Has Russia’s diversion failed? | Ukraine Pod

Has Russia’s diversion failed? | Ukraine Pod

I’m Dom Nichols and this is Ukraine the latest today we discuss the latest from the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia take a brief look at the implications of the death of Iranian president ibraim REI and talk to Colin Freeman about his recent reporting tour in The donbass Bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with Victory if we give president Z the tools the ukrainians will finish the job Slava ukraini nobody’s going to break us we’re strong we are ukrainians every weekday we sit down with leading journalists from the telegraph’s London Newsroom and our teams reporting on the ground to bring you the latest news and analysis on the war in Ukraine it’s Monday the 20th of May 2 years and 87 days since the fullscale invasion began today I’m joined by senior foreign correspondent Roland oler and foreign reporter Colin Freeman I started with the latest news from Ukraine so the Ukrainian general staff have said Russian forces conducted an unsuccessful mechanized assault on Friday going to start over the weekend start back on Friday this was a roughly reinforced company size bit more detail came from The isw Institute for the study of War they say two tanks and 21 infantry fighting Vehicles were used in the attack on the Eastern side of ch massive y now that is quite a sizable chunk of material and perhaps the push that one would expect whilst you were trying to keep your enemy focused Elsewhere on potentially a diversionary attack so what I’m talking about is if this effort in the vicinity of harke that for the last week or 10 days or so which we’ll speak about in a moment if that was a diversion that has been suggested it would be designed to draw in Ukrainian reserves and we should expect to see a bigger push elsewhere now nothing happened for a few days which is not unexpected you want to draw the enemy in but what’s happened now is that the harky assort isn’t ready going anywhere but hasn’t drawn in much Ukrainian Reserve we think elements of three brigades have been moved there so not caused a huge amount of conniptions in the Ukrainian forces plus Russia has not been able to take advantage of that in the area of what is assessed still continues to be assessed as their main efforts around chiv y now remember there was a thought that Russia wanted to take chass of Y by Victory Day Parade May the 9th of course you don’t want your en enemy to be advancing at all but for all the Bluster about har being terminal Russia having strategic momentum Ukraine being starved of ammo there’s not an awful lot happening in terms of the Lines Moving which says says a lot about the capability of the Russian army right now so if this push whatever it was on Friday into chivar tanks and infantry fighting vehicles that didn’t work if that was the main assault with haki being a diversion it’s not worked now it might still be very early days um and we don’t know but that’s how I I look at things uh as it pans out on the battlefield anyway back to the updates overnight Saturday Sunday Ukrainian drone strikes hit Russian military infrastructure and oil refineries in Crimea and then Kadar cry and Leningrad oblasts in Russia it’s estimated Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s refining infrastructure has resulted in a 14% red uction in capacity that’s not massive but is certainly not insignificant now the isw say that or note Russian mod said that their forces destroyed nine attachs missiles over primier near s stopol and belc Airfield just to the north of course we should pause for a moment decide whether or not we’re going to believe the numbers Moscow are putting out but we should note that something seems to have hit a vessel Naval vessel in sopel Port so in this overnight Saturday Sunday attack the Ukrainian defense Ministry said that its forces sank a m sweeper the covet M sweeper in the strike about 1 15 Mi south of the line Russian telegram channels confirmed a loss leaping on the opportunity for a bit of Mischief Ukrainian defense Ministry said on Twitter another bad day for the Russian Black Sea Fleet however then Russian channels and other sources I’ve been looking at are now reporting that the vessel hit was the much more modern caliber armed Corvette cichon six Russian Sailors killed 11 injured we are told this ship built only last summer was a carrier and launcher for the very fastest ziron missiles as well as other caliber and other cruise missiles so you’ll see footage published yesterday as well that also purportedly shows Russian forces attempting to repel Ukrainian drones over the port of nov rosis in Russia on social media you’ll see something flying quite low in daylight a lot of rounds being put down by Russian Sailors I presume at very low angle of elevation so something is blown up something explodes in the sky but there’s loads of Cheers all over the place but those rounds are going to go somewhere I mean someone in a tower block somewhere is going to get that now all these cheers amongst the Russian Sailors the RNE seems lost on them that they’re in Novar rois and having to repel drones gror CRI Governor Benjamin conev said that the air defense had had shot down 10 drones and the falling de had caused fires I’ve not been able to verify that at all and only see in the one um social media post so what’s going on here then in crier well now for months we’ll remember that that many people are saying that the long range attacks would be able to shift things on the battlefield other people saying no there’s not one piece of um equipment that would do that I’m T I tend to agree with that that there’s no Silver Bullet here however a tacks if it is what’s being used hitting ships airfields logistic bases air defense sites in Crimea is having a real effect of course war is a team sport and I tip my hat if it’s possible to do that to Maritime drones but attacks in particular is increasingly making Crimea untenable for Russian forces making the juice for Russia of operating there not worth the squeeze of losing signature kit I’ll be interested in Roland and Collins’s views on this of course Putin doesn’t want to give up Crimea arguably the political center of gravity of this war without it it would make make the war very very difficult but Putin’s increasingly being handed the choice of staying there and losing the exact stuff that he needs to prosecute the war elsewhere air defense caliber Cru missile ships a route into Southern Ukraine so does he reinforce primier thereby switching resources from elsewhere pull out which is politically unacceptable the fact Ukraine is now attacking the Black Sea Fleet in novos just adds to the problem and this I see might be a way for Ukraine to progress overall militarily to somehow stay in the fight and not see too much ground elsewhere while also presenting so many problems to Russia individually small but collectively they all add up that the system grinds to a Hal now again question for the lads in a minute do I think Putin is going to pull out of Crimea no but do I think the potential loss or the humiliation of staying there and losing signature kit might move him sooner to the negotiating table yes I do anyway couple more updates for me so yesterday 12 people killed 40 injured in har volas this comes from Governor o subo there they said a Russian isand M missile double tap attack on the Northern outskirts of harke reportedly killed six people including a pregnant woman and injured 28 including two Medics now last night Ukrainian forces said they’ shot down all 29 Shahed drones launched by Russia at Odessa mikf pava and Lviv oblasts Russia reportedly launched these drones from the proso ACT task that’s on the Eastern side of the Sea of aov and K oblast in Russia and that one bard the sui region up to the Northeast Sumi and heon also hit over the weekend no reports of any death in that in those attacks and then in a meeting with journalists which I think happened on Friday or Saturday attended by our friends at the Key of independent president zinski said Ukraine’s Partners quote are afraid of Russia losing the war he said they would like keeve to win in such a way that Russia does not lose he said Russia’s loss would involve unpredictable geopolitics and then went on to say I don’t think it works that way for Ukraine to win we need to be given everything with which one can win and then finally just up to date this morning a Ukrainian rocket attack is said to have targeted a Russian military base a couple of kilometers just west of luhansk city you’ll see images on social media something a very large explosion there no further details known and also this morning Deputy Governor of hary vblast Roman Muka speaking on national TV said Ukrainian forces now control 60% of the town of VCH tanks just north of harkee amid continued Russian assaults over the weekend just one for me on the Diplomatic front worth noting Estonian prime minister K Callis said fears of sending troops to Ukraine to train the country’s soldiers that could draw them into a war with Russia she said are quote not well-founded speaking to the financial times in an article that’s out today she said there are countries who are training soldiers on the ground already although she didn’t name names she said it was not an automatic Article 5 moment if Russia attacked training personnel and said I can’t possibly imagine that if somebody is hurt there then those who have sent there people will say it’s Article 5 let’s bomb Russia it’s not how it works it’s not automatic which adds to this conversation at the moment about what would Western sln troops on the ground inside Ukraine training Ukrainian soldiers look like kicked off by President macron backed up by by some others Brit’s foreign secretary for example okay w that idea it’s doing the rounds it’s out there as a conversation we’ve mentioned it a few times it’s worth just noting it I don’t think there’s going to be any immediate resolution but we do need to note these these comments from someone in the position of estonia’s prime minister now then turning to Our Guest Roland really interested on your thoughts about any and everything that I’ve been mentioning there crime and and the comments from Kai Callis but as it’s such a big story and it could frame the international context for for um for a little while yet could you just bring us up to date please with implications of the confirmed death of Iranian president Ibrahim reisi and for Minister Hussein Amir abdan I note Charles Michelle the European Council president tweeted this morning the EU expresses its sincere condolences for the death of President REI and foreign minister abdan as well as other members of their delegation and crew in a helicopter accident our thoughts go to the families to which very quickly Hannah Newman a member of the European Parliament replied with I want all the people in Iran know that Charles Michelle is speaking here as a private person not as European Council president and for sure not on behalf of Europeans so it’s all getting a little bit feisty in the response to this but if you could bring us up to date please and give us a view on uh any possible future implications please yes absolutely so as I’m sure everybody knows by now Ibrahim RI along with Iran’s foreign minister in a couple of hours had been on a trip to aaban yesterday where they had attended the opening of a dam with President Al of aeran it was a joint Iranian aani project and on the flight home they were flying in a convoy of three helicopters they ran into extremely poor weather up in Northwestern Iran very remote area the helicopter the president was on went down took a long time for well we’re told long time for here for the wreckage to be found but yeah by the time I woke up this morning probably about 6:00 UK time turned on the world service and they were already saying just confirming this breaking news that he had been confirmed de so II who became president of Iran in 20121 now dead the immediate implication of that is that the first vice president of Iran will take over for a caretaker period there’ll have to be a presidential election within 50 days so we’re looking at an election in Iran by early July I suppose 50 days is there was going to be the next one was going to be in 2025 it’s been brought forward a little bit now in terms of implication the thing to understand here first of all is that the president of Iran doesn’t really set foreign policy he doesn’t really set the direction of domestic policy okay the ultimate Arbiter of power on Iran is the supreme leader Ali H and he remains very much in power anyone you talk to about Iran it’s one of the stories I’ve been reporting on nor for a few years besides Ukraine and Russia and stuff anyone you talk to about Iran says look he’s old he’s 85 this year he’s Cogan he’s nobody’s full he’s very much in control and the whole system defers to him so don’t expect a shift in Iranian foreign policy don’t expect a shift in the confrontation in the Middle East with Israel which is run by the irgc anyway I wouldn’t expect a shift in Iran’s kind of relationship with Russia and the delivery of drones for the Russian war effort in fact we had the supreme leader on Twitter within a few hours of the helicopter going down putting out tweets address to the Iranian public talking about how look don’t worry the state is going to keep on moving smoothly there won’t be any disruption which I think suggests that they knew quite early on that the president was dead and now trying to manage this this news coming out so I wouldn’t see a big shift but but but there’s always a b there’s two big implications inside Iran which may have implications further down the line so the first one is Ibrahim RI was one of two men who would generally thought to be being groomed to potentially take over a supreme leader when h this Mortal coil and you can see from the way he behaves that he knows is at the end of his life as well that that’s going to happen at some point so who have you got left you’ve got left his second Son who’s a fairly shadowy secretive figure but we know that he’s close to his father he’s meant to be close to the rgc he’s considered quite an effective manager within the Supreme Leader’s office but he’s not well known by the Iranian public and this whiff I wouldn’t say a stench but a whiff of hereditary monarchy there and you got to remember the isamic Republic overthrew a monarchy they’re not meant to like kings or hereditary power so you can imagine some disquiet not just within the ranks of reformers and and Iranian liberals but amongst some hardliners about hold on are we really going to just install the son of the previous guy is that really what this place is all about so I think you’re going to see a power struggle within the hardliner factions inside Iran somebody’s going to think oh there’s an opening here now maybe I’ve got a chance and then that further down the line when hame Dies who is that person who’s going to take over is he going to be someone who’s a firm believer exactly the same kind of person or will he guide Iran down a slightly different path who knows but a big question the other thing to remember is a very delicate time in Iran it’s really difficult to overstate how polarized things are there at the moment anyone you talk to will acknowledge it that there is a hardcore of support for the regime but there’s also massive massive just just fed upness if I can turn that into a noun people who feel like look like the economy is basically morban sanctions don’t help with that there’s massive widespread corruption which is made worse by the fact the regime has let the irgc take over vast wastes of the economy which means there’s no transparency which makes corruption worse so everyone’s very cynical about all that and then there’s the repression the hijab law you remember the the massive protests over the last year or two following the death of a woman in custody at the hands of the so-called morality police right um those were the biggest protests the biggest challenge to the established power in Iran since the Islamic revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power all right so this is a really really delicate time in Iran so although the death of RI is not going to shift the geopolitical balance that we look at on this podcast of a focus on Ukraine not immediately but it it brings into Focus these forces inside the country these tensions that down the line really could change things and you you can see where Iran lies in this huge kind of geopolitical standoff you immediate words of condolence from Russia from China Iran very much on that side of things as the world divides into this Global Mexican standoff so those are my immediate thoughts on that Dom well you said that the protest sparked by the death of mar armeni a couple of years ago I think it was a couple years ago probably got my dates wrong there sorry were the biggest since the start of the Islamic Republic how significant is it do you think that they there were fireworks over Teran last night I mean a very obvious response to this death you can’t really say well it’s just somebody’s birthday I mean that was a very pointed uh demonstration to the uh to the authority authorities or am I overplaying it I mean I saw those pictures as well and then I thought oh hold on my responsible journalist head kicked in and I was like oh are these pictures verified I don’t know I haven’t had time to go out and work out if that was definitely last night but that’s what I’m talking about right I mean I I was in Teran for the election of the the ri w that brought him to power in 2021 it was the lowest turnout of any presidential election in Iran since the Islamic Republic was established it had the highest number of spoiled or uncounted ballots it was a very distinctive way in which kind of liberal reformist non- Hardline candidates were blocked from getting on the ballot in the first place so there was this deep sense of cynicism and resignation the sense amongst people who probably would have voted for a reformist candidate before that there’s there’s no point this this this place can’t be reformed and just to to share a little anecdote with you I remember being a at R’s Victory rally which I’m not sure he actually turned up to which I thought was a bit of a snub to his supporters anyway it’s big Square in Teran lots of True Believers Hardline voters a lot of women actually there waving their flags and speeches and all of this and everybody Trails off afterwards and afterwards I was with Sam taring the photographer used to work with a lot in the Middle East and he said God it’s getting on in London now can we just sit here and I’ll edit some photos on my laptop and send them fine okay so we’re sitting there outside this Metro station under an underpass or something in Teran he’s he’s on his laptop I’m having a cigarette it’s getting dark and these street sweepers clearing up the mess and one of them is like oh you you are you a foreign journalist yeah okay and he just lets rip I mean just just like everyone you saw standing there is an idiot Ry is a killer all of this stuff I tell that as an anecdote CU it’s striking but it wasn’t difficult during that time there to talk to people who felt really fed up and they weren’t afraid of talking about that people who didn’t want to vote for him I mean the 1988 things he’s a hanging judge he was very involved in these I suppose you call it a drumhead court Marshal and these little secret hearings and courts that sentenced thousands the numbers are disputed but thousands of political prisoners to death in 1988 people know about that and people are angry with it and I’m not saying everybody in the Islamic Republic hates the Islamic Republic but a lot of people do and you can see how the fatigue crosses class lines now as well to put it in the terms of the British culture war north Teran basically is the equivalent of North London it’s well off it’s leafy it’s where well educated liberal leaning rich people live and you would expect Ibrahim RI or someone like that never to get a single vote from North Teran right but anyone you talk to Follows on will tell you this crosses class boundaries it doesn’t mean that the regime is definitely on its last legs it doesn’t mean that they’re completely without support it doesn’t mean they’re not afraid to crack heads and spill blood to stay in power but coming back to your original point to see someone letting off fireworks over Teran and at the same time to see some extra police on the street just in case something kicks off from the side of the authorities that I think is quite a neat illustration of the kind of polarization that you hear talked about a lot when you talk to people about the Dynamics in Iran at the moment sorry longwinded answer but that’s the thought process I had when I saw those videos of fireworks and also there’s videos of oh okay so the you know there’s there’s some more irgc militia on the streets to what’s that all about interesting right we’ll keep tabs on that please we’ll come back to you over the next few days keep an eye on that now the other thing I posited earlier on and I’m going to get told off by David when he’s back because I was mixing news with analysis so look let’s just keep it amongst ourselves please but I was suggesting that what Ukraine are trying to do right now is just hang on on the land basically and make crime so untenable for Russia that Putin really has to think about how much it’s worth earning through his men material to hang on to that that that Chun of land um what’s your views on that you’ve been there more often than anyone else Roland and also you’ve been to Novis so talk to us a little bit about that town as well please because that’s under under attack sorry I want to refrain from making Grand predictions about the intention I mean I I think the attacks on Crimea the air attacks they’re very noticeable they’re very obvious my guess was it’s the ukrainians trying to stretch the Russians where they can right if you can blow up Russian aircraft if you can blow up Russian air defenses if you can really threatened that then you force them to deploy air defenses or something else there it’s one place where the ukrainians are able to bring certain strengths to bear and push the Russians in a way that the Russians are able to stretch the ukrainians in all kinds of spaces as well my only thought is that no matter how much you bomit or fly atams at it the Ukraine is obviously a very long way from ever threatening Russian possession of Crimea on land systematically you remember before the counter offenseive last summer there was some kind of armchair analysis of if they break through if they make it to the Sea as of then suddenly Crimea is in play then like Crisis for Putin that didn’t happen and we’re a long way from that novaris Novis is a little bit like a kind of low-lying fiord that makes a kind of natural Harbor on the coast of is it Kad dark I went to nois years ago when I was on the business desk of the Moscow times and the reason was there was a really murky corporate struggle for control of that port and it’s got an oil terminal and stuff that I just I could not get to the roots of it but there was there were clearly a really classically rushing kind of tussle for control of that place commercially back then we got tour of the harbor it was a large but fairly tired Harbor I did see a couple of Navy boats in the harbor at that point the main thing then everyone was focused on was the oil terminal that’s why nois was a big thing and I do remember people talking about how it is an alternative for seever stopple but it’s not as good it’s it’s not as deep seole is a better Harbor basically was what I remembered from that thank you I do hope you weren’t including me in this armchair General rent no I was thinking of who’s that there’s a retired American General there a particular chap is it Ben hoders who was talking a lot about how Ukraine is a center of gravity and there was lots of analysis like that and you could see how it would work if that offensive had worked and we know that the objective was the Sea of as of you know you you can see how that would be a crisis kind of thing but I just think we’re a long way from that now yeah I I think we are but I think if we are at least entering the arena of Putin trying to decide at what point does he make serious suggestions about negotiations orbe it thinking I’ll buy for time now I’ll come back in 10 years time he might decide actually now’s about as good as it’s going to get because he’s just losing too much stuff so he might play it that was all I was that’s all I was saying R but never mind let’s have a chat with Colin Colin you’ve just come back from your your latest reporting trip to Ukraine we spoke to you while you’re out there you’ve been speaking to draes around the chass Y area what were you chat to those guys about and any views on on anything you’ve just heard there and if you could be even more controversial than Roland well I’d be impressed yeah I I did Cover Iran several times when I was younger but I haven’t been there since about 2009 when the last big pro-democracy protests were snuffed out so my knowledge is a bit out the date really I’ll talk about something rather more current yeah I was up in the donbas until the end of last week and as per usual we were Scouting Around really for things to do and see around the front lines the way we do this normally just for listeners benefit is we approach different media officers and commanders that we know in different brigades fighting up and down the front lines and ask them what they can safely afford US to let us see and report on so sometimes they say that we we’ve got an artillery unit we can go and see sometimes they say you can come and observe a field Hospital in action sometimes it will be to talk about infantry troops who recently participated ated in a particular battle um on this occasion one unit that we have had dealings with said that they were training up some current conscripts who would be soon fighting in the donbas and we thought well that would be interesting because our readers hear a great deal about Brave ukrainians who are willingly going to the front lines and that that’s a narrative that has been going on ever since the war when volunteers who had never fought before were suddenly seen abandoning their jobs as software designers and picking up a Kalashnikov but we thought this might strike a slightly different vibe especially given the sense that the war is not going in Ukraine’s way and the way that it used to so we went off to a training ground and we observed conscripts from the 22nd mechanized Brigade being trained firing rocket Propel grenades shooting machine guns and so on and certainly very much a sense that these guys were being thrown in at the deep end for a start they are are soon going to get deployed to somewhere like chass ifar which is the next town up that the Russians are trying to capture after their capture have de kak in February so it’s very very intensive fighting High casualty rates and so on and these guys were being trained as Frontline infantry troops they weren’t get getting jobs as backro Clarks or anything else so very much at the sharp end with the associated levels of casualties and so we were asking one or two of them how they felt about being conscripted most of them I have to say said yep it’s just one of these things I felt scared when I got my subpoena papers but I thought well what can you do you can’t avoid it frankly if they had they wouldn’t be there I think there are probably plenty who have done just that but anyway these were people who clearly were prepared to obey the subpoenas and they said yeah they were scared to start off with but that the training had not been bad and that this was I think we were meeting them while they were once they were already I think a couple of months or certainly a month or so depending on who they were into their training so that they felt a little bit more like they knew what they were doing but then we did notice that when one chap we spoke to a young guy about 38 I think he was we asked him how he felt about it and I was we were getting the usual sort of quite Bluff response we’ll deal with it and then we asked him what his wife and kids thought about it had they expressed any views and at that point really really out the blue he just his voice started choking with emotion and tears were pricking in his eyes and he just said yeah of course he’s worried sick and yeah of course the kids want me to come back as as possible and it just made me think that in all those interviews that I’ve done on the front lines over time you often just get the kind of bluff Warrior response but clearly every now and again there was a lot going on in the back of people’s minds and when you ask them in certain situations you see perhaps something that is a little closer to the truth of just how frightening this is for a lot of people and this of course has been happening since the start of the war itself but at the beginning of the war people weren’t quite as well aware of the high casualty rates that there are now and also I think at the beginning of the war people would just thrust into it without really having much time to mle things over whereas now guys who get subpoenas they get told a certain date that they have to report by they have a lot more time to think about it and they also have a lot more time to work out how they’re going to deal with their families and how they let that time spent saying goodbye to wives and also children one guy said to us yeah I just I have an 8-year-old son I asked him what’s the conversation you’ve had with him does he even know that you’re going and he said yes he’s dimly aware of the war and we’ve just in the last few days that I spent with him we just tried to spend as much time as possible I said did you talk about the war he said no we just played games and tried to have a lot of fun and then there was a third guy we spoke to who again had a son around the age of eight and he actually said no I’ve not told him as far as as far as he’s aware daddy is off working in a nearby town and we’ll be back fairly soon so yeah it was quite heartwrenching stuff really especially given that there was no bones about it that some of these guys may well end end up as casualties in the war given the very high casualty rates the other thing was just the general look of these fellas because of the conscription age even now is still minimum 25 most of these guys were still generally they there were a couple in their early 30s and then a lot nonetheless still Vis people in their 40s and even their 50s Not all looking quite in their Prime to put it mildly and quite a few broken noses here and the odd knows that looked like it a bit mtled like been quite a few years on the booze and just generally clearly people who are perhaps not from the upper echelons of society overall and confirming I think that old thing that we’ve heard perhaps since Vietnam really that um it tends often to be the the Working Class People the less privileged in life who end up getting drafted you may some listeners may remember me talking last week when we were talking about the draft ing the kind of young affluent middle class in Kiev and so on that there that the Ukrainian government is giving people options as to what kind of units they want to fight in do they want to be in a draft a drone unit do they want to do artillery or whatever I did ask these guys whether they’ expressed any kind of preference beforehand as to what sort of units they were in because the casualty rates as I say in Frontline infantry assault units are a lot higher than in other units and none of them said that they had chosen exercised any preference in advance that might be because they’re content to be in an infantry unit but it might equally be that they’re just not the sort of people who are particularly Adept at gaming or playing the system and and don’t tend to read the small print when they get those draft papers in but yes it it was quite emotional and moving scenes and it also reminded me of what what you sometimes see at katos railway station katos being the the main town in donbas where troops gather for rechelon activities and RNR when then get their girlfriends and their wives come in to say hi to them and spend weekends with them on on time off and you often see at that platform a lot of people hugging and crying in a way that I’ve spent a lot of time at airports and um Railway stations in my time as a foreign correspondent but I’ve never seen people doing it like this where you see people who’ve either not seen each other for a long time or who are about to not see each other for a long long time and who do do not know whether they will again and the emotion and the tears are all the realer for that and again the sense of peril really is quite extreme but that’s my general sense anyway and we did a piece about that’s in Sunday’s print edition and was in I think Saturday online as well if any readers or listeners want to go and check it out thanks Colin a question for me please and I think Roland’s got a couple so doing a little bit of looking behind The Wizard of Oz curtain into into journalism when you’re speaking to these folks and you know that it’s getting emotional and you are asking them directly to respond to how does it feel to leave your 8-year-old child behind and you say that the tears aren’t far away from the conversation how do you judge how far to push that to get a great human interest story and really bring this thing to life for people who have no idea of it and and it draws us all in but at the same time you could be making life very very difficult for some of these individuals if these thoughts stay in the front or brought to the front their minds and stick there so how do you make that judgment well I’m not going to pretend that I’m some great Diplomat you do ask hard and nasty questions being a news reporter is not a job where sensitivity and touchy feeling comes into it terribly a great deal sometimes I do think in this case it’s Justified because I want to get it home to readers back in this country and elsewhere that this is a a nasty scary dangerous War where people who go to war May well not come back again the casualty rates I think I’m reasonbly confident saying are a lot higher than they might be in Iraq or Afghanistan and I don’t want to spare people’s F of feelings in that sense I do want to make them realize just how horrible it is and that it’s draft it’s affecting people that you know that could be them in in a in a different in a parallel world and again sometimes the way you bring that out is by by asking them about how the the conversations that they’ve had with their children or their wives because that’s what makes it relatable to people have got families back in this country and anybody else because it’s when you rope in the feelings of other people that the stakes come in because these are not decisions that you’re making just on your own they’re decisions that affect other people as well as regards their ability whether that kind of question might upset somebody and perhaps make their minds Wonder in a way that compromise their effectiveness to do their job and therefore their own safety and the safety of the others around them I’ll just say what we for most of them I as I understand are trained very much to keep their eye on the job and for example we went and met a military psychologist who’ been working with this unit who said look a lot of the focus of the job is just focusing in on you and looking after yourself and your buddies and not dwelling on uh the fear and and the fact that some of your colleagues may have your comrades may have died at certain points she actually said they get quite a lot of people especially newcomers who may see somebody being killed or injured and that can be very difficult for the newcomers it’s especially hard if they’ve not actually had any fighting experience themselves already they’ve not been through the baptism of fire and then they suddenly see a colleague badly injured because they don’t really yet feel like they have the confidence in themselves to to deal with these situations they still not really feeling like they they’ve stood the test the old times it’s just maybe seeing the same thing happened time and time again and she said we tell them look just don’t dwell in that world because if you dwell in the world of your dead comrades it’s a world that you can potentially never get back from you there was a time and a place for thinking about that sort of stuff but it’s not now and you really have to focus on the job and generally just about every soldier I’ve I’ve if while I’ve been here in the last two years whether they’re foreign whe whether they’re Ukrainian soldiers or foreign foreign volunteers have said the same thing when you’re out there and something bad goes wrong you focus on the job you don’t think about it too much I thanks for that Colin I was just going to say that I mean I I find in those situations quite often people they appreciate being treated like adults and having Frank conversations sometimes about that kind of thing when you’re having a Frank discussion about what’s going on in the situation they’ve got into that’s how I would look at having those interviews so with that in mind chaps I just come back to you for any final thoughts and then we’ll draw stumps for today so Roland any final thoughts to leave us with please yeah for about a week before the Russians opened their car offensive we were putting together a piece about what would it look like if Russia puts in a car offensive um and then it got held for some reason and then it happened then it had to be Rewritten and then there was the graphics had to be redone anyway it took ages and it was out last week and anyway it’s meant to be a reference point really if you go online you should see this big great big piece um which is basically what we think is a kind of general map of the state of the the Russian offensive plan for the summer which I think have you discussed the effort in ad dbas is the effort in kiv is one of them a diversion and so on I’ve just been looking at some comments from Ukrainian defense Think Tank I won’t try and immediately record the exact name now but I can’t but if you look up at the battle of v Chans V Chans sits on a river and if you go a little bit down you’ll find um Russians have recently made a push down towards a little crossing point where I believe there’s a broken bridge and the assessment is they’re going to try and cross that if they do I think the Ukrainian position in V chant might become a lot more difficult but of course these are talking about tactical level gains at this stage does this Grand offense of testing the ukrainians up and down the line turn into a a breakthrough or does it stretch the ukrainians eventually enough um to create a route or something I mean we just don’t know and I think probably the Russians are working on the same kind of assumption that ukrainians were working on and their ongoing offensive last summer it was push and push and push and maybe we’ll get to this point where the Russians just crack because they’ve put in all their reserves and there isn’t anything else or something like that so my one thought very broad thought really is if you’re watching what’s happening in donbass and Kaku over the immediate future I don’t think necessarily this is a question of will they make a breakthrough and make an advance in by this time next week I think it’s a a question of an ongoing process that we’re going to see play out across the summer I would imagine that’s the depth of my intellect today Dom well don’t worry Roland it’s nearly Friday we’re just going in the wrong direction but Roland thank you for your time today um Colin’s phone has died he’s just managed to email me sorry that’s why he he disappeared so Colin um thank you for your earlier um offering and thanks everybody for listening i’ be interested in your thoughts actually about how you received this stuff if you feel that journalists and photojournalists of course not forgetting are prying when we ask these kind of questions or when photo journalists shove a camera into a situation where it might be deemed a bit intrusive been interesting your thoughts about do you feel it brings you closer to the issues and makes you think about stuff or or do you from you know on The Human Side do you feel it goes too far but yeah you know how to get a hold of us Ukraine pod telegraph.co.uk we do read every email we really do I mean and I love it people say dear whoever opens the mail for Ukraine the the latest podcast it’s us right it’s me David and Francis we are doing n to chest every day reading all this stuff and replying to as many as we can we do thank you so much for getting in touch can’t answer all of them I do apologize but it’s the three of us here on the other end of that but Ukraine POD at telegraph.co.uk and we read every message you send us and we thank you all uh very much for sticking with us that’s it for today you’ve got the 18 back tomorrow I think Santa’s Little Helper is back from Poland Francis will be here he’s back from his tailor so everyone in the right place at the right time I’ve got to go on a two-day reporting job to Bordeaux in France so apologies I won’t be back till Thursday but you’ll have a lot of people who know what they’re talking about thank you very much indeed for joining us and thanks ring again from the telegraph here in London we’ll back tomorrow same time same place I wish you all a very good afternoon Ukraine the latest is an original podcast from the telegraph to support our work and to stay on top of all of our Ukraine news analysis and dispatches from the ground please subscribe to the telegraph you can get your first 3 months for just1 at www.telegraph.co.uk Ukraine in the latest or sign up to dispatches our Foreign Affairs newsletter bringing stories from our award-winning foreign correspondents straight to your inbox we also have a Ukraine live blog on our website where you can follow updates as they come in throughout the day including insights from regular contributors to this podcast we also do the same for other breaking International stories you can listen to this conversation live at 1:00 p.m. London time each day on Twitter spaces follow the telegraph on Twitter or X so that you don’t miss it to our listeners on 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Day 810. Today, we discuss the latest from the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia, take a brief look at the implications of the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, and talk to Foreign Correspondent Colin Freeman about his recent reporting tour in the Donbas.

Contributors:
Dom Nicholls (Associate Editor, Defence). @DomNicholls on X.
Roland Oliphant (Senior Foreign Correspondent). @RolandOliphant onX.
Colin Freeman (Foreign Correspondent). @ColinFreeman on X.

Subscribe to The Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk/ukrainethelatest
Email: ukrainepod@telegraph.co.uk