Frontline Special - Former UK defence attaché to Moscow and Kyiv, John Foreman (Extended episode)
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting. Hello.

Hello and welcome to Frontline with me, Philip Ingram. Now, today we're very privileged to be talking to John Foreman, CBE. John is a former UK defence attaché to Moscow and Kyiv, worked in Washington DC, in NATO and with the EU. He's been banned by Russia - congratulations John - and decorated by Ukraine - congratulations once again. But you're also an associate fellow of Chatham House. John, welcome back to Frontline. Hello Philip, good to be back.

There's a lot of bouncing around between social media and posts going on at the minute. We've had Donald Trump warn Vladimir Putin that he's playing with fire in a statement on Truth Social. His latest comments came after he called the Kremlin leader Kremlin.

crazy. And then what we get is Medvedev from Moscow coming back and saying that Trump's words are playing with fire. And the only really bad thing that has happened, because Trump said really bad things would happen if he hadn't been looking after Putin effectively, the only bad thing would be World War III. And then

This morning or last night, we get General Kellogg coming out and saying, stoking the fears of World War III is unfortunate and a reckless comment by Medvedev, an unfitting of a world power. President Trump is working to stop the war and end the killing. And he then emphasised that General Kellogg and Donald Trump were still waiting for the Russian memorandum that they'd promised over a week ago, giving the outline of the ceasefire.

So you're sitting in the embassy, put your old hat on, trying to make sense of this. What's going on? I think it all goes back to last Monday when Trump and Putin spoke. And Trump obviously gave way to the Russian position. Putin got away with his position of let's have talks first and then a ceasefire perhaps in due course. And Trump abandoned his position of having a ceasefire first and then talks later.

So I think what we're hearing is noises off in the absence of further statements by Trump. And there was that tweet, that was Truth Social saying, you know, come on, Vladimir. We're waiting to see what the Russian reaction is. But of course, the real problem is whatever's being said by Medvedev or Kellogg hasn't really changed anything. The Russians seem to be insistent on their position.

and that Trump isn't prepared to use any sticks to bring the Russians to the table. Now we can discuss whether America has enough sticks, but even the sticks it's got, sanctions, arms, frozen assets, secretary sanctions against Russian allies, G7 oil price caps, things like that to actually try and drive compliance by the Russians, the American president has been unwilling to use. So even in his tweet, he was talking about

things would be a lot worse if I hadn't been president. Well, you know, not for Ukraine. Things are pretty bad for Ukraine. So we'll have to see whether, I mean, the proof is in the pudding. Irrespective of all the rhetoric, I would say, you know, are the Russians serious? And we'll see that whether they've come up with a memorandum, what's their negotiating position. And in the meantime, I think the Ukrainians are sitting there saying, well,

but stay close to the Americans, we'll let it all play out between Russia and America and not get little. Yeah, well, it's interesting. So trying to drill into the Russian psyche and work out where Putin is coming from, because you've actually been there in Moscow, you've worked into Russian government, you've interacted with all of these sort of individuals, different levels.

Give us a sense for how Putin's team works. Who will be briefing him? Does he actually listen to his military advisers, his political advisers, or does he only get really what he wants to hear? I think the centre of all power is the presidential administration. What we've seen over the last 20 years is a consolidation of power into the presidential administration away from the ministries. So the ministries tend to be doers, not thinkers, and the thinking and the strategy is done by the presidential administration.

and that's clear where the positions come from. Putin in 2021 sat down and wrote out his long essay about Ukraine that sort of set the justification for the war. It was his decision to set the demands on NATO and on the US and on Ukraine before the war. It's been the presidential administration who have been and the president himself sticking to the demands and not making the concessions

And it's people like Ushakov and people like Peskov, the spokesman and the national security advisor, effectively. They're the people I really listen to. I'd have less time for people like Lavrov, Balyusov and others outside, actually in a court.

The other problem is you have two forms of government. You have the visible form of government, presidential administration, the Duma courts, MOD. You have the informal side of government, which is business, criminality, security services, long friendships, going back to St. Petersburg. So it's always very hard to discern intent. And that was one of the problems we had in Moscow before the war, is actually what did the Russians really want? What was their intent, stated and understated? And I think, you know,

All we can say for the last three years is that Putin...

has kept his team in the presidential administration the same. And secondly, his demands haven't changed at all. Okay, so what would the collective of Western defence attaches be doing at the minute in Moscow with everything that's going on to try and get an understanding so you can back brief various foreign officers or MODs? And is there a good collective noun for a group of defence attaches? Well, I mean, firstly, I think gaggle is probably the word I'd use, a gaggle of defence attaches. But

I mean, the first thing is Russia, the diplomatic corps, the military diplomatic corps in Moscow is or was one of the largest in the world after the United States. So unlike, you know, when I was in Ukraine, every part of the world represented, especially more in Africa, more from South America, more from South and Southeast Asia than there were in Ukraine. I think it gave a sort of a cosmopolitan feel to it and also,

It was important for those of us from NATOs to get out of our comfort zone, not just talk to NATO defence associations, go and talk to those who have different views, especially those nations, we call them third nations, third states or whatever, places like Egypt and Morocco and Nigeria and Pakistan, India, Israel, Japan or South Korea and others, to see what their perspective is. And also because we have limited numbers and limited access since 2018 and scribble poisoning.

trying to get insight into what's going on to the Russian MOD is important actually put out as many feelers as possible. So what would I be doing? I'd be talking to my colleagues, I'd be trying to speak to experts, given the access into the MOD, Russian MOD, very, very

I'd also be trying to define what the Russians are actually telling us. And also we have other meetings, perhaps with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or presidential administration, others, to try and come up with our view. Is Putin serious? What are the red lines? Where is there possible room to shift how the war is going? What are the key problems the Russian military is facing?

and also where's the Russian military going beyond the war, what the pathway is towards reconstitution and how long have we got in the West to ensure that our defence and deterrence are adequate.

Now, you know, within all this, everyone refers back to Putin's past as an old KGB officer. Are all of his tactics explainable by his past, his upbringing in that intelligence background? And again, people are saying and Donald Trump has said that he's seen a change in Vladimir Putin over the years. He doesn't know why he's gone crazy. You know,

Have you seen a change in the way Putin is dealing with things? What do you think might have caused it if it's there? Well, I think firstly on that point about change, I think Putin has been pretty consistent since the very early days of his presidency. He's been consolidating power. He's been removing opponents. He's been trying to seek to reestablish control over those countries which were part of the former core of the Soviet Union.

He's removed political opponents, he's presided over a mountain of corruption to enrich himself and those around him. So I think that's been going on since the very beginning. And I don't think it's changed at all. What the Russians have been doing in Bucha is very similar to what they did in Chechnya and what they did in Georgia. I mean, I think the problem about Putin is I'm less convinced about his mythologising of this KGB past. It's also about where he came from, poor boy, Leningrad, in the wake of the war.

his brother had died in the siege and I think the Soviet period and the KGB gave him structure to his life and that says by the most formative moment is to get it becoming part of this sort of shield and sword of the Soviet Union and you know he wasn't particularly successful of course he was a lieutenant colonel he was part in being sort of counter espionage counter intelligence in East Germany rather than being should we say in the

in the west of Europe, running agents himself. And I think the problem is he's very much a man of the 1970s and 80s, of the sort of Brezhnevian period of stagnation. That's what he refers back to the whole time, about the glories of the war, the glories of the past. And those around him, which he promoted, have grown old with him. So they will empower these old white analogue men, a particular worldview that's shaped their nationalist, chauvinist opinion towards war.

Ukraine and also a suspicion of the West. None of them have any great experience of the West. There's a deep lack of understanding about us, just as I would say there's a deep lack of understanding about Russia in the West. Well, you look at what's happening to Russia at the moment. If we look as to why or one of the reasons why the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, it was the mothers of the soldiers that put pressure on the government at the time. Casualties coming out of Afghanistan,

Ukraine are horrendous at the minute. If we believe the Ukrainian minister of defense as an indicator, 980,000 dead or wounded, we're getting on towards a million. Ukraine is now firing more and more drones into Russia. One of the biggest drone attacks from Ukraine last night. Russia is doing the same back. We've got Zelensky possibly meeting the German, the new German chancellor Merz in Germany today. Zelensky's landed.

And Mertz has come out to say that the restrictions on the range restrictions and use restrictions on Western missiles. And interestingly, he said British, French, German and American restrictions have been removed. I haven't heard that from any of the other leaders that are around.

But, you know, there's a lot of talk around the importance of the Taurus missile and Western missiles and all the rest of it. But Ukraine is hitting targets well beyond Moscow and having a military effect on them without the Western weapons. What do you think the Russians and the Russian people are making of the Ukrainian drone attacks? And do you think that the use of Western military missiles would have an appropriate military effect or potentially lead to an escalation?

I mean, firstly, I'd say that it's very hard to equate the war in Ukraine with the war in Afghanistan. And I think, you know, there's a sort of narrative by some British ex-military journalists who talk about, you know, it's one more step, you know, the mothers of the soldiers rise up. But actually what happened was Putin and his regime neutered those organisations before the war started. So they'd be declared foreign agents or they'd be marginalised and closed down. So I think the difference is...

that the presidential administration or the Russian government has been quite carefully managing the war in terms of knowledge of casualties, knowledge of how it's going, and preventing soldiers coming back into society at large numbers so far by keeping them in the field. So the past is not prologue necessarily. I think the other thing I'd say about drone attacks being going for a while, missile attacks, the storm shadow attack on the scalp of the past, is that

Russian public support for the war seems to be pretty solid. Now, I mean, there's lots of academic arguments about whether you could actually point to say, yes, this means that the Russians are supporting or not supporting it. But I think if you look at the trends, I think the numbers of Russians who are supporting it, hardcore nationalists, or who are sort of acquiescent towards it, outweighs those who are hardcore against it. And actually, recruitment went up in the Russian army after the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk.

And actually, there's been no sign, as we know, at all of any public protests because of the fear of coming out against the government. So what do they think about it? I think they see it as baked in, but also they see that this is the patch. They want to see the war end. They want to see the drone attacks stop, but they want to see it end on Russia's terms. And they trust the government to do that. That's my reading of it.

So I'm not expecting to see drone attacks really tipping the balance, especially the numbers. I mean, don't seem to be at the same scale as the Russians can achieve. I mean, the Russians have had punishing attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and cities for two or three years now. That's been delivered to target the military industrial complex and also to target Ukrainian morale, which I think has probably worked. And we saw the attacks over the weekend as a continuation of that strategy.

in return the Ukrainians have these spectaculars but they don't seem to have the weight to be able to do it constantly to have a significant effect on the trajectory of the war or the Russian rear. And of course the missiles again they are great capabilities within a certain range but do they have enough? And of course

Schultz, we talk about Taurus two years ago, and I agree with Ben Wallace. He was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The new chancellor has apparently lifted restrictions. The problem is, in the meantime, the Russians have dispersed. They've got a better cabin flaging, and they've improved their air defenses, and they've got electronic warfare. So in this sort of cat-of-mouth battle between offense and defense, I think I don't expect to see these long-range missiles have quite the effect they had maybe a couple of years ago.

It's interesting, you know, knowing the Germans, I'm sort of asking the question myself as to whether they're concerned that it would not prove as effective as they believe it is if it's flown against modern electronic warfare and Russian air defence systems. So that's one of the reasons why they're holding back. But that's purely me speculating, having lived in Germany and worked with them beforehand. Yes, we had the same discussion about

Sorry, Jeff, I had the same discussion about Storm Shadow. Storm Shadow's effectiveness was very good, and then maybe the Russians did these things, and then there was countermeasures to adapt to those changes. So I think that's been going on. But again, I don't think there's many Storm Shadow left. I don't think there's many Scalps left. I don't think there's many Attackams left, because I think they haven't been supplied in large numbers, irrespective of the number of German missiles. And I think the second part of your question was,

Is it going to exacerbate the situation? I said to somebody else, Russia's been murdering Ukrainians, peace civilians in their cities for three years, over three years now. Russia entered this war, as Obama Harris once said, with a sort of strange misapprehension that they could bomb Ukraine, Ukraine can't bomb Russia. The difference is that Ukrainians go after military targets at all.

of dual use targets once the Russians go after sort of indiscriminate bombing of cities. So, you know, we'll be used to Mr. Mirbidev's cackling and Peskov's moaning and Zaharov's lies. But the fact is that in truth, previous use of long range missiles in Russia by Ukraine hasn't changed the situation because I don't think Russia wants to escalate the conflict beyond Ukraine. I want to keep it local.

not make it a regional war when they do. So do you think all this nuclear saber rattling that happens every time there's a new piece of equipment used is merely just trying to stir the information pot to create angst in the West, but the Russians aren't serious about the use of weapons, of proper weapons of mass destruction? No, I'm not. You know, I mean, I think every time we've had these sort of military doctrine, these new nuclear doctrines come out,

what Russia has been doing is clarifying the use criteria, perhaps it lowered some of its launch criteria against aerospace attacks or use of third parties against Russia, but actually it's been pretty consistent as far as I'm aware, you know, nuclear talks between the P5 nuclear nations continue and that's good for strategic stability. Second, the Russian nuclear posture, strategic nuclear posture hasn't changed dramatically in the last three years.

Thirdly, Russia carries out its exercises as it's always done. You know, it had an exercise just before the war, and that was to signal America not to get involved directly in the war. And in some terms, that's how it's worked. You know, the rules of the game are Russia's got nuclear weapons, Ukraine doesn't. So everything in this conflict has a nuclear dimension, whether we like it or not.

So it's settled down. Now we could talk about extension of the Russian umbrella over Belarus, but that was always implied in the previous doctrine. So I've always been fairly calm about the nuclear angle because again I don't think Russia wants to go down that path. It wants to keep war away from its soil and it has that sort of cultural memory of 25 million dead in the Second World War and doesn't want to go that way at all.

No, interesting. But Russia is, you know, if we're to believe some of the reporting, preparing for an offensive into Ukraine from the north to create, as we keep hearing Russian commentators, you know, I think Lavrov has said it and Peskov has said it, you know, a buffer zone. And then there's the definition of what a buffer zone is. And one of the maps I saw is 99% of Ukraine as a buffer zone, which is Russia's previous objective anyway. And then we hear rumblings about

Belarus, Russia trying to bring Belarus back into the conflict or into the game. Is this all bluster or do you think Russians could generate sufficient combat power to mount a credible operation from the north? And if they can do that, why are they not putting it into what they're doing in the east? And do you think Russia is trying to get Belarus involved in the fight? Well, I think the main effort is still Donbass, in particular Donetsk. That's where...

the Russian summer offensive has already started to try and flank some of the Ukrainian cities and try and make greater ground towards the two fortress cities and try and get closer to the Donetsk oblast border, which is one of Kislyak's demands. I think there's been talk about from Zelensky and others about this Russian offensive from the northeast to follow the Ukrainians over the border from Kursk around Sumy. Again,

The problem the Russians had before in 2022 was splitting their axis of effort into multiple axes of effort, none of which succeeded. So the key lesson they learned, which the Chinese also learned from this, is that you need to reduce your boundaries. You need to focus your effort. And within that front, that direction, that will have a main effort and not start off having vainglorious attacks from elsewhere. So I expect to see diversionary attacks along the front. I expect to see the main effort in the front.

in Donbas. On Belarus, I think Lukashenko has been always very very keen not to get Belarus dragged in directly. So we know that Russia launches air attacks and drone attacks, missile attacks by that way. And also by maintaining forces there in diverse Ukraine they can't send them all to the east. They have to keep troops along that border which actually has been pretty quiet over the last two and a half, three years.

The difference, of course, is Zapad, which is coming up. I think some commentators see this as like a rehearsal about annexation of Belarus or attacking Lithuania. I think, again, that is not what this exercise is about. I think it's a part of Russia trying to signal to the West it has credible Russian deterrence and defenses along its western border. Now, we talk about...

a lot about Russia's tactical forces, its capability, but it's now reported it's relying on between, what, 60% and 80% of its ammunition and artillery ammunition coming from North Korea. We're seeing artillery pieces now coming in from North Korea. It relied on Iran for its drone technology. I wonder what Iran's getting back for that. The Russian big...

Armoured vehicle storage depots are emptying, if not are completely empty now, three years into the conflict. Can Russia's defence industrial base sustain its level of operations and its level of losses at the moment? I'll be reading about this over this last week. I think the Russian industrial complex has sort of stepped up. I mean, it was really bad before 2021.

it has stepped up a lot of money it's running more shifts and it's had more focus maybe the other has been sent into the factories threatening death to bad managers but the other problem is it suffers from capacity issues it suffers from access of tech it's up as corruption and poor management lack of investment lack of tooling so what it's really been able to do is be able to refurbish and re-equip these older Soviet tanks equipment you know arm-fighting vehicles

and not be able to provide those sort of exquisite newer capabilities. Now, that's fine, isn't it? Because, you know, somebody said a tank is a tank. Whether it's a T-72 or it's a T-90 or T-84 or T-64, you know, it's a tank. That's the way the Russians have been using it in the field. It doesn't have to be an Abrams or a Challenger 3 or a super-duper Armat tank. So the analysis I've read about the industrial complex is actually production capacity has plateaued.

So the shell capacity has gone up, they're providing, they're producing more long-range missiles, both the Akalaba air-launched and Iskander. It's providing more equipment to the front, perhaps not well-beating, but good enough in the sort of lower quality army you've got. The problem they've got, the real problem for the Russians is,

can they go beyond this? This semi-mobilisation of the state has brought it to a certain level and it's sort of grinding a bit, maybe grinding a bit out now. But to go to reconstitution, you're going to have to have either massive investment, massive enlargement to replenish all this stuff that's been lost. Or you have to pick some certain key areas and just ISR, C2, EW, drones, missiles, and the rest of it will have to be sort of, shall we say,

you know, older generation stuff. So I think that's a big issue. But at the moment, you know, I think the use of North Korean shells and missiles and Iranian tech, I mean, I know that Russia has taken all that tech and is actually now producing it back in Iranian tech, now in Russia itself, through factories in Russia. So we have seen adaptation and the drone gap has dropped, closed with Ukraine. And I think Russia's got a missile system

advantage, considerable missile advantage and drone advantage strike drones now over Ukraine. Why do you think we haven't seen the Russian Air Force that was feared by the West for so many years with the volume of aircraft and weapon systems that they've got have have

any real effect on even the tactical battlefield. The Russians have not been able to create local air superiority over the battlefield, which is why ground operations are just not progressing at the level that Russian doctrine would have suggested they should do. Again, I think people before the war misunderstood what the Russian Air Force was or is. I think it's fundamentally a defensive force, not an offensive force in the same way as...

the American Air Force is. So if you look, people took the American Air Force, projected it onto the Russian Air Force and said they operate in a very the same way. Well they don't. The role of the Russian Air Force is to keep threats away from Russia. So air defence, they had no practice in conducting complex combined operations over enemy territory. It was the sort of dog that failed to bark in the early days of the war when we expected much more bombing.

they weren't used to operating in a contested environment, training hours were low, the equipment wasn't necessarily the most modern and they got their hands, their bottoms handed to them by the Ukrainians in the first weeks and months of the war which forced them to withdraw to a sort of situation now where they do have an effect I think by lobbing these glide bombs in but they're not an air force which is capable of doing independent air power as we might imagine the Americans or the British

French air forces to be able to do they're very much more an extension of the Russian army as a flying bomb so the prospects of their reconstitution they don't get talked about much by Putin actually his reconstitution efforts focus on the navy and the army and strategic missile forces not on the air force so I think the future of the air force um

it hasn't had a good war, it's lost a lot of aircraft, it's failed to sort of say have strategic effect as we might imagine the Americans would do. They did in for example Iraq

And it's been, as you say, rather disappointing, I think, to the Russians. I think the Russians will pick that up as a lesson because that's one thing they're very good at. But, you know, as we're coming to the end here, do you see a ceasefire anytime soon? Do you see a peace agreement coming anytime soon? Or is there still a lot of war to be fought out before both sides will sit down and deal with that? And what are the levers you can put on Putin? Yeah, I mean, I think...

peace ceasefire the problem we've got is actually I think the sides weren't that far apart three years ago in Istanbul you can see a shape of a deal which would be land for peace which is unpalatable it doesn't satisfy Ukrainians it won't satisfy the Russian elites going to this war in the first place that's probably where you're looking at now just with the realities of the war

Neither side will be able to achieve a breakthrough. Neither side will be able to deliver a knockout blow. So Ukraine can defend but can't throw the Russians out. The Russians can attack but can't defeat Ukraine. So that's been where I think things have been going for last year. The problem, of course, is getting to that peace, quote-unquote, or ceasefire after three years of bloodshed and war crimes and rapes and disappearances by Russia on Ukraine is going to be extremely difficult. So I think...

If the Russians came back with their memorandum with a sensible proposal, it's more likely. If Russia is still demanding denazification, which is the removal of the elected government or demilitarization, shrinking of the army,

or demanding formal recognition of the occupied territories or demanding NATO pull back or the removal of American nuclear weapons from Europe. I think it's going to be very hard to get to a peace deal when they're in a ceasefire. So I think the problem is the Russians are reluctant to enter a ceasefire because they realize if you do, they realize if you do then things get fixed and they still want to achieve full control of self-declared annexed territories in southeast Ukraine. So

Getting into a war is easier than getting out of it. And I think, you know, what we need is leadership and cunning and diplomacy and nuance in the American administration, which we're not getting. Well, on not getting that nuance and leadership from the American administration, John, getting your insights into this from someone who's been there, seen it and done it is absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for joining me today on Frontline. Thank you, Philip. Enjoy it.

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