Ukraine Invasion: The counter attacks keeping Russian forces at bay

day 11 of this conflict once again we're speaking to professor michael clark our defense and security analyst and professor clark we're looking um today at the advances both being made in the north and south but let's talk in particular about this area here around luhansk where we're almost seeing that perimeter being joined together by those russian advances yeah luhansk was the area where the russians expected fairly easily to push push out north they thought they'd really control that area well they didn't but now they're beginning to push out and joining up with troops that have screened kharkiv they haven't taken khaki yet they're still fighting but they're coming down to the uh the south east so they will join up that perimeter but this perimeter of their own friendly troops was something they expected to establish within probably two or three days and here we are on day 11 they still haven't quite managed it i mean nor have they completely established the perimeter uh around mario paul the big issue for the russians is when are they going to start to push north up the uh nipra valley because to do that they've got to take nepro nepro is a city of about a million people it's one of the old russian cities used to be an armaments industry center very industrial the regional leader of that area has said i will make nepro into a new stalingrad and that was the worst longest siege of the second world war if he means it that would be a real tough nut for the russians to crack as and when they begin to move up that valley which at some point they will have to do and it's worth saying the ukrainians are fighting back if we look now at a closer map of the north of the country um we can see hostile airport which is uh just above kiev here um this is a place where on day one the russians took and the ukrainians took back yeah i mean the ukrainians can't mount a counter-offensive as such a big strategic offensive they just don't have the forces but they can mount counter attacks they can try to take back local areas they've certainly done it they've certainly done it somewhere north of kharkiv they lost hostimel airfield on the first couple of days but they took it back and that was not just any old troops i mean the russians were putting their best airborne forces into that and still the ukrainians took it back they've held it since it looks as if there's fierce fighting going on there now so the russians are trying to take hostimal airfield and that will be pretty important to the future of kiev we've been looking at this map for a few days it does look like they're making advances around kiev like they're starting to surround it almost yes and and a lot of the um uh reports today are of some fierce fighting on the edges around the perimeters of kiev to the west increasingly to the south and of course these troops that are moving in from from chernyhiv and sumi um that again they've they've um uh gone round those cities they haven't taken them but they're moving towards kiev the problem that the russians have is that if you're invading a country that doesn't want you there every time you capture somewhere you've got to leave troops behind to protect it so the troops at the front of the push get thinner and thinner so the push gets harder the further away you are from your base at some point the russians will start to run out of troops strange as it may seem and how many days do you think it could be before kiev is totally surrounded well it's hard to tell they've made very hard work of it so far but you we have to expect that in the next let's guess three four days kiev will probably be surrounded and then the next phase of this fairly awful war will on begin to unfold okay let's look now at another map we have of the south of the country and we were talking yesterday about these ceasefire areas mario pole home ordinarily to almost half a million people that seems now to actually be in place to cease fire it seems like it's happening today it seems to have opened about a couple of hours ago it's only open for nine hours this six fire is due to finish in uh nine hours after it started there's no chance of getting two hundred thousand people out in nine hours we'll see if it holds for the rest of the day one would hope it might um but if it's going to be successful they'd have to keep on doing this successive days to get any significant number of people out of the way in mariopol okay that's interesting if we look at the military advance in the south more broadly i mean odessa we've been talking about that too for a few days is that the next big battleground here yeah odessa has to be the next big strategic target going westwards odessa is the uh the famous old port catherine the greats port it's like a great cosmopolitan port it's it's a bit like marseille or the way hong kong used to be very pro-russian historically right up to 2014 but it's very pro-ukrainian now and the odessans are saying they will defend it that will be a very tough nut for the russians to crack but if they do the logical thing will be to keep on going because in transnistria in nextdoor moldova country next door they have a mirror image of the donbass and if president putin is going for broke he might just keep on going for broke and try to unite the whole territories of nova russia the old czarist russia of which odessa would be one of the jewels in the crown but still in ukrainian control and they will fight for that and it may well stay in ukrainian control for quite some time they really are defending that city it looks like the second world war there already and they are committed even the russian speakers in odessa to defending it against this uh invasion okay thank you so much professor michael clark so in the north the battle around kiev getting ever closer and in the south odessa could be the next big battleground thank you very much

Channel: Sky News

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Keywords: SKY NEWS, SKY, NEWS, SKY NEWS LIVE, UK NEWS, LATEST, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, MOSCOW, VLADIMIR PUTIN, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, KYIV, KHARKIV, KHERSON, TROOPS, MILITARY, ARMY, REFUGEES, UK GOVERNMENT, NATO, WEST, DOWNING STREET, KREMLIN, CIVILIANS, SHELLING, BOMBING, LVIV, MARIUPOL, BALTIC STATES, TRAIN, Screen, Wall, General, Poland, Leave, Refugees, Migrants, poland, charity, humanitarian, crisis, route, border, breaking, Defence and Security Analyst, Professor Michael Clarke, ALI FORTESCUE, COUNTER ATTACK, DNIPRO, ODESSA

Id: _vbHgIGKbxs

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022