Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. The news is still fast moving as a section of the Nord Stream gas pipelines is blown up, with many blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin's much vaunted partial mobilization descending into chaos. As always, the picture is quite confused and it's difficult to get to the bottom of what is really going on.
And that's at least in part a result of the way in which we are being told about the war. So the media has obviously been a vital front in the struggle for both sides. And the messaging could hardly be more contrasted. On the Ukrainian side, they've brilliantly presented themselves as freedom fighters, shedding their blood not just for their liberty, but for that of the whole world.
Meanwhile, the Russians have made very little attempt at all to win over international opinion. And they seem to prefer to promote a narrative that they don't really expect anyone to believe.
So this week, we're talking as promised to Anthony Lloyd, the legendary Times war correspondent who has reported for many years from virtually every battlefield in the world. He's superbly placed to put us in the picture about the media aspect of the war. He's just returned to Ukraine. But before he went, this is what he told Patrick.
So, Anthony, you've covered many a war going all the way back to Bosnia. How does this one differ from the ones you've been engaged in before? Counterintuitively, although it's a really serious war, obviously quite a mixture of modernised Western weapon systems, digitalised artillery and such like, and also some Cold War weapon systems, and you're dealing with Russia, in many ways,
As a correspondent, it's more, I wouldn't use the word benign, but it's easier to cover than many of the smaller wars I've covered. And here's why. You've by and large got the consent of the population in a huge country and the war focused more or less in the far east of that country. So unlike with smaller wars that I so often cover, in Ukraine, you're driving in from Poland and covering the best part of 800 miles worldwide.
before you really get into the war zone. And that 800 miles is populated by people who are extremely friendly towards you. You've got, you know, consent is a really important and under-considered element when you're assessing how to work as a journalist in war.
And also you can live and eat, you know, pretty securely. There's running water, there's electricity. If you want to eat lobster in Kiev, you can do it and drink Sauvignon Blanc. Okay, conditions get a little bit more rudimentary out in the east, but so many small wars I cover. You go over the border, you're not sure whether the local population is necessarily going to be friendly. They might turn on you.
depending on the war, something like Syria. I mean, you never knew whether a barrel bomb was about to drop on the village you were in or whether there may even be a chemical attack or what was going to happen. And that was as soon as you crossed the border into Syria. There wasn't this great sense of,
hospitable, friendly depth before you could make a calibrated approach to the area of fighting. So that's one really big element. People, I think, often confuse it. Oh my God, it must be a terrible war to cover. Well,
Elements of it are difficult, but you can just look at Ukraine and see by the variety and number of foreign journalists there. And I would hesitate, rightly, to call them war correspondents. Most are just journalists going there to report on a big story. There are thousands and thousands.
You know, you've got a football correspondent from the Times there the other day going to Kiev. You've got Piers Morgan going there. I mean, there's all these people. It shows that in many respects, areas this war are very benign to cover. Yeah. You've also, the number of journalists who are there, the way that it's become something that you've got to do if you regard yourself as being a serious communicator, does raise the question of to what extent one can actually be objective in all this. You know,
You know, we are very, everyone is very much on the side of Ukraine. To what extent does that translate into the way you look at the war and the way you report it? I think it translates hugely. I mean, I think it's totally wrong. The journalists who, for example, put the Ukrainian professional journalists who put the Ukrainian flag on their Twitter handle. I think that's wrong.
I think it's wrong that journalists who, for example, when the Moscow was sunk, journalists who tweeted, to use Twitter as a platform example, you know, kind of
memes joking about the sinking of the ship and such like, laughing at the slight, sneering slightly at the deaths of young men in the sea and taking such an unskewed approach to reporting that particular story. But here's the thing. None of us as journalists are truly objective. What's objective? You know, a rock's objective. I'm not a rock. We're things of flesh, blood, electro impulses and prejudice, right?
You can recognise that, but I think it's very important still to be commonsensical about it. Now, if you're commonsensical about it in your approach as a journalist to the war in Ukraine, you can recognise your own revulsion at and at the injustice of
of the Russian invasion and the barbarity, and barbarity is an appropriate word, with which the Russians have conducted themselves in what really seems to be a colonialist style invasion.
of Ukraine. You can reflect that in your reporting, but at the same time, you should not indulge in the kind of enthusiastic froth, often of unquestioning regurgitation of lines from Kiev. I mean, looking at the reporting at the moment, it's really interesting to see how effectively
Kyiv is utilising its own messaging by and large with a willing and often unquestioning Western media. I'm not saying always unquestioning. There are some great journalists there and there is some good journalism there. But by and large, really big issues like, for example, at the moment, a very successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in northeastern Ukraine. What level of casualties are the Ukrainian forces taking there?
Well, it seems probably not that high. The Russians have partially withdrawn, partially been routed. But what level of casualties have the Ukrainians taken around Kherson, where it's a very different picture? It seems extremely high casualties for not much gain. How has the Western media managed to assess that or analyse it or even report on it? Well, hardly at all.
They've been very, very tightly controlled in their access to the operational zone. So most of the information coming out is tweets from Ukrainian soldiers, which are fairly carefully assessed by the Ukrainian commanders before they're released. A messaging from Kiev. I'm not putting both sides on an equal footing here.
There is no justification for Russia's invasion. And Russia is the one who is responsible for this war. And Russia is the one that has conducted itself with such brutality in the war. But we have nevertheless to analyse and assess Kiev's own conduct. And I think often that is compromised.
by Western journalists rush to sell Keeve's message rather than to assess fairly and responsibly and with common sense
Exactly how Kiev is fighting its war. Yeah. I mean, we were discussing with Janita Giovanni the other day this question of Ukrainian atrocities in any war. Both sides commit atrocities. That's inevitable. I think the balance without having any specific knowledge, it seems to me that though the Ukrainians may have done so there again, there's no equivalence. There'll be a much smaller scale than Ukraine.
than on the Russian side. Have you got any feel for the way that the Ukrainian soldiers are conducting themselves? Do you regard them as being better behaved, to put it very simply, than their Russian counterparts by a huge margin? I don't think there's an equivalence there. And I do not think that in areas recaptured and liberated, is a fair word, by Ukrainian forces, there has been anything like the atrocities on the scale that we saw in Butcher.
And there's a number of reasons for that. And they're slightly comparable to Bosnia. You get a sense of a lot of it's due to propaganda.
In Russia, Ukraine has been denounced so long that when you get quite ill-educated troops, often from eastern Russia, working in Ukraine, they think the Ukrainians are kind of animals. And so, you know, they're dehumanized. And so that's responsible for a lot of the atrocities in Ukraine. Although there's no shortage of sentiment, you've got a westernized, more educated population, and it's harder to get them to conduct atrocities locally.
that scale I would suggest I would suggest my overall impression is that undoubtedly atrocities have happened on both sides we've seen video footage of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners but it's nothing like on the scale that the Russians have done war crimes upon Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil may I add however one thing's really interesting to me whenever a journalist says
sites, instances of war crimes conducted by the Ukrainians, they get roundly denounced on social media, not just by Ukrainians, but often by journalists too, foreign correspondents, often by Westerners as well. In some ways, it seems easier to criticise one's own government as a Western journalist than
than it is to criticize Ukrainian forces or the Ukrainian government. The response for doing so is huge. I mean, that sort of seems to suggest that we are part of a broader civilizational war and that we see ourselves almost in a kind of World War II situation where
if you or I were war correspondents in the Second World War, I think we'd find it very hard to actually report on misbehaviour by British or American troops. That is true to an extent. I would totally agree with that. And I think the psychology and sentiment of Western publics and the Western media is totally comparable to, you know, that of Western societies in a greater war scenario.
However, in the Second World War, you would also get on numerous occasions fantastic access for correspondents going in with Allied troops, jumping in jeeps, going off with commanders off to the front. You know, Western correspondents landing at D-Day, you know, Western correspondents entering Belsen. You've got a real sense of
of conditions soldiers were fighting in, often of casualties, often of casualties, and of how the war was being fought. Now, none of that's comparable in Ukraine at all, not at all. How does that work then? Because it's very hard to form a picture of how the authorities are controlling access. Do you have minders? Is there a very strong accreditation system? Can you tell us a bit about that?
So there's a very strong accreditation system. Really, to get around, you need an official press pass, which, first of all, you're vetted by, I think, two or three security agencies within Ukraine before you're given it. And that really allows you to get through checkpoints. Without that, you'd be lucky to get through a checkpoint. Not impossible, but you'd be lucky. That's what people want to see. And if you haven't got it, there's often a problem. As a photographer or a cameraman or camera woman, you will have
a great deal of problems taking imagery near the front at all. Ukrainians are very, very concerned that any imagery might be used on open intelligence platforms by the Russians to recalibrate their fire. But also, they're concerned with the messaging. They don't want images of wounded soldiers or dead Ukrainian soldiers going out either.
At the beginning, the system was if you wanted to go to an area near the front, you would apply to that brigade through their press officer. Now that may or may not be granted that permission.
There are always possibilities of circumventing that system, but they're quite difficult to do and often quite dangerous to do. I mean, it's the nature of being a war correspondent, but you don't really want to turn up in a unit area without their permission, having gone around the checkpoints because you're going to be in a world of trouble.
Now, there has been some great work done by foreign correspondents in Ukraine. I'm not denying that for a minute. If you look at people like Carlotta Gould, her work, a very forensic approach to the aftermath of the massacre in Bucha, how she reconstructed that. She herself then went off to Severodonetsk when that was just before it was captured by the Russians. An extremely brave and forward reporting. And she did that in a specific way.
uh lindsey adario the american photographer some fantastic work some of it on the front line but much of it um behind the front line thinking about lindsey's work actually probably her um strongest photograph that i can think of from a place of action was actually done with um
Some civil defense volunteers or an equivalent paramilitary force of Ukrainians in an area where civilians were coming through the line out of Irpin to cross over to the Ukrainian side. And a mortar round dropped, Russian mortar round, and killed a family. And she was just there in this searing image of this dead young family just lying there with their suitcases lying.
So that wasn't really accompanying a regular Ukrainian unit somewhere. You can do that, but it's quite difficult to do. So what I'm describing is a very natural filtration system. Western armies have exactly the same kind of process of accreditation and permissions and all the rest of it. But in Ukraine, it does seem more stringent. You're very unlikely to get an embed with a Ukrainian unit somewhere.
as you might have done with Western forces, with American forces. Have you formed any impression of how it's been reported on the Russian side? Yeah, actually a little bit more vocally than we would think. I mean, certainly looking at Russian TV at the moment, there's a good deal more to and fro in discussion and recognition of the Ukrainian counter-offensive than we might think in the West.
Yeah, I would say there's more debate going on now in the Russian media, even Russian state media, than you might have thought. Overall, though, you know, they are very hooked, the Russians on, you know, Zelensky's government being a fascist government and, you know, the operation is to de-Nazify Ukraine. How much Russian society really buys that or whether Putin doesn't really need Russian society to buy it. He just needs them to acquiesce.
or have a kind of numbness to the news, I think, in order to keep their sort of passive support going. I think there is more debate than we would believe within the Russian media. I think it's also important that one of the things, for example, is the Russians consistently allege that there are right-wing extremist groups operating within the Ukrainian military. Now, let's be straight about that. That is true. However, let's put it in context.
there is a very small number of right-wing extremist groups operating within the Ukrainian military. When measured up against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this colonialist style kind of expansion of Russian war within Ukraine and Russian atrocities, the presence in a huge number of Ukrainian forces of some small right-wing elements is fairly negligible.
However, has anyone really, you know, done a serious, has any Western journalist really done a serious analysis and investigation of the leadership of the Azov battalions? I mean, you know, no. I think it's also really interesting that the Kiev Independent said,
were, to my knowledge, the first the other day to look at the leadership of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. I mean, the Foreign Legion is quite expensive now. It's got hundreds and hundreds of foreign fighters who have gone to Ukraine to fight against the Russians on Ukraine's behalf. It's divided into two wings.
One wing of the Foreign Legion is led by a Polish mafioso chief who is wanted in Poland for crimes. And he was instructed and ordered his men to conduct crimes, including looting of various areas in Ukraine. Now, you would think, bearing in mind the number of Westerners serving him, that it might have been Western journalists who broke that story. But no, it was actually Kiev Independent.
Yeah, well, that's encouraging in a way. I mean, it does suggest that Ukraine claims to be a proper democracy, etc. We all know they had their problems before the war began, but it seemed to be holding up. And so, you know, that makes Western support all the easier. However, these things always have their time, don't they? I mean, from your experience, do you see media interest, just to keep it to that,
staying at the same sort of levels that it is. Obviously, it goes up and down, but there's still been a massive investment of resources and airtime, newspaper coverage, etc. Do you see that lasting for a while longer? Yes, I do. And here's why. And I totally accept the cycles of up and down and all the rest of it. Looking back on other wars I've covered, ones that have longevity of press interest, media interest, Bosnia did because
By and large, it was in Europe and people had a natural interest in the implications and the fallout of something of that scale happening in Europe and the implications of the unfolding humanitarian crisis. The war crimes committed so close to home held people's interest.
In Ukraine, it's much more accentuated than that. There's a sense of existential threat people have as a result of the war in Ukraine. There's a very great awareness in the West, in Europe, that this could escalate in a way outside our control fairly easily. There's a great awareness that the war in Ukraine is affecting our lives now in terms of heating, in terms of energy, in terms of costs. The effects of the war in Ukraine are being felt by people here now in terms of their emotion,
and our living standards. They are therefore interested in that war. So the media's interest in that war is going to continue. It is going to hold its interest at least at a high plateau level for a long time to come.
Well, that was a fascinating interview that touches on a number of key themes. And the first one I want to mention, actually, Patrick, is his point, and I think you might be able to comment on this, that in some ways it's an easier conflict to cover than others in his experience, because most of Ukraine is pro-Western journalists, and it's possible to work relatively securely. In other words, you can
go from that whole stretch in western Ukraine all the way close to the front line and not really be in any danger is that a contrast frankly Patrick to your own experience?
Well, it sort of depends where you are, really. I mean, there are wars like that or conflicts like that when you can go to the front, do a day trip to the front, come back to a hotel, have a shower, go down to the bar to see your mates and discuss the events of the day. So there have been plenty of wars like that. I think what's really interesting here is the way that access really is very, very difficult to get to the front line. I think this, as Anthony says, is
This is, in his experience, a new kind of war where you are very, very heavily controlled. And that really does raise questions about how accurate what we're hearing is. I think what the situation really is that it's the absence of news that's troubling, not what you're actually told. I think what you hear and what you see is legit. It's genuine.
But it's what you don't see that we have to concern ourselves with. And of course, you know, the one that he mentioned, the one that was in everyone's minds is Ukrainian casualties. Yeah, to be fair, I mean, we don't know for sure, of course, because as Anthony says, there hasn't been...
proper reporting, or at least journalists haven't been able to report properly, about the recent casualties. I mean, he talks about probably high casualties in Kherson, that of course the Ukrainians have a vested interest in keeping quiet, the much vaunted
counter-offensive in the northeast has been spoken about where they probably did take relatively few casualties because it seems the Russian defenders broke and ran but in the south it looks like the Russian troops have been much more stoical and we we don't really know much about that and I think this feeds into his more general point about some of the partiality of the reporting I mean he also we should stress makes the point which you have
Patrick, a number of times, there's no moral equivalence between what Russia has done and what the Ukrainians are trying to do in getting rid of them. He believes, as do all of us, that this war was started by Russia and they should take the vast majority of the blame for any mischief that's resulting.
But that doesn't allow, in his view, for journalists to lose their objectivity. And he gives a good example of this, of course, by using the Ukrainian flag on some of the journalists, professional journalists, Twitter feeds and social media outlets, which very much shows you which camp they're in. There is, though, I think, Saul, a difference in this war. There are wars where there are essentially good guys and bad guys.
And I think the journalist then has to re-examine their role. I saw this myself in the Falklands where the Argentinians were the aggressors, the people of the Falkland Islands were the victims of their aggression, and therefore – and the British forces were going there to liberate them. And I think we – some of us in the press corps –
tried to maintain this neutrality, thinking we could just dispassionately say, on the one hand, on the other hand. But Max Hastings, who was definitely the man of the match in journalistic terms in that conflict...
he understood straight away that his job really was to be a propagandist, not a jingoist, not someone who's saying that we're always right, but someone who basically was there to tell a very supportive British public the good news. And I think there's an element of that in Ukraine. I mean, there clearly is a villain and a victim in this. And I think
that the journalist inevitably, he's a human being, she is a human being, they're going to feel that their heart is really with the Ukrainians, they want the Ukrainians to win, and that's going to play into their copy or their reports. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, I think you've got to guard very carefully about being used as a tool by the Ukrainians to promote their narrative.
Yeah. I mean, he talks about the lack of reporting into some of these extreme right-wing groups. I mean, uh, you know, let's not kid ourselves. They're in a small minority here, but of course they have allowed the term Nazi and far right extremists to be bandied around by the Russians. And so it probably does require a little bit of looking into who, who are the people running the Abzal battalion. Um, uh,
And it's interesting that he says Western journalists, generally speaking, haven't done this. And if any investigation has been done into, for example, the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, it's been done by the Kiev Independent, which of course are Ukrainian journalists. Another interesting point, of course, was this question of access and harking back to the Second World War, where indeed, journalists were right up at the front line taking the risks. One thinks of Richard Dimbleby, the BBC radio reporter, he went to Berlin in a
bomber took part in a bombing raid on Berlin, a hugely risky thing to do. I don't think there's any shortage of people, particularly people like Antony, a very brave reporter, as well as being a brilliant writer. I don't think there would be any shortage of people who wanted to go up front with the troops, but the Ukrainians, for the reasons that he pointed out, are not allowing that to happen. So you don't really get the flavor of the front lines at all in this war.
You asked a very pertinent question, I thought, Patrick, about the reporting in Russia and Antony's perception of that. And he came out with quite a surprising answer, which is that there is a lot more discussion and a lot more recognition about what is actually happening, even on these sort of official propagandist channels.
national news outlets than we might imagine. And they are admitting to some of the setbacks. Why? Well, his theory is because Putin doesn't actually need the population to support the war per se. In other words, they can stomach a bit of bad news. He just needs acquiescence. It's very interesting, isn't it? This idea that a
a brainwashed population, a population that's being run by an authoritarian regime, doesn't need to be actively supportive of a war. Do you think that's right? Well, I've got a slightly alternative view on that, but maybe we'll discuss that later on when we talk about what's happening inside Russia. That'll be just one of the topics we're going to be digging into. So please join us after the break and we'll be discussing all the latest developments there. Welcome back.
Well, we're now going to move on to the latest news over the course of the last seven days. And one of the most extraordinary stories has been this bizarre twist to the tale in the destruction of a section of the Nord Stream gas pipeline that, of course, comes across the Baltic from Russia to supply Western Europe with gas. Now, there were at least two, possibly more, underwater explosions
The assumption has been no question from most people observing this that it's got to be a state player involved. Some, of course, conspiracy theorists have mentioned the fact that the US might have done it. But I think we can dispense with that. And I think we all know who the culprit in this is. It's almost certainly Russia. We now have reports from German intelligence identifying Russia as the most likely culprit.
I suspect before long we will actually have evidence to show this, Patrick. But the real question we've got to ask ourselves is why on earth have they done this? What possible benefits can you see for Russia in this sort of destabilization? I think you have to go into the Russian mindset, quite a difficult thing to do, I know, to try and work out what's in it for them. I've been talking to some people who do have contacts in Russia about this.
They're saying it's not necessarily actually the Kremlin that has done this. It may be an element of the Russian state, but it could be hardliners who are actually burning, you know, to go back to Caesar arriving in Britain, he burnt his boat. So there was no way back. And this...
guy was speculating, it is only speculation of course, but this could be a hardline element inside the security hierarchy who are saying okay that's it, there can't be any accommodation with Europe, there's no way that there's going to be a negotiated peace in which turning on the supply of gas to Europe is part of the equation. So in my mind it sort of, it seems that the Russians are
at some level, have a kind of Masada complex, of course, referring to the suicide of about a thousand Jewish Sicari rebels in their fort in Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea. They killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans. I think there is an element of this sort of messianic
the apocalyptic in a lot of the Russian rhetoric that we can't overlook. They're making the point that they don't really care what happens to themselves. They're so convinced of their own rightness that they are doing something that is part of their national destiny that they're prepared to harm themselves to actually achieve their end. I mean, how it achieves their end is another matter. But
it seems to be a kind of nihilistic act that has huge and sinister symbolic implications. Yeah, this is a worrying trend, frankly, Patrick. I mean, I've already said I don't think the Russians are going to go down the track of using even tactical nuclear weapons. But of course, what's interesting about this speculation, the one you've just given, is that this isn't necessarily Putin. This is elements within his organization who are getting a kind of bunker complex. You made the
relation to Masada. I see it also as Hitler in the bunker. But it's interesting, do we separate Putin from this action? Well, we won't know until we get more news. But one thing is for sure, it's ramping up the tension. And it's making us, of course, more nervous about the potential use of nuclear weapons. If there is this kind of idea, we're going to go down in flames. And
What do you think our response would be, Patrick, if, I don't think it's going to happen, but let's speculate anyway, if Russia fired a nuclear tactical weapon? I don't know the answer. I don't think anyone knows. And that's quite disturbing that there isn't actually, that we're aware of, a worked out response to the various sort of rampings up.
of that nuclear threshold. Say it's a tactical nuke. Are we going to respond with a tactical nuke? Are we going to go in conventionally as NATO and say, okay, we are now formally on the side of the Ukrainians? I'm not sure that's going to happen. What happens if they do miss out a stage and go straight to using a strategic nuclear warhead, say dropping a bomb on Kharkiv?
How are we going to respond to that? Are we really going to go to nuclear war, full-on nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, which isn't a member of NATO? We don't have any NATO obligation to go to their defense. So the weakness of democracies is that they rely on the assent of their population. So do you think that the people of Britain, of France, of America particularly,
are going to say, yeah, that's what we have to do. I'm not sure that they would. I think there'd be, you know, obviously catastrophic dismay and horror at all this and leaders would find it very, very hard to
to follow through on what is meant to be their sort of nuclear doctrine. So I don't know. No one knows. But I do remain of the view that it is a possibility that the Russians will go nuclear.
Well, I don't agree with you, Patrick. I think the response would be immediate and severe. The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan addressed this particular issue and said if Putin did use a nuclear weapon, there would be catastrophic consequences. And that has to be the response. That has to be the determination, because that is how it's
nuclear deterrence works. You have to know if you use it, there's going to be a response. And I think Russia does know there will be a response, whether it's the, you know, tit for tat or whether it's some other way to massively cripple their ability to fight this war and indeed to fight any war is another matter.
But there has to be an enormous response and they have to believe that that's going to be the case. And I would have thought most right thinking people in the West would believe that any country mad enough to use a nuclear weapon has to be responded to immediately. Yeah, well, I think there's a difference between what you're saying and what would actually play out in a democratic political theatre. So let's hope we actually never get interrupted.
get to find out. We should remember, of course, that Ukraine was itself a nuclear power, but gave away its nuclear weapons in 1991.
In 1994, it actually had on its soil a third of all Soviet nuclear warheads. In return for giving them up, it got financial compensation and security assurances from Russia, also backed up by the US and indeed us in what was called the Budapest Memorandum. Sounds a bit like a kind of Len Dayton.
thriller, doesn't it? But under this, you know, Russia agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. And that includes the Crimea and Donbass. Now, even at the time of
People were warning that this was actually a rash move. There was an American political and security theorist called John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. He predicted that in time, this would inevitably lead to Russian aggression. But so he takes a very Hobbesian view of power politics and that territorial aggrandizement is an inevitable consequences of aggression.
of great power status, whether it's real or pretended. Yeah, it's very interesting the point you make about Ukraine. They gave up their nuclear weapons in return for a guarantee of their security from Russia, and it's not worth the paper it's written on. And the truth of the matter is that you either need nuclear weapons or you need to be allied to someone with nuclear weapons to have any chance, frankly, in a sort of modern world
world power politics scenario. So I think the long-term security of Ukraine will rest on its membership of NATO, which frankly is almost inevitable now.
Shall we move on to other news, Patrick, and get off this rather gloomy discussion of nuclear weapons? So what's the other big news this week? Well, I mean, there's the call-up, ongoing call-up, which has got a big element of black fast in it with dead men, people in hospital, et cetera, getting their call-up papers. And, of course, this has sparked this huge exodus. So you've got the borders flooded with people.
Draft dodgers, you've got demonstrations here and there in Moscow, interestingly, even some of the real saber rattlers, our old friend Margarita Simonian, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today, is accepting a bit of disquiet over this, not at the idea of people going off to fight Russia,
but the way it's been done in such a sort of typically candid Russian fashion. So one of the things that have been raised is should we let them in? Would it be a smart move and indeed, you know, a humanitarian thing to do to actually allow these Russians in? And I must say, if I was in Poland or the Baltics, I wouldn't be surprised.
rushing to open the gates, not least because as various people have pointed out, these guys were perfectly happy to go along with things as long as they weren't themselves going to be sent off to Ukraine. But once that became a possibility, then their attitude changed quite considerably. Another aspect, of course, is that among those trying to get out inevitably will be some dodgy characters, maybe FSB agents. This is exactly what happened in
at the end of the Bolshevik revolution when the Bolsheviks actually were in charge and middle-class Russians, the bourgeoisie were desperate to get out.
And the Brits were smart enough to know that among them would be some secret agents, checker agents, I suppose they would have been in those days. And the British spy Robert Bruce Lockhart told this brilliant story about how they weeded out the genuine bourgeois refugees from the potential secret agents. And what they did was when someone sat down and said, I used to be a doctor in St. Petersburg or a lawyer or whatever,
the British official would throw an untied bow tie onto the table and say, do that bow tie up. And of course, if you're a Russian revolutionary, you don't know how to tie up a bow tie. So it's a wonderful kind of cinematic moment when the spy is rumbled.
Yeah, great stuff. But what is not in doubt is that the call-up is completely chaotic. We have a situation where tens of thousands of people have already crossed into Georgia, which is one of the few places Russians can go without a visa. Tens of thousands of young men. And of course, the Russians are now trying to put a stop to that by making it difficult for Russians to go through the
border terrain of North Ossetia, which is the province that immediately borders Georgia, stopping people going there and even getting to the Georgian border. So they're clearly concerned about the number of people they're losing
to their potential armed forces. And they believe up to 100,000 people have already gone into Georgia. And it's an enormous number if you think that they were only trying to call up 300,000. And those who have been called up, well, we get tales from this interesting tweet from my old friend, Professor Peter Caddick-Adams, who's got very good contacts within Russia. And he tells me that at least the attempted call-up was supposed to have exceeded 300,000. So they said it was that number. Actually, it was many more.
But when they turned up at these recruiting areas, they had to bring their own sleeping bags, first aid kits, tourniquets. None of this stuff was issued. There were no beds in the barracks. They're sleeping on bubble wrap on concrete floors. Rumors of less than two weeks training before they're sent into Ukraine. I mean, it is a recipe for disaster, frankly. And we haven't seen very much from Russian state propaganda on the other side. You know, they would be trying to
present pictures of, you know, happy troops, patriotic lads, you know, striding into battle with their heads held high. There's been very little of that. The best they can do is come up with these images of Orthodox priests blessing troops. I wouldn't have thought that was very reassuring. It seems like a preparation for death to me, but...
It's visions of First World War, isn't it, Patrick, where the Orthodox priests were blessing the icons of the regiments and the standards of the regiments before they went into battle in the First World War. I mean, we know how that turned out. Yeah. And of course, then Stalin revived it, even though it's meant to be a godless state. Stalin understood the power of the Orthodox Church, and so he brought them out again.
of cold storage and they were blessing troops of the Red Army as they marched into battle. Stalin himself was an old seminarian. He studied for the priesthood, so he knew quite a lot about all that sort of stuff. But it's another example of how the Russian Orthodox Church is the ultimate Erastian, a great word is Erastian, which means that the religion is put in totally in the service of the state.
This is exemplified by the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who in fact is actually an FSB agent. There's plenty of evidence to show that on the way up, although his day job was as a priest, he was also a serving FSB agent. Anyway, he said the other day that any Russian soldier dying in Ukraine would be cleansed of all sin.
Again, not something I would have thought would be much of a motivating factor for these poor guys. You've got to feel a bit sorry for them. They passed out having drunk themselves senseless before they got on the bus or the plane to take them off.
to a very, very unpleasant situation. They're essentially victims of a press gang. Yeah. Well, two other major pieces of news this week, and neither of them good news for Russia. And the first of them is that the US has announced a new aid package, another
1.1 billion to add to the nearly 17 billion or 16 billion that they've already spent on Ukrainian military aid. And this includes significantly 18 more HIMARS advanced rocket systems
uh and the other thing that's in this package well there are lots of different things in this package um heavy equipment and lots of money for training but the other thing is weapons to counter drones and i think this is particularly aimed at the the drones that are supposed to have come from iran uh they've certainly shot down a couple already and this is an attempt to you know knock out that weapon system yeah well that is good news for ukrainians because they are
clearly going to be a problem, these so-called suicide drones. And it's really a question of numbers. You know, the idea is you just overwhelm the defenses by the sheer volume of these drones coming over. So if there's any way of counteracting that, that would be a big relief to the Ukrainians. Now, there has been a bit of a dearth of actual news from the front, but we are
hearing that the Ukrainians are making some significant advances around the town of Lyman, which is in the Donetsk. And there's a report saying that the Russian forces there are on the brink of being encircled. That would be a big surprise.
gain and there's no way of immediately verifying this but there are sort of images coming out of there which seem to match uh what the ukrainian authorities are reporting this would uh
the Ukrainians to push into the Lugansk region and reversing all the gains of the Russian summer offensive. So it could be very damaging, not just militarily, of course, but politically demonstrating once again that not only are they
Not able to hang on to the initial gains, but they're now having difficulty stabilizing the defensive front they've got in the east, following, of course, those disastrous losses of Izium and Kupyansk earlier this month.
Yeah, and the Russian forces haven't been entirely inactive. They are trying to carry out offensive operations around Bakhmut and west of Donetsk city, leveraging apparently penal units, that's guys that they've taken out of prisons, without much success. And of course, at the same time, they're lashing out with airstrikes and long range missile strikes against civilian infrastructure in places like Kharkiv.
So, more of that, which is pretty grim, of course, if you're in any of those Ukrainian civilian areas. Well, I think that's about all we have time for this week. Join us next week when we'll be talking to a key analyst or participant in the war and bringing the latest diplomatic, political and military news from the war. Goodbye. Goodbye.