Ukraine's plan to trap Putin in Crimea | Michael Clarke

Shogun always appears in uniform he's never spent a day in the military in his life he's been a civilian all his life but as Minister of Defense as a courtesy he gets a uniform so he gets a uniform as a four-star general and he's got medals a chest full of medals he doesn't want a single one of them doing anything so there's three possible areas around back mutt around valika novasuka and then further west south of archive which looks like the biggest that they've made so far they've got more space there and they've got through a lot of the minefields that they may or may not go for that space because a lot of strategic deception is likely to be involved but somewhere along the front a 750 mile front they've got to commit themselves to pushing their heavy weapons their heavy forces these uh armored brigades through one of the gaps and that will be risky because the Russians have still kept quite a lot of their defenses intact they are stretched the Russians are not finding it easy but they're certainly not collapsing so yes there's some risk involved and this article these three routes to Victory you call it could you just take me through these a little bit more in depth one route in the north is north and south of bakmud um the Ukraine is not trying to take back the city as such if they surround it then any Russians they will have to withdraw or surrender in particular the The High Ground south of bakmud if they can push on there they then have the choice if they put a big Force through there of maybe turning South into uh Donetsk and they can then start to take back some of the ground that they lost even in 2014. so that's quite an attractive idea to win back some of the donbass now they've got to be careful because the Russians themselves look as if they've been trying to sort of counterpunch north of that from cremina and svatovay towards kobayansk the Russians aren't going on very well with that but they they do look as if they've still got quite a lot of forces masked around there and the Russians might try this counter punch further north which would negate uh the advantages which the ukrainians might get a bakmut itself so that's a complex area the second area is uh velika novasilka which is to the west and then volada slightly to the east of that and that's another area of pressure down to the South if the ukrainians feel they can push through there they would probably head for Mario pole on the coast of the Sea of azov and that would make a certain amount of sense and again this High Ground The High Ground at volada they've already got and when you get high ground particularly in a country like Ukraine that matters because there's so much other ground you can see if you're on The High Ground if you're on The Ridges then you can control a very large area but the most profitable route is what I call route one which is from origin through tokmak to Molita pole and then straight onto the coast which would be onto the Sea of azov but it would be so close to Crimea that from there if the ukrainians are able to push to the Sea and that's 120 miles away still if they are then they would be able to dominate Crimea they could bombard Crimea they could launch air attacks they could launch himas attacks lots of things they could do so the two things that would do without trying to to actually invade Crimea which would be a different different matter but they could make the the four air bases and the Naval Base at sevastopol completely unviable because they could keep bombing them it make it impossible for the Russian to keep any aircraft or ships there and believe me that would make life for the 800 000 Russians who who live in Crimea most of them are incomers they've moved in since 2014 when it was illegally occupied and think that they can live their for you know very comfortable very nice area very Mediterranean sort of place they think they can live there for the rest of their lives will it make it unviable for them and so the ukrainians if they could reach the coast south of Melita pole they could make Crimea a complete no-go area for the Russians both militarily and in civilian terms and that would be a massive crisis for Putin it'd be a huge bargaining chip for Ukraine and it would be a strategic gain wouldn't end the war wouldn't give them total Victory but my goodness it would be a big step towards some sort of ceasefire on very favorable terms yeah absolutely and I mean you've said in your article that you know they're giving me it keeps giving the impression that they will use route one but could that actually just be um a strategy of deception maybe maybe they'll use one of the other groups that you've outlined deception is always entirely possible in these circumstances it's a bit like the Normandy invasion of 1944 the famous D-Day invasion everybody everybody knew it was coming the Germans knew it the French knew it the British knew it people in the street knew it everybody knew but nobody apart from a very small number of Allied planners knew exactly when and exactly where and out of that inevitable situation it was inevitable that there would be an invasion in 1944 it is inevitable that the ukrainians were launched most of their forces through one of these three gaps or maybe a fourth one if they could open it um but we don't know exactly when we don't know exactly where so strategic uh deception is always possible and the ukrainians themselves may not have made the choice they may be seeing what what lies on on each of those three areas they've made three reasonable breaches through the Russian defenses they might be looking at each of them and saying well which is our best Advantage you know it's it's a it's a mixture of deciding where can you get through and having got through what gains you get from getting to the other side of the Fortress as it were how How likely is it that the Russians would actually collapse if you get through this area or will they not collapse they're just withdraw in good order and the the danger for the ukrainians is that they might penetrate through Russian defenses but it'd be like penetrating a sponge that they'll get through but the Russians will just pour more more men and more equipment in which you just close around the ukrainians and although the ukrainians won't be defeated they won't be victorious either that's the risk that they don't they don't break the opposition they just make the opposition behave like a sponge if let's say the Ukraine shoot goes the route one way about this I mean what sort of obstacles do you think they're going to be facing because we're already seeing landmines kind of slowing down the counter-offensive they're facing attack helicopters and the lack of air power means they can't you know provide themselves with the coverage to push forward what sort of things will they be anticipating the the big problem with route one is that they the ukrainians have not yet met the sort of vegan line and the sort of Deacon line the general solid he came when he was in charge he's been removed now and we haven't seen him since the 25th of June anywhere so maybe he's tied to a chair having his toenails examined with no idea um but son of eacon has disappeared um and uh his defensive lines uh around top Mac are still there and those defensive lines consist of just about everything so there are anti-tank ditches there are dragons teeth these sort of anti-tank uh concrete uh bollards placed in in Long rows um and of course there are mines and the Russians have placed about triple the number of Mines that most militaries would have put per kilometer of ground into the area and then they've created floods the the Russians have built um uh a dam east of topmac to flood the ground to the east of topmark and if top Mac is occupied by the ukrainians almost certainly they'll blow that Dam and flood top Mac itself so the ukrainians are probably going to have to deal with some flooded ground as well now all this can be done and the ukrainians have got some very good modern engineering equipment which NATO Nations have given them but the point about all of this particularly minefields is you can always get through them but it slows you down it it it Narrows that it catalyzes you so it Narrows the channels through which you can move and the enemy will have those channels targeted with their artillery and so if you have to slow down if you have to go through certain areas and relatively narrow lines of attack Then You're vulnerable to attack from the air particularly helicopters the ka-52 um Russian helicopters are very effective they're Attack Helicopters also they're they're su-25 aircraft with these they're called the the Fab 500 bomb the Glide bomb and that's a very old bomb which got Wings on it so it can glide up to about 40 kilometers and that's very destructive as well and without air Superior Authority the ukrainians again find this difficult because they've only got ground-based air defense if they if they could control the airspace um then it would be much much easier for them it would buy them time to get through these obstacles but as it is they're going to have to work their way through the obstacles and probably probably accept a fairly High degree of losses as they go through um that may turn out not to be true depends on how how much they have bombarded the rear areas of the Russian defensive lines and that's certainly what they're trying to do they're trying to get to the rear areas with their himars their multiple rocket systems on their own um air launch missiles in order to destroy that stuff but I find it hard to believe they will have been able to destroy enough of it to get through the obstacles without taking a fair few losses themselves yeah and I um I feel a bit hypocritical or ironic for asking you this question because the whole article is about how you know how um General um how they're being held to this kind of like impossible timetable but you've also written that the next few weeks are really the test for Ukraine's military talent I mean do we maybe have a timeline is this something that we could be seeing before the Summer's over the effective timeline is whenever the bad weather arrives I mean the weather hasn't been particularly good the last couple of weeks been very wet which is not good for the offense um but the really bad weather the Autumn weather you know will arrive certainly in uh October and after that things will get very difficult not not impossible but really difficult to move forward and so by then by the the end of the Autumn the ukrainians have got to have achieved something that looks decisive to the West not just good but decisive as if somehow they've changed the the balance of advantage on the battlefield to make people think think that this war could be over maybe sometime next year that the ukrainians are capable of throwing the Russians out of most or all of their territory during the next 12 to 18 months if it looks as if well it's a stalemate and it'll go on for four or five years like this then Western um support is likely to decline but if it's felt well look another six months 10 months 12 15 months will do it with more support then I think Western support will remain fairly solid and so it's a matter of perception there's no particular objective which the ukrainians have got to take if they can reach the coast at the same as of that'll be pretty good if they can extend that line if they reach the coast in a sort of a line and then can extend it outwards that'll be even better um and if the Russians look as if they've cracked and are in retreat in two or three areas that would be very good but none of those things may happen somehow the ukrainians have got to create an image that yes this war can be concluded on favorable terms in a foreseeably politically foreseeable time frame a year 15 months something like that I mean isn't it it's quite unfair though isn't it to be holding Ukraine to this political timetable which just simply doesn't really work when you're in the middle of a war no military campaign should be run according to political timetables and that's a straight military doctrinal reality but it is also a political reality that they always are I mean all military campaigns have some sort of political timetable operating behind them and in this case uh Ukraine's political timetable is not really driven by Ukraine but it's driven by the Western allies and the things that are looming on that is the beginning of the American uh presidential election uh the degree to which the European Union and European powers are prepared to as it were remain constant with Ukraine they'll all keep on supporting Ukraine but how enthusiastic are they because it's getting very expensive and also the um the Western powers are all all going to run into a an armaments crisis in the Autumn whether Ukraine's successful or not we've given Ukraine all that we easily can our own stocks are now getting lower and we've not invested very much in building them up and every European power is going to run into a crisis in the late Autumn where it just simply doesn't have enough ammunition enough sustainment enough weapons either to give to Ukraine or to maintain the levels that it thinks it needs to maintain with its own forces and that crisis is is coming whatever happens in Ukraine so of course it's very unfair on key even the most unfair thing on Cave is the fact that we are now going to give them air power when it's too late um they'll get the effective air power in F-16 sometime next year if if we'd have taken that decision six or eight months ago they would have air superiority now over the battlefield at least and that would make a huge difference and so as always we've done we've done I've you know usually we've done too little just about in time on aircraft we've done too little too late and the ukrainians are trying something which we wouldn't try uh we wouldn't be we wouldn't do this they have no choice so they have to and they have to try to create a modern combined arms approach to Warfare in a matter of months and we spent years developing this and we're asking them to do it over six months and the answer is well they've done some of it but not all and there's a there's a debate it seems to be going on now in Kiev between whether they should keep on trying this combined arms approach which they're not entirely comfortable with or go back to the old Soviet style tactics which they do understand and which their commanders feel more comfortable with and you know if they don't succeed quite soon in breaking through they might just fall back on their old Soviet style tactics and say well just hammer away do the best you can and accept whatever you know big losses you have to take I hope they don't do that but I think there's a there's a there's a sort of tension building now in Kiev between persevering with a new style of warfare which is quite hard to learn and they've had to try to learn quickly and falling back on the old one which may succeed but it horrendous cost and I I wonder as well well if the ukrainians or maybe even kind of being forced or put in a position where they also have to hold themselves to a foreign political timetable which is the U.S presidential elections you know if Trump is it seems quite likely to be receiving the Republican nomination and you know he does and let's say he is elected president you know the U.S is the one giving the most weapons to Ukraine and they know that and Trump might take I mean a completely different tactic on it um I mean what do you is there should Ukraine be worried about that possibility I think the United States will maintain its uh its level of support for sure um during the the course of the campaign right through to November next year but the campaign itself May ignite a more Fierce debate within America on the amount of money that's being spent and the Strategic value to America of supporting Ukraine to this degree now most I mean most Democrats have no problem with those questions as most Europeans don't but as the campaign gets going it will be one assumes a very bitter campaign and there's no telling what the Dynamics the internal dynamics of America will be but I don't think American policy will change before a presidential election and but I do think America's attitude may change and you'll see that in the press in the political debate and so on and and if that attitude changes if it looks as if you know a republican uh candidate might win and therefore reduce um uh support considerably to Ukraine or even stop it all together that will encourage Putin it will encourage the Russians to hold on for a new government in uh in Washington um and that will have an effect on the on the way the battle goes so I don't think there'll be changes in policy in America but Changes in Attitude may have an effect on the morale of the ukrainians and of the Russians I wanted to move on a little bit to the Kremlin in Putin I mean we're just over a month on from progressions march on Moscow the Russian military does see still seem to be in quite a state of disarray doesn't it the the Russian military is in a very uncertain State at the moment and I think there is ferment um in Moscow Putin tries to pretend that everything is normal but of course it isn't he is he's immensely weakened by what happened uh on the 24th of June which the pragos in the Wagner march on Moscow um I mean the whole thing was a sort of farce um it was nobody was in control of anything I mean you know pragosi didn't know what he was going to do next sort of he can seem to know about it but didn't know what he was going to do Putin didn't know what he was going to do um everyone was sort of casting around to get a grip on on this whole thing and the whole thing was was very chaotic but in that chaos it was also very dangerous because what was clear was that the Wagner group um felt they had some leverage over the ministry of Defense not necessarily Putin but the ministry of Defense when they started this march on Moscow a lot of of Russian military unit just sat on their hands they didn't do anything and the people who see most of his to sit on the hand with the vdv the Airborne forces and the Airborne forces of the elite forces they are in most militaries and they're also very close to Wagner um they train together at mokino their their base used to be one of the bases was mokino where they were next door to each other they and a lot of vdv troops uh you know retired from the military and then joined Wagner so that they were very close and what's happened since then is that Putin was then seen five days later from this march on Moscow on the 20th uh 29th of June there he was negotiating in the Kremlin with pragodian and 38 Wagner people and he didn't even get what he wanted with them sitting in front of him these people who've been traitors the previous week scum the previous week were therefore you know fated to um tea in the Kremlin for a discussion and they went away without having given Putin what he wanted that's astonishing and so Putin has certainly lost from that but also the ministry of defense is in firmament because there's is a sort of purge going on we're trying we're still trying to get to the bottom of how deep this purge is how far it goes of the vdv and so clearly shogu the defense minister and garazimov the chief of the general staff are trying to do something about the Loyalty of DVD commanders they're not entirely certain about their loyalty and um the commander of the 58th combined arms Army Ivan Popov the best General that the Russians had on the ground he was he was the man on the southern front the oroki front that we were talking about the man who's who's operating some pretty efficient defenses in the South he was removed for criticizing the ministry of defense and it's now sort of open seasonal criticism is that a lot of senior commanders on behalf of their men are now criticizing the ministry of Defense so the mod is is involved in trying to as it were re-energize its control of its own units um Putin himself is is standing away from that but he's just weak intrinsically weakened by the whole Progressive thing and the fact that that wardner still exists they're in Belarus that they will continue their operation in Africa and pragosian is still a player in Russian politics and then beside all of that um Wagner are not fighting in Ukraine anymore um the a lot of vdv units have been withdrawn from some of their Frontline roles and the Russian troops that are there are complaining in these videos that I see every day where a little group of troops 15 or 20 they say you know this was this is what's left of a company a company of troops would normally be 100 120 men and there's 20 of them and they say this is what's left and we've come back we've got no ammunition we were let down our commanders disappeared they just left us to rot and we appeal we appeal to you Mr Putin uh Vladimir Vladimir validovich um they always calling that so we appeal to you Mr Putin um to actually do something about all of this and so the Russian army although they are um strong in their static defenses or not in a particular good shape and I think the pregosin um Rebellion if that's what it was is still having Ripple effects throughout the whole Force do you think that shoigu and garazimov do you think that they could be on the Alps as well yes I mean shogu has been supported by Putin I mean they're very old friends they go they go hiking together or used to and a lot of people said well you know Putin's is naturally close to pregozin because they go back to Petersburg and the old days of the crime gangs and so on but shogu is closer and shogu has a much better reputation throughout Russia because it used to be the man for Emergency Operations and so he was the man who dealt with floods and natural disasters and he has quite a good profile in Russia and it looks as if Putin believes in shogu more than he believes in pragosian um garazimov is a bit of an outsider to this um but I think shogu is is actually he you don't hear much about him and he doesn't say very much in public but I think quietly he's he's consolidating his power although it's shaky he's consolidating it garasimov is in a more vulnerable position I think um and of course they none of them really know what Putin is thinking because like all dictators he operates only with a very close circle of people who are not really political at all they're just his backers and his friends and people who have been bankrolling him for years um and nobody quite knows you know when he's going to turn on any any given member of the uh of the ruling group you said sure Goose um uh he's trying to consolidate his power I mean could you elaborate on that a little bit I mean do you mean that he could kind of pull a progosian is that a more shogu certainly has no love for pagosian I mean it's been rumored that uh timchenko one of the oligarchs has had a contract out on pragosian for over a year and certainly It is believed that a lot of people would will Target pragosian and they'll certainly kill him if they can um shogun's got his own uh private Army remember himself called Patriot and so like all of them there's at least 20 to 25 private military companies running around on the Russian side of the of the war and some of them are just security Ford like gas prom and rosny F they've got their own security forces and they are some of them are doing some fighting but there's groups like Wagner and Patriot has become a bit like Wagner um and that you know is essentially belongs to shogu and Shogun is a very rich man and he's got a lot of interest in the donbass region and so he's been consolidating his economic uh Power but also consolidating his his authority over the armed forces and in that respect um I don't think he's that close these days to grazimov I think we always talk about Shogun grazimov together Shogun the defense minister smoker azimov the you know the head of the armed services um I'm not sure they're so close together and one of the big differences of course Shogun always appears in uniform he's never spent a day in the military in his life he's been a civilian all his life but as Minister of Defense as a courtesy he gets a uniform so he gets a uniform as a four-star general and he's got medals a chest full of medals he hasn't won a single one of them doing anything um I mean he's a civilian uh not a day in the military but um he's consolidating his control over the military and grazimov is is is isolated somewhat from that Central group shogo is still in that Central group as far as we know with Putin it's interesting though because I mean those are actually as things stand the three men Putin garasimov and shoigu who you know if Putin decided that he wanted to to push the big red nuclear button those are the three people that have to say yes it's interesting the kind of politics and things that are playing out there yeah yeah it's a three three key firing chain yeah all three the the president the ministry of defense and the chief of the general staff all have to agree that they're going to as it release the nuclear codes yeah I want to ask um about kind of what we're seeing on the border of Poland Poland and Lithuania have warned that Wagner Fighters are that are currently stationed in Belarus could attempt to destabilize NATO's Eastern flank what do you what do you make of this there's a lot of talk about Wagner operating to destabilize NATO I don't think they I don't think they will I don't I'm not sure they will try and I don't there was at all succeed the vulnerable area is which governs the savalki corridor which runs from Lithuania of course oh sorry from kaliningrad within Lithuania and kalinograd is Russian territory to the old Russian base there and the savalki corridor runs from there to Belarus and that Corridor is a is NATO territory but it's not very it's it's quite narrow and the the idea was um if if there's if you create incidents along savoki Corridor then you can in theory uh call in Polish troops uh that might end up fighting Belarusian troops and then you've got a sort of a more European crisis on your hands it's possible that Wagner would try that I mean that's the sort of thing they do in Africa fairly successfully but Europe is a different place Europe is much more institutionalized there's a great deal more independent surveillance of what is going on and NATO is very well equipped for crisis management so I don't think that Wagner would have much success in doing that that more success is likely to be achieved in trying to create false flag operations to persuade Belarus to get involved in the war in Ukraine to convince the belarusians that they are on somehow under attack from Ukraine not from NATO but from Ukraine itself I think that would be a more um conducive uh role for Wagner to play if they want to play a subversive role even then I think they I'm not sure they would succeed because this war is pretty unpopular with the public in Belarus and the Belarusian Army is extremely weak they're quite small they're not well equipped they're certainly not well trained they wouldn't make a whole lot of difference to the war even if they did join in thank you to Our Guest today he is the renowned Michael Clarke he writes fantastic articles often in the Sunday Times and this one in particular had interactive maps and really insightful information on how the war in Ukraine is going to proceed and what it means for the Kremlin if you'd like to read more from Michael Clark you can subscribe to the times and the Sunday Times with the link in our description thank you very much

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 632,057

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Id: eijBpNpdFcs

Length: 27min 48sec (1668 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023