00:00Sean, welcome back. Good to see you.
00:02What should we make of this reshuffle at the top of Ukraine's military?
00:06Is it unusual to fire and hire the top man in the middle of a war?
00:12Good morning, Jamie. I mean, it's not unusual.
00:14In World War I, World War II, you know, there were a lot of senior generals moved along
00:19because they get tired. You need fresh ideas.
00:21I think what's the tragedy here is that maybe it wasn't picked up by some of the earlier reports.
00:27It is Siesky's a 60-year-old. He's a sort of relic of the former Soviet Union times
00:33and therefore probably more set in his ways, even though he's had a very distinguished history.
00:37Whereas Fedorov is a 35-year-old, young upstart, full of ideas, full of technology.
00:43And he's been part of this revolution that's been trying to find a way to get Ukraine away
00:49from this attritional battle on the front line, which is something, frankly, they can't win,
00:53into striking Russia using high-tech capability.
00:57And he's been very, very effective at that.
00:59The failure here, I think, is that you've got two very different beasts.
01:04And President Zelensky was this sort of making sure peace was kept between them.
01:09But Zelensky's been away a lot over the last few months.
01:12And quite frankly, when he's been away, it's pretty clear these two have not got on
01:15and eventually one of them had to go.
01:17As it turns out, both have had to go.
01:20Where would you say we are in the military terms of SIPREP?
01:24I mean, where are we in terms of where we are with the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
01:28Are we approaching the end?
01:30Is this the beginning of the end, stalemate or forever war?
01:34How do you judge it?
01:36Well, that's a simple question, Jamie.
01:39It's not an easy answer.
01:40I mean, I think the war has morphed into two distinctly different areas,
01:44one of which is around the sort of northwest of the Donbass, the front line,
01:49which is the fortress cities.
01:51One of them is Kostyantinivka, and that's where Russians are pushing hard.
01:55The trouble is they're losing more people there than they can recruit.
01:59There's lots of reports that Russia's considering mobilization.
02:02You'll remember that each year they have a conscript army that people are brought in.
02:07But mobilizing means more fighting-age people that you can actually put on the front line.
02:11If Russia does do that, it'd be incredibly unpopular.
02:15But both sides are struggling with manpower there.
02:17What Ukraine has done very successfully, which is the second part of this,
02:21is take the war to Russia.
02:22You were hearing about the strikes on these warehouses.
02:25It's all designed to take the war to Russia.
02:28And the long-range strikes using long-range missiles,
02:32particularly targeting Russian energy.
02:34I was reading the other day that the ability of Russia to now create petrol and diesel
02:40has dropped to a 21-year low.
02:42And you've got to remember, that's how Putin finances this.
02:45Does that mean we're near the end of the war?
02:47Almost certainly not.
02:48But Russia's finding it more and more difficult to grind forward.
02:52And I think we are gradually approaching the day
02:54where there'll be some sort of frozen front line,
02:57because Russia will have to stop for a breather.
02:59The challenge for the Western community is make sure that frozen line
03:03doesn't unfreeze again in a few years' time.
03:06And a thought on U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Exeth earlier,
03:10admitting the cost of the Iran conflicts so far
03:13and how much more the U.S. military will need.
03:17Do both of these conflicts in Ukraine and Iran
03:21fundamentally depend on who runs out of cash first?
03:27No, I don't think that's quite true.
03:30I mean, I do think they're so distinctly different, Jamie.
03:33We probably don't have time to get into it.
03:35I think that the tragedy of the Iran war
03:37is that there is no military solution to the Strait of Hormuz.
03:41And that's the sticking point at the moment.
03:43America has been conducting nightly and daily strikes against Iran.
03:47But all that's doing is delaying the inevitable negotiation.
03:50That's the only way they get the Strait of Hormuz open.
03:53And besides, if you remember, the sole reason that President Trump justified that war
03:58was to stop Tehran's nuclear ambition.
04:01Well, we're not even talking about that.
04:02We're talking about the Straits.
04:03We're talking about the global energy crisis.
04:05That was not an issue before the start of the war.
04:08So I think there's an element of frustration building here from President Trump.
04:11He would have expected his military to be able to deliver strategic success.
04:15That's not been the case.
04:17And the challenge for President Trump is how does he extract his fingers
04:20from this mangle while keeping his reputation intact?
04:24Very difficult.
04:25Sean, thank you.
04:26Sean Bell, the military analyst and former Air Vice Marshal in the Royal Air Force.
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