'Until Ukraine gets the air power that it needs it's probably going to be a slow, painful grind'
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00:00 to the war in Ukraine now where Moscow and Kiev exchanged several waves of attacks over the weekend.
00:05 Officials say Russia launched airstrikes across Ukrainian cities including on a blood transfusion
00:11 center in the Kharkiv region. While Kiev says it hit two bridges and occupied territories on Sunday
00:17 and targeted Russia's Black Sea fleet. Meanwhile on the ground Ukraine's military commander-in-chief
00:22 says its troops defensive lines are stable amidst the fighting as they continue to fend off Russian
00:27 advances. Well to unpack all that let's bring in Dr. Samuel Romani, Associate Fellow at the Royal
00:33 United Services Institute, RUSI, who joins us now from London. Dr. Romani, quite an exchange of
00:39 attacks over the weekend. Let's first talk about Ukraine's attacks on Russia, namely the Black Sea
00:44 fleet. What can you tell us about that? I think that that was a major attack on the Black Sea
00:49 fleet. It was the largest attack that we've seen really since the Moscow sinking that occurred
00:54 and it was likely done with Ukrainian originated drone and military technologies. That's quite
01:00 significant. Even more crucially it was an attack that was launched on Novorossiysk.
01:05 And Novorossiysk is a safe harbor for Russian forces, Russian ships. In fact Russian ships
01:09 moved through Sevastopol and Crimea deeper into Russian territory in Novorossiysk precisely to
01:14 avoid attacks of this kind. This is a real humiliation for the Russians. And of course
01:20 Russian forces are continuing its own airstrike campaign across Ukraine. Can we say that Russia
01:26 is still specifically targeting civilian infrastructure? Well Russia is continuing
01:32 to target civilian infrastructure. It's not as coordinated as it was between October and
01:36 December of last year when General Sergei Serebryakhin was at the helm and they were
01:40 targeting mostly power grids and electrical supplies. Now they seem to be launching attacks
01:44 on infrastructure, real estate, civilian areas just to cause terror and panic. But there is
01:49 that consistent dimension and probably it's aimed at preventing any kind of investment into Ukraine
01:54 or any kind of reconstruction of Ukraine from really taking foot. And of course Ukraine has
02:00 so far recaptured several villages in the south and around Bakhmut. But from what we can gather
02:05 it's yet to claim a major breakthrough across some heavily defended Russian lines. Give us an
02:10 idea of how Ukraine's counter offensive is shaping up. Well Ukraine's counter offensive has been
02:16 somewhat disappointing at least from the high standards that were set by the September 2022
02:20 liberation of Kharkiv followed by the November 2022 expulsion of Russia from Karazhan. And that's
02:26 because of the depth of Russia's fortifications on the front lines. You've got dragon's teeth
02:30 trenches. You've got also anti-tank and landmines that have been put through. And that really slows
02:38 Ukraine's progress. And when Ukraine is slow and it's trying to figure out where to enter,
02:42 the Russians have advantages in terms of air power and they can launch attack helicopters
02:47 from behind the horizon and weaken Ukrainian positions further. Cluster missions are helping
02:52 the Ukrainians but it's not enough to close the gap. And that's why until Ukraine gets
02:56 the air power that it needs it's probably going to be a slow, painful grind. And just lastly,
03:03 if you will, there were talks held in Saudi Arabia over the weekend on the war. And a senior
03:08 Ukraine official has called it a huge blow to Russia. How significant were these talks and
03:13 did anything interesting come out of them? Well, I think it's interesting to see that there were
03:17 also non-Western countries that were at a conference and championing Ukraine's territorial
03:22 integrity. I mean, this conference in Jeddah was the second one after the one in Copenhagen,
03:28 and it's likely to lead to a global Ukraine summit that could include India, Brazil,
03:32 as well as China. Chinese envoy Li Wei was actually surprised attending at the summit.
03:37 But I think he was trying to market China's global security initiative, which you saw them broker
03:41 between Saudi Arabia and Iran and create some distance from rumours that China's supplying
03:46 Russia with dual use military equipment, reading uniforms. All right, Dr Samuel Romani from Rusi,
03:53 thank you very much for your analysis.