'Russia isn't the threat that we once thought' | Air Vice Marshal Sean Bell

hello and welcome to Frontline for times radio with Me Kate Chapo and today we're joined by air Vice Marshall Sean Bell whose 32-year career in the RAF included commanding one Fighter Squadron and the Harrier Force tours of Bosnia Sarajevo the gulf and Afghanistan and heading a strategic combat Air review and he's now a prominent military analyst Sean really good to have you on front line today thank you very much we're talking in the aftermath of this march by the Wagner group on Moscow aborted many people have been asking if this is the opportunity for Ukraine to launch its counter-offensive Full Throttle if you like what kind of impact though has the alarm that was created by evgeny pregozian created amongst Russian forces the short answer is very little I suspect as we stand today most of the Russian forces are in their trenches pointing their rifles at the ukrainians will still be very scared about what the attacking forces will bring and will be less concerned about what's happening back in Moscow in some way away um but I think in the longer term there's three main issues here one of which is President Putin will be undoubtedly concerned that you have getting precautions March for justice got so far and will almost certainly want to bolster security within Moscow the only way you can do that is to withdraw some of the reserve forces that are currently deployed in Ukraine so that will reduce the amount of resistance available secondly is that the mercenary forces for Russia have provided the best army they've delivered the most success in our Battlefield far greater than the Russian army has yet Putin's confidence in them will have waned significantly as a result of this so certainly they won't get used as much but in terms of morale therefore undoubtedly the guys at the front line of Russia will be concerned about what's going on back at home we'll see somebody Reserve forces going we'll see some of the mercenary groups no longer there and that means whilst they can stand firm on the front line if the ukrainians do make a breakthrough it's very likely that that could be decisive and President Putin has launched a kind of damage limitation exercises addressed security forces in Moscow um do you think that the Russian troops are any more vulnerable of collapse now than they were before this weekend just gone well like a lot of this we're speculating a lot aren't we about and the honest answer we don't know um what's most likely though is that the Russian forces on the front line of the war in Ukraine they have barrier forces behind them in other words their own troops pointing guns at their own soldiers because if they turn around and run they will they will shoot them so it won't change their resolve at the front line because they have no choice almost certainly though the one thing that will change is that at the moment we've seen skirmishes nothing more than skirmishes on the front line the Ukrainian attack counter-offensive has not actually started that Ukraine has not committed the vast majority of its forces what it will do it's a bit like the cracks in a dam once a crack opens up that's when Ukraine will funnel through it and that's when I think we'll see more like the hood of a Russian collapse because the resolve uh you know in terms of warfare morale is a really difficult thing to measure but it can become incredibly fragile and you've got conscripts on the Russian army who don't broadly trained poorly motivated poorly Laird don't really know why they're there have suffered immense casualties the moment there's a breakthrough I suspect we're going to see the floodgates open and it's reported that the U.S is poised to announce a new military package worth 500 million dollars to support Ukraine that includes 30 Bradley Fighting Vehicles 25 Striker armored personnel carriers Munitions for the high Mars rocket system Javelin anti-tank weapons ammunition for the Patriot and Stinger anti-aircraft systems and do you think that the events that happened at the weekend have increased the urgency for this war to be brought to a swift end no um but I do think that opens up a broader question let's take the American thing first the American the way America Funds this is it drip feeds uh through the approvals process so another 500 million and quite understandably they look at where the shortcoming is and actually try and plug that um and 500 million sounds like a lot but it's not a significant amount given the temper of the war that's going on what it does demonstrate is continue resolve of the West to help Ukraine I think if you look from a grand strategic perspective the worry here is that is this actually a war that's winnable from a Ukraine perspective and is it losable from a Russian perspective given that Putin only wanted a special military operation if you explore those questions the dangers you come to the conclusion that this is possibly and not a winnable War for Ukraine Ukraine will probably never liberate Crimea and the donbass and therefore it's more a question of Where the Line gets drawn on a map as to when the war stops and the West has got lots of its domestic priorities here in London we have there's a cost living crisis there's an inflation crisis we don't have the weapons in our inventory we're doing the best we can to support Ukraine but it we can't keep going like this and when you say um it's not winnable for Ukraine and it may depend on on whether line is drawn on the map what are you suggesting there is a deal to be done was historically either end when one side wins or when both sides grind to a halt exhausted in a stalemate and then they are persuaded to talk now as we currently stand um sorry President Putin will not be in a position where he wants to negotiate because he's taken a lot of land and he wants to Camp there um in terms of zelinski he's absolutely on the cusp on offensive he doesn't want to stop at the moment but by the end of this fighting season by the end of this year um undoubtedly Ukraine would have lost a lot of troops on the offense you lose three times as many as you do on defense the West's supply of weapons will have been largely exhausted will Russia still have the appetite for fighting all of a sudden the planets start to align when it looks more likely that both sides will be in a former stalemate and therefore there is the potential for discussions not always public I think some of these will happen in private rather than the public stage because they'll involve incredible is which will be very difficult for either side to take but there will be pressure I have no doubt brought to bear to try to bring this conflict to an end so do you think that the solution may come from Western allies who say time's up we've got no more weapons to give you we need to sort this out I think it's in nobody's interest for the war to continue I think it drains resources if it's about territory there are examples like Finland in the winter War where territory was seeded um that would be a a very difficult compromise for president zlinski to take but um the other issues he's got to resolve the security into the future and the West is in a position potentially to offer some solutions around that and also the cost of rebuilding Ukraine which will be immense and again there are commitments the West might be able to make to sweeten the pill for president zlinski the challenge is how would President Putin be drawn to that table and I think there is a potential role for China here because China won't want to see Russia fail but he'll also want to see this a conflict escalate and there is a however horrendous it sounds Putin's always described this as a special military operation if he was to negotiate keep the donbass and Crimea he could claim to a domestic audience success now for us that would be very hard to swallow but it might be that that's the way to bring this conflict to an end the former foreign secretary William Hague has written in the times the longer the war continues the greater the risk to International Peace particularly in light of what's happened recently would you subscribe to that view as well I do because Russia is a nuclear power and as we've seen any instability like this um does have unintended consequences uh I am not a subscriber to the view that yevgenia pregosians March for justice could have end up with his hands on the nuclear trigger but for a nuclear power like Russia it's very concerning that any of these incidents that if um Putin finds himself in a corner it's a Madman might be poised with his finger over the red button even if it's tactical nuclear weapons and if that happens the risk of escalation is grave any conflict like this has always got a risk of miscalculation and escalation and um and therefore it's not in anybody's interest for it to continue of course we don't know Jin's next move will be but it appears he might be building camps in Belarus for some of his Wagner troops what kind of danger does that pose there's lots of sort of Machiavellian theories that are here aren't there um uh I think if we go back part of that question is based on the assumption that pregosins there as part of a pre-planned outcome where um Putin is trying to pre-position forces within Belarus to be able to attack Keith because it's a lot closer to Belarus you say what to that well if if he if Putin had wanted to do that he's already put Air Force aircraft in there he's conducted training missions in Belarus he's conducted operations from there and now he's deploying nuclear weapons from there it would be really simple for him to put the Wagner group on a bus and just send them in he wouldn't have to go through all of this theater or progozin being fired upon by helicopters pregos in shooting down a load of Russian aircraft Russian lifting roads up Putin looking damaged on the world stage none of that would have had to have happened to make that maybe not pre-planned but maybe could have been an opportunist moment to make that kind of decision again Never Say Never I think sometimes we risk overthinking these things I do think that um if you look at Putin's features he was angry at pregosin he was angry at his authority being undermined but the interesting calculation Putin's got is he needs mercenaries they have been the most effective fighting force do you think there will be Wagner troops in Belarus then I think there will be final groups troops in Belarus but I don't quite sure yet is that we call it Wagner I think there might be a rebranding exercise because Wagner is you know inextricably linked to evgeny pregosian and if at face value it I'd be very surprised if Putin would trust him again but somehow Putin knows that his army alone have not delivered the success on the battlefield whereas the mercenary groups have so he will need to find a way of still exploiting mercenary groups potentially and let's face it Money Talks yeah mercenaries are not necessarily aligned to an individual they're aligned to a sum of money and Putin's almost certainly prepared to continue paying them so do you think there might be rebranded as a private security Force still and still be working fighting in Ukraine almost certainly the individuals will still be needed in Ukraine um I suspect if um there's been a bit of analysis done on this that if you were Putin he wouldn't want it to be 50 000 strong at which the current marginal forces were there or thereabouts you'd probably want them to be a fraction of that size because then it's less threatening to you the worst that can happen is you can extinguish that critique easily um so therefore and also manage how you uh commission them how you lead them how you use them but I have no doubt and most of the Military Allies have no doubt The Mercenaries will continue to play a key role in in the conflicts in Ukraine and what kind of effects do you think priguration will have in Belarus supposing he is going to be there um we heard from a former Belarusian Diplomat Pavel slunkin he said that he actually may have been a bigger threat to lukashenko president lukashenko than he is to keep well it raises all sorts of interesting issues that how on Earth he's been accepted there because if you remember um lukashenko is the last dictator in Europe you know he's meant to be part of a democracy but the successive elections they appeared to be the most recent one there were riots on the streets and the only reason lukashenko stayed in power was with Putin's support now lukashiga has to therefore tread a little bit of a careful line a poll done about a year ago if I recall said that the Belarusian military I think 95 of them want nothing to do with the war in Ukraine uh didn't see that as their War at all would tolerate lukashenko being polite to Putin because Putin still provides uh gas at something like 20 percent of the market price to Belarus so keeps Belarus sweet by bribing them effectively but how does you know lukashenko walk that fine line and the moment he starts getting nuclear weapons based there the moment he starts having thugs like yevgeni pregosian if preggers in was to launch an attack from Belarusian soil that would no longer be Russians launching attack that will be a bunch of mercenaries I'm not sure how Ukraine would respond to that and that might end up with President lukashenko looking increasingly vulnerable because his people do not want to get drawn into this conflict in his audio message yesterday pregosian apologized for his troops shooting down Russian aircraft what is the potential for Anarchy given what took place the weekend first of all I think we're seeing a lot of damage limitation going on um most everything we see in the media from the Russians subsequently proves not to be wrong not to be right at all so um I wouldn't be at all surprised we don't know the deal that was done with pregosian to give him his life it was almost certainly involved Sanctuary for his family his son his daughter and his wife it almost certainly involved his Safety and Security and almost certainly involved regarding having to read out a pre-agreed message so quite exactly what he believes compared to what was said is something else do you think that message was pre-agreed I I suspect that it was part of the package of agreement because let's face it President Putin is always divided and conquered he does not provide wholehearted sport for his mod he's always created frictions because that way nobody can can rise up and and Tackle him so in a way I think he's cultivate he created the Beast that was yet getting pregosian and bluntly from West's perspective sergai shogu who regularly walks around in as a defense secretary in military attire has never served in the military in his life um General grazimov has not got a great name as a leader they are there for political reasons and yet they've had to conduct a war they've done it badly and it's cost tens of thousands of lives it's not a great surprise that has angered pragosian who's seen his own troops fall foul of that the the defense minister Sergey shoigu may be keeping his job we don't know yet at least for now General garazimov Chief the general staff we don't know there has been speculation that a potential successor to the defense minister is close to pragosian this person called Alexei diumin whoever replaces either of them at any stage is going to say something isn't it about the power play between precaution and Putin what's fascinating about that very conversation is that if Putin was to replace garazimov and or sugar that he therefore panders to progression's wishes and I feel very surprised if Putin wants to do that so I wouldn't be at all surprised I think they'd both stay in post well and not even if they're incompetent or we don't actually know that they are long-term friends of Putin he trusts them and that's why they're in this post that's why they've become the head of their but respective political and Military establishment so if Putin decides it is its best interest to change them then they will be changed but uh I suspect Putin will not want to be seen to be pandering to a Vagner group Leader's request to get rid of them that that would that would be a sign of weakness and just drawing on your experience and expertise on from the air force it looks like an illusion 22 command plane was shot down by Wagner troops in veronis quite a significant Target it is and I and it's slightly there's not that many reports of what actually happened we've hit reports that um the Russian air assets were sent and they strafed the uh pregosian Convoy we understand there were quite a lot of casualties up to 30 deaths as a result of that and we understand that the Convoy fired back with anti-aircraft and took out seven helicopters and this one command and control aircraft now the helicopters would have been Attack Helicopters they fly fairly low and therefore they present a Target generally speaking command aircraft fly a lot higher are out of sight out of mind and therefore wouldn't necessarily be a Target so it's not entirely clear what that aircraft was doing there and why it found itself in the middle of a firefight um but do you have any idea no no and I wouldn't want to speculate the fact is from my perspective um eight aircraft were shot down if pragosian who said I didn't want to spill any Russian blood well he's got a strange way of showing them that if he takes out that many aircraft so no wonder President Putin was worried that this wasn't just a March for justice that there was something rather more Sinister involved the Russian Ministry defense said that two British typhoons and the surveillance aircraft flew close to its borders over the Black Sea um How likely is that to be true I think it's very likely to be true um if you recall back um we lost an MQ-9 one of the drones that the Russian aircraft took out the sky it was into International airspace it perfectly legitimately had to be there then the Russians later fired on one of our surveillance aircrafts and that luckily they miss our misfire but again it was in international waters perfectly had to be there my understanding is that all of those assets now have two typhoons running shotgun to prepare to um to protect them my understanding and that's been validated by the Russians they were operating International airspace they're in perfectly entitled to do that um the typhoons were there to protect the rc-135 in case it became under any trouble and the Russians are perfectly legitimately allowed to if if they're getting close to their own airspace to go up and threaten them I don't I think that's that that happens almost routinely I don't think we should look too much into that so what routinely might they have been looking for uh well one of the things that the the West is doing NATO is doing is um flying up and down in international airspace using its Radars watching listening um uh the battlefield and undoubtedly helping Ukraine uh with some intelligent situational awareness and the like that will definitely frustrate the Russians because there's actually nothing they can do about it because if you're operating International airspace um they can't shoot you down if they were to do that all the Russian aircraft that fly into our International airspace through the north Etc our typhoons would be at Liberty to go and shoot them down um so but this is all a bit chess it's about Russians being very upset that NATO is not directly involved but is indirectly helping um you mentioned earlier about the need to if there were to be some kind of negotiated piece at some point the need to secure Ukraine for the future how might that be done well it's waiting to join NATO there's that there'll be a lot of discussions around this that the the short version is that um Ukraine won't be able to join NATO anytime soon there's a whole list of requirements and it seems very unlikely that NATO would circumvent those what's most likely to be agreed is a path to joining NATO uh but that almost certainly will take years if not decades so the real question is that how will president zielinski of Ukraine be confident once the war is over that he has some security one of the traditional ways would be assigned document by President Putin saying that I respect your integrity the trouble is in 1994 The Budapest memo you know when Russia America the Brits and Ukraine signed up if Ukraine will give up its nuclear weapons he'd guarantee the security 20 years later he ripped it up and invaded so that will not be the worth of paper it's written on so you're then into how do you provide some degree of security some of the ideas that are being floated around whilst it may not be part of NATO that doesn't stop bilateral or trilateral arrangements so for example America the Brits the the poles the Germans uh having a bilateral arrangement with Ukraine if you attack um if you attack Ukraine you attack our country as well it might also involve some sort of buffer zone you know it's like Cyprus or that sort of thing where you have United Nations patrolling a buffer zone undoubtedly they're accepting that Russia retains parts that it has invaded I I'm not here to negotiate it's my gray hairs mean I'm a pragmatist at heart and that if the ultimate aim and the starting point for negotiation presidents lensky I want to clear all the Russians out of Ukraine soil absolutely right but pragmatically um getting the Russians off Crimea will not be easy and even if they could get them out of the dumbass Russians have been funding the Insurgency there for the last 10 years they inherit a shark infested custard the wild west and it will be almost ungovernable so is that actually what president silenci want and therefore it seems that you're into a balance now between how much do I want to have the whole of my country back and I'll continue at war with diminishing Western support or do I compromise find some way of calling the war to an end except I lose some territory but I get security guarantees from the west and I need to rebuild the country and I will need a huge financial support to make that happen and very much like Germany at the end of the second world war it was devastated but grew to become one of the powerhouses of Europe it's quite possible that Ukraine could follow the same same cause you get the impression that this is a moment in history that will be poured over in years to come and as a military analyst are you able to sum up how you might describe this moment as it stands to Future Generations are you talking about the pregos and incident or yes the the war in Ukraine yeah that that's a great question um I think the the West will uh history will probably judge that the West was quite slow to support Ukraine in the early days of the war it was almost like binary Ukraine is not part of NATO we can declare our frustration at Russia but we won't do anything about it then we gave them anti-tank weapons because they were defensive weapons but we weren't wouldn't trust Ukraine with any offensive weapons because they might use them against Russia and therefore escalate wind the clock forward to today and we're talking about giving them Jets we've given them long-range weapons within the stormers shadow we've given them if those decisions have been made a year ago would the conflict have followed a different course and if you if you accept that why are we not leaning more heavily into the war today I understand the logic of it but I do wonder whether history might judge that actually we are involved it you can't be a little bit pregnant you either are providing weapons that are involved or you're not the key issue here is that we don't want to put combatants on the ground but we're doing everything else apart from that and would we actually be prepared to see Ukraine fall for the sake of putting a few combatants on the ground I think history will have a long look at this because it's been a horrible Bloodshed there are some positives though I think history will take out this as well I served in the military in Germany and we were scared of what the Soviet capability was the Russian capability was after the Cold War what this is actually exposed is that Russia had some fantastic equipment but had no way of converting that into military capability they didn't have the professional training the support the doctrine the leadership and actually they can't Prevail as a Goliath over Ukraine's David that sense of really positive message for the future than actually Russia isn't the threat that we once thought Russia has been diminished by this just seeing the pictures of Putin and uh present XI together of China they used to be equals they're definitely not equals anymore I think there are some Grand strategic lessons that come from this but unfortunately at the moment we're still in the thick of it uh Vice Marshall Sean Bell thank you very much for your time welcome pleasure to speak to you you've been watching Frontline for times radio my thanks to Louis Sykes our producer to support the work of Frontline hit the Subscribe button you can also listen to times radio throughout the day or read it at times.co.uk thanks for watching bye-bye

Channel: Times Radio

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Keywords: times radio, frontline, life on the frontline, ukrainians living on the frontline, ukraine front lines, bakhmut frontline, brit lads embed with ukraine forces 0.5km from the russia frontline, ukrainian special forces behind enemy lines, war crimes, timesradio, james cleverly, ukraine medical evacuation, medical evacuation ukraine, headlines, ukraine evacuation, himars in action in ukraine, valentines day in hyderabad, vladimir putin, putin declares war on ukraine

Id: jo3IxaacudM

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023