Biden gives Ukraine green light to strike Russia with US weapons north of Kharkiv | Keir Giles

Biden gives Ukraine green light to strike Russia with US weapons north of Kharkiv | Keir Giles

I would assume that this is the start of a broader relaxation across the board and of course it’s not the just the United States that this effects there are other countries who West weapon systems Ukraine has already been using uh with far fewer restrictions than those set by the White House hello and welcome to front line for times radio with me Kau and this time we are catching up with Kier Giles Kier is a Russia Analyst at the international Affairs Think Tank chattam house he’s previously worked at the UK defense Academy writing and Advising on issu ises ranging from Russian military defense and security issues to strategy and Doctrine he’s the author of multiple Publications explaining the Russian approach to Warfare and his latest book is Russia’s war on everybody and what it means for you k j really good to see you and just to qualify to people we are meeting now to update a conversation we had before the announcement from the US that it would allowed qualified use of its weapons to strike inside Russia by Ukraine um we’ll hear the later part of that conversation before the announcement later but just wanted to catch up with you to reflect on that particular announcement um that that until now that had really been something that had limited what ukrainians were wanting to do Ukrainian forces and this particular um announcement allows very limited use around the hke area to strike into Russia in the defense of HEV um what can Ukraine do exactly with this new permission well of course the fine details are never made public and what precisely the parameters are the limitations on exactly what Ukraine can do is something that for very good reasons nobody will be discussing uh anywhere that Russia could hear it but of course the reaction around the world has been on the one hand enormous relief that there’s been this slight policy shift from the United States but also a collective face palan because of the incrementalism because the United States is still trying to control the extent to which is happening keep a damper on how the conflict develops and as you said it’s in this very limited area with very strict rules on what exactly can be engaged some people are interpreting this as the US once again uh looking to what has already happened to to guide its uh its policy on Ukraine as opposed to what’s likely to happen in the future they’re dealing with a situation that has already passed because all this came to a head when Ukraine was facing the building Russian offensive against H and that’s what this policy would be would be um would be most effective at dealing with but of course that situation has already gone it doesn’t address the future situation that Ukraine will face along other sectors of the front so is it too little too late well uh sadly it confirms the the theory that you can judge these US policy steps these relaxations of us restrictions the supply of of weapon systems to Ukraine by this Grim Tariff of how many unnecessary Ukrainian deaths it takes to actually move the needle on US policy uh once again it’s been the the US facing disaster in Ukraine that has actually brought about this shift plus of course the growing International isolation of the US white house uh and the fact that so many European leaders had either reconfirmed or stated for the first time that it was nonsensical to put these restrictions on how Ukraine was defending itself the outgoing NATO Secretary General seemed to Trail this announcement ahead of the NATO foreign ministers meeting saying that now was the time to lift some of the restrictions using the word sum um do you think this could just be the starting point and we could actually actually see a wider uh softening of those restrictions well of course NATO cannot speak on behalf of individual countries that set their own policy on this but of course it was part of the pressure that was growing on the US when even the NATO Secretary General points out that something needs to change then that does add a certain amount of moral pressure to all of the The Logical and the legal reasons why the US should not be setting these restrictions as for whether it will actually be the first of several relaxations the pattern of us Behavior has been clear the the dogged res resistance to doing what people are calling for in support of Ukraine and then a gradual relaxation and then uh later on things getting easier and as though there had been no limitation in the first place we’ve seen this over and over again with the supplies of weapon systems and capabilities to Ukraine the ones that Ukraine have identified as being essential at any particular phase in the conflict reluctantly and begrudgingly being supplied by the us about a year later in small quantities and then eventually treat it as normal so yes I would assume that this is the start of a broader relaxation across the board and of course it’s not the just the United States that this affects there are other countries who West Weapons Systems Ukraine has already been using uh with far fewer restrictions than those set by the White House let’s move on to other announcements um and the Pentagon said recently it believes Russia has launched an anti-satellite weapon into the same orbit as a US Government satellite whether true or not Russia would want to do this wouldn’t they absolutely right because this is one of the the key areas where Russia feels it is disadvantaged by Western superiority and Military capability and we’ve seen on the battlefield in Ukraine the effect of Russia seeking to counter some of the high technology weapon systems that the Western countries deploy we’ve seen their electronic warfare systems reduce the effectiveness of GPS guided Munitions supplied by the United States for example it’s a technological cat and mouse game there but in space and in other areas where Russia can Target Western Communications it’s been a much longer program uh there have been attempts by Russia to investigate the vulnerabilities of telecommunications infrastructure reconnaissance satellites and so on in space in the subsy domain on land and in Virtual space dating back not just years but decades so this is just the latest twist in Russia looking for ways in which it can counter that technological advantage that Western countries particularly the United States have can you just begin by giving us an overview of how you see the war in Ukraine at this moment both on the battle lines and in The Wider political Arena are we approaching a turning point well it’s strange the way the media coverage of the war lags behind the actual real situation on the front line sometimes for a couple of weeks so when you’re looking at the picture as it’s being reported in uh in mainstream media it tends not to be an accurate reflection of actually what’s really happening at the moment in Ukraine but there’s no doubt that all of the slightly dire headlines that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks about how Ukraine’s time might potentially be running out do actually indicate there’s a severe problem for Ukraine because it is dealing with the aftermath of that Interruption of USA that period of six or seven months when the supplies on which Ukraine depended were cut off with a US Republican party foot on the hose and of course that has given Russia the ability to to take advantage of Ukraine’s temporary weakness particularly in terms of artillery ratios for example also of course you have the fact that now this new push from Russia and the kariv direction in the north has taken advantage again of another opportunity that’s been offered to Russia by the United States in this case the um prohibition on Ukraine striking into Russia itself which has allowed Russia to build up for its offensive more or less unopposed and also prevented Ukraine from building defensive fortifications to to try to hinder it so with all of those things together plus the the exhaustion of two years of war you can see some justification for these headlines we being seen lately that the the clock is ticking and that’s an interesting reversal because we’ve seen that previously in this conflict said about Russia but Russia is now settling down for the long War it’s mobilizing its economy it’s moving to a full War footing it’s continuing to throw vast amounts of money at recruiting people to throw them into the front line and so it is coming down to a test of attrition and those tests of attrition tend to fail Russia and if the media is a couple of weeks behind in reporting what’s actually happening what’s what’s the discrepancy what is the reality do you think that that’s being missed there it depends on which phase of the campaign we’re looking at there are usually developments on the ground or the way the campaign is shaping on the ground that takes a little while to feed through into the general coverage it’s only if you look at the people who are actually reporting directly from the front lines for example uh did you get a day-to-day update on what the situation is to take the example we have at the moment the descriptions of That Russian offensive towards KV uh are not at the moment generally reflecting the fact that this has been stalled it has been prevented and there is not uh any indication that Russia is actually making a move on the city itself that of course is not necessarily Russia’s objective there’s been a plausible suggestion that what Russia actually wanted to do was create some kind of buffer zone away from Russia’s own border to try to respond to these crossb B attacks these crossb sustained raids that Ukraine had been mounting into Russia’s belgar region but either way of course it’s enormously damaging for the Ukrainian Defenders they’ve been reportedly having to shift defending troops from other sectors of the front line to ensure that Russia doesn’t make any further inroads and this is in a situation where Ukraine’s forces are already stretched thin this kind of thing often elicits nuclear threats by Russia the latest comes from foreign minister Sergey lavro after Belgium’s pledge to send us made f-16s to keev he said he hoped belarussian drills on non-strategic nuclear weapons would knock some sense into our opponents do you think the West’s cautious approach until now um was ever Justified there’s always room for caution when you’re dealing with the possibility that there might be a release of nuclear weapons however there’s a weight of evidence that suggests the early assessments of Russia’s nuclear intimidation program were in fact correct that it is not important when Russia says something you only need to pay attention when Russia does something and the assessment that in fact this was not a realistic threat has been borne out by every single instance that we’ve seen since then because it’s it’s a standard response by Russia something happens they don’t like they find some way of attempting to to press the rhetorical nuclear button not the actual one in order to try to deter it and of course over time the effect of that wears thin now in this particular case we we’ve seen not just Ser Lov but also a range of The Usual Suspects from the Russian foreign Ministry and their spokesman uh doing precisely what they’ve explained their job is trying to ramp up the fear of some kind of nuclear use by Russia and that has been extremely effective of course in constraining specifically the United States and to some extent Germany as well because it builds on a a much longer program of laying the groundwork for this campaign of intimidation when we studied the way in which Russia’s Messengers and its mouthpieces had actually been pushing these messages about Russia being on a nuclear hair trigger we saw it going back a decade plus with this very consistent program of trying to get Western thinkers about escalation to equate that with Russian nuclear use and the result of that has been that instead of talking about escalation management it’s now escalation avoidance because people think that you cannot compete in any form of escalation with Russia because that will inevitably lead to nuclear use that’s a massive strategic success for Russia because it’s completely changed the terms of the debate about deterrence it’s interesting that you talk about this this campaign of intimidation and people like yourself and many other people over and over again highlight that um it’s extraordinary that it still works it is absolutely bizarre uh and of course it is extremely well documented um people uh in this industry have studied very closely how Russia’s nuclear Doctrine has evolved it’s has gone through multiple phases since the end of the Cold War and we more or less know precisely where we are in March of last year there was a chattam house report called specifically a Russian nuclear intimidation how Russia shapes Western behaviors which examined all of this and broke down both the causes and the effect uh and the it is as you say it is extraordinary that we know how this works and yet we see it continue to work on those Western politicians that are willing to buy into this and what is your assessment of how you combat that it is extremely hard to know how exactly that can be can be combed because as always talking about the West as a whole is a little bit misleading because there are different countries with different attitudes of course across that Coalition of countries that are backing Ukraine but I think it’s very indicative that the the countries that are most vocal about disregarding Russia’s nuclear flouncing are precisely the ones that have the the most to lose if they’re wrong it is the Frontline States again it’s the Baltic states Poland Finland all of whom point out very clearly that this there is no uh rationale for paying attention to what Russia says as opposed to what Russia actually may be considering doing now they would be in the front line of any catastrophic consequences from Russian nuclear use and yet they are the most vocal in pointing out indirectly that the United States is wrong to have brought into this Russian narrative and if we just return to to the ground war now in Ukraine in what state do you judge the Russian military at this point and is there any significance in them redeploying the Africa core units to Ukraine do you think one of the most striking things about the current situation is the the consensus that you get from military analysts from people who are long-term rers of the Russian military and also from Chiefs of defense and defense intelligence head and defense ministers across Europe all saying more or less the same thing about their assessment of where the Russian military is first of all that it is a different Army from the one that went into Ukraine in 2022 that one was eviscerated and it’s been rebuilt in a different image but that it is now larger and while they are burning through rapidly their post Soviet stocks of of so of um armored vehicles of artillery and so on uh which is outstripping their ability to actually make new ones it’s still the case that they have reserves to draw and people are estimating 2025 as being the time when finally Russia’s stocks start to run out in the meantime of course Russia has a military Implement which is designed for a different kind of War but it’s the kind of war that Russia is entirely comfortable fighting a war of attrition a war where you don’t count your own casualties a war where bodies are good for soaking up Ukrainian bullets until there are none left yeah and on that point how long do you think they can keep up this Tempo without a massive mobilization well again the assessments from all the people who watch these things closely do seem to concur that Russia at the moment is not having any difficulty in bringing recruits into its Armed Forces partly by throwing vast amounts of money at the problem vast life-changing amounts of money which are for people in rural provincial Russia uh usually very poor areas are actually really um a genuine incentive to go and sign up plus of course Russia is bringing in Manpower from other countries as well we’ve seen um nepales we’ve seen uh Cubans we’ve seen citizens of a number of other countries who have ended up in Ukraine fighting for Russia whether or not they actually intended to be there in the first place now of course it’s a big question just how useful they’re going to be to the Russian war effort because if they don’t speak Russian they’re not going to be very good at following instructions but again if Russia just wants the so-called meat waves if it wants ways of soaking up Ukrainian resilience and Ukrainian bullets then they’ll do the job there have been reports by Russian Mill bloggers that a Russian army General commander of the Russian 20th combined arms Army has been sacked this hasn’t been independently verified but the institute for the study of War said this would be significant as it’s the first dismissal of an officer actively commanding Russian forces what do you what do you think President Putin’s ambition is in general with the recent reappointments and sackings that you’ve seen yes there’s definitely something going on in terms of uh turnover of individuals in responsible positions in the Russian Ministry of defense and in the armed forces and again the consensus seems to be that now that Russia is taking this war seriously and realizing that it is it is going to go on for some considerable time Russia wants to be in a position to ensure that it can withstand that now I mentioned a moment ago the enormous amounts of money Russia is spending we’ve seen also this week Russia raising its tax rates for the first time in uh in a considerable period including corporation tax trying to bring in more funds to keep it going but of course the other side of that is making sure that if they do arrive in the defense Ministry they’re spent in a sensible Manner and uh and not don’t disappear into the sand through corruption to quite the same extent they have in the past so that may lie behind some of the the reshuffles that we’ve seen in the defense Ministry trying to make the corruption a little bit more efficient perhaps and in terms of the the retribution for speaking out against the the conduct of the war we’ve seen some criminal prosecutions of senior offices which may be linked to that uh but again it’s an ongoing process and uh whenever this happens within the Russian system you always think of that Churchill comment that the Kremlin infighting is like the bulldogs fighting under a rug you don’t know who’s going to come out on top until the bones fly out what have you learned about President Putin since February 2022 do you feel your understanding of him has changed at all sadly no uh and unfortunately that’s because there were people who understood perfectly well what the threat from Putin was uh before February 2022 but for too long their warnings went unheeded and again you have to look to the Frontline States those most directly in the path of Russian intervention for for that greater understanding of precisely what was at stake uh but as the the representatives of the Baltic states and of Poland say now after they’ve heard from so many other European leaders we should have listened to you the their plea is well can you listen to us now there are there’s no shortage of understanding of exactly what kind of threat Russia poses and with Putin at the head of it or without him uh but the only problem is actually getting that understanding across to the people who can take decisions about confronting that threat and from your understanding how and where is Putin looking for opportunities to disrupt and disturb outside Ukraine can you describe the different layers of influence used by the Kremlin well here too it’s it’s been a recent Spike of reporting across Western media which actually refle reflects a very longstanding problem a long-standing trend uh there has been this this wave of reports about so-called hybrid Warfare about sabotage about attacks that have been carried out across Europe um the GPS jamming which has been going on for a decade has suddenly hit the headlines as well in part of course that is a a reflection of the fact that there’s been a coincidence a number of different cases of Investigations reported at the same time but it uncovers a much longer standing problem Russia has been at war with Europe in every domain except open military conflict again since the the period shortly after the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and how prominent that is in Western media and in the thinking of Western politicians tends to be a function of how much attention it’s getting at any given time rather than the actual intensity of attacks so there’s no doubt that Russia is now more visible in terms of the attacks it’s carrying out what we can’t tell is whether that is a result of of the the Western victims the countries in which these attacks are being carried out being more effective or more interested in investigating and Prosecuting them whether it’s just more publicity because the cases are coming to court or whether there’s a genuine increase in Tempo now that Russia has successfully managed to recruit so many proxies to carry out attacks that previously its own Military Intelligence Officers would have done either way it’s illustrative of the problem that Europe faces that if Russia does decide to go to war with another European state it has means of immobilizing the continent by carrying out these attacks on a much greater scale than we’ve seen to date if we just return to uh Yen stalberg another point he he was making um as he prepares for this uh meeting of foreign uh ministers he said that Ukraine can win this war but only if allies give continued robust support why um when the general consensus is that the Rights and Wrongs of this War are so clear that the resolve of Ukraine’s allies can be so unclear the problem is that among Ukraine’s supporters you have countries that have the will but not the means and the means but not the will you’ve got countries that have thrown vast amounts of their own defense capacity into supporting Ukraine because that defense capacity those weapon systems those aircraft those those U artillery pieces armored vehicles are doing the job that they were bought for IE destroying Russian armor before it comes close to their own country and that’s a recognition of just how important it is but of course the scale is much smaller than those major players like the United States and Germany who have the means but not necessarily the will who have poured large amounts of Aid into Ukraine but with one foot on the break the biggest individual contributors but with these restrictions that we talked about earlier and of course the painful process of overcoming the reluctance particularly in the United States to deliver weapon systems that Ukraine identifies as being essential at any given moment in the campaign so if only there were more countries with both the will and the capacity to do something about it Ukraine would be in a much stronger place and it would have that robust long-term Aid that has been identified both robust not subject to interruptions like the um like what we saw in the United States over the past few months and also longterm actually anchoring Ukraine into a system of Defense support so that Russia understands that over the long term it is not going to be able to outweight and Outlast the West a couple of things we’ve talked about during this conversation were activities that Russia has been up to for a long time but which haven’t necessarily been talked about or had the prominence that they should have had is there something uh you’d like to highlight that that we’re missing at the moment that actually should be talked about right now and is not being listened to enough Western political leaders west of Warsaw as usual have been spectacularly bad at extra explaining to their electorates just what is at stake and how this is a long-term problem and it’s going to be an expensive one and people’s lives are going to have to change as a result of the threat from Russia again we talked about the the consensus among analysts and among government officials about what Russia is actually planning and it’s extraordinary the here too we’ve never seen such an agreement across the board on the fact that you Putin is not intending to stop Ukraine and Russia is looking for at the next Target Beyond Ukraine that means that European security is under threat and it means it needs to be defended but so few countries have actually recognized what is required to make that happen and we have countries like the UK that is still tinkering with percentages on its defense budget as opposed to recognizing the scale of the threat the scale of the challenge and just how profound this is going profoundly this is going to change our lives thank you so much for your time it’s been it’s been great talking to you on Frontline thank you very much goodbye you’ve been watching Frontline for times radio with me K chabo my thanks to our producers today L syes and Morgan berdick and for you for watching if you’d like to support us you can subscribe now or you can listen to times radio for the latest news and in-depth analysis or go to the times.co.uk for now though thanks for watching bye-bye

The US has partially lifted the ban on Ukraine using US weapons to strike Russia, Ukrainian forces will now be allowed to strike target in Russia in defence of Kharkiv, Keir Giles from Chatham house updates Frontline on what the policy change means following an interview before the announcement.

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