Putin could lose initiative as Ukraine stabilises Kharkiv and hits new targets in Russia | Frontline

Putin could lose initiative as Ukraine stabilises Kharkiv and hits new targets in Russia | Frontline

because Putin specifically rules through the intelligence Services which is a combination of a rule of Terror and Rule of infiltration it’s probably pretty stable it’s just that it’s pretty brittle so the Russian government Putin specifically is not vulnerable until the day that they are um looking back along the stretch of History if you look at the year before every CER Revolution there was no reason to think anything was wrong it all boils up very quickly but you have to have a mass trigger so for example the loss in the Crimea War damaged the Zars the loss in the October Revolution triggered the withdrawal from World War I and the collapse of the Zara system uh the Cuban Missile Crisis led to the fall of Cru Chu you have to have that very short sharp painful realization that Russia has lost and lost big and then the underlying population that has been buying into the propaganda realize it’s all wrong and then the government turns we’re not there yet I don’t think the fall of Crimea even would be enough to do that but that is really the only thing that’s on the short-term Horizon that would even maybe fall into that category so it would have to be something bigger than that even yes you’d have to have a mass defeat so for example if the ukrainians were able to not simply um cut that rail line those Rail lines going into Crimea but actually Advanced the coast so that crime becomes basically a death camp run by Russians where Russians are dying and starving because remember the Russians destroyed the kova dam there’s no more irrigation for agriculture and Crimea at all so all the food is imported if you turn that into a very public globally aware place where the Russians are dying in the streets because they can’t get food in maybe um if we could just talk a little bit about the state of of Russian forces at the moment figures obtained by the BBC and an independent Russian media Outlet media said that more Russian Fighters had died in the 10-month Battle for bahmut than in the 10year Afghan War and the ministry of Defense here in the UK has put the total number of Russian casualties since the start of the full SC scale Invasion at more than half a million how is Russia Meeting those challenges of replacing its Personnel uh I I can’t comment about Avida or abaku those those numbers are just too squirly I I don’t want to say that they’re wrong I think they’re in the right Realm as for the half a million number I think that’s absolutely accurate um keep in mind the Russians have 8 million men in their 20s or at least that’s what they started the war with if they’ve lost a half a million now and a million have fled that still leaves them with six and a half million bodies to throw at this problem and to be perfectly blunt the Russians have yet to fully mobilize most of the people that they’ve brought in through their draft system have been minorities from ethnically disadvantaged economically disadvantaged areas they haven’t really gotten into the core of what the country is capable of that’s still ahead of us but at this rate there’s no way the Russians can keep this up for another eight years and I know that sounds like a long time it is but remember two things number one the Russians never fight short Wars they do short intimidations their Wars are always long because they’re always about human waves number two if they do this this is their last War because there aren’t enough Russians under age 20 to theoretically repopulate the system so when this is done one way or another Russia is done if the ukrainians can achieve even just for brief moments local Air superiority then the capacities of the Iranian military excuse me the capacities of the Ukrainian military to launch um offensive changes every offensive that the ukrainians have attempted for the last 12 months has bogged down because they don’t have air superiority and if they can’t maneuver functionally with armor and um and armored vehicles then they can’t move nearly as quickly they can’t move in large number and it makes it a lot easier for Russian Artillery to pick them apart well if you can achieve even just for a few hours a certain blanket then the tables turn and the ukrainians can do things like clear mines uh without having to get shot out from artillery and uh you throw throw a patriot into that you throw the new f-16s into that you combine that with a little bit more liberal restrictions on the Ukrainian ability to tar Target objects within Russia proper and you’re seeing the ukrainians already starting to use things like the at cams to prep Say crimeia by basically taking out something like an S4 an S400 air defense system a day for the last week uh and the Russians only have 50 of those for their entire country so we’re changing the shape of Battlefield very quickly you plug a patriot into that process and we can actually have perhaps a meaningful counter offense of this summer interesting that that you mentioned those those strikes on uh Russian air defenses and occupied Crimea this week hitting surface to air missile systems it does look like the ukrainians are exploiting a new weakness here doesn’t it well the the s400s have always been a bit of a mystery from the American and the NATO point of view because until you’re in a hot War you have no idea well the top-of-the line equipment is going to work well the S400 is supposedly pre-war the most sophisticated anti missile and anti-aircraft weapon system on the planet much better supposedly than what the Americans could do and now we discover it can’t deal with rockets uh so not only is this taking the Russians down several pegs in terms of their own feeling of their invulnerability not only is it reducing the interest of countries like India in getting any weapon systems from the Russians because now they realize they’re not all that that it’s changing the complexion of what is possible because if you can basically in one spot bleed the entire Russian air defense grid then you’re not just talking about a change in the Ukraine war you’re talking about a change in what Russia is capable of uh and we’re still kind of coming to grips with that what that means this is also new so in that light could it be just literally a matter of time until Ukraine can shut down Russia in Crimea cut it off and stop Russia’s ability to support the war from there that is definitely the goal even if you don’t conquer reconquer re liberate whatever word you want to use uh Crimea it’s uh its military supply basically goes on two routes there’s a rail route that is on the mainland that goes through Maple which is somewhat vulnerable to Ukrainian assault today and that’s the new line that’s the backup line and then you’ve got the primary line which is the kch straight Bridge which is becoming increasingly vulnerable and I would argue that if the ukrainians wanted to take that out today they could but they’re waiting for more military capacity and and when you do that Crimea goes from being a Launchpad for Russian assaults to Simply the most vulnerable part of the Russian land mass and that’s a different sort of complex so this summer is going to get really interesting will the ukrainians be able to pull this off don’t know every everyone like me who saw this war coming we all made predictions about how this was going to go and we were all wrong and then we got new data we reassessed and we were all wrong again I’m just trying to highlight where we’re seeing things move and where that might take us yeah you say you say this summer could get very interesting the winter could be quite desperate because um president ziny has stressed the need for more air defenses at the Ukraine recovery conference they’ve been looking at at trying to build up resilience in the energy infrastructure and and really I mean he’s right isn’t it because you you can’t really talk about resilience before you have the fundamentals in place to protect those systems the the winter is going to be awful it doesn’t matter really what happens at this point it’s just a question of how much worse does it get uh the Russians have basically taken something called The Fab 1500 dusted It Off from their Cold War storage uh put a Chinese made flight kit on it and have Glide bombed it in and simply destroyed entire power plants the Fab 1500 has roughly a metric ton of explosives in it and it has a blast radius in excess of 3/4 of a kilometer so you’re not talking about sending an Iranian drone into a small transformer station something can be repaired in a few hours you’re talking about leaving a crater in the ground where a power generation asset used to be and that’s basically the entirety of Southern and Eastern Ukraine now so there simply is not enough power the only way that communities that are kind of east of Kiev and southeast of Kiev are going to have electricity the summer is if it’s imported from the European Union so it’s a question now of transmission now luckily transmission is cheaper to put up the new generation but yes it’s going to be a cold winter for all concerned a lot of the European leaders appear to be petrified by the nuclear issue you know particularly those countries who don’t have nuclear weapons themselves and I think it is complete Bluff and Bluster um Putin was saying they’re defenseless saying he’s going to use tactical nuclear weapons well you know I’ve said this often and written about it often that this is just not going to happen and I think really importantly what we’ve seen with Ukraine being given the ability to use sophisticated American and British missiles to strike into Russia has make that made that you know completely unworkable because you know Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are on What’s called the scander missiles and and these are on big trucks um and they’re also put on aircraft like Su 57s now those missiles need to only have a range of 400 km they need to be on the Ukraine border to fire them now with all the intelligence that we’re hoovering up I expect the ukrainians would have at least several hours if not a day or so of of information of this so they now have the ability to take out the Russian nuclear launchers themselves and the same with the aircraft so I think it is a complete irrelevance and Putin knows that and I think that’s why he was so uh verbose and demonstrative at the weekend on this particular issue because he I think he sort of feels that that you know things are running through his hands he’s he’s losing his grip but maybe if he can you know get some of the softer members of uh parliament in Europe to to keep worrying about it then then that’s a chance but I think it’s very important that people you know not only in this country but across Europe understand in my opinion and I’ve been looking at this a heck of a lot over the years I think the Russian tactical Nuclear deterrent is completely unusable and do you think it’s significant therefore that comments from the Kremlin from Vladimir Putin himself around this issue have come about in a time when we’ve seen the US say to Ukraine okay we’re going to give you the green light to use in a limited capacity some of our Weaponry to strike targets inside Russia and that that the comments from the Kremlin have have sort of arisen out of that context I think absolutely absolutely because if Putin can convince European NATO leaders that uh that this is going to lead to escalation then you know he’s that then that’s for him good because he knows that that’s the last people thing people want but actually you know he he’s done nothing so we know for the last you know four weeks and over the last few days Ukraine has been using Russian British missiles to take out Targets in Russia what has what has happened you know Putin has you know more hot air is coming out of his out of the Kremlin and him in St Petersburg but nothing actually is happening and it’s been the same for the last you know since virtually since the 24th of February 2022 when he and um you know some of his other lap dogss have been shouting the nuclear issue nothing has happened there has been no escalation in over two years so again I just hope that Western leaders and our own politicians realize this and make decisions on the basis of that I’ve said is the his nuclear capability is unusable rather than assume that it is assume that it isn’t and we’ll be in a much better place because as I’ve said you know I think you the front lines are in the balance at the moment but the the balance is Shifting very much towards Ukraine with ability to strike into Russia and again with Warfare we’ve talked about morale once you start to get a bit of momentum then then things are huge and and the other issue that uh is significant is is what we call the air War so the sea war Ukraine has won the Black sea fleet has disappeared so Ukraine has freedom of maneuver in the sea on the ground they need air power to have freedom of maneuver on the ground if they get freedom of maneuver the ukrainians that is they can punch through those defenses and apart from these missiles and the ability strike into Russia you we we know the f-16s are coming over the horizon if Ukraine can dominate the air and get air super superiority even their parity then they can start moving on the ground so I think you know that that’s why I think this all so pivotal this summer is key because we know with you know Grand strategic things like potentially Trump coming into Power then that could change the American attitude so um in one way I think Putin is trying to hold on until November because he thinks you know Trump will be a bonus for him but for the ukrainians and I think for NATO and ourselves we we’ve got to absolutely push as hard as we can and now there is a glimmer of hope you know reinforced success um get on with it uh so yeah absolutely key the way things are moving and I I think Putin’s rank rant at the weekend some Peter BG is is somebody who’s really worried I think he realizes that you know things are going south they’re not going his way and there could be a chance that you know he could be back where he started in 2014 and that would be the end of him um the the the Thousand Mile front line has been you know fairly static although the Russians have been making some significant gains and you know really for the last year or perhaps two years Ukraine is almost been fighting with one hand behind its back because it hasn’t had the ability to actually or or permission permission is probably the wrong word to strike into Russia itself you know that has been discouraged by the allies and until really a few days ago um the US has not allowed its Precision guided Weaponry um to be used to do that now now that all NATO countries who are supporting uh Ukraine have really given the goahead um it is potentially going to tip the balance and some of the attacks over the last few days are absolutely saying that now the attack on the the stealth the the most modern sophisticated Russian fight of the SU 57 uh that is in the metor at the moment is um you on the face of it lose one fighter sort of so what but from a uh morale perspective uh for the ukrainians it’s fantastic and for the Russians it it it’s uh you know it’s a severe blow you know this is the the fighter that fires the Hypersonic missiles that are doing so much damage it’s supposed to be completely immune to anything but actually you you know a a drone has taken it out now I think what else is important and it’s an Open Secret that uh the ukrainians are getting an awful lot of intelligence for this targeting from from from NATO from predominantly I expect the US and the UK so that is having a huge impact we’re also hearing um about an attack on a command and control key command and control node which again actually you know it’s um from a military perspective if you cut off the communications cut off the direction we know that the Russian troops on the front line are all pretty very poorly trained desperate morale and if they’re getting no orders and being told what to do then that is a Rabel and that’s what Ukraine wants they want this Russian Force to turn into a Rabel so in order to do that and attack you know up to 400 kmers into Russia I think that swung the balance and and let’s face it Russia has not been hamstrung by this they can attack um from anywhere so yeah I I think this might be that we might be on the top of the tide as it were and it could be significant and the fact that Putin over the weekend has been screaming about nuclear attack yet again saying that Europe is defenseless to me is is really showing how concerned that he is getting hit that actually you know and we also heard him talking about ceasefires and peace talks uh sort of 10 days ago that that actually the you know the special military operation might be about to crumble well we can go into a number of the things you mention in more detail um over the our conversation but you you mentioned uh there that the attack on the uh command node the Russian command node that was um was directly hit by by Ukraine you’ve talked about morale based on your experience on the ground serving in the armed forces if you were Commander or indeed um a soldier and you have one of your command nodes being directly hit what does that do to to yourself what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking but also your unit and and The Wider um you know Army that you have in that area well well it’s it’s rather bizarre I expect some of the Russian soldiers are probably delighted um because of the the cruelty and brutality that’s handed out by their commanders but but I think also from a morale side you know if if somebody is taking out your key areas way behind you you know with such Precision then you you’re starting to realize and and I expect all the all the rubbish that these troops have fed from from their commanders that they’re invincible and you know the ukrainians are just some sort of second rate military well you you start to realize that that is not the case um and morale is everything in Warfare it’s uh you know that to to to get out fighting is a terrible game it’s terrifying um but in order to do it effectively you need to want to do it you need that morale so I think again adding to other things yeah it could be very significant and yeah it could break whatever flat fragile morale those troops have uh because they know that you know if the if the generals can be taken out so easily you know what hope have they got so um yeah I think it’s it’s a big big big time Big issue hello it’s James here we’ll be right back with today’s episode of Frontline in just a moment but first I wanted to tell you about a really exciting new YouTube channel and if you like Frontline I think you’re going to love this it’s called history undone with me James Hansen and every week we look at a different battle and ask what if in other words asking what the long-term historical consequences might have been had certain key factors panned out differently our first episode was all about D-Day our latest episode is about the Battle of Aras in 1940 a lesser known battle but with huge strategic implications had it panned out differently potentially the British evacuation of Dunkirk may not have happened would Churchill have sued for peace would the Americans have entered the war what would have happened to the Soviet Union would Stalin have ended up in a prison camp in Berlin these are the questions we ask every week on History undone we’ll put a link to the channel in the description of this video please do like share and subscribe and watch History undone around H uh where as you’ll be aware the the Russians have begun this sort of move to put pressure on the city and they’ cross the border and taken territory um but it does look like the ukrainians have at least temporarily been able to stabilize that um and that’s where they are benefiting from some of the changes uh in permissions to use uh International Supply uh weapons and equipment and far into Russia um although there is some ambiguity over exactly how far those constraints have been released so at the moment a lot of the talk has been around the use of the high mils systems which is a guided M water rocket system and they provided uh they’ve been provided by some of those by us a couple of other countries and they have some UK um variants and they’re able to use those now to strike Russian forces on the other side of the border and for what is known as counter battery fire so attacking enemy artillery um however there is some question as to whether or not they’re able to use the longer range attackers so Tactical called ballistic missiles um and the reason why that matters is because Dax uh got a range of up to 300 kmers and with those they’d be able to threaten some of the air bases that are further back in Russia from which both helicopters and Russian Jets uh launching bombs both against H and against ukraini Frontline forces that’s where they fight from do you think Matthew we’re already starting to see the impact of that decision a couple of weeks ago by the Americans I mean it’s interesting that Ukraine has already used High missiles now on belgrad last week there are reports that Russia is moving some of its air defense systems from Crimea to belr O blast is that a direct consequence do you think of of the decision by the Americans I mean it can be quite difficult to tell but certainly they are they are talking as if that counter battery effort um is at least providing them some relief from the particularly the shorter ranged Russian Artillery it does look like they still have issues um with Russian aircraft and as I said if if attack of the longer Range Systems aren’t available so that will still POS a challenge now they have also got a long range uh drone program um and they’ve been using that to strike a variety of targets and actually what’s interesting is that isn’t just confined to the north so going back 18 months now um they’ve been um trying to use those to disrupt Russian long range bomber aircraft that fly from a variety of bases across Russia what we’ve seen in the past week are a couple of attacks um which are more to the east of Ukraine um Reaching Across to some of the Russian regions around there there was a high-profile attack which appears to have at least damaged some of Russia’s new sc57 aircraft but they also attacked um air bases in North Atia and so it it’s interesting to see the ukrainians have still retained the ability to launch those sort of deeper strikes in a number of different directions I mean let’s say it is true and it is only a report of this stage that the Russians have been moving air defense systems from Crimea to to belgrod which would make sense what could the long-term implications of that be because you know Ukraine has been very consistent over recent months in targeting sites in Crimea even in the last few days there’s been again strikes on on Russian air defense assets in Crimea so if you’re moving air defense assets out of crime surely that that just increases the risk of of Crimea becoming weakened from a Russian perspective so crime is obviously hugely important to to both sides I mean partly symbolic uh importance but but also because of what it is as essentially the extension of the front line um and uh a a base from which the Russians have been able to launch uh attacks until now um from both aircraft and again helicopters and also as a base for the black SE Fleet now we’ve we’ve already seen the significant impact on saster pole has forced a black SE Fleet to basically move out of the area and largely back to Nova Bisk and they’re being attacked there um as well um but by increasing the pressure on Crimea um the ukrainians are effectively you softening it up um for um what you know one of the areas where they might want to be looking at for for future offenses I think there’s there’s pros and cons not to that approach but to the the the military challenges that are around Crimea I mean for starters ukrainians have got the benefit that they have been consistently targeting crime for over a year now um with a mixture of their own drones and because it’s Doge Chumps out of the range of artillery that includes High Mars we’ve seen a tcams used there and very prominently we see um cruise missiles provided by the West things like Storm Shadow uh used there and so they’ve got the benefit of from what we can tell having done some fairly significant damage to Russian air defenses which increases the chances of future attacks getting through and Ratchet up the the the the the tension on Russian forces in Crimea attacks also would allow them to potentially attack the Kur brid and other links into Crimea um but the the the the challenges to this approach is that there is so if you like the land bridge the bit of Crimea that the Russians um captured uh in the initial advances that links it as well so even cutting the kurch bridge um which would put severe pressure on Crimea doesn’t eliminate the ability of the Russians to supply crime AG rather me they’ve also got um fairies those have been attacked recently so we can see this cumulative pressure building I think one of the problems will be is that it seems unlikely that this kind of deep strike long range attacks on their own will cause the Russians to abandon Crimea so one of the big issues will be is there the prospect at some point of UK Ukrainian forces along that front line being able to up the pressure there as well will they be a to maneuver through Russian defenses and seriously threat F because at that point then the the loss of um resupply lines um pressure on their headquarters um difficulty refueling their forces then begins to come to the for that’s really interesting I mean how feasible do you think that might be Matthew well I think the way that we’re looking across the whole of the front this year is that it doesn’t seem likely that a a major Ukrainian if you like repeat of the counter offensive is on the cards they’ still got a lot of work to do to shore up their physical defenses to recruit personnel and to bring newly trained Personnel together with a still you know what required a fairly significant influx of uh material support from International Partners so that the recent supplemental from the US is only the start we’re seeing more pledges from other internation Partners but in truth what they really probably really want to do um is rebuild that Force for next year with a fairly significant recruitment drive and they are still somewhat on the defensive in other parts of the country so if we’re looking at the bigger picture it does look like what the Russians are being pressured now in number of directions by the ukrainians as you say might be having to move air defenses around on the ground the pressure along that Eastern front and out of the dbats and on from aiva is still there and so that looks like that is still focused on chazi Yar because of how that would if captured potentially unlock further inroads and so there was a lot of uh speculation and I think good analysis that the har Advance wasn’t really intended to capture the city it was intended to pressure the ukrainians so they in turn had to move some of their forces around to shore up their lines and there’s been so much talk about Ukraine’s air defense capacity over recent weeks and months and the need for Patriots Etc what about Russia I mean the fact they are having to reportedly move air defense systems from Crimea to belgar suggest they’ve also got issues yes I mean they’ve got their air defenses in around sort of Russia proper as opposed to what they’ve lost in crier are probably still pretty significant and they can obviously move move essentially weapons around along their interior lines but one of the Striking things has been that although uh the success rate that the ukrainians appear to have had with some of their uh you know drone strikes has been very variable they are still getting through to some degree so they’ve had periodic attacks against uh Moscow very long range Target um and not done serious damage um but that obviously of concern to the Russians the more recent attack on the Su 57s um which in theory should have been a you know well defended Target um will have um caused some conation for the Russians I mean it hasn’t played a huge role in the conflict so far but as a Prestige Target um it it doesn’t look great when it’s basically taken out on the runway um there’s a question there about the extent to which the Russians have got physical defenses in place um many of the Ukrainian drones that we’re aware of don’t have large Warheads or penetra Warheads when compared something like Storm Shadow and some of these attacks could have been prevented by basic um physical defenses uh like aircraft shelters um and yet they keep having aircraft and helicopters CAU out in the open so there are there there appear to be some challenges for them in terms of Defending that very very long if you’re like Frontier with Ukraine and the Ukrainian ability to get what in some cases are quite low profile drones through that they from what we’ve seen of what’s been recovered they’re using a combination of some relatively slow but pelen aircraft that are quite low profile and some shorter rang but jet powered uh drones some of which if you like look like um converted Target drones basically Putin is I think it’s fair to say not good in a crisis and the interesting thing is what happened is as we’ve seen in similar situations in the past at first Putin just disappeared from view you would think as soon as it’s clear that a mercenary Army has turned upon you has just occupied this city Rost ofon Don which includes the headquarters for your operations in Ukraine and there’s you know an element of it beginning to move towards Moscow you’d think he’d be right you know Putin would be immediately out there calling it out he didn’t really until basically the next morning and then he did he called it sort of treachery and the like and I think this is the key thing this is always about an attempt to try and Win Win Putin over and more or less make Putin realize that he needed to take pin and his concerns more seriously the point at which Putin eventually actually came out and publicly called this treachery that’s a point when PRI knew that the game was up now he wasn’t going to be able to take Moscow with the 2,000 or so troops he’d sent as a sort of flying colum up there it was all about theater and performance and at that point progin started trying to open neg negotiations and the interesting thing again what we saw is Putin just desperately wanted this problem to go away it was humiliating for him I mean he’s always meant to be the guy who’s able to manage the elite and he’ clearly have failed in this crisis you know when people had been telling him for months that the prian shyu Rivalry was going to get dangerous he had his own security apparatus not joining the Mutiny but not frankly showing any particular enthusiasm for stopping it I mean the of the National Guard Victor zolotov real Putin loyalist spent basically all of that crucial day on the phones trying to get in touch with local commanders and get them to try and stop Vagner and they made a damn sort of strong uh campaign of not being contactable by phone so that they could avoid getting orders that they’d have to either refuse or or follow so in in that crisis actually prian got probably a much better deal than he probably would have been expecting in that you know he seems to get away with it and at that at that particular moment it didn’t it wasn’t inevitable that pran would be punished in a fatal way for this can you tell us about the reprieve that was offered by Putin less than a week after the uprising what happened exactly well the deal that was struck um and it was sort of struck by basically Putin’s kind of most senior political operatives with the president of of berus Lenka kind of providing a sort of uh you know heavyweight uh support was essentially that he has to give up Vagner in Russia and Ukraine but he can keep the side of vagno which is still operating and making a lot of money across Africa and and elsewhere and he can go and set up his base in in berus and he might lose some of his business Holdings at home but essentially he’d be able to keep the Concord Group which is his kind of overarching holding company so you know from his point of view he’s launched a mut his guys have shot down Russian planes and helicopters um he’s humiliated Putin and yet he’s basically you know not only is he getting away with it he’s invited for tea at the Kremlin with a whole bunch of his senior commanders and when Putin mores suggests well how about we put your your main Chief of Staff man with a sort of call sign the s greay hair in charge Broan says no no no the boys won’t agree with that so you know actually pran is by that point beginning to bounce back and thinking oh actually I’m you know maybe I’m more powerful in a stronger position than I thought and again this is this is a humiliation for Putin he he made too easy you know he he was too slow at responding when he did he wanted this to go away so quick so desperately that he made too generous a deal with with pran and so pran’s frankly feeling his oats by that point is that what went wrong then is that why it didn’t work was it just that pran by this point had got too cocky and uh had pushed it just a little bit too far I think it’s a combination of things yes that’s absolutely the case we saw this with uh a a big Africa Summit that was held in Petersburg where prian was very pointedly not invited but he still turns up in St Petersburg holding all kind of meetings on on the margins you know again it’s almost like he doesn’t know that he’s not welcome or he’s trying to push things but also I think that you know when the immediate crisis goes this is what tends to happen you know Putin panics in a crisis and tends to overreact while way or the other and then over time realizes what what what he’s he’s done and there were certainly a lot of people around him who had no time for prion including Nikolai pev who at the time was was Putin’s sort of effectively National Security advisor who clearly was telling him look this this this isn’t going to work and So eventually again in some ways Putin overreacts the other way and decides the only way of of quite literally clipping pran’s Wings is to have his plane brought down and how do you think um this whole experience has influenced the way that Putin has shaped his military leadership and political Entourage since his reelection I think the interesting thing is I don’t think it’s had a huge effect in terms of shaping his political leadership yes it’s led to you know shu’s in due course rotation away from the defense Ministry in some ways actually prian I think delayed that because Putin had to allow a certain amount of time to pass otherwise looked like he was giving in even posthumously to what pran wanted but so you know we have seen some changes but the main thing is actually the degree to which Putin hasn’t responded I mean there’s there’s no way of getting around the fact that from the point of view of the elite yes Putin was able to show strength in the sense of he was able to kill pran but frankly that was never in doubt you know if it’s one thing that Putin’s regime can do is kill people unfortunately but mainly it’s precisely the very fact that that Putin has to flip-flop and Putin has to do one thing that he’s never done in the past which is actually break a deal with an Insider you know look Putin lies to all and sundary breaks international law before breakfast not a problem but the idea that within the the ranks of the the Loyalists you have to know that if you make a deal with the boss the boss will keep to that is really important because there’s there’s no rule of law it’s only really against like a mafia family this time Putin broke it and that really was quite shocking within the elite and do you think that that breaking of the deal um with an Insider has had an effect on those who on whom Putin has counted for loyalty do they now feel well if he’s gone anyone can go and actually our loyalty counts for nothing yes I think obviously no one’s going to turn against Putin tomorrow because Putin has killed the one person who who made the sort of the greatest challenge but it’s a different kind of relationship it’s a relationship of the hostage and the hostage Aker more than the the um sort of willing willing Ally um you know and and there are going to be future crises that’s something that’s always going to be the case in politics and the point is next time Putin has to make a deal with someone will they actually feel they can make that deal will they feel that Putin can can actually be be trusted and it might sound silly to talk about trust in the context of this kind of vicious self-interested kleptocratic regime but when it comes down to it Putin is just one guy with a hand handful of fellow septo denarians who share his vision for Russia and the future and a much larger Elite who are just in it for what they can get out of it they they will be making a constant cost benefit analyses what’s to my advantage and what what are the dangers now before the the prian Mutiny think there was that sense that even if you didn’t like the way things were going that at least you knew where you are with Putin and that Putin was if nothing else a competent manager of of the elite now he’s been shown that in fact his grasp his control over the elite is much less strong than it was once upon a time you know something that you get time and time again talking to Russians is this sense of that he’s no longer the old Putin and in part this about age in part this about over 24 years you get out of touch with your country whatever but you know that sense that he’s no longer the guy they need but also that sense that you know you can’t actually trust him trust really does matter within the leag some political systems and when you you step back and look at pran’s life and how influential he’s been on the world stage be it in the pr disinformation machine he had the troll Farms that notoriously flooded the internet ahead of Trump’s re election in 2016 all the paramilitaries and his business dealings H how do you assess it I think what it’s really shown is in some ways and in largely in the worst ways Putin’s Russia is ahead of its time Putin’s Russia is one in which the old boundaries between public and private between one kind of business and another between the job of a spy and the job of an oligarch these boundaries matter much much less and this was pran’s strength is he constantly crossed boundaries not just National ones obviously but in terms of what he was doing one minute he’s he’s a he’s a catering magnet next minute he’s running troll Farms on contract to the state then he’s running a Merc Army which some of the time is doing the kremlin’s work directly other time it’s just making money and in some ways the reason he was able to be so successful was precisely that actually we live in a world where a lot of the old boundaries and assumptions about you know what’s the job of the State versus the private sector matter that much less so look progin was not driving this process he was just a very quick and eager person taking advantage of it to make himself a lot of money but nonetheless I think it it tells us something about a future firstly in which Wars are just as easily fought by trolls as by jet fighters but secondly about one in which actually the boundaries of of the state and the non-state are much less clearly cut than we might like to think and a year on from the the Vagner Uprising in an article that you wrote for the Sunday Times you suggest in the title that pran could topple Putin from Beyond the Grave um why and how could that happen is is it because he tapped into this sentiment of a desire for greater fairness what is it exactly I think there several things and obviously to a large degree it’s worth noting that it’s it’s also wishful thinking on my part um but I think it is important that first of all you know if one looks at how pran is still being discussed in to a degree the Russian media but much more on social media he’s still very very present in in in Russian social Med media and it is precisely for this sense even amongst people who despise him as a human being but nonetheless say but at least he believed something at least he stood for something now look one can question how far you really believe but nonetheless that doesn’t matter I think it actually the myth becomes powerful precisely because it fits something that people want there is a a pervasive sense in Russia that you know for all the talk about nationalism and the grand cause and bringing back Traditional Values and everything else that Putin tries to convey it’s not really working there is that sense that there is a a vacuum at the heart of Russian State and society and so people want to feel that that can be filled not necessarily by what pran himself stood for God that would be awful but nonetheless at least they recognize the value of someone who did seem to believe in something so that’s the first first reason why this is actually significant and and secondly again it is about the corrosion of Putin’s control over his Elite that is absolutely crucial now you know it’s not corrosion that has actually broken the system yet but nonetheless it means that the next Crisis that it goes into it will be that much weaker that the old fallbacks which is Putin’s personal Authority and his control over the security apparatus which is kind of the final back stop of his rule both of those have now been shaken and October 2023 is when it became clear to the Russians that the US Congressional debate on the supplemental Aid would be a long protracted ugly Affair and that’s when the Russians started cooking up a plan to try to exploit the situation that would inevitably occur when the aid would be delayed uh throughout the course of October up until about I’d say early may we had the Russians uh conducting offensive operations in fdva we had the Russians uh setting conditions and and that during that time redeploying significant uh forces uh to Northeastern uh Ukraine the Border regions in K and Brians and uh uh belron oblas to create this large operational grouping of about 30 to 50,000 soldiers that is the group that then on May 10th uh entered North uh eastern Ukraine with their renewed harke operation um that wasn’t uh any sort of operation that the Russians decided to execute uh out of op you know and easy opportunity or uh sort of a spur of the moment sort of thing they set conditions and plan for that many many months in advance and that was I think it started to metastasize uh back in October concretely uh since the Russians began their Harkey offensive uh in on May 10th the Russians have made very small tactical gains uh you can go measure it on the map but they’ve only penetrated you know such and less kilometers not very far they’ve lost a lot of forces and they’ve been held up and pinned down in V chk for a while they’ve yet to seize the entire city and Ukrainian forces have been conducting a series of tactical counterattacks to try to improve their tactical positions within the city um the Russians nonetheless they still maintain significant operational reserves uh for this operation by our estimates they’ve only committed about maybe about a third maybe a little bit more uh of their prepared Force for this operation and the Russians absolutely maintain uh the opportunity to be able to intensify uh their operations I’d note that you know over the last 24 hours uh the leader of CHA ramam kadirov just announced as of yesterday uh June 9th that uh some of his chesan forces actually crossed the border from KK into Sumi oblas and they claimed that They seized a a border Village uh we need to verify those claims but I would just add that it would be completely consistent with the Russian campaign design which is the Russians seek to open up a series of fronts put military pressure on the ukrainians so that the ukrainians then stretch themselves to thin across this whole theater of operations uh in order to generate opportunities uh and facilitate what could be some uh Russian breakthroughs in what we think is the priority area eastern Ukraine and those developments that you’ve just described since the US Aid package have they been smaller tactical gains on Russia’s behalf half than you might have expected or or greater or indeed exactly what you would have predicted yeah so I think the Tactical gains around de Diva that especially occurred in April were concerning because it seemed like the Russians were able to actually exploit the fact that the ukrainians there were underprepared under equipped and they managed to project west of Diva out of rate that surprised me faster than what I would have expected but recently it’s bogged down as the Russians have actually appro apprach the main area where the ukrainians have built their main line of defense uh just west of Diva so it was fast at first but then it slowed down in a in a surprising way with regards to the Harkey operation um that was very interesting we were forecasting the Russians to actually start their Harkey operation uh much later than they actually did the time window we were thinking that they would begin it would be late May or early June they began it in early May on May 10 and also under strength um all the indicators suggest that the Russians wanted to create a operational grouping of about 50 to 100,000 uh forces uh Personnel for that operation and they committed to it significantly under strength of that Target somewhere in the ballpark of 30 to 50,000 so about half and um I I think the timing and the seeming uh decision for the Russians to go after this uh offensive despite not yet being fully prepared to their desired strength is indicative of the Russians indeed wanted to seize the opportunity before the aid began to Surge uh to the front I think they expedited the Tim taes to try to make sure that they could get whatever they could create whatever effects they’re trying to create on the ground uh before the ukrainians would be able to rebuff them and there’s a risk there right um you take advantage of that opportunity when the aid situation and the material situation is worse for the ukrainians but you also take a risk in that your own strength isn’t isn’t there um and that so far it seems that that gamble has not paid off for the Russians interesting um it’s also been just over a week since the US changed its stance on Ukraine using donated weapons to strike targets inside of Russia in a limited way how would you assess at this stage Ukraine’s use of that permission um and has the US done enough do you think to to change the situation um on the front yeah so the best metric that we have for this is the performance of the Russian evens of in Haro blast which uh as of late May and early June has been pretty pretty poor and I think part of that is in fact to that the US you know the Biden Administration they made the decision to allow the ukrainians to conduct some limited fires across the border at some Russian forces it’s an extremely important policy change however I want to highlight that it’s actually a very very small and very limited change I think it was mischaracterized by most reports as being this Monumental watershed moment for US policy and as real game changer for the war and it certainly has the potential to be that but at this stage it really isn’t if you study the minuche of the actual policy change the Biden Administration has allowed the ukrainians to use uh a subset of weapons the haar’s uh gimer that guided multiple launch rocket artillery uh to strike targets that are actively attacking Ukraine in the vicinity of harke the US policy still does not permit the ukrainians to use uh their most effective weapons that the US has given Ukraine attack them missiles uh that can strike into the operational rear and deep rear um I just published a map about this yesterday but if you look on the map of concretely sort of what changed with the policy you’ll find that the sanctuary space that the Russians used to Shield their forces has been decreased by a maximum 16% that is to say 84% of all the shielded territory Still Remains and unfortunately um it’s not just about numbers I I think you know when a commander is conducting operations and they’re Fielding hundreds of thousands of men and they’re pushing uh a lot of material and Fuel and lubricants and projecting into another country for operations any commander has to make a choice between uh balancing two desirable things uh economic efficiency uh and expediency versus protection crudely speaking when you have a tank formation uh you can drive it in a column that is the one that ex you know that optimizes economic expediency and fuel efficiency but it’s dangerous because if you get caught with your pants down by the adversary you’re lined up and easy to be destroyed um the way that you would actually try to maximize protection would be you flare out you go into line formation you’re dispersed you move slower but if you get engaged you’re prepared to handle that threat right now this huge territory in the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine is optimized for economic efficiency and my argument is that if the Biden Administration uh follow suit like many European states have now done and removed all restrictions on what the ukrainians are allowed to Target in Russia then it will force upon the Russian command to make difficult decisions about to what extent do they reconfigure their rear and support areas uh in order to maximize uh protection or at least improve protection um in in in exchange for supporting uh at the expense of efficiency concretely that’ll have very important effects for Ukraine big ammunition Depots will be partitioned and morselized into a series of dispersed and small ammunition Depots uh same for fuel um you won’t be able to have big accumulations of your forces as far as deep uh you’ll have to stretch your interior lines further and what we’ve seen is that the Russians perform a lot better when they have short interior lines versus long interior lines it’s also critical for uh the air operations that the ukrainians are are planning and the air capabilities are trying to build Russia has limited air defense and electronic warfare uh protection assets and right now the Russian command enjoys the luxury of being able to exclusively have to worry about protecting the frontmost areas of the theater um in Ukraine and they can really pile on all of their air defense assets in a very geographically small relatively geographically small area as opposed to having to consider the need to deploy those inwards rearr the way that they have these limited assets deployed to protect important and vulnerable Targets in the rear and if we can actually get the Russians to redeploy some of those air defense assets instead of being at the front to the rear then that of course will make a uh a better operating environment for the the various different Western aircraft that are going to be going into Ukraine soon you mentioned a moment ago the the air operations that Ukraine is planning as part of the defensive operations in in the north of of Ukraine um Ukraine has launched an air strike using a Ukrainian Air Force jet uh for the first time um against what’s been called a a Russian command node um in belgrod how significant do you think that attack is yeah um it’s we’re working on trying to see what kind of battle damage assessment we can clarify from the extent of that attack but in general I think it’s very important I think it’s extremely important that we revisit collectively our assumptions about uh air power in this war for the first two and a half years of this war really air power has been sort of a secondary or tertiary uh afterthought when it comes to uh war and a large part of that is because I think it actually stems from the sanctuary right um we’ve assumed that the ukrainians are not going to be capable of using air power the way NATO would use air power because the Russians have uh a very capable Air Force and they have uh a lot of air defenses air defense systems on the ground that we’re not able to take out and if we start to examine some of those assumptions right like why can’t we take out the air defense systems well um it’s because they’re based on Russian territory uh and we can’t strike Russian territory well if we check that assumption it no longer is axiomatically impossible that using scalp and storm shadows and attack of missiles the ukrainians could conduct a shaping operation that seeks to uh destroy Uh Russian air defense systems s300 and s400s try to get the Russians to redeploy some of those from the front towards the rear to protect them and then it’s no longer sort of a crazy thought to say the ukrainians can start building towards over the course of many months and years a concept of operations where you actually do have Ukrainian uh aircraft um operating in the theater uh conducting strikes uh doing air-to-air operations and supporting uh combined arms I think this Ukrainian strike um if it’s confirmed against the bunker node in uh belgrad that’s going to be very important and I hope it’ll be uh the first heralding event for what will be uh A Renewed uh series of Ukrainian operations in the air domain thank you for watching Frontline for times radio for more on Global Security and the war in Ukraine you can listen to times radio take out a digital subscription to the times and click subscribe on our YouTube channel

Putin’s offensives are slowing as Ukraine stabilises the front around Kharkiv and hits a series of high value targets in Russia. This week’s Frontline experts discuss the latest:

Peter Zeihan, author of The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years on
Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, Former CBRN Commander
Matthew Savill, Director Military Sciences, RUSI
Prof. Mark Galeotti, Former Adviser on Russia to the UK Foreign Office
George Barros, Russia Team Lead, ISW

📻 Listen to Times Radio – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio

📍 Subscribe to our channel – http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTjDhFuGXlhx9Us0gq0VK2w?sub_confirmation=1

🗞 Subscribe to The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/subscribe/radio-3for3/

📲 Get the free Times Radio app https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/how-to-listen-to-times-radio/app