Ukraine war: Russia’s troops ‘partially pushed back’

Ukraine war: Russia’s troops ‘partially pushed back’

so tell us more about this situation on this Northern front yeah uh it’s moving day by day and the two areas that we’re interested in is lipy and V Chans and the issue is that if the Russians can push towards lipy then it brings KV within artillery range and they’ll do what they the only really thing that they’re good at which is standing back and and destroying an area with artillery and then moving into it um but more important ultimately is probably what’s happening to V Chan and they seem to put more effort in here because if they can take V Chans which is on the other side of the donet river then it sets them up to to do something else maybe to move southwards and possibly eastwards to link up with other troops that would be a big move the ukrainians obviously want to prevent that and in a way whatever the Russians intend they’ve now met their first objective which is to make Ukraine detach troops from elsewhere to deal with this because the ukrainians have moved some of their their good units parts of their 47th mechanized Brigade really good ones 92nd 93rd the 57th they’re all good units and they’ve taken elements of all of those brigades and sent them North in order to stem this advance so it’s had that effect the ukrainians are digging in properly um they’re defending better than they were to start with so this is probably going to be a static front unless the Russians can produce more material to push through and if they do of course the ukrainians will have to meet that so it’s stretching Ukraine even further During the period when they’ve they they are under strain all the way around the front well as lensy said as well they seem to have pushed some back so it is it seems there is some movement around that battle line and um we’ve heard from President Putin as well talking about an increase in defense spending how significant is that yes so he made a statement today talking about increased defense spending I mean defense spending since before the war has gone up uh about threefold about 300% and so um it is now about 8% of the Russian economy and that’s a lot of money and bov the new defense minister of course is an economist I mean he’s he’s a man who I mean had been uh a previous Deputy Prime Minister he’d been an acting prime minister he was Minister for economic Affairs and bellof is a a straightforward technocrat and he’s he’s very statist he’s often described as a liberal an illiberal economist that’s him um because he believes in State control and he’s very close partly through um man manturov that he’s also put in to be now first Deputy Prime Minister who who directly connects to rosc which is the big State Arms producer so the you know the arms producer of the state is now very close to the very top of government and the defense minister himself and so he will push greater efficiency in this economy but it’s going to make it look a bit more like the old Soviet economy when it was still a communist system and it’ be interesting to see that dynamic because that worked completely oppositely to the way in which the oligarchs around Putin have done their business until now interesting to see how that Arrangement can last and how how long it can last for absolutely and I mean the Russian economy is still very dependent on energy it’s oil and gas I mean other areas of the economy you know they struggle a bit and they’re fairly they’re not very Dynamic and the Russian energy production is as they say mature they’ve got they’ve got maturity out of their oil fields and their gas Fields they need to find more oil and gas they know it’s up there in the Arctic but they need Western technology to get at it and one of the problems they’ve got is how do they create their technology over the next 10 years to get it new sources of energy that will be their root towards making this economy work better

Ukraine’s forces have “partially pushed back” Russian troops from the town of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian military has said.

Sky’s Military Analyst Michael Clarke assesses the latest developments in the region.

#ukraine #russia

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