Russians are preparing for Ukrainian counteroffensive in south, but are not ready to defend themselves in Donbas – expert Grant

I would like to start with a strange but large-scale information leak. Russian intelligence services and the media are trying to speculate on this, but in any case, we can see how concerned the intelligence community in both the United States and Europe is.

As you say, overall it's quite a complex thing. In the first place judging by the American actions since the release of the information. It looks very much like a briefing given to someone by the intelligence services or by someone who's put together a briefing about not just Ukraine, but the world in general to update them. It looks like a typical sort of briefing actually for someone who is new in office. It's the sort of thing that you give someone who's just joining the state department or joining the White House or the Pentagon or somewhere like that. A briefing of this is where we are in the world. 

So it looks as though when it was actually found by someone or given to someone like the Russians, that some of the figures and some of the information was changed on the Ukrainian pages to make Ukraine look worse and Russia look better.

I can't comment on the other pages about other allies and about other areas of the world because I haven't seen any of those. I've only seen the Ukraine pages, but obviously they are old, they are not new. That's the first thing, the information is a couple of months old. So the point the British Ministry of Defense said that much of the information in there is untrue, is actually true. It is untrue now because it's old. 

The leak upset the allies who gave America information. There is no doubt that people in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand who have a close relationship in intelligence will be upset because they'll think about whether it is possible to give America information and then it doesn't disappear. 

I think also the fact that America is spying on some of its allies, who it doesn't need to spy on, who they can just ask questions and get truthful answers is also worrying for some people because I'm absolutely sure that Great Britain gives truthful answers to America, as does Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan countries like that. They have no reason to lie to America. 

But actually the Americans should have been ready for something like this happening because after Trump had all these secret documents that should have been quite clear to them that their control of secret documents is weak. I mean I wrote about it several times on Twitter and things that they needed to actually to relook at how they handle strategic information like this because if Trump can have it and give it away, then anybody can have it and give it away. 

Now about Ukraine. Firstly, the information gave away one or two things of strategic importance, one of which was the air defense, and the talk about air defense missiles, but this actually may be a good thing because having highlighted it at this level that the Ukrainians are as a country are running out of their defense missiles, which actually anybody could guess, that's not difficult to guess that, it does rather put pressure onto the international community now to make sure that Ukraine does get more air defense systems. And I know that America is now trying to rush some air defense systems and missiles to Ukraine to make sure that what is mentioned in the intelligence report does not happen, that Ukraine runs out of missiles. So this may be a good result actually for this information having become public. 

The information doesn't give away how, where and when Ukraine will counter attack, and those are the key things that information is not in there. You can't guess it from there. You can only guess the level of readiness but again, that level of readiness has been made public by the British Ministry of Defense, Swedish Ministry of Defense, German Ministry of Defense and many other people talking about when their equipment will go to Ukraine, what training is taking place. So that's been public and there's nothing new in that. 

Ukraine can be fairly sure that Russia is not going to be able to take much from that report except for the air defense details, and that loophole will be closed. 

If you look at this in the wider picture, it's an embarrassment for the United States, a real embarrassment, and something they must now take seriously. They must find out who leaks it, and they must try and close the security loopholes that exist in their system.

This means that the enemy was trying to influence decision-making in certain strategic areas: The US, the UK, the EU, and of course Ukraine. We are well aware that Ukraine has several options for strategic development of events, and all of them can be used depending on changes both on the battlefield and in the supply of new weapons.

It's interesting Russia releasing this. I've had to think long and hard about this and a lot of my friends who analyze these things are also not 100% sure exactly what the Russian ambition was with this. I mean in the first place he obviously wanted it for home consumption as much as anything to show that Russia is at war against America. They need this for mobilization. They need this to convince people to volunteer to fight for Russia. So that's the first thing, and it probably will have an effect on that because just fighting against Ukraine is not the same as defending Russia against the West. So they will use that information very much in terms of that and also to show that the West is corrupt, weak and does bad things unlike Russia which of course as we know is perfect and never does anything bad.

They will also see it as a possibility to maybe delink Ukraine from America a bit more and because Russia always gets this thinking wrong, it would never occur to them that this might actually bring Ukraine and America closer because America is now embarrassed, and when America is embarrassed, it has to actually try harder, not to try less. I think that Russia will have got that understanding wrong. 

And then there's the third thing which is of course to raise the standing of Russia in the eyes of China because Russia is nothing in this war without China at the moment, and I think they know that. And so being public about this also shows that America is ready to fight China as they would put it and therefore that actually brings China and probably a few other countries into a closer relationship with Russia than before the leaks.

Those are their key aims with it. I don't think it changes what Ukraine can do or will do at all because the information is not that sort of information. It's more administrative operational than operational operational information. And as I said, it is old information, a snapshot of what was happening three four months ago, not what is happening now.

Russia is increasingly raking in its population to replenish losses at the front. We also see an increase in the intensity of weapons production both in Russia and through agreements abroad. We do not know how the defense relations between Russia and China or India will develop.

I think in the first place Russia still seriously intends to bring Belarus into the war at some stage, and will try to use the Belarusians and the northern front because this is too strong an opportunity for Russia to waste. Maybe not now, maybe in three-six months or a year's time. So I don't think we should ignore that. 

The thing is that Russia at the moment has the initiative. In military terms it is always criminal to give away the initiative, you have to try and get the initiative back from the enemy. While Russia has the initiative it means they can move their reserves where they want to. But Ukraine has to move reserves where Russia is fighting. Ukrainians have no choice but to move reserves, for example, at the moment to Bakhmut, but I suspect that they will now continue with Bakhmut as it's going and then attack in one or two other places, all the time trying to stretch the front line beyond the capacity of Ukraine to defend. And they are doing that quite well at the moment in several areas. Ukraine is holding on. If they continue doing it in this way, there is an inevitability that Russian will actually break through somewhere because Ukraine has not got enough frontline troops at the moment of the quality, and when I say quality needed I don't just mean people. I mean people, ammunition, weapons and vehicles in the defensive posture. 

And what Russia will be trying to do in the short term is to force Ukraine to use the counterattack forces in defense. So when they're used in defense, then they're not available for a counterattack. It looks to me what they are trying to do at the moment.

In the long term Russia will want to come out of this summer in the same position that it is at the moment, maybe slightly further forward in places 10-15 kilometers, but I think that they will be quite happy if they hold the line because Russia believes that if they can hold for maybe another six to eight months that the Western support will dry up. It will dry up because they don't have enough ammunition themselves, because they don't have enough equipment themselves. 

Russia will also be hoping that China keeps the pressure on Taiwan because if China keeps the pressure on Taiwan, America has to look two ways. And that is very difficult because America will not want to give away everything in the Ukraine battle if she's going to need to fight a war in the Far East. What China does for Russia is to keep the pressure on Taiwan and she's doing that already. That is an important factor. 

I don't think India will come back into play on the side of Russia because eventually India is a democracy, and although the government has been very lukewarm about supporting Ukraine, the majority of people in India are lovely nice people. And they will see what is happening in Ukraine. They will see things like the recent beheading of a soldier, and they will hate that sort of thing. And you can already hear this in the press, you can hear this in the media and on television that the Indians are not happy with what the Russians are doing in general. There is a difference there between the government and the population at large.

But Russia will get support from North Korea and will get support from Iran.  Worryingly, it's possible that other countries may align themselves with Russia because there is a feeling amongst many analysts at the moment that the world is lining up on either side. It's either lining up for America or it's lining up for Russia-China with the possibility of a bigger war later. And this is worrying that some countries do not see what Russia is doing as being bad. And in the long term that is not good for the West. It's not good for Ukraine.

So my conclusion for that is very simple, and I've said it before, which is that Ukraine badly needs to sort the government out, that we need a government of talents, not the government of friends, but actually putting the best people into government. And we need to sort out the arms industry in Ukraine so that Ukraine has something of its own that it can fight with. If it doesn't do that long term, then Ukraine actually could be in real problems in a year - 18 months time, especially if China keeps pushing on Taiwan.

If we look at the Russian air defense system, we wonder whether the Russians have enough systems that could stop several hundred drones. And how would this drone strike affect the psycho-emotional state of Moscow residents?

I think we've yet to see this army of drones. And even if you have an army of drones, and even if they fly lots into Russia, I don't think it will change anything to the positive because the truth is that the only people that can take and hold ground, in other words can get Donbas back and Crimea back, are foot soldiers, infantry. And you can have an army of drones, and you can attack Russia, but Russia is huge and I'm not sure we will ever have enough drones to attack the whole of Russia. And in fact, if you attack the whole of Russia, you may increase the chances that the war will continue because then even more Russians will then want to fight against Ukraine. So it actually could be counterproductive to do too much in Russia. But the bottom line still, no matter how much you kill in Russia, you still have to march forward and go and get the ground back. You still have to march forward into Crimea and get the ground back because these things won't be given away easily.

Does Putin have a plan for the second stage of the great war? We understand that all of Putin's preparations will not be limited to a war with Ukraine. After all, the process of occupation of Belarus continues, a number of agreements on military cooperation have been signed, which means that a new direction or pressure, or even military aggression, is possible. We are, of course, talking about the strategically important Suwalki gap to the Kaliningrad region. Putin may start putting pressure on Poland and the Baltic states.

There is no chance that Putin can do anything against the Suwalki gap of any value. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that it is actually militarily protected. In other words, the Lithuanians, Germans, Poles and Americans down by the Suwalki corridor. The second thing is that they built a huge motorway through the center of the Suwalki corridor. If you haven't been there, you should go and see it, and it basically is the largest anti-tank defense that the world has ever seen because the motorway has got huge ditches on either side. And so it's actually quite easy to defend, and the Belarusians have no ability to cross that motorway militarily at all. And the Russians are not going to leave Kaliningrad to go into the Suwalki gap because if they leave Kaliningrad to go to the Suwalki gap, then the Americans will just go into Kaliningrad behind them. The Suwalki gap should not be seen as a worry at the moment. It will be a foolish mistake for Russia to try and do anything there. But in the long term, obviously as Putin and his team have said so, that they would like to go into the Baltic states, possibly take back Finland. At the moment they simply do not have that ability. They don't have enough infantry of quality. And NATO is prepared to fight in those areas. So I think that if Putin sees that as a long-term aim, we are talking 10 to 20 years before that becomes a possibility, and I don't think the world is going to be the same place in 10 to 20 years that it is now, and I don't think Russia will be the same in 10 to 20 years as it is now. That part of the plan is unreal. I'd be far more worried about Putin's intentions in the next two years than I am in the long run.

The Russians continue to deploy their military equipment. Are there any positive developments in the supply of weapons to Ukraine? Perhaps F16s or heavy armored vehicles in adequate quantities?

On the first question, if Russia keeps bringing old equipment out, then it has got still in Russian terms bottomless resources. Because they've saved everything since the World War II. Everything they've ever made, they've saved. They've still got as we know thousands of T-55 tanks and thousands of people. So Russia has still got a lot that they can throw at Ukraine. It's unclear about ammunition. That is one thing that is unclear whether they are actually running out. My suspicion is that they're not, that there is still ammunition in the bunkers inside Siberia and in Urals and places that they haven't touched but it will be old ammunition, and it will not be the most effective ammunition. Also a lot of their artillery guns that they've got on the front line are now completely worn out. So there are a lot of them that are going to break in the coming months because they've just fired too much ammunition through them in the last year. So a lot of those guns are going to die and that will make it much harder for them. 

Their resources are lots of low-grade equipment, lot's of low-grade trained people, but that's still a lot. And they're still going to be able to attack in all sorts of places or just use people as ammunition effectively. I don't think that we're going to see Russia suddenly grind to a halt in the near future. Ukraine's ability in terms of resources will always be less than Russia's. This means that the Ukrainian Army has to start fighting cleverly and has to start using technology much better than it is at the moment. There are still lots of areas where Ukraine in military terms is working inefficiently. When are we actually in Ukraine going to start changing some things and improving how we fight and improving business because to fight Russia using the same actions and the same logic as Russians is to guarantee losses and to guarantee that we're just going to lose hundreds and hundreds of people because we're not fighting as well as we could fight. 

There are lots of things that Ukraine has got to do. It's not just equipment, training is the big thing, collective training, improving how the communications are used and just generally understanding how to fight better.

What are the main features of the Russian offensive strategy? What should we pay attention to?

If you take the political view, then what Russia wants is a totally subdued Ukraine effectively, almost in the same way that Belarus is subdued, in the way that Moldova has been subdued, to a large degree Georgia has been subdued. In other words a Russian leaning government in charge and all the key dissidents either imprisoned or killed. That's what Russia would like politically. So Ukraine becomes a client state, a serve state of Russia again as they would see it like that.

And going back in history, militarily what the General Staff wants to do is, as I said earlier in the interview, to overwhelm Ukraine defenses somewhere so that there is a breakthrough. They need this not just militarily, but they need it for the political military aspects of showing Putin that they are capable generals, and that they can fight and win because if they don't win somewhere soon, then there is the possibility that some of these generals will eventually be removed, and new people will be put in charge. And I'm pretty sure that people like Gerasimov do not want that. He's going to do his best, to use all the resources that he has and find more resources inside Russia from the military because those resources are there. There are resources in different parts of the country that they haven't used yet, military equipment, and he will want to bring that to the front line and overwhelm Ukraine somewhere. 

I don't think in the south because they're building huge defenses everywhere including on the east banks of the river in Kherson. They're building defenses there. So they don't intend to attack across the river. They don't want to be attacked across the river and if there is a counterattack, they will want the counterattack to be where they are strong, where they have defenses, so they will try and attack in other places to try and force Ukraine to attack where they are strongest in defense. 

They will make their defenses strong so that they can stop a counterattack. And they will assume that Ukraine is not going to attack through Bakhmut, for example, that they will not attack Avdiivka because those are places where Russia is attacking. So probably the most vulnerable place for Russia is actually Bakhmut even though they're attacking there at the moment, but they have to do something because careers and futures are on the line, and it's not just about careers and future, it is about lives in terms of Russian generals. I mean Russian generals will get killed if they don't deliver. So they need to do something.

Glory to Heroes and God Save the King, and thankfully he is supporting Ukraine very strongly.