Ukraine faces Russian summer offensive as Putin throws 500,000 troops into battle: The Frontline

Ukraine faces Russian summer offensive as Putin throws 500,000 troops into battle: The Frontline

Russia has made its fastest gain since the first weeks of the war and it claims it has mustered a record force of over half a million men as it launches what appears to be the first stage of its summer offensive we’re in my name is Jerome starky defense editor at the Sun newspaper and this is Frontline your weekly Roundup of the most important news from the war in Ukraine Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in China meeting Xi Jinping and a European leader has been gunned down in the streets Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Foo is fighting for his life after being shot in the stomach but we’re going to start today with the reports from Ukraine of the harv offensive on the northeastern front Russian forces have advanced at least five miles into Ukrainian territory over the space of a week that is unusually fast this has been a war of slogging grinding offensives at the cost of huge numbers in terms of men and material but this offensive has made fast gains for Russia it’s interesting it does not appear that Russia is attempting to re to to capture Ukraine’s second largest city the city of HEV but it has made these incursions into rural HEV Province starting last Friday with an attack on the tab the larget town city it’s called in Ukraine of V Chans home initially to some 18,000 people only about 300 residents left as it is reduced to Rubble by this Onslaught The Institute for the study of War has suggested that Russia’s ambition appears to be create to create a buffer zone territories of khv and belr are adjoining uh the city the edge of the city of har is only 15 mil from the Russian border and both sides have long been able ble to fire uh across that border at positions either side nonetheless The Institute study War suggesting Russia may be trying to push Ukraine’s forces back it would also appear that while this is not an attempt to take harv City it is clearly an attempt to stretch and pin down Ukraine’s already overstretched Defenders to draw reserves to this new front on the northeast uh of the line of contact potentially drawing troops away from the donbass which appears to be to continue to be Russia’s main effort around places like bahmut and now chazar around Aviva both those towns which Russia captured over the course of the last year at huge cost and where Russia continues to try and grind forward suggestions from the Rousy think tank that this is uh the opening stage of Russia’s long-expected summer offensive we might also expect to see more scum in on the south central front of zapia possibly also in Kon but again those fights likely to be attempts to pin down draw and distract Ukraine’s Defenders to allow Russia uh to put more pressure on in the east in the donbass we’ve heard from General cillo buinov the head of Ukraine’s gu Military Intelligence who said that they have no more reserves to commit slightly desperate situation in Ukraine uh the National Security Council estimated that some 30,000 Russian troops are currently involved in this offensive with another 50,000 sitting in reserve in Russian belgaro Province threatening both harv and neighboring sui again keeping Ukraine’s forces pinned down president zalinski has cancelled All Foreign trips uh while in order to to be there in order to to monitor the situation across this harv offensive but the suggestion more recently in recent hour from Ukraine is that the pace of that Russian Advance has slowed the front line is again stabilizing Ukrainian forces we understand have fallen back to new positions there are reports unconfirmed reports I picked up this week that perhaps this was an opportunist attack by Russia whilst Ukraine has long expected has long been tracking the buildup of Russian forces in belgrad perhaps long long expected an attack in that area of course the exact timing an exact location uh was still something of a surprise and this a suggestion that perhaps Russian forces may have seen a rotation or a gap in the front line in Ukrainian strength and exploited that when they launched the attack it came in force whilst the troops were operating in small numbers uh in small assault squads uh they were backed by a massive bombardment of rockets and air launched Glide bombs the first stage of the Russian attack came around vchan the second element some 20 miles to the West directly north of KV around the town of uh lipy those those positions appear to be uh that that offensive appears to be slowing down but worth keeping an eye on that and we will keep you updated on how that Russian offensive moves and whether or not it uh leads to any sort of secondary attacks further east in the donbass the other things we want to talk about today Russia’s uh President Putin’s visit to China now this is at least his third uh visit to China and of course since the war started and of course he went there just before uh invading Ukraine when President XI and Putin described a friendship with no limits now there are two things I suspect Vladimir Putin is trying to get out of this relationship with China the first is prestige Vladimir Putin does not have many allies and he certainly has no allies as powerful as president shei he is his most significant supporter and the fact that Beijing is willing to welcome Vladimir Putin is uh is a coup for Russia it is symbolic and the fact that Beijing is continuing to stand with Russia will give Moscow some sucker as the rest of the world lines up against him and on the side of Ukraine but more importantly perhaps than just the theatrics and the symb symbology of this visit is what it might mean in terms of material support for Russia’s War we know that Russia has ramped up its War economy in a really urgent some might say desperate bid to Resource its forces on the front line and Russia has also been looking around the world as Ukraine has to see where it can Source more crucially more ammunition and from Iran we’ve seen it trying to source and successfully sourcing those longrange kamakazi drones now China as far as as I understand has so far not provided uh weapons that will tip the balance that’s according to briefings from Western officials but it has been providing parts and it has been providing some ammunition that will be key to Vladimir Putin he will be uh desperate to keep that tap turned on of course Russia’s other sources of ammunition have been North Korea and Iran its options are limited but it is also ramping up its own domestic production uh to keep itself in the fight Russia has lost a staggering 450,000 men either killed or injured on the front line thousands of Tanks various estimates putting the figure upwards of 3,000 tanks many more armored vehicles but if there’s one lesson from history we know that Russia has proven itself able to absorb and endure spectacular losses and to continue fighting but without bullets without ammunition then those forces on the front line will be vulnerable and that vulnerability is something Ukraine has experienced it is something Russia is trying to avoid that is why Vladimir Putin is in Beijing and we’re going to come back now to the ongoing story of the assassination attempt of prime minister Robert Foo in Slovakia he was gunned down in the town of Handa Northeast of the capital Bratislava after finishing a government meeting a government away day and he was out and about on the streets meeting the crowd shaking hands when somebody lunged forward with a pistol we understand and shot him repeatedly in the stomach he was airlifted to hospital he’s still as we record this fighting for his life now this is highly unusual highly disturbing there are echoes the situation with most Jeopardy of course are The Echoes of the assassination of the arch Duke Ferdinand which led the world careering into World War I in 1914 this is different but uh nonetheless a moment fraught with Jeopardy because of we still don’t understand who uh or rather the motivations we don’t understand the motivations of the wouldbe Assassin we still don’t we still can’t say whether or not Robert Foo is going to survive there are some suggestions uh that the man who’s been arrested had been a member of a pro- Russian group within Slovakia which is surprising because Robert FICO was also a ardently pro- Russian Prime Minister there’s a lot there still to uh emerge we’ll have to wait for that picture to become more clear uh and we will keep you updated on that of course if you’re watching on YouTube and you have any questions please do ask them in the comments below we’re continuing to get a fantastic response from you to these episode so please do keep making your comments and asking your questions um one of the questions from last week was how many forces uh does Russia have in Ukraine it’s a really timely question because as I alluded to at the beginning the suggestions Russia has now mastered a force of over half a million men that figure comes from Dr Jack Watling a war expert at the london-based rousi think tank he made the point that the prospects for Ukraine at the moment are Bleak and it needs to be able to muster more men it needs to increase the size of its Army it like Russia has suffered very heavy losses over the course of the last two plus years and that need for more men was also echoed uh by General s Richard Baron who spoke to us spoke to me on our sister show uh the world at war and I’d recommend uh you have a watch of that if you’re interested in the situation in Ukraine but the suggestion now Russia has mastered some 510 thousand soldiers who are involved in the invasion of Ukraine that is significantly larger than the force it had on the first day of the war but of course on the first day of the war Moscow was expecting its Invasion to be over in a matter of days if not weeks and we are now many hundreds of days into this conflict more than two years in and it shows no sign of abating General Sir Richard Barons in that interview uh with World at War also suggesting that this would go into 2025 202 six perhaps before Ukraine can start to roll back the Russian invasion he said it’s not a war that can be fought against the calendar but it is a war in which Ukraine is going to need more men and more weapons and commitment from its allies to provide the weapons and the ability within Ukraine to raise the Armed Forces question number two is whether given what we’ve seen of Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine indeed the the uh sometimes Rusty shaky surprising inly poor capability of those armed forces are we confident that their nuclear forces are up to scratch the short answer is we can’t be certain but we do know uh we were the world was surprised in many respects by the poor performance of Russia’s Armed Forces uh we contined to see sort of tactical strategic failures on the battlefield which it compensates for with scale we have also seen Russia learn in quickly on the battlefield the evolution of Technology on both sides on the Russian side and the Ukrainian side in areas particularly like drones and electronic warfare and Russia does have very sophisticated air defense weapons and we’ve seen them working well for Russia in many instances during this campaign that’s not to say weapons haven’t got through Russia’s nuclear forces are one of moscow’s strategic if not moscow’s strategic top priority so we would have to assume I would suggest that its nuclear forces are in good working order it would be rash and fool Hardy to make a calculation on the fact that Russia’s nukes would not work this is on the back of course of Putin launching those non-strategic nuclear drills a few of you asking why I was using the phrase non-strategic rather than tactical and was that scam angering no it’s not scam angering nonstrategic was the term uh that Russia’s Ministry of Defense used to describe those drills which had announced uh on the back of uh suggestions from France and Britain or a former British Minister that troops should be sent to Ukraine Western troops should be sent to Ukraine and in response to uh Britain’s foreign secretary endorsing strikes with Western weapons into Ukraine now Russia announced what it called non-strategic drills those are we understand drills with tactical nuclear weapons tactical nuclear weapons smaller yield than strategic but also at the Victory Day parade in Moscow Vladimir Putin made the point that his strategic forces the intercontinental ballistic missiles which can annihilate cities and countries that they are combat ready so both types of nuclear weapons have been mentioned in the Russian saber rattling and my final question that I’m going to answer today is are there any weapons which can turn the tide in the war it’s a good question because we’ve seen Ukraine focusing over the course of this war on specific weapons that closed the skies at the they wanted the air defense weapons those have been vital for protecting cities protecting civilians and protecting high value military assets throughout the course of the war but Ukraine needs more of them they have in some sense helped Ukraine halt the tide but they haven’t turned it we saw Ukraine demanding tanks tanks tanks and that blocked that was effectively unblocked when Britain sent the challenges then Germany and allies sent the leopards and America send the Abrams but they have not turned the tide either indeed the American Abrams have been pulled off the front line and now of course Ukraine is waiting for the f-16s the American made F-16 Jets which are going to come from the Netherlands and Denmark which it hopes will turn the tide but I have to say the experts I’ve spoken to have said it is unlikely to f-16s are unlikely to turn the tide they will help there’ll be a morale boost General Sir Richard Barons I asked him this exact question in World at War and again if you’re interested I’d highly recommend you watch it he said it is always unwise to look for a silver bullet what Ukraine needs is it needs enough men enough equipment uh enough training and and enough ammunition to sustain well-trained men well equipped men and women in the fight for long enough to uh not only to Halt Russia’s advances But ultimately uh to roll them back there does not appear to be one single weapon that will turn the tide and indeed that was also the message of the previous command commander in- chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces General Valerie zi who said at the end of last year both sides were more or less technologically matched and then he did not expect what he called a beautiful breakthrough on the front lines that’s all we’ve got time for this week as ever thank you for your questions if you’ve got them and you’re watching on YouTube please make them in the comments below and we’ll do our best to answer them next week

On this week’s episode of The Frontline with Jerome Starkey, Russia has made its fastest gains since the first weeks of the war amid claims it has mustered a record force of half a million men as it launches what appears to be the first stage of its summer offensive.

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