Ukrainians must concentrate their forces in one place, break through frontline, or there will be no victory - Glen Grant

An experienced military expert, retired colonel of the British army, Glen Grant, is with us today on Espreso TV channel. I welcome you, dear Mr. Colonel, to the studio of Espreso TV channel.

First of all, congratulations on the Ukrainian Independence Day, which was a couple of days ago, but we understand that the holiday of the Independence of Ukraine should be celebrated every day, which is what our military actually does.  On August 24, we all expected a massive missile attack, but Russia did not dare to do so, and there is a feeling that they are running out of strategic forces, being not ready to go on the offensive.

Yes you are right. The Russian capacity is reducing in some ways, not in every way though. The morale of the soldiers is not good on the other side, we know that from the telephone calls, from all the things that the intelligence is saying. But there are still a lot of Russian soldiers, and as far as we can gauge, they still have a lot of artillery and ammunition. Although the artillery guns must be now getting tired or wearing out, because you can only fire from a gun so many times, and then it actually becomes dangerous, as it no longer holds the shell properly in the barrel. So they must be getting very tired in that respect.

If you look at this in a wider context, this is a very dangerous time for Ukraine, because Putin will be looking for the possibilities of keeping what he has got, before Ukraine starts pushing back at him. This means that he will try lots of things out in the West, hybrid activities to persuade other countries like Germany that are positive in supporting Russia, that it is a good time for a cease fire. And this is a bad time for Zelenskyi, because he has to say NO to a ceasefire, because the country will not accept it. He will come under pressure from a lot of international people to make some sort of deal, and I don’t think the society in Ukraine is ready for a deal at the moment. You could say that although Ukraine has pushed the military side forward into a good position, the international political position is still very dodgy across the world now.

Yes, the situation is extremely difficult, I agree with you. We understand that Putin is not just taking some hybrid actions, he is engaged in a frank nuclear blackmail, it is about the Zaporizhzhia NPP. On the other hand, it is for the first time that the West gave an extremely clear signal to Putin. For example, the American congressman Adam Kinzinger promised Putin to use Art. 5 of the NATO Charter in case Putin dares to commit a man-made disaster at the NPP in Zaporizhzhia.

In my view he is not ready to act, as there is very little to gain if he does act and lots to lose. Because if he gets the whole of NATO and the world against him, then he will cut off a lot of other things that he wants and needs from outside of Russia. He is far more likely to want to try and take the electricity the NPP produces and use it for Russia, either in the Crimea or somewhere else, because there is value in doing that.

From what we hear of the troops and the nuclear experts that Russia has in the NPP, they are shelling at the NPP, but they deliberately keep it away from the main power station itself. As you say it is enough for blackmail, but not enough to create a disaster. I think we have to keep our fingers crossed that it stays no worse than that. But sooner or later the Ukrainian Forces will have to go and take the NPP back, because you can’t exist with something so important for Ukraine left in Russian hands

Owing to the weapons from the West, and thanks to the skill of our Armed Forces, fires are burning in the temporarily occupied territories. Ukrainian Crimea, where the Russians set their military bases, is on fire. This is an extremely serious case, because it is a public humiliation of Putin in front of Russia, although he will survive such a humiliation, but it is also a humiliation in front of the rest of the world. The Crimean cotton demonstrated that Putin ceases to control the military situation in those territories that are symbolically important for him, we are talking about our Ukrainian territories.

All the deep attacks are important, whether it is on commanding control or ammunition sides. But the attacks in Crimea are doubly important because of the psychological value. The fact that it is actually putting pressure on other Russians, not just the military, but rather Russian society is now knowing about the attacks on Crimea. And this is when they start raising questions about the Russian strategy. I don’t believe yet that attacking Crimea is sufficient to make the country think that it is time to stop the war. In fact, in the initial stages for a while it may actually make things worse, as it may make people want to support the government to make sure that Ukrainians do not attack Russians. It could have a negative effect for a while.

But sooner or later people in Crimea, either military or civilians are going to realize that it is really time to leave, because if they don’t, they are going to get killed. That is going to be a big decider, when people really take this point and start getting out of Crimea in big numbers.

This is an important symbolic moment and this whole story in general reminds me of the story of the German pilot, Rust, who landed his small plane on Red Square. Then they publicly and not publicly whipped Soviet generals, who demonstrated that the air defense of the great, powerful Soviet Union was worthless, as one German plane managed to land on its central square. And we understand that this can cause a certain chain reaction now, because today Belbek's explosions can evolve into tomorrow's similar scenarios with the use of drones or long-range artillery in deep Russia. There is a certain breakdown in the psychology of the Russian military, they no longer feel like winners. If a soldier is not sure that he is able to win this military campaign, then this is a guarantee of a certain psychological breakdown in war. And the second psychological point here is that they really feel like invaders.

In some ways I will disagree with you, because I do like to disagree with you sometimes. You have to remember the majority of the soldiers are on the frontline. They know nothing about Crimea. Nobody is going to tell them what is going on in Crimea at all, because they are just about fighting. If we want to break the army in the whole, it actually means breaking part of the frontline, as it is only the frontline that is in many ways the most important part of it. Because that is a bit that is actually pushing Ukrainian soldiers back in places. So we have to break the frontline somehow. A second thing to this is that we must not concentrate our thinking only on how we deal with Russia, because as I said the big part of this is to do with the West. We have to think about our approach to the West, and it can’t just be from Zelenskyi’s broadcast every night, because people don’t look at that. What is really important, for example, is making sure that all the ambassadors are absolutely the best people we can put there, being pro-Ukrainian and who are going to argue the Ukrainian case, not just sit in the embassy quietly, as a lot of them do at the moment. Zelenskyi cannot afford to just put his friends in embassies if they are not going to be the right sort of people, because these are weapons in a way for Ukraine. The Ambassador and the Defense Attache must be absolutely the best people we can put into, because they are the face of Ukraine for a lot of the time, they are people the journalists and other politicians talk to. If you are going to fight the best fight for Ukraine and to get support for the next steps from the West, then what goes into the embassies is absolutely vital and must be of high quality.

This is also a separate painful story. If we are already talking about our counteroffensive attempts, or attempts to break through Russian positions, we understand that this requires armored vehicles and powerful artillery systems. On the other hand, we understand how wide and long our front line is, it is extremely large and now in fact it is ¾ of the length of our border. This is the border with Belarus, because we have to protect the capital. This is the border with the Russian Federation and this is the front line with the temporarily occupied South of Ukraine. This requires much more powerful artillery work, and we still lack anti-aircraft missiles.

That is a true thing. If you are going to attack, you cannot attack everywhere, and If you are going to defend, you cannot defend everywhere. This is a truism of war, especially with a frontline as long as the one we have got. Some risks have to be taken at some stage. They are already taking risks in places, but it does mean trying to put the best forces possible into one place to break through. And that means making sure that when the vehicles come from other countries, there is a prioritization, and one or two brigades are made stronger than the others, so that they are capable of driving hard into the enemy. Give them more artillery obviously and more rocket launchers support, because you have to do this. Historically, when you look at all wars, the strategic plan is a focus on one area or point and a breakthrough, and Ukraine will have to do that as well. And that does take risk, it does mean you have to be weak in some places, and maybe even go backwards. But that is what happens in wars, it is not a nice, tidy, straight line activity, never has been and never will be. If you want to win you have to go forward and start taking ground. You can wear the enemy out and forever, but eventually you have to start going forward which means taking risks and concentration of force as a military principle. You have to concentrate in one area to break through, and if you don’t do that, you will not break through. It is as simple as that. 

Concentration of military forces, primarily military equipment, armored vehicles - armored personnel carriers, etc. At the moment, we clearly understand that we do not have enough of them. Why, in your opinion, dear Mr. Colonel, the West still sticks to such a dosed supply, what are the reasons?

 You are getting a lot of equipment, and then how it is used is one thing. Some of it is being used extremely well, some of it is not being used as efficiently as it could be. For example, artillery. There are many places on the frontline where you do not have sufficient artillery observers with the right equipment. These things are systems, an army is a system and that means that you have to make the system work, and not just individual pieces of equipment. That is an absolute fact. If you spread tanks out, one here, one there, then you have no power. If you put 50 tanks in one place, then it creates an effect. You have to have the best arguments to the West that you can possibly get. And that doesn’t mean the Minister or Zelenskyi speaking every now and again. You have to come up with a coherent plan on what you want to do, so that people are aware of what you want to do, and how you are going to do it. So that the West is not just giving things without knowing what is going to happen to them.

I know Zaluzhnyi is talking to America and other people more. Hopefully, there is a plan that we don’t see. In other words, it is a plan that is going to be fixed in the coming weeks and months, because a lot of the things you are talking about take a lot of time. You cannot just produce tanks for another country without checking, maintaining, moving, training before they actually come in. Some of those things do take a long time. Equipment has been installed, in this case it has to go through a comprehensive check before it is allowed out, otherwise it just breaks. It is like guns, you cannot just keep a gun if you are not using it, it has to be maintained and looked after. It is not a five minute job to actually go through that, before you do something with it. So all these things take time. Like the training of the soldiers in Great Britain. There is a limit to how many people can be trained at one time. It is going to get more, because now other countries like New Zealand and the Netherlands are promising instructors, so the number of soldiers that can be trained abroad is going to increase. Soldiers on their own are just like pieces of a jigsaw. You have to put a jigsaw together, to put all the pieces together to make a picture. And this is the same challenge for the army at the moment is that they have lost pieces of the jigsaw, and now they have to put new back in. It is not going to happen in five minutes.

I will go back, you have to have a plan along with good diplomats. 

Recently, the Minister of Defense of Russia, Mr. Shoigu, a war criminal, one of those responsible for the aggression against Ukraine, made a rather high-profile statement that Russia is deliberately slowing down its offensive pace in order to preserve civilian lives. It is obviously nothing but a lie and PR, but most likely it means that some kind of internal management or some other crisis is brewing inside due to the fact that they cannot carry out an offensive and, accordingly, they begin to refer to their humanism, which is actually absent. On the other hand, this means that regrouping is underway and perhaps Russia is preparing for a protracted war.

 I agree. I think you can almost say, the bigger the lie that Shoigu makes, the more success we know we are having.

They need to slow things down at the moment, because obviously they have to bring forward new artillery guns and find more ammunition, as we keep killing it, and they have to find soldiers, and they currently have a real problem with soldiers.

Therefore, as I said at the beginning, they must be thinking about whether to call the cease fire, to try and create some sort of delay to give them time to get into a better position. And we cannot afford to let them have that.

Accordingly, how much time do they need and what would this attempt to freeze the front line look like? We understand that they will be ready to continue the campaign in a month or two, but what about massive missile attacks and the involvement of new additional forces. Now they are most likely not able to develop the directions of their offensive. However, if they really do prepare for a long war, the story could be quite complicated. We remember how in 1899 the Boers very well and skilfully smashed the British units. Three years passed and Britain regrouped, reformatted and began to achieve success.

I think Putin probably needs more like a year than a few weeks to do something serious. Because he will have to change factories to get them to produce things, and he will have to find a lot more men and make some political decisions about this, some of which will not be very popular in Russia. This raises the questions, ‘Is Ukraine preparing for the same thing? Are we starting to produce weapons and systems ourselves? Are we preparing for the long war?’ In identifying who is going to be fighting for the long time and what training they need, and not just basic infantry training, but all the other special trainings for maintainers, artillery observers, engineers. If this is going to be a long war, then there are a lot more people who need to be trained, especially officers. We have to find more officers, as many of them have been killed or injured.  There is a need to increase the number of officers now in the system. Perhaps it means making a lot of the sergeants officers rather than creating new ones.

Whatever happens, there has got to be a system to face up to what Russia is going to do. We cannot wait till Russia changes and then does something, we have to be in front of it if we are going to be better and beat them. 

Finally, dear Mr. Colonel, I would like to clarify why the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, who visited Kyiv the other day and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson, who also came to congratulate the Ukrainian people on Independence Day, were so brave. Has our air defense strengthened so much? Are they just brave people, or would Putin not dare to hit them with missiles?

I believe it is just their character. They would have come whether the air defense stood stronger or not. Boris is a man of character. And you have people of character willing to take the risk of being in Kyiv, as they believe in what they are doing, and they believe in what the Ukrainians are doing. Therefore, this is showing that they believe in this. They are not there for political grandstanding, but because there is a belief that what is going on is really important for Ukraine, for the West and for the rest of the world. And they want to show their part. 

It is with great regret that I have to end our conversation. Thank you very much, dear Colonel Grant, for this candid, honest analysis on Espreso TV channel.  Slava Ukraini!    God save the Queen!

Heroiam Slava! Thank you.