate to take the town that they were throwing in just a month ago, started putting in more regular troops with Wagner. I mean, they're throwing everything in to get it. And so it just seemed to me that the Ukrainians with what I would say is good intelligence and needing to keep the Russians whittled down,

made the decision to fight for Bok, but it seemed to me logical from their point of view. I wasn't going to second guess it. And I have to say it does seem now to have been absolutely the right choice for them to have made.

By looking at the way the Russians have fought, their inability to surround the city, but their desperation to take it, it does look like the battle is winding down. I mean, the Russians now have 80% of Bakhmut, seems to be where we are at this point. But again, the supply roads to the west are open.

The Ukrainians could pull their troops out if they want to. And we are getting closer and closer to Ukraine now being able to launch a counteroffensive. And from what I was told by the Ukrainians, the forces in Bakhmut were not those allocated to the counteroffensive. They were separate. Now, those troops in Bakhmut did a huge work for the Ukrainians. I mean, they just had a really difficult task and they have suffered real significant losses.

And there's nothing that can be said to make those troops feel better. They've probably had a terrible, terrible time. And if you talk to them, you probably got a very different view of it. You just talk to the troops in Bakhmut. It's like, this is never ending. This is huge losses. We're never going to get out of here. It's just, I think, from the larger Ukrainian grand strategic perspective, it made sense why they did it. Well, that's all for part one. Please join us after the break.

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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Welcome back to the big interview with Philip Sobrian, Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. This is what Phil told us. Phil, before the war began, you were one of the few voices who was insisting that the overestimation of Russian military capability

was ever present, and it had been for a while. I mean, but are even you surprised that they don't seem to have learned many of the lessons or at least repaired many of the errors that they've got up to from command all the way down to, you know, kind of small unit tactics since the war began? What's surprising, Saul, is that instead of reacting to the first reverses, really severe reverses,

and to try and put in the system to learn and improve, they've actually almost doubled down on doing things badly continually. Now, I thought they were terribly overrated because I was not convinced that the Russian army, the Russian military that we have seen in places like Syria or Georgia could execute complex operations. Just never actually. I mean, people say talked about Russian air power in Syria. Well,

No one was firing back. It's not hard to fly an aircraft. No one can fire back at you. At places like Georgia, they didn't actually fight terribly well. There was no integration of complex system combined arms warfare that I had seen, in which case my assumption was they were going to do it very poorly to begin with. The last thing they were going to do is have this wildly successful offensive and take Kiev, which just seemed to me a pipe dream, before February 24th.

And by the way, a lot of that is based on the fundamental weaknesses of the Russian state. This is a dictatorship. Dictatorships fight very poorly on the whole. This is another thing we tend to, I think, overestimate dictatorship warfighting capacity. And secondly, Russia's economically not that strong. Whatever, 10th, 11th largest economy in the world, but also not a productive high-tech economy. It's a resource extraction economy. And all of that should have been red flags, but they weren't red flags.

What has happened since, which I think is more surprising than I had expected, is that the system might be so flawed that it can't adjust, that Putin's just changing commanders the way they did the drafting.

You would have thought if they decided, oh my God, about April and May, we're in a long war, then let's actually come up with some coherent plan to have conscription, train the soldiers up properly, get the right equipment out, do something to prepare an army. But what seems to happen is more and more it's a case of

They were generating soldiers, rushing them to the front without training in many cases, not fully preparing them, the equipment levels. One thing the Ukrainians have said, which was very interesting, is they see very little evidence of new Russian equipment. It does show up every once in a while, but most of what they're seeing is stuff coming out of storage. It's less good than the material they had on February 24th.

So the Russians have certainly showed some tactical advances, but the overall way the system has fought the war has shown, I would argue, very little improvement from an overall perspective from 14 months ago.

Turning to a slightly separate issue here, Phil, we mentioned actually on the podcast last week that finally there's evidence of what we feel, and I think you agree, is a smoking gun with regard to Russian responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines. Extraordinary how many people have even written in to us and said, well, surely there's evidence that it's X, Y, Z. I mean, I know you're well aware of all of that. Can you explain what that new evidence is and why you're not in any doubt as to who's responsible?

The evidence was that actually blowing up a pipeline requires an operation. You know, it's not like you're going to, you know, Saul's going to put on a wetsuit, go down, strap up, you know, an explosive to a pipeline and blow it up. The evidence that we have is that actually the Russian equipment that would be needed to do this, a vessel that carries submersibles, was discovered and photographed by the Danes right over the area that was attacked just before it was attacked.

So the Russians had the right equipment, the equipment they would use in the exact area where they would have it just before the bonds went off. That was always the idea that the Ukrainians would rent a yacht. And there was certain bizarre stories that this made no sense. That's the other thing. There's too much just daring do crap gets talked about in war. War doesn't work like that. So that was the evidence.

Now, I had never tweeted that much about it because it seemed to me obvious that the one nation that would benefit from this was Russia. The Russian plan clearly was to freeze Europe over the winter. That's what the Russian plan was, to try and deprive Europe of energy to show that it needed Russia to get by, that Russia had the whip hand in the power relationship.

So it was and Russian propaganda went to great lengths all winter about how horrible it was for Europeans. They were eating mice. Things were so, so terrible that they couldn't afford to heat their houses. So Russia is the country that had the clearly expressed interest in shutting the pipeline. On the other hand, they didn't want to just shut it off themselves because they'd be breaking a contract. And also the European people would then blame them.

The Russians wanted to show what it was like without Russian power, but not take the responsibility for having done it. And I think they probably also believed they could muddy the waters brilliantly by all those people who would jump up and say it was QAnon or Ukrainian yachtsmen, Norwegian frogmen, whatever the heck it was. So I've never really engaged with it because it was one of those that those people are just going to pop up. And so to me, it's just a really revealing issue. It was always revealing of those who wanted to back poop.

wanted to argue for the Russian case, and they came charging out right away. Yeah, they went for the Seymour Hersh BS, which I think has been discredited entirely at this point. I mean, when I tweeted about it last week, what was fascinating was the huge reaction

those tweets God. Oh, that's not true. And they don't really have any evidence beyond the Seymour Hersh piece, but they really just don't want to believe the Russians did it. And it seems to be a combination, one of the outwardly pro-Putin group on that, but also the people who love conspiracies. So there are sort of two people, two groups acting together. So it's more illuminating, I think, as to who actually responds to those arguments than anything else.

I'm going to come back to those groups in a minute because I think, you know, I've been completely fascinated and probably shouldn't have been surprised as I have been at the number that have been coming out of the woodworks. But going back to the counteroffensive just for a second, and on a similar sort of theme, I've noticed a lot of Western commentators in the last few days saying,

and analysts urging caution with regard to the likely gains the Ukrainians can make. Is this sage advice, Phil, or just another example of overestimating the Russians and underestimating the Ukrainians? Well, no, I mean, as I've said, you know, it's not, you don't want to assume the Ukrainians can end the war with us because going forward is really hard. Defensive firepower has an enormous advantage, particularly if you have good defensive firepower that's prepared.

So going forward is really difficult. I mean, look at the number of tanks that have been visually confirmed destroyed. I think for the Russians, it's now over 1,700 have been visually confirmed. That must mean the overall losses probably aren't that far below what the Ukrainians are claiming, about 3,000 or something. If that's the visually confirmed ones, we have so many destroyed behind Russian lines or ones that have been damaged and are back for repair. These have never been photographed. So...

It's a really hard war to go forward. It's really, really hard to do so. And the Ukrainians are going to try to do it in a way that no NATO country would be expected to do so, with quite limited range and their weaponry and without air domination. The United States would never attempt what the Ukrainians would do. The United States, if it was going to attempt an offensive, would have air superiority, would have weapons that would fire a lot longer in range than the stuff they're giving the Ukrainians.

So the Ukrainians are taking on what actually is on paper a really, really difficult challenge. And I think that has to be understood. They will probably do much better than the Russians have done in any of their offensive operations. That's the Russian offensive. The last 10 months have been very painfully slow, small advances, tiny. The Ukrainians will do better than that. The question is, can they actually do the kind of

offensive that will split Russian forces and cause a major Russian collapse. And that's not always, that's not that easy to do. It'd be nice to think they would, but I'm not one of those who say it's automatic. And the Ukrainians have their own fear of this themselves. I mean, what the Ukrainian fear is this. We do an offensive and we do pretty well.

We knock the Russians back in a number of places, cause the Russians a great deal of losses. But of course, our offensive also suffers real losses, as it will go forward. So we make some advances. We liberate a significant amount of territory. But the Russians are still there and fighting in a few months. And the war doesn't, it's not that the Russian army has been broken, in which case the fear is that's when the pressure comes for them to agree to a bad peace deal.

This is one of the reasons I think the Ukrainians are being very careful with this counteroffensive. There is a worry that if it doesn't come off, they will get some significant pressure to agree to a deal they don't want to agree to.

And I think that's the question. So I think there will be some successes for the Ukrainians. The question is to what degree it is. One of the reasons I think it's right to fight in Bakhmut is the longer it goes on, the less prepared the Russians will be, the greater losses the Russians would suffer, the less they would have had time to rest up. Going back to these...

seemingly sort of pro-Russian lobby there is in the West, you know, these kind of useless idiots who are always likely to listen to the arguments in favour of the Russian position and against Ukraine. I mean,

I asked the question before, but can you explain to me a little bit more detail for what you think is going on here? Is this some kind of strange political divide between the far right and the far west, some kind of legacy of the Cold War, that people would go to the extent of being prepared to exonerate the Putin regime for its many horrific crimes in this war? It's a combination. On the one hand, there's just the pro-Russians. There's sort of what you call the Russian nationalists and their

They're doing what they're doing because they like Russia. And they feel loyalty to Russia, the Russian state, Russian history, Russian culture, to Putin personally. So a lot of it is this sort of, a lot of the, you would say, useful idiots are not so much useful idiots, they're true believers. They are Russian nationalists. The odd ones are the ones who are pro-Russian, naturally. They don't seem to have, probably, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene didn't even know Russia existed two years ago.

But they are those that come from increasingly the far left and far right. That's what they are, which are very similar. The far right and far left are actually far closer on Russia and Ukraine than they are to the center. And it seems to be motivated by a few different things. And it's hard to say to what degree the motivations are similar. The far left...

might be one that they just disapprove of NATO in the West so violently in the United States that anything that fights in their mind, NATO in the US, even if it's fascist, that's the weird thing. There is nothing more like a fascist regime than Vladimir Putin's regime. That is a, it's a regime that's based on intense nationalism, on dictatorial rule,

On militarizing society, glorifying military, militarism, all these things that we would normally associate with fascism are there in this regime. And yet those on the far left seem to be, there's not all of them, but many of them seem to exonerate it. And the only thing you can say is they're just so anti-NATO, so anti-the West that they're willing to do it.

On the far right, it's more, I think, that they have decided that Putin represents their kind of populist orthodoxy, anti-modernism, anti-tolerance, authoritarianism. They love authoritarianism. So that they also believe that Putin represents something that they identify with. But it's just interesting, terrifying to see how they have come together on this.

On the other hand, I think the positive thing is the center is holding. It's not the case that a lot of support for Ukraine is weakening. It's weakened in the Republican Party among the Trumpites, but that was going to happen.

But actually, in most places, support for Ukraine is holding up quite well. And finally, Phil, there have been in recent days, as you know, various efforts from various different quarters to at least encourage peace negotiations, talk about peace negotiations. Even the Pope, so I read this morning, is getting in on the act. Are any of these initiatives, notwithstanding the success or otherwise of the counteroffensive, likely to bear fruit, do you feel? Well, right now, neither the Russians or the Ukrainians want peace.

You can call for peace all you want, but neither the Russians or the Ukrainians want peace. I mean, Putin isn't going to retreat back to the one that came out yesterday. Putin's not going to just go back to the February 24th one. That's not going to happen. So what are you saying? If your peace deal is based on Russia going back to the February 24th one, that's not going to happen.

The Ukrainians aren't going to accept a ceasefire where the line is now because they're about to launch counteroffensive and they believe they can liberate a lot of their territory. So it's all well and good to say, yes, I want peace. But if you want a peace that neither side is at all remotely interested in, it's not going to occur. Now, it might occur later this year. If the Ukrainians have a very successful counteroffensive, then you might have movement towards peace.

But you need the sides to actually, and you need both sides to actually believe having a peace deal or peace negotiations is in their interest. And right now, neither believe that. So it just seems to me that this is often performative, that it's people doing it to look like they matter or get involved. But I don't see how you can have it now with the sides thinking what they think.

As a quick addendum to that, Phil, can you imagine a scenario, whatever happens again with the counteroffensive, where Putin actually remains in power, but negotiates a peace, which clearly is going to be humiliating to some extent for him because his war aims have not been realized? It's often, it's not easy to get dictators out of power, so we can say, oh, he might get embarrassed. Well, Stalin screwed up 1918, 19, 2021, and just rewrote history. You

You know, all of a sudden you turn into a military genius. So I don't want to say he will automatically fall with a bad peace deal because you never know. I mean, someone's actually going to have to overthrow him. And dictators become dictators because they're really good at protecting themselves and killing anything they think is a threat. And so would you like to think it would lead to a regime change? Yes. But I still remain cautious.

Whatever happens, we're not going to end up with the Ukrainian army in Moscow capturing Vladimir Putin. That's not going to happen. It's not going to be like Mussolini or Hitler.

where the other side gets to the capital and captures the person. In which case, getting rid of him is not going to be that easy. Great stuff, Phil. Thanks so much for spending the time. Your insights, as ever, are just fascinating. It's great to hear a voice of reason, frankly, in this mad, mad cacophony of voices we're getting as the war goes on. Thanks for having me, Saul. Cheers, Phil.

Well, that was all fascinating, wasn't it? And normally I get the opportunity to bounce things off with Patrick at this stage when we've both been listening. But unfortunately, as you might have noticed, Patrick is not here with us this week. He's traveling around the United States and was a little bit too tricky to coordinate everything.

time zones with the interview with Phil. But I've just got a couple of quick thoughts myself, actually. I mean, as usual, Phil's talking complete sense, a voice of common sense in the mad cacophony of voices that we've been getting with the analysts and commentators on the war in Ukraine. But, you know, really interesting, wasn't it, to hear of his response to his visit there, how determined the Ukrainians are. Of course, there's an element of war weariness, but even they were

been slightly surprised at how well they've done in the fighting and pretty confident they can win this war as long as they get the kit they need. It's something we've long suspected, but it's interesting to hear confirmation of that on the ground. One of the other interesting responses Phil gave me was whether or not the leaks have made any difference to the Ukrainian war effort. And I loved his expression, it's a nothing burger. Basically, the leaks making no serious impact

they might have done, of course, if the actual war plans had been leaked. But of course, that wasn't the case. And there wasn't really a lot in those leaks to concern the Ukrainians, which is why we're hearing so little about it now. What about prospects for the counteroffensive? Well, Phil was understandably cautious, I think. I mean, he's backing up the points made by a number of other commentators recently that, you know, don't overestimate what's likely to happen. Otherwise, there could be a lot of disappointment. And that can feed into political disappointment. And of

Of course, we need to be in it for the long haul. He's not ruling out the fact that the Ukrainians are going to do pretty well because, as he said, the Russians, frankly, haven't learned anything from their errors. That surprised even him. And he didn't have a particularly high opinion of the Russians before this war started.

And the reverse would be true of the Ukrainians. And yet still to break through lines when you don't have air superiority, as Phil explained, is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Armour is very vulnerable. So the Ukrainians could take some quite serious losses. And it's just a question of how much ground they can take. So we will see over the weeks to come. All right, that's all we have time for. Do join us on Friday when Patrick will be back. We'll be discussing the latest news and answering listeners' questions. Goodbye.