Always good to see you make now this move towards
hockey,
one of Russia's biggest land operations in recent times,
Ukraine was expecting it. But how do you assess Russian
strategy?
Are they probing? Are they getting a a foothold?
Do you think they'll attempt to take the city or
could it all be a faint?
Yeah, good day, Michael. Well,
in March, President Putin actually forecasts the formation of buffer
zones in Ukraine itself to reduce the number of their
long range attacks.
So this could well be part of that strategy.
At the end of the day,
what the Russians are doing is in opening up an
additional front,
putting the Ukrainians under more stress about where they put
their ground forces,
their artillery and their air defenses,
which are already under tremendous stress.
Yeah, Ukraine's President Solinsky said on Saturday.
There's a counter offensive starting.
As we said, more troops are moving.
How? How equipped, though, is Ukraine to do that successfully,
to to hold, let alone push back?
Well, it's a very tenuous situation for the Ukrainians.
They have some reserves. You always keep some troops in
reserve,
and we've seen them actually rotate troops in other eastern
battlegrounds over the last month or so.
But they will have reserves.
But they're stretching it very,
very thin indeed.
Kiev is of course Ukraine's second biggest city.
I think it's 1.3 million people.
I mean, could one strategy by Russia to be to
not take the city in its entirety with all the
difficulties that that would entail,
but, you know, get close enough with short range artillery,
just make life there unlivable?
I mean, what could be the scenario strategically?
Well, certainly that was what the Russians were able to
do in the first couple months of the war.
It was only with that stunning September 22 counter offensive
by the Ukrainians that they're actually able to clear the
Russians out of artillery range.
Certainly the Russians would like the whole risk.
It makes Ukrainians commit more forces there,
but it also assists what the Russians want to do,
which is depopulate eastern Ukraine.
So there are a few objectives the Russians have here
and certainly they want to impact on the morale of
both Ukrainian soldiers and civilians at large.