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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Battleground Ukraine with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop. Well, a week after the murderous attack by Islamic extremists, some of them Russian citizens as it turns out, on a concert hall crowd in Moscow, Russia is still in shock and in mourning. This was not just a terror attack. The
The consequences are potentially very fateful indeed, both for Vladimir Putin and his security state, for the Russian people, but also for Ukraine.
This is starting to look like a hinge moment in the conflict. We'll be digging into what all that means and where things are going. And to help us, we have with us our friend Alan Phelps, veteran Russia watcher and historian, who we'll be talking to shortly. Listeners will remember us reporting last week that one of the first things Putin did after his overwhelming election victory was to address the senior staff of the gigantic FSB state security organization.
He lauded them as a key guarantor of Russian security and sovereignty. How utterly hollow that now sounds. The Russian security state is enormous, with nearly a million policemen, 340,000 National Guards and 100,000 spies.
Yet it failed miserably to carry out its primary duty to protect Russian citizens. Instead, its energies have been spent on beating up demonstrators, harassing gays and murdering Putin's peaceful opponents. Their uselessness was demonstrated with their delusional claims that Ukrainian resistance would collapse within a matter of days and then their failure to predict the Brygozhin mutiny last summer.
The FSB is the state within a state on which Putin's power ultimately rests. We'll be asking whether their failure to identify and deal with the internal threat from Islamic terrorists, despite their being alerted to the danger by American intelligence, may prove to be one betrayal too far of his own people by Putin. The initial silence from Putin after the events at the Crocus City Hall...
on the outskirts of Moscow that has so far left 140 dead, was deafening. One can just imagine the panic as he and his court struggled to cobble together a narrative that would exonerate themselves and the FSB and direct public dismay and anger elsewhere.
It came as absolutely no surprise that the first statements suggested that Ukraine was somehow behind it and the apprehended suspects were heading for the Ukrainian border, where they were expected when they were nabbed. This nonsense was quickly rebutted by the US and Kiev, but since then the Kremlin and its media mouthpieces have doubled down on the lies.
Despite all the evidence pointing to the attack being the work of Islamic State of Khorasan, Moscow continues to point the finger at Ukraine and the US. The latest utterance coming from Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova is that it is extremely hard to believe that Islamic State was behind the massacres.
This, frankly, is incredible, coming from a nation that purports to be a great power and has a seat on the UN Security Council. The question is, despite the fact that the Kremlin has an iron grip on the Russian information space, will these tactics work? And given that Putin has chosen to ignore the real enemy in the shape of the many Islamic militants who hate Russia, will
Will Ukraine now bear the brunt of his fury as he tries to convince his subjects that he's capable of protecting them? Well, joining us to discuss this today is Alan Phillips, former Reuters and Telegraph man in Moscow and distinguished author of The Red Hotel, The Untold Story of Stalin's Disinformation War. Welcome, Alan.
So, Alan, let's start off by clearing a few things up. Apart from Putin's claims, there have been stories swirling around that this might have been some sort of false flag operation mounted by the FSB themselves. That's not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility, given that the FSB were behind the bombing of apartment blocks in three Russian cities, including Moscow.
all the way back in 1999, that were then blamed on the Chechens, and this accelerated Putin's accession to the presidency. What's the likelihood of this being a false flag operation? And is there any possibility that this could have been orchestrated, as the Russians are claiming, somehow by Kiev?
Well, you have to bear in mind that Putin thinks that his staying in power is vital for Russia, and there's no one to replace him. So effectively, nothing can really be conclusively ruled out.
I think it's worth going back to 1999 to look at that false flag operation. I think the consensus is that these apartment building bombings in Moscow and in the south of Russia, where the work of the FSB and blamed on the Chechens,
There are some people who disagree, but it suited Putin perfectly. He'd just been raised to the position of prime minister. He therefore was going to be Yeltsin's successor, and he needed to make a bit of a name for himself. So almost immediately after these bombings, he launched the Second Chechen War. The Russian army had lost the first one. So this was the revenge match.
And it wasn't very long, I think it was in December of that year, that Putin got into the co-pilot seat of a Sukhoi bomber and flew to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, with great aplomb, really showing himself to be the energetic man of action. Unlike poor Boris Yeltsin, of course, who was addled by drink, by alcohol, and in very poor health.
So in that case, the false flag had a very clear purpose and was, from Putin's point of view, 100% successful. What we've seen in Russia over the last two weeks is a bit different. I mean, if the aim was to pin this on Ukraine, Putin and all his many, many thousands of security people have not come up with a single fact to support this.
Instead, Putin has looked out of touch, not sure what to say, and of course was silent for quite some time while he was looking to his acolytes to come up with some evidence to pin the bombing on Ukraine.
And then, of course, Islamic State actually claimed responsibility and came up with what seems to be some very genuine video of what the gunmen were doing in Moscow. So if it was a false flag, it was extraordinarily incompetent. You could say there's a lot of incompetence in Russia. Look at the beginning of the war, completely incompetent, disorganized forces, utterly ill-prepared and
actually to win the war in Ukraine. So there is a lot of incompetence in Russia, but I think the idea that this was just a false flag operation needs to be treated with a pinch of salt. Is it possible that they knew that Islamic State was going to do something and they let it happen and it turned out that what they were doing was successful in Islamic State's terms beyond all our expectations?
As far as I'm concerned, still to be proved. So you see, the Kremlin is in a very difficult position. They control the media narrative in Russia. There's an extraordinary front page on the weekly magazine, Argumenti Facti, which says, we know who inspired this narrative.
And it doesn't actually give any names, but there's a graphic. And on that graphic, you can see Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, President Biden, and of course, Zelensky, the presidents of Ukraine. So these are the guilty men. Let's just lay this one to bed about Kiev's possible involvement. Is there any chance they could have been behind it in some way? Well...
The world of spy versus spy is very murky. You often get people who claim to be avowed enemies operating together. You see double agents. You see a lot of treachery.
But if we look at it, if we look at it even from the Kremlin, what are they saying about Ukraine? Are they a natural ally of Islamic State? They are, as we know, they have a Jewish head of state, not a natural ally. In Russian terms, they are at the forefront of gay rights, not something that the Islamic State really holds. So the whole Kremlin narrative is
It's a bit like in Stalin's purges. It emerged in these show trials that his colleagues had all along been working not for one enemy, but for lots of enemies. They were working for Trotsky. They were working for British intelligence. They were working for the Poles. So they're trying to do the same thing. There is this multi-headed struggle.
enemy, which is Ukraine, Islamic State, British intelligence, of course, they've been blamed today, British intelligence, and of course, the CIA, which is known as the biggest fermenter in Russian terms of terrorism since the world began. None of it makes sense, but I'm not sure the Kremlin is in the business of making sense. It just likes to create a lot of dust in the air, so no one really knows what they should think.
But nonetheless, I mean, the FSB has been shown up, hasn't it? Whichever way you look at it, no matter how much disinformation is swirling around out there, clearly, you just look at what's going on. You think the FSB is there to protect us and it's dismally failed in that duty. Do you think any of this is going to cut through to affect ordinary Russians' peacekeeping?
perception of Putin. I don't see how anyone can look at the people around Putin. Alexander Botnikov, the head of the FSB, is 72, one year older than Putin.
I mean, obviously, he should have tended his resignation or Putin should have just fired him. That's the most obvious thing in the world. Why doesn't he do that? Well, after the rebellion by Prigozhin, the mercenary leader last year, he doesn't trust anyone except those who've been at his side for a very long time. Because
We could guess, or we can probably forecast from Russian history, that if there is a move against him, it will come from people around him. There's no sign of any groundswell of opposition in the Russian people. Over the years, more than 20 years that Putin's have been in power,
have learned that they don't have any control over who is their president or how their government. They just trust the man in charge to look after them. Well, there's not being looked after. So if the public do basically swallow the Kremlin's line, does that, do you think, lead to increased support for the war?
And will it prepare the ground for wider conscription and indeed for the economic negative economic consequences which will come with a long war? I think there are a number of aspects to this. If there's one group of people that the Kremlin is worried about, it's the soldiers' mothers and indeed the soldiers' wives.
For some reason, which we can talk about, Russian men don't like to be seen as pacifists or not supporting the war. The women are much more forthright, and they have a history of causing a lot of problems to previous governments.
and any demonstrations are repressed with great brutality of soldiers' mothers. Many of these women are not actually opponents of the war. They're just saying, you know, why are so many being killed? Why are we not getting our money? So at the moment, you could see that as being a manageable threat. But if the war goes on too long, I would really worry about the soldiers' mothers.
As for the conscription, the Kremlin doesn't seem to be having too much problem filling its recruitment targets. I think they're being fulfilled by up to about 85%, which is not a disaster. We often think that this war is going to go on for a long time. The Kremlin seems to have decided that they are winning the information war.
This war is not going to be decided actually on the battlefield with who has the more guns and men. It will be decided by convincing the Americans and the Europeans to stop supporting Ukraine, or rather that supporting Ukraine is a losing bet.
So their thinking is that 2025, next year, will be the decisive one. And by the end of it, they would hope to see Ukraine's allies forcing Zelensky to come to the table and basically accept their terms. They think they're getting there. I mean, you look at what's happening in Washington, not very many weapons coming from there. And the opinion polls clearly show that
that support for arming Ukraine, continuing to arm Ukraine, has dropped dramatically among Republicans, and particularly, even more so, among Republicans in Washington. Now, I think you'd have been struck, like we've all been, Alan, by these extraordinary videos that have been put out, obviously with state approval of the treatment of these four captured civilians.
suspects. One of them was having his ear cut off, another showing with great glee having his genitals wired up to a battery
Now, this is clearly some sort of performative retribution, which, as I say, has been sanctioned by the Kremlin. What does that tell us, do you think, about Russian society? Clearly, the authorities think that people are going to enjoy this stuff. Well, I've been following Russia for a long time. I was shocked beyond belief to see pictures of these mauled suspects appearing on television. I always thought,
I would have thought Russia, which considers itself a European country, would have at least kept the photographers away. But no, this is performative. And it brings back the Russia of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Both had bloodbaths in Ukraine against real Russians.
opponents, or imagined opponents more in the case of Ivan the Terrible. You know, bodies were strung up on the Kremlin walls and it's said that Peter the Great actually took part in getting rid of his Praetorian guard who were less loyal to him than they ought to be. So Putin's always talking about going back to the Russian Empire and I hadn't realised
quite how far back he was going. So the Kremlin obviously thinks that this is what they need to show to the people. Maybe it's a distraction, give people something to look at and stop thinking about the incompetence of the FSB. Yes, just a distraction technique. But I can't tell you how shocked I am, basically, at that. This event has shed
light on the fact that Russia does have a very large Muslim minority, whereas Muslim communities spread around the vast territories that
it occupies. What do you think the attack and the aftermath are gonna mean for relations between those Muslim communities and the center? - Well, Russia's a huge country. About 10% of the population are Muslims. These are not mostly immigrants, recent immigrants. They were people who were incorporated into the Russian empire, such as the Tatars. That's the remains of the Mongol empire.
And, well, they've been more or less reliable citizens for a very long time, well integrated. But you have to look at different regions. In the North Caucasus, particularly Chechnya, there was a lot of unrest when the Soviet Union collapsed. I think the Kremlin believes that they've got that under control with their Chechen placeman keeping the tribes under control.
I would say what was more complicated is that the Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and others, their security services used to be pretty much integrated into the Russian service, even though they were independent. They can see that Putin's star is fading, his power is declining.
and they're creating more distance between themselves and Moscow. So I think Moscow could have relied on having intelligence on exactly what was going on in the central Asian countries from those governments itself. Now, I think they're a bit blind. You saw that some of the suspects were Tajiks. That's the smallest of the stans, Tajikistan.
And it's a new area which Russia has to develop a lot more intelligence gathering. But as in Russia itself, the support for Islamic State, I don't think will be particularly large. But in Central Asia, close to Afghanistan, it's a different story. Okay, just before we go, Alan, I just wanted to ask you about your new Substack account, which is related to The Red Hotel, your terrific book.
which is, if you haven't read it, a riveting, highly entertaining account of the press corps who were installed in the Metropole Hotel in Moscow during the Second World War. Well, there's now a, is it Netflix? One of the big streaming outfits is putting out a drama based on, well, some of it takes part in the
Metropole Hotel in wartime. And you've linked your book in the Substack to this new series, haven't you? Yep. Yes, I've just been comparing fact and fiction, for example. The Red Hotel is the true story of the people living in the hotel in wartime, particularly the British and American correspondents and their Soviet translators. They got very close together in the wartime. The
The TV series is called A Gentleman in Moscow, which is an adaptation of Amortel's fantastically successful Book of the Same Name, which follows a fictional count who is sentenced to live his whole life inside the hotel for slightly fantastic reasons.
So I've been looking at the distance. The difference is particularly there's a lot of fine dining and fine eating and fine wines. And I've recalled the almost inedible food, which I remember eating there in the 70s. There was a dish called chicken with apples, which I thought was a mistake on the menu, but it was indeed a scrawny chicken leg in water with some sort of tiny walnut-sized stunted apples in it.
Of course, in the book, things are much grander. They even produce bouillabaisse, which requires at least 12 ingredients impossible to find in Russia. So I'm having a little bit of fun with that. And I'm looking at, for example, the count got off lightly. People of aristocrats were normally sent to Siberia. I've just...
comparing his life in the hotel, which was very constrained in the book, with a Polish victim of the gulag and sort of the life he would have had if he'd been forced to live in Siberia. And also looking at when he arrives in the film, rather I've only seen the adverts,
He has an amazing sort of sable-colored coat. I'm comparing it with the journalists who came to Russia. They didn't really think they'd be long enough there to need a coat. They all had to buy things from secondhand shops. And particularly the Reuters correspondent could only find a yellow dogskin coat, which still smelled abominably of dogginess. And so he was always called Fido wherever he went.
A few amusing sidelines on the fictional Metropole and the reality of the real thing.
Sounds fascinating. Alan, thanks so much for joining us. Okay. Thank you for having me. Now, all this sounds to me like a hinge moment, Saul. I think that if Putin continues down this path of ignoring the real threat from IS and raining down punishment on Ukraine, he's boxing himself ever more tightly into a corner, isn't he? Russia's got some 14 million Muslim citizens, and there are millions of other Muslim migrant workers.
The four suspects appear to be Tajiks. Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic. The Tajiks are well represented among IS Khorasan province members. This operates mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They've attacked the Russian diplomatic mission in Kabul in the past. Now, the Taliban who run the place don't like them much, but they haven't done a great deal about them. They haven't really gone after them in any serious way. So they've
had a pretty free reign there. Now Putin's got a huge potential problem on his hands, which he seems to have given little thought to as a result of his obsession with Ukraine. He's got to be very careful about inflaming opinion among Russian Muslims and those resentful outlying areas with large Muslim populations who may harbor separatist ambitions.
So think about it. Islamic terror is a global problem, and to deal with it, you need global partners. Now, Putin's global partners are, at the moment, Iran, North Korea, and China, none of which are going to be much use to him in this particular circumstance. So looking back to what happened post 9-11,
Back in those days, Russia and the US worked together as partners, but that was then. Those days are long, long gone. So he's only got his own pretty ramshackle security system
resources to rely on. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the broad point to make here, Patrick, is it's always a problem when you should be thinking broadly in strategic terms, what are the many threats that any nation has to face when you concentrate on a single one? And, you know, I'm talking of partners. I mean, Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, who's, you know, pretty much a puppet of Putin, as we know,
is already sending out the wrong messages because he's released a statement to the press saying that those Tajik terrorists were actually heading for Belarus. Now, clearly, they would not have been intending to enter Belarus if they had been agents of the Ukrainians. So already the information is beginning to fracture. This concentration on Ukraine is a problem for Russia. It is putting all its eggs in one basket. And we may see sooner or later that it's going to be a major problem for Russia.
On the positive side, of course, we will always like to bring a little bit of positive news. We should mention the fact that France is making up for its rather sluggish performance in sending arms to Ukraine with an announcement by the French Defense Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, who said a few days ago that Paris will be arming Kiev with high-tech precision guided bombs and advanced artillery pieces.
These precision-guided AASM bombs will be rigged for Danish and Dutch F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine expects in May or June. Speaking at a government presentation to media called Industrial Strengthening Arms and Munitions, Le Corneau said his government intends to overhaul France's military production and increase capacity and output, and that the Ukrainian military will receive a healthy share of the weaponry
So better late than never in that sense. And also more news that ships, another two of these amphibious landing ships have been struck by what seems to be a kind of barrage of storm shadow missiles with all kinds of drones.
preventing the Russians from intercepting them. And they pretty much got nothing left as far as the Black Sea fleet's concerned, certainly in terms of amphibious capability patching. So that more good news and more evidence that the strategy for the Ukrainians ensuring that at least the western part of the Black Sea is free of Russian interference is working. Okay, that's enough for part one. Do join us in part two when we'll be answering all your questions.
Welcome back. Well, some of you may be wondering what reaction in Ukraine has been to the Crocus Hall atrocity. And to give you a little sense of that, we've had a message from our good friend and frequent contributor, Asgol Kruszylnicki, who is on the ground of the country at the moment. And this is what he said.
I also haven't come across anyone here shedding tears over the terror attack on the theatre in Moscow. It's hard to feel sorry for Russians out for an entertaining evening while their government and army daily inflict violence and destruction on Ukraine. Russians are outraged by a terrorist attack against civilians in a theatre but are oblivious to the 400-plus mostly women and kids
killed when Russian planes bombed a theatre which they were sheltering in during Moscow's onslaught against Mariupol. The word children was painted in huge letters on the theatre roof. And I think that, Patrick, pretty much puts it into perspective, doesn't it? It's not surprising that the Ukrainians are not feeling any great sympathy for the Russians at this moment.
Yeah, it'd be rather surprising if they were in the circumstances. Got one here from Tom, doesn't say where he's from, which says, "...with Saul about to release his book on the parachute regiment and airborne forces," that's Sky Warriors, if you're interested, coming up very soon in the next week or two.
Tom asks, is vertical envelopment a potential solution to breaking the stalemate on the Eastern Front? Could a daring and unexpected airborne operation turn the tide or has the action at Hostomel early on in the war, that was when Russian airborne forces tried a coup d'etat,
has that once again confined airborne operations to the history books. He goes on, I would drop a load of blokes on the west bank of the Dnipro and open up a Kerson bridgehead. Great pod and much enjoy your Second World War episodes. Well, that's good to hear. What do you say, Syl? You're the expert.
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it makes me think Tom might have a bit of airborne experience himself. I think Tom's right to ask the question, have airborne operations been confined to history? I don't think so, because even in the Second World War, you did need a certain amount of air superiority to launch a successful airborne operation. And as we've discussed many times on the pod already, neither side really appears to have that at the moment, certainly not the Ukrainians.
Will the F-16s make a difference? Will the degrading of the Russian air capability, which of course has been ongoing with the destruction of some of their radar planes and many of their advanced fighter bombers, make a difference? Yeah, possibly. But until the Ukrainians can be certain that they have some kind of air superiority, I think launching airborne operations are incredibly dangerous because by the nature of the beast, when you're bringing in
either helicopters or large planes to deliver these airborne troops they are very vulnerable and you need to make sure they are safe with a certain amount of air cover and you you absolutely can't say that ukraine has that at the moment so i wouldn't be holding my breath that we're going to be seeing any more airborne operations anytime soon
Do you want to read out the one from Mark McElwain? Okay, moving on. We've got one from Mark McElwain in Toronto, Canada. I found intriguing your discussion about Russia claiming to hear French being spoken among fighters. He then gives a link to an article that was in the Globe and Mail, which is a Toronto newspaper. This link from a Canada newspaper describes the recent death of a Quebecer fighting at a brigade of Canadian volunteers in Ukraine.
The size of this group is not clear, but as most come from Quebec, it could account for what the Russians claim to have heard. What do you think, Patrick? Yeah, well, it's not surprising, really, that they have been picking up chatter in foreign languages on the other side of the lines, the Russians, that is.
Because there are still these foreign volunteer units operating there. We're not hearing much about them these days, but I think a pattern seems to have developed there since the early days when you had a lot of people rushing to Ukraine out of a mixture of motives, bent on fighting the Russians there.
Some of them were idealists, some were fantasists, some were frankly not the sort of people you'd want to have on your side in a trench or a foxhole. And the collision with the harsh reality of war thinned the ranks quite rapidly, I think. So...
Those who the professionals derided as the Call of Duty Brigade soon found out the war was not a video game and hightailed it home. Since then, these thrill-seeking types have been shunned by the Ukrainian army.
And I've been talking actually to Colin Freeman, a great guy who's been reporting from Ukraine from the beginning and who's featured on the pod. He's spoken to quite a few of the volunteers he's encountered on his travels. Now, he's finding that those who he meets now are more professional, are more dedicated. There's an outfit he came across called the Chosen outfit.
which has got many Americans and Brits in the ranks, but other nationalities as well. They seem to exemplify this new trend. Now, if you think you're joining, you're told at the outset in very harsh terms that you're going to spend most of the time fighting, that you won't be heading back to Kiev for R&R on a regular basis. You stand a very good chance of getting killed or injured. And basically, there's no room for anyone who can't hack it.
military experience is obligatory, which certainly wasn't the case in the early days. I think the fact is that at this stage, you're more of a help than a hindrance to the Ukrainian cause unless you really know what you're doing.
Okay, we've got a good one here from Cameron Wilson in Australia. I've recently discovered the Battleground podcast series and I'm thoroughly enjoying finding out more about the war in Ukraine and your Battleground 44 series. On that note, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on which historical general of any nation you think would be the best commander of Ukraine's forces at the moment, assuming, of course, that they could be brought up to speed with all modern technologies. I'm going to start with you, Cameron.
Well, I've got my own vote for that. And actually, it's someone who I've just been chatting to a biographer of recently. That's Rob Lyman. And he wrote an excellent book called Slim Master at War years ago, 20 years ago, in fact.
And the great thing about Slim was that he could do it all. I mean, when I drew up my short list years ago, I wrote a pamphlet called, you know, The Greatest British Commander. And it was really a list of what a great commander would need. And Slim pretty much ticked all the boxes. And in very simplistic terms, he was used to dealing with
a kind of polyglot army. I mean, perhaps he's just been talking about some of the foreign volunteers. I mean, Slim's army, the 14th Army in the Far East, didn't have all the kit it needed. It was very under-resourced, actually. And people have often asked the question, how would he have done against the Germans if he'd actually come over to Europe? I think very well, actually, because his foe were the Japanese army
They'd already proven to be an incredibly formidable foe, as we know from some of the things I've already spoken about on the pod in relation to the Pacific, but also, of course, fighting against the French, the British and also the Dutch. And they'd pretty much swept all before them. And yet, despite all of that, and with, as I say, you know, some pretty threadbare resources, he welded together really by, you know, man management, retraining,
and cleverly working out the best way psychologically to defeat the Japanese. And that is just the sort of commander we need on the ground. Someone who can fight battles, but also can see the bigger strategic picture. What about you, Patrick? Who's the front runner in your mind? Well, maybe a rather surprising one. I think you've got to stand back and see what was the problem here. And the problem is Ukraine's inferiority in numbers and materials. So you need someone who can actually...
fight effectively even at those disadvantages in a difficult overall strategic situation such as Ukraine finds itself in today. So the name that sprung to mind actually was Ervin Rommel, the Desert Fox. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of Rommel as a man,
There's been a lot of romantic rubbish talked about the Desert Fox. There's a sort of right-wing upper-class Brit who has a male, I should say, who has a soft spot for Rommel. But the truth, as far as I can see, was although he was not a Nazi as such, he was like the rest of the Wehrmacht brass. They were quite taken with Hitler from the beginning and were quite happy to go along with him as long as possible.
as Germany was winning. And the same went for most of the conspirators in the July 20 Stauffenberg assassination plot in 1944. Basically, their motivation was self-interest rather than any great sort of humanitarian change of heart. However, Rommel was a superb soldier and operated brilliantly at great disadvantage, as was demonstrated in North Africa in 1942.
where even though he was kind of weak in all areas compared to his British and Commonwealth allies, he still managed to inflict a series of resounding defeats on them. And the culmination, of course, was the capture of the port of Tobruk in June 1942, a particularly low stage in the fortunes of the British war, when his forces, the Africa Corps, captured 32,000 Commonwealth troops, quite an amazing feat.
Number that as well as the port, which was, of course, very, very important strategically and huge quantities of supplies. So I think what the Ukrainians need now is an inspirational figure like Rommel who can think outside the box and keep the enemy guessing, wrong foot them wherever possible.
Well, who is there available? I mean, we've run through Zeluzhny, we've now got Siersky in charge at the top, both of whom have had their go, haven't they? And I think it would be interesting to see what Kirill Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, would do if he had the chance. He's got many of those qualities I'm talking about and he's ruthless to boot. Well, maybe he will get his turn to command in the field one day soon.
So it'd be very interesting to see how he would go about things if that comes to pass. Yeah, well, very good point, Patrick. And actually, it relates to our next question from Paul from Toronto in Canada. And he makes the point Ukraine seems determined to take back Crimea somehow, but it still seems far out of their operational ability at the moment with the proliferation of drones being able to observe and strike.
any size force that could be amassed to tackle the invasion of Crimea. How will Ukraine undertake this monumental task when they do have the equipment and manpower? In my mind, I'm thinking of the vast resources that had to be put together to undertake the D-Day landings. Ukraine will not have that. So what do they do? Well, you know, as Patrick's just mentioned, you need to think out of the box on this one. And it strikes me they already are
The extent to which Budanov is driving the strategy on this, we don't know, but we can suspect because actually there is no intention as far as I can see to take back Crimea by force. As we can see by the relatively little activity with the bridgehead over the Dnieper, which we thought might lead to some kind of attempt to get to the neck of the Crimean Peninsula, what they seem to be trying to do...
hence my point earlier about knocking out more of the Black Sea fleet, is actually isolate Crimea. A far more sensible strategy, you stop supplies coming in both by amphibious ships and ultimately by the bridge. I think what's going to happen next, Patrick, in the next few weeks, if not few months, is a serious attempt to take down that bridge.
We're already hearing that the Russians are planning for that. They're thinking of putting in a railway that's going to enable them to bring in supplies by the land bridge. But once you throttle the bridge, the sea route into Crimea, and then ultimately you take the land bridge, it will be completely isolated. And I think that's the long-term strategy when it comes to Crimea. Yeah, it's a classic example of kind of a 21st century version of blockade, isn't it? Really blockade rather than invasion. I mean, they both got their...
their place and it's a question of which one you actually go for. But I think that's clearly the way that they are going to go given their inability in terms of manpower and resources to launch anything like a conventional attack and occupation. I'm just going to read out one here from Rohit who says he's a long time listener from New York and this is on the subject of the draft age in Ukraine which is something that exercises quite a lot of our listeners.
And Rohit says, look, you know, you're repeatedly mentioning draft age without talking about Ukrainian demographics. He gives us a link to a bar chart from 2020 to onwards, which really demonstrates, he says, what would happen to Ukraine's future social and economic fabric if the numbers of 18 to 27-year-olds died en masse?
Now, this figure that he goes on to cite is really quite staggering. He says there are literally 80% more people who are now in the 33 to 36 age bracket than those who are currently in the 18 to 27 category. So that means really that that's where the manpower is in that older echelon. And if the younger group was decimated, you're basically wiping out
Ukraine's future. This is where the future lies. So you've got a, it's a very serious strategic decision being made here to preserve Ukraine's future. And, you know, Rohit thinks, and I think we'd have to agree with him that it's the correct one.
Yeah, and I mean, it's extraordinary, really, Patrick, and you know, mea culpa for both of us not noticing this before. And by the way, we've had this mentioned by a number of people. I've had an email separately to the podcast, someone making the same point. So obviously, we've exercised people's minds on this by our ignorance, so to speak, but it is absolutely fascinating and chilling.
to think that this younger age group, which normally, as we've said many times, would be doing the fighting for nations, simply isn't there. It's a minuscule proportion of the population and they simply can't afford to waste it. And more than that, even if they called them up, it wouldn't actually produce that many people for the draft. So all of that makes a lot more sense, I have to say, when we begin to look at Ukraine's determination not to lower the age limit. I'm just going to read this one out from Martin Moriarty in County Kerry, England.
in Ireland. He says, "I was listening to the podcast of March 22nd and would just like to make a comment on a recurring theme I hear about the Russian appetite to sustain losses and the hopeful expectation that somehow there'll be a surge
of dissent in Russia as losses mount that will lead to a toppling of Putin. Well, I don't think either of us have been terribly optimistic about that outcome, have we saw? But neither certainly is Martin. He says, I would not be hopeful of such a scenario. Revolution is very much the exception to the rule and unlikely to happen again.
Again, anytime soon, mainly for one reason, apathy. Apathy to politics is deep within the Russian soul. Apathy keeps you away from the attentions of the secret police and out of prison. This is as true today as it was in Tsarist times. He goes on to cite Orlando Fages, who we had on the podcast in one of the early episodes, his book, The Whispers. He says it's an incredible read.
into the psyche of Russian society, even though it's based on the situation 90 odd years ago, I believe it still has resonances in today's Russia. Well, that's certainly true. That's a point made by all our Russia experts, isn't it? The continuity of both, you know, politics and
And, you know, Russian attitudes down not just the decades, but the centuries. Yeah, I mean, the problem with these points that have been made many times, Patrick, on the podcast by Alan and many others and Orlando, I think, when we spoke to him all those months ago, is that there are, I'm afraid, always exceptions to the rule.
There was a Russian revolution. And if you believe that, you know, the intrinsic basic position of the Russians is apathy and that, you know, that they're never going to get to that point. Well, how on earth did the Russian revolution come about? And the other point we've made many times is that Afghanistan, the number of deaths there is
actually produced a reaction among the mothers that forced the Soviet regime to pay attention and eventually led to their withdrawal. Now, there is a big difference, I know, between the Soviet regime and the current Putin regime, but there are also some similarities. So I don't think we can ever say never again. And I think the point we made today about this terrorist attack being a real game changer for Russia in terms of the way the Russian people see Putin and the deal they have with
him to protect them and keep the state secure and to prevent this sort of outrage. I think that may be a moment in which everything turns, but we'll have to wait and see on that, of course. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. The deal that Putin basically did with the Russian people is, I will give you a degree of prosperity and I will give you a high degree of
of guaranteed security in return for your freedoms. You trade your freedom for prosperity and security. And now that compact, I would...
say it must be under some sort of strain now, no matter how much propaganda being pumped out to try and deflect blame from Putin and his cohort. You know, people must be thinking to themselves, surely, that, hey, you know, this isn't going according to plan. This isn't what we bargained for. This wasn't the deal. But, you know, who knows?
Okay, that's all we have time for. Do join us on Wednesday for another episode of Battleground 44. And of course, next Friday, when we'll be giving you the latest news from Ukraine and answering listeners' questions. Goodbye.