Putin will reach a point where whatever he does will suddenly crack - British expert Sherr

The key story is the collective authorization and consent to supply us with Western tanks, in particular, Abrams and Leopard 2. But the key story was also before that, when there was an extremely interesting, albeit hidden, backroom discussion about whether or not to give Ukraine tanks. What happened before the green tank "rocket" was delivered?

Good afternoon, I hope you are all well. This is my first time giving an interview to people on the missile attack.

Yes it's important to understand why this essential decision took so long. And I would say there are three reasons, mainly German reasons, but in part American reasons too. The first is the enormous psychological power of the image several generations ago of German tanks fighting in the Soviet Union against what was thought of as Russians. Of course everyone listening here understands that in very large measure these German tanks were fighting against Ukrainians but this thought simply does not penetrate. The same way in my country there are people who continue to believe that the Scots were once English. Europe is still, unfortunately, full of people who believe that until recently Ukraine was part of Russia. So there is this first psychological barrier and moral stigma. And second, this dreaded fear of anything military, because denazification was too thorough in Germany, it created a fear of anything military. Angela Merkel used to say almost in the middle of fighting there is no such thing as a military solution. This is all very strong and with this the notion that is also shared by part of the Biden Administration that all wars end in negotiation. Not all wars do end in negotiation, particularly the wars with Russia. And the third reason is there are people in Olaf Scholtz's party and elsewhere who still cannot let go of the Iron Curtain, that there can be no European security without Russia. So, all these largely psychological factors had to be overcome and they were overcome by shame because it became inescapably obvious that this hesitancy was doing enormous damage to Germany's reputation, not only in Ukraine but in Europe and the US.

Could Russia resort to some specific military retaliation against our partners or friends on the European continent? After all, these were the so-called red lines. And although we understand that Russia has long since crossed all the red lines, the West no longer pays attention to what the Kremlin considers red lines. This is an extremely dramatic moment.

We should not adopt a carefree attitude, but if we care about facts, the fact is that most red lines drawn have been crossed already without the sky falling down on our head. I continue to be one of those, I don't know if I am part of a majority or a minority, of the people who think about these things, who believe that the people who make decisions in the Kremlin despite their theatrics are not crazy, are fundamentally irrational despite the fact that Putin and others are obsessed about Ukraine, we all understand this. But I do not believe, certainly not in response to these latest decisions, that these people would be prepared in any serious way to contemplate and attack on the rest of Europe or a war against NATO. This question will become more serious and more interesting at such time as Russian forces are expelled beyond the 24th February war, and because of that's one reason there are those in Washington who want to see a compromised solution before that point.

Are there any prospects for the resumption of the Minsk-Istanbul negotiation format? How do you see the prospects for the backstage negotiations?

When it comes to the channels you mentioned, I don't believe there are any positive prospects at all. Of course it is worth listening to the echoes and all these echo chambers, but if the Russians have something serious to say, I do not think they will say these things through those channels. They will say them discreetly by people who one might mention. I think directly perhaps first through European interlocutors and then through the Americans. The Russians are using these channels that you mentioned to play their own games and for their own names. I think it's also very important though Turkey as a NATO ally. Turkey is not a disinterested party in this conflict, it has its own interests, being not the same as Russia's ones. Turkey wants to maintain an integral secure Ukraine but nevertheless it has powerful interests of its own that do not coincide with Ukraine's National interest as understood in Kyiv and most other places. So one cannot have illusions about these forums and these mediators.

I have to say you know in the main Ukraine has to continue to be the principal architect of its own victory. Ukraine must continue every day to demonstrate to others that the greatest danger of escalation arises when you show hesitancy in the face of the enemy, and Ukraine must continue to make this point by its words and actions to the West every day.

Putin and his circle regularly have the information amplitude to talk about nuclear war and about a superpower that can never be defeated without using unconventional weapons. Now certain voices have become stronger again. Our partners and friends in the West have warned Putin very clearly about the inadmissibility of using nuclear weapons and the inevitable consequences for Putin specifically. But it is clear that the current trajectory points to various unconventional scenarios. What scenarios should we pay attention to now? And how can China react in the current situation, since it is also not happy with Putin's threats, particularly through Medvedev's mouth, to use nuclear weapons?

How many faces does Putib have? You know the answer but you have to ask this question every time he says anything. Everything he says about nuclear weapons on Monday, he will contradict on Wednesday, and Lavrov will say something else on Thursday, and he will contradict that on Friday. So please understand that all this communication from Russia is designed to confuse the interlocutor and establish where the fault lines are and who believes this foolishness and who doesn't.

When it comes to China, one must repeat what I said about Turkey. China is not a disinterested player here. China does not want to see Russia lose this war, because the Chinese understand that will most likely lead to destabilization of Russia itself. China needs Russia to be a great power in the global system to help China manage the United States and to tie down the US. With all the reservations and apprehensions the Chinese might have had about the way this war started and the way it has been pursued, in all its public discussion in all of its public communication they have been very clear to lay the responsibility for the war on NATO. This has not changed in every public utterance that is said. The Chinese also play the same game as the Russians when it comes to disinforming others, which they do very competently, and they have been stating through some of their channels that they themselves restrained Russia from using nuclear weapons. Now this whole assertion is very useful to both Russia and China. It appears to substantiate the rumors that Russia really intended to use nuclear weapons in this conflict, I am not the only person who sees no evidence for that and no reason for it. But secondly, it also serves the Chinese interest of showing the West you see we are a mature reasonable power who understand everything from a broad perspective and you need good relations with us if you want to manage Russia. Well all of this should be obvious to a 12 year old, but it doesn't seem to be obvious,  people continue to take this seriously, read the serious official papers published in China. You need to understand Chinese to understand a lot of this. Fortunately, I have my colleagues who do. But again one should pay less attention to these public utterances than people do.

In general, do we understand what Putin wants from the world and from Ukraine now, besides continuing the war and seizing our territories, as well as killing our civilians, which is happening every day? A year ago, Putin issued an absolutely ridiculous ultimatum to the West, in particular to the Euro-Atlantic community, which was rejected for obvious reasons. Now there is an understanding of what is happening in the Kremlin, what would they want? We have now seen that General Gerasimov, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, has been given back all his powers. This means that the chief of the general staff is not only a well-known theorist, but a person who can indirectly give orders coming from Putin to specific strategic units. But this is not just a matter of Putin's wishes; it is also a matter of the capacity of their resources.

How effective will the Lublin Triangle of Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine be? Estonia may as well join it, as it has taken an unprecedented step by transferring all of its trailed howitzers to Ukraine. And most likely, the United Kingdom will be able to help us in some way within the Lublin Triangle. How effective can this "small Entente" be?

Let's first understand what it is. Again let's not be distracted by details of architecture and membership and concentric circles and all this kind of geometric nonsense. The fact is that Europe is divided between those countries and this applies also to the United States who have no direct experience and no direct knowledge of what it means to be part of Russia's historic zone of influence. They have never been occupied. And however committed and strong their feelings might be, they understand all of this as an abstraction. And then there is the other part of Europe that shares a deep foundation of historical experience not only with Ukraine, but in a malign way with Russia and understands these things intuitively. And the UK is a very interesting exception because for an entire year between 1940 and 1941 when there was the Blitz and there were not just fears but elaborate plans for a German invasion of the British Isles, the United Kingdom stood alone without any allies. This continues to have a profound psychological impact. Many of our partners in the EU are very critical of the fact that even now there's so much on television about the war, there're so many films, there're so many documentaries, so many interviews and therefore, in Britain there is an enormous psychological rapport, a huge reserve of psychological moral support for Ukraine. 

The pictures of Kyiv and Dnipro and other places under bombardment are so reminiscent of 1940, the firefighters, all the rest of it, the humor going on in the middle of it, all of it. So that again never ever underestimate the importance of the psychological dimension and in human affairs and the conduct of states, whatever should be the case. The fundamental point is if the United States loses heart, if it abandons its current policy, then we are all, not just you, but the rest of us in very serious trouble. And that makes the return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2024; if it's possible, it would be an event of profound importance - смертельный момент. I don't know how to say that in English, and it's one reason why I think Joseph Biden and his administration need to understand in the national interest and in their own that we must do everything to see that this war ends before the end of next year. 

President Biden may also be following to some extent the trajectory of President Wilson, who also did not want to enter a major continental war on the European continent. But gradually, he was forced to support his friends from Great Britain, France, and the Russian Empire, and he de facto had no choice. And here the situation is such that everything can lead to one thing after another. What would be the wisest thing for us to do, what mistakes should Ukraine avoid making, particularly in the international arena? And what do we need to resolve as soon as possible, whether it is international relations or bilateral relations with individual Western countries?

The answer when it comes to Ukraine is here. Ukraine must continue to be steadfast. What matters is Ukraine's steadfastness and cohesiveness, its maturity and responsibility, it means that in its diplomacy and communication Ukraine's messages should be clear, consistent and focused, as well as grounded in what Ukraine knows from its own experience. And I think these rules in Ukraine are generally observed, but from time to time there are exceptions. When prominent people in Ukraine lecture the West about things that are perhaps not their proper business and about which perhaps they know less than the people they are talking to. But that's the exception, Ukraine's communication I think by and large has been good, but it has to observe those rules. But the main contribution Ukraine must make is by not losing heart and continuing to do what it is doing in the war itself. Besides, I think that some of Ukraine's well-meaning advisors, including military advisors in the West, need to unlearn this habit of treating Ukrainians and Ukrainian military people as pupils. No, they are not pupils. Ukraine in many respects is in a position to be our teacher. It is the Ukrainian Army, not the U.S. or the British one that has prolonged experience now in fighting a power that we in Britain and the United States regard as a peer adversary. Ukrainian knowledge about Russia and how to fight Russia is unique in Europe, and we need to show more respect from this and we need to resist the temptation to micromanage what the Armed Forces of Ukraine do. I am not saying that we should not continue very intimate consultation on a day-to-day basis through all the public and less public forums, we have to conduct that consultation that is extremely important. But we need to get the balance right. We have at least as much to learn as to teach.

David Lloyd George, the British prime minister who bore the brunt of the First World War, once said something extremely significant: "Moral rightness is extremely important, but the question of resources is even more important." This is the harsh truth. Has the West already calculated all the resources it will be ready to allocate to support us-military resources, financial resources, etc.? And what is the overall situation with Russian resources, particularly human resources, that Putin will be ready to use in a war against us? Although we see that he does not spare his military, throwing them into our firing lines. In particular, we are talking about the hellish battles near Bakhmut, Soledar, Kreminna and in the East in general. This is both a financial issue and an issue of heavy weapons - how is Putin doing with all this?

The outcome of war is not decided by GDP ratios, it is decided by the conversion of national attributes, moral as well as material into usable power. Putin sells at converting Russia's attributes into usable power. There is an enormous cost and in future there will be a greater cost because by doing this, he is not only impoverishing Russia, he is ruining and destroying it. He is so fixated on his aims in Ukraine and against the West that I would be tempted to say but I won’t say that he would be willing to destroy Russia in order to accomplish these objectives. So do not underestimate the determination of this man and the people around him. But you will reach a point where whatever they are doing, like iron, will suddenly crack. Russia is not fragile but it's brittle and suddenly it can crack. And when it does, God knows who and when will be able to put it back together, again because that will be the beginning of a very different and deeply disturbing drama. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it, because of the war aims that Russia has such priorities, because of its whole methodology, it has created a situation where there are now only two choices - victory or defeat. It's not the job of the West to worry about what happens in Russia after Russia is defeated. It is the job of the West to worry that we are not defeated. This is the fundamental thing. We have in all of our countries in what we call the West an enormous capacity to be distracted by very interesting issues that are ultimately of secondary importance. We are in the middle of a war. From my perspective, we are in the middle of the war, not just you, and we need to keep our focus on winning this war. And then let Russia look after itself. As to how long they can carry on doing what they're doing, I don't know, there are people more expert than I about the Russian economy, who will also admit that they don't really know. But I suspect when changes come, they will not be gradual, they will be sudden, very abrupt and surprising.