How Putin's 'reckless' military strategy will be thwarted by US-Ukraine aid package | Michael Clarke

for the Kremlin this is a disastrous week because they had based their current offensive on the assumption that the aid package wouldn't go through and the fact that it's gone through also leads to other problems which the Russians will have as Kiev becomes more confident and is able to breathe a bit from the pressure that it's been under um since uh last year in effect the most important and immediate things in the package will be artillery shells um and air defense ammunition plus more air defense systems so the thing that um ukrainians need I me in reality they need more of everything but the things that they need this week and this month are artillery shells 155 mm 152 mm tank rounds 120 M millimet rounds for tank guns and ammunition and systems for air defense in particular they need more Patriot batteries and Patriot batteries are about a billion dollars each and of that about 400 million is the cost of the battery and up to 600 million is the cost of the different ammunition lot of ammunition that they fire so they need air defense quickly because the Russians are able to use their Air Force in a standoff mode from many miles away throwing Glide bombs into cities like kave and along the front line which is playing Havoc with uh Ukrainian defenses so if they can neutralize that quickly that will make a big difference but then beyond that Beyond ammunition and an anti-aircraft artillery they they need more equipment of every sort so that they can reorganize themselves properly for the rest of the year the the problem that the ukrainians have first of all is uh missiles and glide bombs hitting their cities so chiv Sumi and particularly KV which is the second city right on the Russian border or the border with Western Russia are very vulnerable now kiv is a big city but the Russians look as if they are trying to do to that City what they did to mariole down in the South it's a bigger city and they'll find that more difficult but they're going for the power uh the um Water Supplies they're trying to actually make life intolerable in the city and they're attacking civilian areas and they're doing it in two ways one is with ballistic missiles such as the escanda missile which is is not impossible to defend against but you need good anti-aircraft systems like the Patriot to defend against an incoming ballistic missile and the other way they're doing it is with these Glide bombs called The Fab 500 Fab 500 and there's a Fab 1500 and the 500 is a 500 kilo bomb which is ,000 the 1500 is A500 kilo bomb which is £3,000 in effect it's about a ton and a half of Warhead and these are very old bombs and the Russians have got literally thousands and thousands of these bombs but they found a way of fitting Little Wings to them and giving them a very crude um guidance system so these bombs can be dropped by aircraft at 30,000 ft up to 50 or 60 miles behind the front line and they will Glide from that height to their target and they'll hit their target with enough accuracy given that they're big bombs if they're 20 or 30 meters away from the target they'll still do a lot of damage and those Glide bombs are something that are very difficult to defend against there's no easy defense against them the only way that the ukrainians can do anything about it is to hit the aircraft before they drop them and that means that they either have to have good anti-aircraft missiles long range high altitude missiles which they are now going to get so they can Target these these aircraft when they are 30 and 40 miles away from the front line but also they need their own aircraft they need their f-16s and whatever other aircraft they may be able to get and they're not going to get them soon and but they need them to be flying in some numbers to protect the airspace above their own front lines and maybe to Chase some of these um Russian bombers these su 34s su 35s into Russia they've got to chase them way behind the front lines to keep them from dropping their Glide bombs the Glide bomb it sounds like a a rather um specific thing but it's actually a it's a weapon that's made a big big difference to Ukraine over the last few months the package is not quite too little too late but it's certainly on the uh the wrong side of the right time to arrive put it that way I mean if this package had come in October when it was first proposed then far fewer ukrainians will be dead far fewer Russians will probably be dead actually um and in fact the the ukrainians would have maintained their lines and have been able to take a breath over the winter because this package has been delayed they have lost some territory they've certainly lost an awful lot of people because of it um and they're now going to have to try to get back what they've lost in the six months it's taken for this package to be agreed however the the the fact that the package has now been agreed is very important to Ukraine I mean in these wars no one thing is a game changer but in this case this keeps Ukraine in the war for the rest of this year it means that Ukraine won't lose the war this year they won't win it this year either but they will be able to hold their own they'll be able to plan for the future and they'll be able to make it impossible for the Russians to squeeze Ukraine into a political crisis which is what they were trying to do a political crisis in Kiev that would remove zalinski and replace him with somebody who would then do a deal on the basis that the Russians would keep what they've conquered I mean this war represents the return of Industrial Age Warfare to Europe and Industrial Age Warfare is is one by the side that can produce more and deploy it onto the battlefields at the right time sounds easy to say but of course it's very hard to do and since the end of the Cold War we've run down our defense Industries so did the Russians to some extent but the Russians have now geared up into a war economy and we haven't so we're coming at this uh as it were from behind but our our our capacity is much greater than the Russian capacity if we use it properly so the whole point about Industrial Age Warfare is that you have to be prepared to Gear Up Armament production and you have to be prepared to think of ways in which you can deploy what is necessary because Industrial Age Warfare uses up lots and lots of resources and we've seen the sort of ammunition usage on the on the front line in Ukraine the ukrainians were firing about 10,000 shells a day at one time a day and the Russians were firing almost 20,000 shells a day so they're getting through two and three million shells a year this is what is characteristic of Industrial Age Warfare it's not pretty we don't like it but that is where we are because of what Russia is trying to do to Ukraine and threatening to do to other European powers at some point in the future I think what ukrainians will be able to do is to drive back some of these Russian attacks because the Russian attacks of recent months have been almost human wave attacks I mean our the British Ministry of Defense estimates that the Russians are losing 900 men a day a day and that's killed and seriously injured so 900 casualties every day along the front and they can't afford to keep doing that and they'll lose more than that when the ukrainians get more ammunition the only reason they're only losing 900 is because the ukrainians simply run out of shells to fire they're running out of even Small Arms ammunition in some places so as the ukrainians which they will by the end of this week start to get more artillery ammunition for sure then they will be able to push back these Reckless Russian attacks and I think that will be the immediate effect I think Russian casualties will increase a lot in the next two or three weeks and they they will lose a lot more of their equipment so I don't expect the ukrainians to as it were suddenly go onto the offensive but I think they will stop losing territory in most places they might still lose shaza which will be a real problem if they do but we'll see but if they can hold on where they are now and then gradually push the Russians back then they will be able to take a breath before the summer and then have some control over the situation the problem for the ukrainians is that everything was happening Helter Skelter and they were losing control of what they were trying to do if you can establish dig in and establish as it were a a stalemate on the front you then can start to plan for what you do next and one of the most important elements of this Aid package that was agreed at the weekend in the United States is that it it now allows the ukrainians to plan for the future they couldn't plan when they were falling back throughout with with lack of ammunition now they can begin to plan for what they do in the future and of course they want to try to get it right for the end of the year and into next year when they might be able to make a more decisive difference I think the Kremlin had assumed that the aid package would wouldn't go through part of their offensive all the way around the front was based on the idea that they could they could squeeze the ukrainians and that the United States would not deliver the aid package and therefore they would create a political crisis in keev um the fact that the aid package has been agreed is not only good in military terms on the front line it's extremely important for ke's morale it's also important for the Europeans because the Europeans now have to match it they have to show that they really mean it and get in behind America which they are beginning to do Al they're doing to to a reasonable extent but they now need to do it more and for the Kremlin this is a disastrous week because they had based their current offensive on the assumption that the aid package wouldn't go through and the fact that it's gone through also leads to other problems which the Russians will have as Kiev becomes more confident and is able to breathe a bit from the pressure that it's been under um since uh last year in effect the problems that the Russians will now have is that their their current offensive which is not very not very strong strategically but it is pressuring in all places that that will run out of steam they will have used up a lot of equipment they'll have had a lot of men killed and injured and they will get exhausted um Putin demanded that they press all the way along the front and you can only do that for so long before the troops get exhausted and if they don't achieve objectives and give themselves a chance to rest if they themselves come under pressure which may now be the case case then they literally lose combat Effectiveness and that may well happen and the Russians will um are already trying to pretend that this Aid package is very dangerous it increases the the danger of a nuclear exchange and they again they use this magic word nuclear all the time every time something goes wrong for them they threaten nuclear war and the the real nuclear threat is no greater now than it was before this war started but the Russians always use the phrase because they try and frighten everybody with it and there's some evidence that they've that they have succeeded in frightening some people with it um and that's what they're doing now and so whenever they start to threaten nuclear uh Armageddon in Europe you know that they're having a bad day and that's what they've been doing since Saturday it's very interesting to um work out why Trump has changed his view a little bit on Ukraine and why he gave Mike Johnson the leeway to change his view um I don't know what the answer is but I suspect it was that Trump was looking at the buildup of commentary about it because I mean he says that he can stop the war if he becomes president he'll stop the war in 24 hours and the reason he can do that is that he'd cut off all Aid and Ukraine would have to surrender I mean every war will stop within 24 hours if one side surrenders and that was his that was his solution to the war and I think in a way going into the presidential election I think he his either he or his people around him perceiv that that was not going to play very well when it was subject to real scrutiny on the campaign Trail you know his supporters will believe it because they believe anything he says but the the middle ground people will actually be a bit wary of the idea that this man will stop a war by telling the side that's been um victimized the side that's been attacked simply to give up and surrender um and I think when Trump thought about it I think he realized that he needed greater Nuance in his stance and the Nuance he provided was enough to put this Aid package you know within the Realms of the possible and it goes with a few caveat there's some face saving caveats in it which were not in the original package so that um uh there's some control over the way the money is spent in Ukraine though most of it is spent in America uh there's there's some discretion for the president to pull the whole thing back if he didn't think it was being spent properly I'm sure that's not unreasonable there were some um issues in it regarding um the supply of atan missiles the attack ground attack missiles that gives the presence some discretion but but on the other side of it it was also accompanied by a bill to seize up to8 Billion doar worth of assets that are presently Frozen and give them to Ukraine and that goes above and beyond what anybody expected because that's actually quite a big step and quite a controversial step and I was genuinely surprised to see a rep Republican measure suggesting that but there you are they've done it and so that's a that's a bonus for Ukraine although it may create some legal complications down the line you know freezing assets is are one thing but freezing them and then seizing them is another legally complicated and it sends out a bad message to investors for the next uh number of years but we'll see how that works out the Europeans are are stepping up their support in lots of different ways the EU had a 50 billion Euro package which they thought would help to to compensate for the lack of an American package and then that 50 billion package was was accepted but has been put into installments so it won't have the same effect but it will be useful but on the other hand a lot of European countries individually now given that they if they can't use the EU framework in the way they that they had hoped they're doing things individually so the estonians have scoured the world looking for artillery shells and have come up with about 1.2 million shells that they can buy uh the Czech Republic has done the same they've come up with about 1.3 million artillery shells that they think they can buy and so there's over over 200 sorry 2 million artillery shells available that would fit uh Ukrainian systems which will cost about three billion euros to buy so if the Europeans can commit that money they can pull these shells in now that won't happen immediately because it's not they're not sitting in Poland already they've got to be brought from other countries and checked and all the rest of it that will take time but the Europeans both individually and collectively in the EU are now beginning to really get behind Ukraine and the the American decision on usaid on Saturday in a sense will Galvanize that I think um it will actually create the situation whereby the Europeans now have got to get behind the American act it challenges them to do the same and they need to be seen to do the same because I think the message has got through to European leaders most of them if not to all of their publics that this is serious this is not a this is not a war of choice I mean Putin is making war in Europe and threatening everybody and unless he is seen to fail we will all be a great deal poorer and less sensitive and I think that message is now is now clear I mean different European countries have different views of what they should do about it but very few European leaders and European public now think we shouldn't do anything about it we should should leave it most Europeans now now understand that this is our problem and we've got to take it on and I think that's very different to the situation of a year ago e

Channel: Times Radio

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Id: rR_7RVCWkJ0

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024