Ukraine will ‘become untenable’ for Putin as air defence fails to stop attacks | Chip Chapman

Ukraine will ‘become untenable’ for Putin as air defence fails to stop attacks | Chip Chapman

the ability of the Russians to make offensive gains is really being inhibited now the other thing which the American weapons and the release authority of the British and um Swedish French weapons has enabled is the ukrainians to fight a far deeper campaign with the the ranges in in Crimea now that is significant because it’s almost making Korea Crimea untenable for the Russians in terms of strangling it as a legist IC Hub pushing their air defense further away and their sea forces further away hello and welcome to Frontline for times radio with me K Jabo and today we are catching up with Major General chip Chapman he was a platoon commander in the Falcons conflict and went on to command to parah chips a former British military adviser to us Central Command and spent 33 years in the military chip Chapman welcome to Front Line good to see you again um can you just start by giving us your overview of the current situation on the battlefield in Ukraine well it’s interesting Kate that I’ve really been away for the last two months traveling the world and if I had have been in a time machine I could almost give you the same analysis two months ago as I would now apart from one thing and that is then the uh ukrainians were I think I characterized it as losing slowly and that the American Aid which would come would be needed to equalize the battlefield that would be a situation which was very similar to the situation in June 22 and I think that that has happened really though there’s more a to come in terms of the equalization of the battlefield so really what you’d characterize it now in a number of words would be that the Russian offensive is really any anywhere you look both in um North and Northeast of K City in the Lans oblast and in the and in the donet oblast they’re really a on a mark time offensive and they’re really only making micro gains and if you the the kind of words you use about the situation all along the front line really is either unchanged trying to advance without success or marginally Advanced so these are still just minor tactical games which really have no operational import and um there are a number of reasons for that and the first thing is the impact of these weapons and particularly not just the American weapons but the sort of release authority of the weapons given by a number of Western Nations and by that I mean the the ability to strike you know deeper into Russian territory because though at the moment seninsky has been warning that there is still a grouping from the northern uh grouping of forces which is 90 kilometers away from khi essentially the second Echelon of forces you have to be able to bring that second Echelon of forces to bear and with the release Authority the ukrainians have been able to strike troop concentrations logistic builds up um Road convoys and things like that so will they bring be able to bring this second Echelon to Bear when the first Echelon is being mired in the mud I don’t think they will because one of the things that we’ve seen throughout this campaign is although that um you know Communications and digital profiles act act and operate at the speed of light we’ve really have people who are operating at the speed of a crawl in terms of the tax opportunities so all this means that um the ability of the Russians to make offensive games is really being inhibited now the other thing which the American weapons and the release authority of the British and um Swedish French weapons has enabled is the ukrainians to fight a far deeper campaign with the the ranges in in Crimea now that is significant because it’s almost making Korea Crimea untenable for the Russians in terms of strangling it as a logistic Hub pushing their air defense further away and their sea forces further away and it is significant that the you know on the only on the 10th of June there are a number of s300 and S400 air defense systems taken out by um I think 10 American atacam systems and the suggestions that the Russians are going to move their S500 Prometheus their um anti-ballistic missile defense into Crimea to try and have this um air defense bubble around Crimea now that would be significant to see what the um the sword versus The Shield would be in terms of the Russian air defense against Western technology and Western missile systems one of the things that you can say about the s300 and S400 which have had quite a lot of export success for the Russians is that it doesn’t really work very effectively and that’s also being one of the reasons for example that it’s not being turned on in support of the Syrian air defense profile when the um Israelis have been attacking Iranian Targets in Syria the irgc targets over the last four or five years what do you think the current uh Ukrainian strategy is regarding Crimea has it changed or does it remain the same because according to some analysts for example the need to take out the Kirch bridge is no longer there and you’ve mentioned those successes and Strikes into Crimea itself well I think you’ve seen recently again a number of feries being taken out part of the um logistic support route as it were to Crime year I think that psychologically um dropping the K Kirch Bridge would be helpful but I don’t think you will see it being uh dropped at the moment by the ukrainians uh because you need to set the conditions for that operational and strategic success for dropping that bridge and that is when Putin would really be on the back foot because again it’s the politics of Crimea from a Russian perspective that actually matter you know it was that sort of notion in 2014 that he was raising up and gathering in the Russian people by annexing Crimea and therefore everything from there on in would be a walkover and of course that’s not been the case so if Crimea goes and is untenable then Putin uh potentially loses power that’s always really been either directly or indirectly the uh Ukraine Ian notion of Victory really in the same way that Russia understands that it can’t um take over geographically all the territory of Ukraine and its theory of Victory goes along the lines of disrupting the the willower determination of the West to support Ukraine and therefore leading to a a settlement which is on Russia terms and that’s really the big Divergence that you’ve seen in the last week or so with the russ notion of a peace plan versus zelinsky’s notion of a peace plan in Switzerland last week yeah but Vladimir Putin’s notion of a peace plan seeding Russian occupied territories I mean to to Russia I mean this is it was ridiculous he knew it was going to be refused before he even put that plan forward didn’t he well not necessarily from the P perspective of the axis of um dictatorships and not necessarily from those people who um sort of support his notion of a multi- poar world and see the Americans an imperial as an imperial power but if you look at all the various Notions of um Peace deals he would probably say that it is a humanitarian peace because it stops The Killing but of course if you flick that coin it is a surrender piece because the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine has been diminished uh they’ they would have to get out of the for or blasts which you know Lans theet Zaria and hon which the Russians have not even taken so the other two o blasts we didn’t mention in terms of the situation on the battlefield at the moment Lance the um offensive continues there but uh the operations on the um kopans satovi Pria line remain unchanged it’s another one of those defensive areas when it’s unchanged and then D though there have been advances advances in the chass chassa direction particularly in the last week or so these are again just micro gains and three months ago I said the same thing that the backbone of the Ukrainian denet defense is the the line of along katos Sloans which could threaten POG Ros but it’s the same as three months ago it hasn’t because they haven’t really had anything other than glal Gaines having said that the mod in London is reporting that Russian forces are within Striking Distance of the main Supply route for Ukrainian troops defending the Eastern donbass region region as it continues to push towards the garrison city of poov what would that mean if they do cut the Supply route and what if they do take that City well I don’t think they’re anywhere near that it would be very significant but in terms of geography it’s still I think about 80 keters away so it would mean that they would achieve one of their objectives for the year because the whole of the donque oblast would become untenable to the Ukrainian should they go that far but there’s a lot of fighting before you’d even get to that position so I don’t think that notion of encirclement and cutting that is is uh credible at the moment um so I don’t see that as something which is going to occur in the in the short time uh short term the real um the real sort of toing and throwing at at the moment is between the sort of Sword and the shield I think between um the ISR drones the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance drones of the Russians being targeted by The firstperson View drones of the ukrainians and within that you have this electronic warfare bubble um where you know the notion of who wins the electronic battle between drone counter drone and guided weapons is really significant that will inhibit or enable forces to move in the future and that really comes on to this notion again of control of the air because all the things to do with drones are really just a democra democ ization of the air battle and delivering it at a lower level than it’s been with the use of air power uh historically so it’s just another notion of air power for the future and that’s also really interesting when you get to for example Notions of the F-16 because there were four um factors for success in 20th century Warfare the first was control of the air it’s absolutely a necessity the second is a second and third are shock and Sur rise which the um the Russians may have had in terms of their offensive in towards K City but that started on the 10th of May so already um sort of six weeks down the line with not much gained uh and the fourth one is offensive wky now all those unless you have all those factors together your ability to achieve operational success is really really quite a narrow thing uh in front of you so so um they’re just not there for either side so restoring that sort of mobility and breakthrough to the battlefield is what each side seeks to achieve and one of the interesting things I think this week was the capture by the ukrainians of one of the turtle tanks of the Russians now it’ll be interesting when they analyze that because the turtle tank is really a large protected carrier uh which seems to be IM immune from loitering weapons and firstperson view drone but it carries an electronic suite and a flail type um entrenchment or tool at the front to try and clear sort of a path for forces to pass through the sort of notion from little heart of the expanding torrent where you have a narrow breakthrough and then you can fan out to achieve operational success um so that shows you really the electronic uh battle that is going on so I think there’ll always be this two and fro and uh the ECM battle the electronic counter measures uh battle you know one side develops one side counters that is the one which will be interesting I think to see in the next few months um the first f-16s are expected to arrive imminently and the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces General cki has said that mindful of that Russian forces are trying to make the greatest gains as quickly as possible from what you’re saying they’re not doing so well at that um how great an a an impact do you think the arrival of the f-16s will actually make well I don’t think their arrival is going to be imminent to be honest I would be surprised if they were here or in Ukraine this summer now the F-16 yeah the f-16s are you know for various reasons to do with both the you don’t need just it’s not piloting the plane it’s fighting the plane it’s doing the engineering on the plane the support of the plane all those things matter in having the trained Personnel along the sort of whole chain that of getting a fure into the air and generating a number of sorties which means it can fight multiple times so what we do know is that the number of committed planes is still is 85 and Rising that Pilots are being trained at sort of speed but they’re still not really into I think the sort of advanced weapons modules at the time at the moment U and they will make a difference because one of the things that they will do is they will push back the Russians ability to use their Glide bombs the cab in the way that they’ve been doing at the moment and those are the things which are really um doing the large scale destruction of um you know the cities which have been targeted particularly in the um Car City area and around the uh the front line there V chance being the U the one which you know is the most pertinent because about 80% of that has been destroyed I think so they will make a difference um I think zinsky has said he’d like 120 to 130 to give some sort of parity with the Russian Air Force we talk about various Notions of Air Supremacy air superiority and air parity but it depends where on the front line you know because you want to maximize your combat potential at a particular point to achieve a an effect or outcome at that time one of the things they will do is give them the ability again in the electronic warfare sphere to probably negate a number of the Russian capab abilities and to uh give the more freedom of action for the Ukrainian forces and again we’ll have this toing and throwing about how that works so for example they’re they’re creating some of the weapon systems to be integrated on the f-16s which will home in on the GPS Jammers um and that the Russians are using which is hindering in certain aspects some of the drones of the of the ukrainians now again that depends on the encryption sort of software that ukrainians are using it is far easier to in inhibit the signal to a commercial off the commercial off the shelf system than it is in military encrypted systems is that the main capability you think that they’ be useful in inhibiting well electronic warfare will be one of them because it’s a multi Ro fighter both the air to ground and air to a aspects will also be pretty crucial so its ability to not Russian aircraft out of the sky and its ability to provide um close support to the Troops on the ground because boy that’s a good capability when you need it if you’re a infan teer on the ground what and where do you see the signs that the US weapons that have been held up by Congress are getting through and starting to make a difference do you see any of that well I think you see it in that in their deep battle really so uh not necessarily all of the um all of the systems because part of the deep battle for the ukrainians is of course their uh attacks on the oil refineries and we saw another two refineries yesterday taken out and one in the Tambo region and in the ad digia Republic so we believe now that there’ve been 40 attacks on oil refineries uh by Ukraine and that by the end of last month 14% of Refinery Sy uh Refinery capability had been knocked out I think most of that is either by British and um British and French systems the sculp and um sto Storm Shadow rather than American a tachs but I think you they have released Authority for those troop concentrations and logistic concentrations which does inhibit that um sort of second Echelon getting to the front and I think one of the things that the Russians have done is not really planned in enough strength to um have enough combat PA to actually break through with the first Echelon if you’re not doing that with the first Echelon and you’re being inhibited by bringing those forces to bear in the second Echelon then um they’ll have a really hard time in exploiting um further than a lot further than where they are at the moment towards the North and Northeast of Ki City but in some ways that doesn’t necessarily matter because although they would the Russians would like to be within artillery Cube artillery distance of K City the fact that they are in sort of Glide bomb range and are pummeling the um uh the city means two things really firstly their deep battle is energized this year certainly from March on hitting the electricity grid and we already know that 50% of the uh Ukrainian electricity generating capacity is being destroyed this year some of which won’t be um brought back online for for years now of course you can um you can import some from the European grid but the notion that by the winter that large parts of Ukraine might be without electricity for 20 hours at a time and therefore that you part of the Russian theory of theory of occupation as it were there in a demilitarized zone is you make a demilitarized zone and a depopulating Zone really by making it uninhabitable for people who are forced to move and the notion of people moving at scale from KH City and other cities um does lead you know the withdrawal of a population from one place to another can have a really debilitating effect on the morale of other citizens so I think that is part of the way that the Russians are trying to fight their operational battle at the moment is sorry to interrupt is that what you think the plan then is for hak hak City Haro blast is that what you think the actual strategy is yeah I do I do um now of course initially they might want to in circle it and you know take it in a in a good manner but there’s just no possibility of that so certainly in 2024 in my opinion so drive it out and create a buffer zone yeah make it untenable for the ukrainians to live there uh then you know when when at some time you have a peace settlement and no one’s going to go towards that in negotiations at the moment then that becomes something which is potentially up for grabs it shouldn’t be again in terms of the sovereignty of Ukraine uh and of course Ukraine would like to see reparations for the damage which has been done all those things will be very big obstacles in coming to what would be an equitable solution now an equitable solution is different from each sides uh everyone wants the rule of law but whose rules will apply is always a sticking point in these things for the future the financial times is reporting that the US government plans to divert Patriot air defense systems destined for other countries to Ukraine and and by the time this conversation is actually out there that may already have been officially announced and Romania has all also donated a system where are these Patriot systems needed most and how many is enough air defense is Never Enough you would like coverage over the whole country but that is one of the problems that the ukrainians have because of U the fact that you can’t be strong everywhere uh otherwise you end up being weak everywhere uh one of their dilemmas is they probably like some Patriot systems to be forward protecting an air defense envelope over K City to stop sort of the ballistic missile and other attacks there that would make them increasingly vulnerable now in terms of military philosophy we talk about a center of gravity the source of your of all your strength so protecting the capital city is nearly always the first notion that you do and the s500sx are there to be part of the anti-ballistic missile defense of um Moscow replacing a system in the future but it’s always a political necessity to protect your capital and then I think the the the um the ukrainians need to protect those areas which are you know far away from uh far away from the front line uh because that gives you your rear area security it’s where people can live in more sort of Harmony not be psychologically Under Pressure uh and take it from there so you know the capital is always the first thing you’ll Supply routs in from Europe and your other major cities LOL in the uh in the west um but there’ll never be enough air defense to go everywhere coastline is Coastline around adessa and hon um of blast is also significant because there’s no doubt in my mind that the Russians would really have liked to take the complete seab bridge and make the coastline a a Russian Lake again and I don’t think they’ve got any chance of doing that either how do you expect the war to develop over the summer months and do you think that the combination of us Aid um the new ability to use foreign weapons in a limited way inside Russia these developments could could it mean that the most dangerous Point has been passed for Ukraine this year yeah I think the most dangerous point for Ukraine has passed but again it comes back to how Wars end neither side is going to be strong enough to conquer the other in military terms or military geographic terms so if you get go back to the second world war you know I and I directive because we just our dedo was to you know with allies to go to the heart of Europe and destroy the German armies you’re not going to see Russia in a position to do that neither are you going to see Ukraine in a position to do that to the Russian army and therefore you go back to how Wars end and they end in three ways firstly by decisive military Victory chances of that still pretty low the second one because of the indecisiveness of military Victory which leads to some sort of negotiation uh that’s not on the cards at the moment or the third one which is going to be on the cards for both of them at some stage but not yet is because either the political military sociological population economic social cultural social economic whatever you want costs are too great to one side and therefore the will and determination to to go on is is diminished to a point where you need to have a settlement essentially that’s what happened with the destruction of the will of the um the Russian army in 1917 leading to the Treaty of Bressler TOs and you could posit I don’t think it’s likely at the moment that with 1200 casualties a day from by the on the Russian side with very marginal gains you know you could get to a point when the Russian military walk off the battlefield I don’t think we’re going to see that yet uh the second one is of course is the centrality of um Crimea to the um the myth of you know Russian imperialism if that becomes untenable then the Elites in Russia could say enough is enough Putin and his chromies need to be overthrown and the final one is that the population of Russia has had enough and um you know rise up and and sort of Dethrone him now you probably to do that in a dictatorship is very very difficult but historically you only need 3.5% of the population to take to the streets and um show their massive descent um to bring about some meaningful change as we saw for example in the Revolutions in 18 uh 1989 which deposed chesco and some of those other Eastern block countries neither of those I think is tenable in the next sort of three months though Ukrainian troops are also tired they need to be rotated they need to be rested new troops need to be trained and quickly how well is the military leadership in Ukraine meeting that challenge that’s a really interesting question because of course it’s not only mobilizing people but it’s demobilizing people and one of the things which is being put on hold in Ukraine is the demobilization act the demobilization ACT should have been that after 36 months of service and being really tired you would um be allowed out of the service but then you’re losing a a card of really well trained and professional people and the second one was that you needed uh the notion was that you need rate troops every 6 months now both of those have been placed in a bance because of the Manar constraints for the ukrainians indeed we had a new mobilization law in May which didn’t mention those things did bring for example the age of um of the draft down from 27 to 25 and put a number series of other conditions in you know it’s always been the case that since the war started men under the age of 60 aren’t allowed to uh leave the country with some exceptions of course as there always are so um there are problems in mobilization really for both sides you’ve got a sort of crypto mobilization from the Russian side and now you’ve got the ukrainians after two years really mirroring what was sort of policy on the Russian side with an ability for example to Now sort of recruit people who’d been in prison in Ukraine now that was a forceable um method with Prien of course in uh in the Vagner group in the early days of the campaign but that is one of the other things that they’re looking at along with for example increased fines for draft uh draft evasion so it’s difficult times for that but if you uh do believe that you know freedom and democracy are worth fighting for then you would hope that there are enough people who come forward and certainly the opinion polls in terms of those who still believe that Ukraine can win within Ukraine and understand the consequences of losing to Russia and Putin’s Russia in particular means that I think that the things will be stabilized there in the future what more can Ukraine do beyond the battlefield to defeat Russia well like most of the things It’s always important to win the information Ops battle what I think we see is a lot more disinformation coming into the domain of uh the sort of social media and the media with lots and lots of um people sort of parting Uh Russian talking points really uh and this is partly a a symptom of sort of War fatigue and people would like to sort of see an out but um what’s dangerous about that is it seeps into the sort of consciousness of people that uh you know that you know things can be done differently but there are often Russian points which will being pared in things being done differently particularly in terms of the notion of you know this is a war fatigue from everyone and the simplest thing would be to stop this and everything everyone would live in peace and Harmony which of course is not not really true it’s only true in the shortterm sense because the um Putin in my characterization is still someone who wants um to regain lost territories and spheres of influence that begins with Ukraine it doesn’t end with Ukraine so are you suggesting that Ukraine could uh get better at mastering the disinformation I don’t think Ukraine could have get any better I think they’ve been masters of it but the West press need to get better at it or the Western governments need to get better at it and that’s been one of the problems at the moment that we it’s not really just the uh the Western governments of course there’s a lot of fractures within uh uh you know the EU and America at the moment which makes this sort of disharmonious uh environment more difficult um for when you’ve got an absolutely focused Russian opponent on the other side I think we saw it in a way with some of the comments from uh one of the certainly one of the um candidates in the um in the general election in the UK recently who I think was sort of um really parting Uh Russian um propaganda points I won’t say who he is because there election on yeah but it’ll be pretty obvious I think to most people um one of the constant criticisms of Ukraine’s allies is they’ve been slow to provide weapons and it needs and when they do provide them it’s too cautious on saying how Ukraine can use them do you think that’s changed now I don’t think it’s changed wholly and that’s always been I think because the fear of um escalation and what that might need lead to um but I think every time there’s been a sort of Russian red line which Putin has stated we’ve crossed it with no action from Putin so I think we can continue to call his bluff now from a military perspective giving freedom of action with weapon systems of any range caliber that you want is of course how you would like to um like to fight a battle and a war um but you know there is a you what we call the strategy bridge between political intent and military power and of course you know all wars are fought for political purposes it’s just the Warfare is the fighting bit so of course we’re limited by what politicians are worried about in terms of the consequences of escalation and I’ve talked many times about how I see escalation in seven areas which are I think are generally targets objectives uh geography domains which could be cyber and space mobilization and rhetoric and we’ve seen an uptake uptick in rhetoric as well recently particularly in the nuclear rhetoric again from Russia and more exercises and that always puts people on a sort of um strategic defensive when they don’t necessarily need to be in my opinion there’ be other things you’d look for if you were saying that Russia were really um going to release nuclear weapons you know we would look for signs of imminency which would be there and we be on our sort of warning indicators and warnings in the intelligence committee which we would know about predictions about how long this war will last have varied widely what could be the implications uh for European security and Global Security if it does last a number of years well I think the characterization we had previously uh to or previous to February 22 was that all wars will be short and um you know most of the the wars in the middle have been in the last 40 years the wars that we’ve fought in the west against um you know in Iraq and elsewhere the war fighting bit not the the war after the war bit have been short so we need to have a reality check that Wars might not be short and therefore there are a number of things that flow from that in terms of having the industrial capacity to fight a long War having the Regeneration of your military force if necessary and they not using any notion of conscription here to fight beyond the first battle and the Second Battle but the the battles which may occur after that and really the notion that scale is something which has been out of sync with our recent experience and thinking so understanding those things for the future is um absolutely vital and I’ve also said before um that there’s really two parts to war a physical part and a psychological part and it’s therefore it’s not armies that fight Wars It’s Nations that fight Wars the Ukrainian Nation absolutely has understood that in terms of their mobilization and will to fight we’ve got to really make sure that there’s understanding in the western uh sphere about those sorts of things because um you know I don’t think Putin will stop but it doesn’t mean one of the fractures which could occur I talked about fractures is that just because you have an article five NATO um line and let’s say if uh Russia uh invaded one of the um one of the Baltic countries Estonia lvia Lithuania that doesn’t mean that you’d have to put an Armored Division in support of them so how you would do that you don’t you know it’s very difficult to see so Putin would play on that in the sort of um hybrid Warfare kind of aspect I think so it’s dangerous times and the best way to keep uh that danger away in my opinion is to unequivocally support Ukraine with the weapons it needs and that’s the best way to avoid the characterization of World War II and any move towards World War III which I think is overplayed if we if we support Ukraine Major General chip Chatman great to speak to you thank you for your time thank you Kate you’ve been watching Frontline for times radio with Me Kate shabo my thanks to our producers today Louis SES 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 by

The failure of Putin’s S-300 and S-400 air defences has put Crimea at risk for Russia says Maj. Gen. Chip Chapman speaking to Kate Gerbeau on Frontline.

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