How significant is Blinken’s unannounced trip to Kyiv? | Ukraine-Russia war

How significant is Blinken’s unannounced trip to Kyiv? | Ukraine-Russia war

well let’s take you back to Ukraine now and the US Secretary of State Anthony blinkin has paid a surprise visit to Kiev it comes at a crucial time in the war effort against Russia which has opened up a new front in the Northeast with reports of a possible major offensive on the horizon we’re joined Now by our security and defense analyst Professor Michael Clarken and Michael we saw those shots of Anthony blinkin enjoying a working lunch in Kiev just a short while ago what significance would you attach to this surprise visit he he’s made to Ukraine yes Jane I mean I think the key word is surprise nobody thought he was going to do this because he’s been involved in the Middle East very intensively and in public they said what you’d expect them to say they both said they use this word challenging it’s a very challenging time for Ukraine so he’s there to offer support he’s there to talk about the importance of the aid package which the Americans have now granted that’s what they’re say in public he doesn’t need to do that face to face in private what I suspect they’re talking about will be the restructuring of the government which zinski is working on and there’s a lot of controversy in Kev at the moment is under pressure and the Americans have views about the way the government might be restructured to make it more efficient to actually combat corruption more efficiently which affects all of these governments and they also have views on the Rules of Engagement the ukrainians have been pushing the Rules of Engagement to attack Russia directly not using Western weapons but attacking Russia directly and attacking oil refineries in Russia the Americans don’t like that because it raises the price of petroleum and so on so I think blinkin will be expressing the Americans view about some of the internal issues which linski has got to deal with over this critical summer that’s why I think they’re talking face to face now of course there’s this us Aid package which the secretary of state says has already arrived in Ukraine what are the main arms that the country needs to to push back against Russia well they they need more of everything um and they need more artillery uh more tank rounds more Small Arms ammunition but if you ask zinski and he said this in a couple of interviews what is the one thing he most needs is better air defense I mean this time last year um they were intercept about 90% of all the drones and missiles that were thrown at them now they’re intercepting sometimes less than 30% and so the the drones and missiles doing a lot of damage both to the front line and to Ukrainian cities and they need all sorts of air defense but the thing they most want and zalinski is mentioned this very explicitly now Patriot air defense batteries they’ve got two batteries one Dutch battery and an American Battery and they want at least two more and probably three more after that the Americans are reluctant to commit any more of their own Patriot batteries but they say there’s at least a dozen batteries in Europe you know why not some of them and they put pressure on the Europeans to provide these batteries there’s Patriot batteries in East Asia in the Gulf doing nothing in particular I mean there’s a lot of patriot batteries around in the world they’re very expensive about a billion dollars each they’re about 400 million for the battery and all the bits that go with it about 600 million for all the ammunition so they’re not cheap but they’ll get anything with Patriot batteries are the the the a grade air defense so the ukrainians need all sorts of air defense but they’ love more Patriot batteries and has made that pretty clear now what about the northeastern front that reports that some parts of that have fallen to Russia yeah now I mean this is really important Jame because when you see these Maps uh it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense until you put the water on them have a look at the sesu donet river and the great Reservoir the pish res Reservoir right at the bottom of the river the southern part of the river and it begins to make a bit more sense I mean the Russians are I think are trying to do two quite different things here they’ve not committed all that many forces to this operation though they’ve got quite a lot of forces around the whole front but they look as if they’re trying to push towards lipy um kiv is the Second City they almost certainly can’t take kiv with the forces they’ve got but if they get to lipy then it’s within artillery range and so they can do what they do best which is using artillery to just reduce a civilian area to rubble and then they move in and plant their flag on the rubble that’s the the one thing the Russians have proved to be really good at and if they get topy they could do that bring it within conventional artillery range and the Ukraine will have to try to stop that happening because that would be from their point of view intolerable but this is the more interesting one and and in a way lipy if they can get there is designed to pin Ukrainian forces in place to make ukrainians have to defend it to pin them there so they can’t go anywhere else breaking their breaking the line almost exactly because here is where I think they’ve got something more ambitious plan at vchan and the point is vchan is the other side of theet river and the Russians have been attacking the bridges now if they wanted to actually swing towards khv they’d leave the bridges where they were but they’re not they’re dropping them why because are going to go the other way if they can get vchan and they haven’t yet then they don’t want the ukrainians coming over the bridges after them and so I think they’ll they’ll swing the other way I mean this is what they would like to try to do why would they do that because off the map here at kopans they’re putting Ukrainian forces under great pressure Kian and linan if they can break through there and link up between V Chans and kopans then they’ve got themselves a belt ex and then where do they go they go if they can they then go southwards towards the dbass from K this is the area that they lost last year remember and then northwards from chazal where they’re fighting very hard to link up now that would be a very ambitious campaign plan but if I was a member of the general staff in Moscow looking at this I’d say that’s what we ought to try to do if we can stretch the ukrainians so far that they can’t stop us then we can start to move in the way that we always wanted to move as a proper maneuver Army now I think that this is too ambitious I don’t think they’ll be able to do it but if there were a proper maneuver Army if they can get themselves into gear and if the ukrainians cannot stop them and get pinned to the west of that with too many troops trying to defend kiv then that’s a a plausible outcome so I think the vchan operation is to operate at the other side of the river not to try to cross the river having dropped all the bridges really interesting Michael hope they’re not watching Russia thanks very much they have worked it out they have worked it out themselves yeah thank you

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has arrived in Kyiv to reaffirm American support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Mr Blinken’s surprise visit follows the approval of a long-delayed foreign assistance package for Ukraine by Congress.

Our defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke has more details.

Read more: https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-latest-putin-russia-moscow-kremlin-shoigu-kharkiv-battlefield-12541713

#ukraine #russia #war

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