Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Acast powers the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend. It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is always the right time to read, talk, and think about Pride and prejudice. But why is it this book that we universally acknowledge? Why has Pride and prejudice lasted for over two centuries as the most famous romance novel of all time? This season of Houghton Bothered, award winning journalist Lauren Sandler and me, Vanessa Zoltan, are looking closely at Pride and Pregidus, interviewing experts and trying to figure out what this book has taught generations of readers about love. Listen to Houghton Bothered wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. For the big news this week is the announcement by the US, Germany, and France that finally they are sending armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine that can be used for a spring offensive. There are also reports that Britain might be about to supply Challenger 2 battle tanks. Well once again we've seen little movement on the battlefield though there is some indication that Russia is at last making some ground in its attempts to capture back moot in Donetsk. But we have to ask to what effect and at what cost and where might the war be heading in the coming months. To answer this and other questions we are delighted to have our guests General Samaik Jackson, a former head of the British Army and a man with a unique insight into the Russian military mindset. Before we hear from Mike let's drill down into the details of these new announcements on military hardware and their significance. Patrick what have you heard? Well let's get down to details the US has promised to send 50 Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. Germany is promising 40 martyrs and France an undisclosed number of AMX 10 armoured combat vehicles as well as Bastion armoured personnel characters. Now the first three characters are at their all-wield armoured cars with cannons so they're not tanks but they're quick and effective particularly the American Bradleys and the AMX 10s. The really significant news is that Britain might be about to send Challenger 2 main battle tanks that's real big heavy bits of kit I remember the very well from the Gulf War. I mean they're old but they're still excellent and better than anything that the Ukrainians currently have. So the relevance of all this is that as we mentioned last week the West doesn't seem to be bothered about tweaking the bears tail do bears have tails I'm not sure but anyway by the diagonal lines and there and so they're unconcerned it seems about the possibility of escalation. Yes well as President Zelensky has been lobbying for tanks since the beginning of the war and this announcement might open the door not just of course to the sending of challenges but to the US sending their tanks the M1 Abrams and Germany sending leopard tanks and there's been a lot of chat about that in recent days and as for those who say the West is eventually going to lose interest in the war and stop supporting Ukraine the lie was given by our Ministry of Defence which has just announced that it plans to match or even exceed last year's funding for military aid to Ukraine and will and this is a quote continue to build on recent donations with training and further gifting of equipment. Now the UK has already provided over 200 armoured vehicles to Ukraine including stormer vehicles with star-street missiles. This follows on from a similar US announcement of almost 3 billion of new military aid so it seems Patrick that for the time being the West support for Ukraine is holding firm. Yeah it's not all going Ukraine's way though is it so all you mentioned at the top but Russia making some headway in their very vigorous attempts to capture back mut in Donetsk we've long puzzled about why they're actually trying to do that given the terms relatively insignificant strategic value we decided it's really a kind of propaganda thing proving they can still capture territory. Also worth reporting that this week you have Gennie Prigogin someone who's often appeared on this show the head of the Wagner mercenary group whose set whose meta said to be doing most of the fighting and dying for back mut his motivation apparently is to get his hands on the salt mines that surround the place. There's a town just to the north of Batmur called Solidar which is a mining town which has minerals and salt and the thinking is that if Solidar falls Batmur might follow how serious you think this is? I'm not convinced it's that serious as you say Patrick I think it's a propaganda issue there are some analysts saying well this could open the door to further advances and it could all be disaster for the Ukrainians are not buying that for a second. Of course Ukraine doesn't want to lose any more territory if it can avoid doing so but back Mood is not a vital strategic prize as we keep saying. The bigger picture to look at here are the offensives from both sides that might take place in the spring. Now we got an insight into the Ukrainian possibilities from major general Kirolo Budenov the Ukrainian chief of intelligence who's just said that his country is indeed planning to launch a major offensive then we know of course there's always the danger of misinformation to deliberately to see the Russians but he didn't talk about anywhere specific he just said that he expected the fighting to be at its hottest in March when he anticipated the liberation of territories and the final defeats of the Russian Federation it will he added ominously happened throughout Ukraine from Crimea to the Donbass of course if the Ukrainians have western battle tanks by then their chances of success will be all the greater but what about the Russians Patrick what might they be planning? Well just before we get onto that solo I've been talking to people in Ukraine about the mood there and it is pretty upbeat I mean something that we've been concerned about is the relative imbalance in manpower reserves now we all know Russia's got a kind of inexhaustible supply would seem whether they're willing to fight or not as another matter but on the Ukrainian side they've got far fewer but it seems that there's confidence there that they can not only hold the line but actually carry out an offensive in the spring their own offensive and of course you know this possibility that we've talked about before that the Russians might try and force them to fight on to fronts by advancing from Baeolal Rus with Baeolal Rusian troops it doesn't phase them at all in fact they're kind of saying bring it on the intelligence analysis of Kiev is that if the Baeolal Rus was actually forced to fight the soldiers there be mass desertions there might even be people coming over ready to fight on the Ukrainian side and the entry of Baeolal Rus into the war might actually hasten the demise of the dictator essentially Lukashenko which would then create a huge problem for the Kremlin because they were there be facing a sort of crisis on to fronts so just to deal with that I think you know the mood is pretty sanguine in Ukraine at the moment on the Russian side what are they going to do well you know we keep coming back to this mass mobilization they're talking about up to half a million men the possibility of a mass attack in the spring looking at history Russia does have a in the second world war history of going from near disaster and defeat onto the front foot quite quickly after the Battle of Moscow inculcating of course in the annihilation of the Germans on the Eastern Front that was a very different situation I think you have the monolithic power of the communist state which you say able to bring every resource in Russia and its dominions to bear on the problem defeating the Germans we're not in that situation now as we keep hearing support for the war is dubious it may not actually translate into demonstrations on the street etc but you know no one really wants to fight in this war no Patrick and the other point about the Second World War is that Russia had western economic support and of course in this conflict it's completely the opposite and that western economic support as we know from recent research by people like Philo Brian who's appeared on the podcast made a massive material difference to victory in the Second World War but let's talk about another issue the Russians have got to resolve and that's their dwindling supply of artillery shells we've mentioned this before and the fact that they've been trying to replenish their shells from sources like North Korea and elsewhere well that clearly isn't working because the number they are firing according to official US sources is down by 75 percent from the height last summer they could of course be husbanding them for a big push or they might just be running out and on that point of external aid another area of concern for Russia is China's attitude well we're hearing from a report on the financial time is that China's now trying to reset its economy and wind back its friends in the west this is trying to actually repair some of the damage done to its economy by the surging death toll from Covid so from an economic perspective China's got to try and get on better terms with the west and that of course means not doing anything that can be construed as support for Russia well and now for something completely different as they used to sail the old Monty Python show and that's Harry we've got to talk about Harry I know it's not directly related to Ukraine well it isn't a way it's about you know warfare how it's conducted and my feeling is that he really did cross a line there we'll be hearing Mike Jackson talking very eloquently about this later on Mike is not at all happy about what Harry said and this is him Harry saying that he killed 25 Taliban in his service in Afghanistan when he was air crew on on Apache attack helicopter now I must say that it did strike me as a very bizarre thing to say you've been around soldiers a lot so I mean have you ever heard any soldiers speak like that not in public and then that's the real key point here would they talk like this in the confines of the barracks probably would they talk like this to people who weren't soldiers family friends journalists even historians not much I mean every time I've heard someone I've interviewed Patrick and these are of course veterans from the Second World War and earlier give me a kind of body count that's I killed five I killed ten I killed 15 almost always my antenna goes up and I think did you really you know it there seems to be an element of boastfulness about this that almost always means that they didn't actually kill that number it is quite difficult to kill that number of people maybe not so much in an Apache helicopter but I think the broader issue here is no it almost never happens in public and therefore this is just another aspect of the emirter that the military quite rightly tends to pursue what about you well you know I've been it like you I've been around soldiers a lot you know not just in a kind of form with situation but you know drinking with them when you'd expect the things like this to come out and I've never heard anyone speak like that I was also in Afghanistan in 2008 so around the time that Harry was doing his first tour and the thing that struck me about it was it really was a grotesquely one-sided conflict you know there's a military term asymmetrical warfare and this was about as asymmetrical as it gets you know one side has the most advanced killing technology ever developed I mean go out encased in body armor with world-class medical facilities on hand if they get hit and the other side are basically with almost medieval warriors carrying AK-47s and wearing flip flops I remember when I was there I was up in Kajaki in Hellman province and going out on patrol I'm all on one patrol when the insurgents I won't call them Calaban because I think a lot of the guys that were doing the fighting were just young men trot you know tribesmen doing what young Afghan males have always done when armed strangers arrived which is to defend their territory well we're out on the patrol the insurgents fired a few water rounds in our direction we took cover and then someone sort of calmly gets on the radio and calls in an air strike so a few minutes later as a massive explosion on the hillside where the fire had come from went up in a you know kind of like ball of flame and smoke we later heard from two satellite guided bombers which had been dropped from I think it was I can't remember what it was that dropped I think it was actually a B1 bomber so the risk levels were extremely imbalanced so you know how are you talking about taking pieces off the board and all the rest of it makes it sound like it's a real contest but Harry's in virtually no danger I think there are only 15 helicopters lost in the entire war to enemy fire and none of them were a patches so presenting this as if it's a kind of you know bold military act it strikes me as pretty sort of uncool actually pro-test school most it's really a story of a privileged white guy flying above the action in very little danger wiping out village boys carrying rifles that doesn't strike me as being particularly brave and it also strikes me as sitting rather oddly with his claims to be a passionate humanitarian I don't think any good soldier feels comfortable about the taking of life do you remember that during when we had David Morgan on saw he was a pilot in the Falklands war do you remember what he told us about his experience of shooting down enemy aircraft yeah we're you're talking about Morgh you know famous pilot Harriet pilots and he was involved in one of the most extraordinary pieces of air combat in fact I think the last time a British pilot shot down an enemy plane in air to air combat this took place during the Falklands just after the rather savage bombing of the segala had and some of those planes that carried out that bombing were taken out by Morgh but the striking thing about that quite apart from the credibly dramatic description of the air to air combat which you kind of course listen to if you go back in the earlier episodes of the podcast is him talking about his anguish after shooting down the Argentinian aircraft they were as he said pilots like him and he felt crushed knowing he had taken their life so that I think is a much more natural and genuine reaction to killing the enemy in combat okay now it's time to hear from our guest this week generals some Mike Jackson Mike is probably Britain's best known general since the Second World War he served in both the intelligence core and the parachute regiment and was later the British Army's chief of general staff with relevance to his knowledge of Russia he took a degree in Russian studies at Birmingham University and later almost came to blows with the Russians during the Kosovo crisis yes well this was in June 1999 I was covering the events there as a journalist NATO had been bombing the Serbs in an attempt to get them to withdraw from Kosovo where they were killing and expelling the Albanian population and Mike was commanding NATO's Allied rapid reaction core while he was they did two outstanding things I remember waiting with baited breath in a field outside Kominov a little place called Kominov a Macedonia while inside this great big sort of marquee Mike was sitting down negotiating with the Serbs generals who are not the easiest people in the world and he managed to persuade them reasonably peacefully to withdraw from the areas of Kosovo they held and to allow NATO in and this they did thus averting a major conflict but the second thing he did showed I think huge moral courage when he stood up to his boss the US general Wes Clark now Russian peacekeeping troops were nearby in Bosnia as part of a kind of a force there that had been sent in after the Bosnia conflict was sort of settled and they decided to take over Pristina airport in Kosovo and Wes Clark ordered Mike to send troops in to block the runway to stop them flying in reinforcements now this we got to remember was at the beginning of the honeymoon period between the old Cold War adversaries following the collapse of communism so relations were very delicate but Mike told Clark in what was apparently a rather heated discussion I'm not going to start the Third World War for you well it all ended amicably over a glass of whiskey and a cigar and an even bigger bust up with the Russians was avoided and the point is that that general Jackson is one of the few British senior officers who have had any direct dealings with the Russians he's also studied Russia and speaks the language so we asked him what his experience had taught him about the Russian army you know Mike what do they tell you about the Russian military and from your knowledge of that has the Russian military changed since those days I'm not sure it has one of the characteristics which came over to me and my fellow commanders was a rigidity in the Russian approach to command and control in particular very top down and it connects it with that and part of the reason for it being top down I some eyes is the Russian army does not have a senior non-commissioned officer body in the way that the British army and other Western armies do where your company's arm major is is a bedrock figure in the libertarian or whatever they are creatures of authority and you don't see that in the Russian army that's a lacuna in my view which doesn't do them any good in some ways Mike you could see your experience of pristine report as a kind of high point of NATO relations or at least the West relations with Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union and I'm exaggerating a little bit there but but things have come to a pretty pass haven't they when by the beginning of 2022 Russia's government Putin effectively is portraying the West as the enemy attempting to destabilize Russia and this is used as a pretty paper thin excuse for invading Ukraine how do you think we've got to that point and is this just an attitude that's at the senior level of of Russian politics or do you think it permeates all the way down into the military too I think you see evidence of both of those characteristics there is no doubt and whether we like it all we don't that certainly at the beginning Putin's decision to basically occupy Ukraine that would have been his strategic objective I'm sure that has very considerable poverty majority support in Russia and then of course as things did not go quite as well as President Putin had forecast to himself I think you see public support going down significantly I mean pin him pulls in a country like Russia are dubious at best but there is in my view sufficient evidence that this war does not have the wholehearted support either of the Russian nation or indeed the Russian army which has had to go to almost bizarre means of keeping his man by going the autumn conscription didn't go very smoothly as I recall are you surprised my given what you've said about the the sort of almost institutional weakness of the Russian military the the lack of effective command and control the fear of really operating out in an autonomous level something the British army's been very good at certainly since the early 90s possibly earlier and this this weakness of the senior NCO which we know is so important to to armed forces I mean given that you knew all of that before the war were you surprised at the relatively poor performance of the Russians since the since the invasion in February 22 I think my answer is a guarded yes I was surprised by the opening gambit as I think we know had Keef in its sights within a week all thereabouts spectacularly failed I thought before it actually happened that there were weaknesses in the Russian army but mass matters something perhaps in this country we don't always emphasize enough mass matters and whatever else the Russian army at on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine had mass I expected a stoke defense but I also expected mass would eventually overcome that stoke defense well in reality I mean to have been so concerned because the failure to capture Keef in the opening gambit was tactically not impressive but strategically they failed at the upset to match their performance to their objective and it was that mismatch in capability against design that in some ways we have seen throughout now make it you say mass matters and it seems that Putin's thinking as well in his new year speech he made it clear that he's pinning really his political future on the success or something he can cause success at the next phase of the war in Ukraine that depends very largely on numbers it seems there's a lot of talk about another round of troop raising maybe to the level of you know 500,000 new troops what difference do you think that will make to the course of the war do you think that this you know really just throwing huge numbers of troops at Ukraine stands a chance of succeeding a chance yes likelihood I'm less certain I mean there are vast reserves of manpower in Russia but to turn 300,000 you said Patrick 500,000 are to turn that into competent well armed well trained maneuver units is going to take a hell of an effort and not a little time because if you don't get that right you are just sending these youngsters ill trained ill equipped not really knowing what they're doing and that is a recipe I would suggest for defeat can they do it spring summer sorry this year I don't believe so in those numbers now by the same token mate you think this could be a hinge moment in the war where you know resounding defeat of a Russian spring offensive could bring about a collapse at the whole military structure and moving on from that perhaps the the end of Putin it's a possibility is it not I mean there are many possibilities as to how the war may or may not develop the difficulty for us here is working out which is the more probable the less probable I find that more difficult there is talk of a spring offensive on base sides I'm more inclined to put my money on new Ukrainians if the Ukrainians use this winter to re-equip train new forces use their now great depth of battle experience get their thinking right it's that the higher level thinking the use of maneuver which probably will give you grain the opportunity to get really on the front foot well that's all very revealing do join us in part two when we'll hear more from Mike and answer listener's questions welcome back we're now going to hear the second part of our interview with general so Mike Jackson the former head of the British army and a noted Russian expert this is what he told us looking at the biggest possible picture Mike and and that's the west sort of global strategic imperatives over the coming years and but obviously moving from this point onwards how important is it do you feel that the west stays firm in its support of Ukraine because there's a bigger picture to be had in relation to China and elsewhere I would say strategically it is vital for the west to remain as one and to show this unwavering support for Ukraine in its are of pretty desperate need the recent emphasis from Russia on bringing down energy infrastructure and let's remember that Ukraine winters minus 20 is not unusual so for me the west has to stay as one in its determination that protein aggression will not be rewarded by success we have to make it clear that this is not the way and it's a wider message as you say so not just a writer Mike a question about the conduct of the Russian soldiers we all know that they've got a long history the second world war particularly of brutal behavior where you take it back by the extent of the indiscipline and the atrocities that very well documented that seem to be going on and on they doesn't seem to be any such thing as progress in their conduct as they're historically no as you say shades of Berlin 1945 I'm afraid I wasn't surprised I was saddened by these reports of quite honestly bestial behavior by Russian soldiers it goes back to what I said as we open this discussion there is not a proper a purpose of senior non-commissioned officers whose job it is in any army to ensure that discipline is maintained and that these awful behaviors do not happen and I think two sides of the same coin now for me and by talking to you about a not direct connection to Ukraine but something you know very dear I'm sure to anyone who's a former soldier and those are the reported comments I think they're pretty clear that they have been made in the in the book by Prince Harry Duke of Sussex about his time as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan in which he talks about the body count Mike and the the fact that he was taking chess pieces off the board I mean are you as a former soldier and a former commanding officer of Prince Harry and his brother saddened to hear those and are they quite unusual comments to make for former soldiers I'm very saddened it reduces the battle field to an impersonal level in my experience soldiers do not indulge in a body count competition killing his yes is part of soldering if you have to but it's not something in my experience soldiers take any particular satisfaction from for its own sake I was very saddened to hear the comment which I believe to be very ill judged it's not the action all the words of the British army I know Mike just before we go what's your feeling about how this is going to end I'm not asking for kind of you know specific prediction but are you optimistic that it will end in in a good result for Ukraine and a defeat that will have consequences for the future of Russia good consequences big consequences and we have not mentioned so far the nuclear option both literal and metaphorical I don't think Putin is just a thought or a hope it certainly both would be so crassly stupid as to open the nuclear pandora's box put that to one side I'm not sure outright victory is open to either side at the moment Ukraine seems to have the upper hand but I have spoken earlier about Russian mass which could our number Ukraine's proven tactical agility will Russia accept a compromise I think they're going to have to in the end is Ukraine willing to compromise now no but as time goes on as the damage based human and structural goes on the pressure to bring it to a halt even if neither side is achieved its full objectives I think will grow and sooner or later there has to be some form I suspect of negotiated settlement with strategic guarantees for Ukraine and once the guarantee of course here's your membership of NATO that would enrage Moscow in really would so it's not a good answer because I I just don't know what it has to try and once hopes in one compartment and once judgment in another hand because the first may lead to a distorted second well that was great stuff as ever from Mike what stood out from me well a number of fascinating points but the first bit was actually the this is the first time we've had a proper assessment of the essential almost institutional weakness of the military Mike talked about the little autonomy that officers had at each ranks how they rigidly followed orders there was no proper command and control and here's the real kicker and the real insight I think into the nature of the Russian army no effective cadre of senior NCOs non-commissioned officers and the latter point of course contributes to poor discipline and atrocities as he went on to say and yet knowing all this Mike was still surprised at how poor the Russian military has performed since the invasion that big gap as he talked about between aspiration and capability yes he wasn't ruled out Russia turning the tide nonetheless just on that issue of numbers you know as he says mass is important and if they really can raise 500,000 recruits that is one thing of course the other thing is they've got to turn them into effective soldiers in the matter of a few months spring isn't that far away and on the other hand you know their adversary the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be much more adaptable and flexible on the battlefield yeah overall like us he thinks that Ukraine has got a much better chance of winning the war than Russia and that also like us it's vital the West continues to show and wavering support for Ukraine and that seems to be what's happening with the various bits of news that we've announced today but ultimately and again I think both of us might sympathize with this point of view both sides are going to have to compromise a little bit before peace is possible of course the Ukrainians certainly don't want to admit that at the moment or don't want to even suggest that that's a possibility and he talks as we have done about the strict security guarantees Ukraine is going to need including probably membership of NATO well he's remarks about the Duke of Sussex I think speak for themselves but I don't think they will be very welcome to Harry okay let's move on to listeners questions the geographical spread is really quite remarkable this week's all I think we've only got one from the UK that will kick off with Derby Field from Wolfham Massachusetts and he says we often default to World War 2 analogies even when there may be more recent or an analogous ones yeah I think we plead guilty to that one but he goes on to say what about going further back actually and seeing if there are any useful lessons from the Crimean War where Imperial Russia was defeated by a coalition of Western powers supporting a regional actor well that's one of your special subjects isn't it so so over to you yeah I'd like to address both those points actually I you know of course he's right we have been talking about World War 2 a lot but there's a reason for that and not just World War 2 actually World War 1 as well but World War 2 in particular because that's the last time frankly Russia fought a major war and so you can understand a lot about the techniques and methods we talked about deep battle that Russia used in that conflict there is a lot to learn frankly from making analogies with the with the Second World War but he's also right the Crimean War is an important conflict can we learn anything from it yes we can a little bit actually because as Derby makes the point this was a war in which the West supported a regional actor of course in the case of the Crimean War the regional actor was Turkey not Ukraine and the opponent was Russia so what happened and you know and what can we learn about it well the big difference of course between the two conflicts then and now is that in 1854 France and the Great Britain supported Turkey not just with economic and military support but actually with boots on the ground and that made a massive difference and of course you had the British Royal Navy which is the real key to the whole story because the fighting in the Crimea was really to knock out the Russians naval base in Sevastopol and of course that has current relevance doesn't it actually because ultimately given that the naval base there has been such an important part of the Russian military history it's one of the reasons why the Russians were so determined to get the hands on Crimea again but the end of the war is very interesting because having been isolated diplomatically in a way that Russia is again being isolated they had imposed on them a very brutal peace which in a nutshell meant the neutralization of the Black Sea now if you consider that up to this point Russia would have thought of the Black Sea as its own lake and of course it had a very powerful military presence there operating out of Sevastopol this was an utter humiliation for the Russians so if there are any lessons to learn there one don't get isolated diplomatically well they have been and secondly you have to be a little bit wary about imposing the sort of draconian peace terms that are going to lead to long-term resentment and those are the things we've mentioned before. Personality stuff one here from George doesn't George doesn't say where he is and he says he's interested in in the video of the Wagner members complaining about lack of supplies and he asks us do you have any insight on the structure of Wagner well you know it's amazing that we know so little really about how Wagner works given prominence is getting in the story and I'm afraid George I can't really offer you anything except more questions you know why do the Wagner guys actually fight their mercenaries no matter how much they get paid surely it can't compensate for the risks they're taking of death or being maimed why are they being used in this apparently sort of pointless battle around back but these are all things that we don't really have any answers to have you got any thoughts on that sort? Well yes one thought is they've got no option I mean they've come out of prison they've been told that if they try and retreat or they surrender to the enemy they're going to be shot I think this is classic going back to our earlier point this is classic second world war tactics you know there's a gun at your back and if you don't fight you're going to die anyway so you might as well fight but you know there's another interesting thing here which is that how does Wagner which is the point of George's question fit into the command structure and the answer that of course he's not he's going to be not very well there there is no place for mercenary groups to fight in a modern army of course they are doing it and they're fighting quite effectively insofar as that they're losing a lot of soldiers and they're making some gains on the battlefield you know a lot of these guys these mercenaries are ex-soldiers so they've got military experience and they've probably got a lot more military experience than of course the conscripts who are coming straight out of civilian life but nevertheless how do you fit their commanders into the overall military structure and there is no insight that that's happening that smoothly and of course there's a lot of criticism from senior Wagner characters including Brickovkin as to the inadequacy of the effort made by the the regular Russian military okay we'll jump to one here from Andrew Hayes in south-eust now I know south-eust I go fishing there a lot because my family have a access to a house there indeed where Andrew Hayes is often to be seen he's actually my brother in law Andrew Hayes anyway he asks a very good question a second mobilization is inevitable if Putin is to have any chance of offensive capability let alone holding his front given the widespread internal trauma of the first partial mobilization which he was anxious to avoid might the second one trigger a more dangerous challenge to the venture in the Kremlin and on the streets well my immediate reaction is I think inside the Kremlin they're probably my feeling would be that they're going to be biting their time see how this new offensive goes and then make their move depending on or not depending on the result of that on the actual question of how it's going to go down in Russia I've been talking to people to Russians living here who have contact with their families in Moscow one particular person has been visiting their family recently there and they were telling me that even though it's quite hard to kind of read the mood there people have been very tight lipped to what what they think about the war they are actually taking practical steps to get their young men out of the country in order to avoid getting caught in the dragnet they will be thrown out any day now one particular story of a 18 and 19 year old lad who's been gone out to Europe and I think there's a lot of that going on so now that the actual mobilization is spreading to areas that were previously relatively uneffective like St. Petersburg and Moscow I think you're going to see not necessarily again let me say before mass protest but what you will see is sort of passive resistance and that obviously is going to be very troubling for Putin. Okay moving on to a question from Mark Harris from New Zealand Kia ora Patrick and Sully says really enjoying your podcast series I may have missed it one of your earlier episodes but has there been much coverage and discussion of the Holdemore in the 1930s that saw up to 10 million Ukrainians die of starvation as the Russians impose collectivization and eradicated the Kool-Aks who are of course with the old sort of land-owning class that kind of you know the small holding peasants class seems to me says Mark that this would still have a major bearing on the Ukrainians psyche and attitude to this current war. Well we we have had mentioned of the Holdemore by a couple of our historians I think in the past certainly we've been aware of it and yes the answer to your question Mark is it certainly will have a major bearing on the Ukrainian psyche I think a couple of the Ukrainians we've spoken to have also talked about it as part of their resentment you know they're sort of underlying resentment to Russia so it is an important factor we have mentioned it before and I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point. It's a massive element in creating a Ukrainian national identity isn't it Saul it's kind of Nietzsche and that which does not kill me makes me stronger and I think it's very much part of the kind of national psyche so yeah it could be something we could revisit down the line. Now we've got one here from Roder King living in Adelaide in south of Australia his question he says is a simple one are the allies of Ukraine sending the wrong message to Russia by not allowing Ukraine to fight on equal terms i.e. they're not giving them all the kit that might actually increase particularly their offensive capability well we're seeing a change of stance there aren't we we've been talking about it throughout the show about this new armor that's heading in their direction there is of course more that could be done do you think that now is the time to do that Saul yeah I do I mean we've been calling for this for a while we absolutely agree with with Roger there are two other vital areas of course that the West can supply modern weapons it's interesting he talks about equal terms with the Russians we don't believe frankly from what we've seen so far the war that NATO weapons even up against the best Russian kit is equivalent it's obviously far superior but nevertheless if we support Ukraine we should be giving them everything they need to fight and of course the other key areas are combat planes more sophisticated combat planes and and more of them but also longer range missiles which could be a real game changer because they can attack the sort of store areas and concentration points and command and control centers deep to the rear of the front lines well that's all we've got time for but before we go we must mention a major milestone the podcast has just passed and that's it's one millionth download and that of course is thanks to all of you so do keep listening do spread the word and do send any questions you have to battleground Ukraine that's all one word at gmail.com and do join us next week when we're talking to another fabulous guest and discussing the latest news goodbye ACAS powers the world's best podcast here's a show that we recommend it's the question that's on everyone's mind how do you live a good life how much do work health relationships matter what about happiness meaning money and love what if your own or anxious ill or in pain these are the questions we explore weekly on the top-ranked good life project podcast hosted by me award-winning author four-time industry founder and perpetual seeker Jonathan fields every week I sit down with world renowned experts iconic writers and researchers and while everyone from a limpy gold medalist world-shaking activists a list celebs musicians and more all with a single goal to help understand what it truly takes to live a good life and to feel a little less alone along the way listen to the good life project podcast wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com