RUSSIA’S military push in eastern and southern Ukraine has stalled, a leading military intelligence expert has told GB News.
Philip Ingram said: “The Russian advances in the east and what they’re doing in the south around the Kherson area have effectively stalled.
“And you’re quite right in saying there have been reports of the Russians building up their defences in the area because they don’t have the manoeuvring capability.
“They’re beginning to bring in older equipment to try and prosecute their operations. Ukrainians in the meantime, have given up a little bit of land to give them for some time and use that time to bring in new Western equipment to get the troops trained on it.
“They’re starting to feel that which means now that they’ve got much better artillery. They’ve got much better rockets.
“We’ve heard of the Himars system and all the rest of it, and they’re using that to attack the Russian supply depots and the command posts, as well as using the closer in artillery to attack the defensive positions and prepare for or seemingly prepare for this counter offensive in the south.”
Mr Ingram said Russia may further restrict gas supplies to Europe in revenge: “That is almost an inevitability. Putin has lost everything that he’s tried to do so far.
“His main effort initially was to try and capture Kyiv and to topple the Ukrainian government. He’s failed to do that.
“He was then trying to capture and is still trying to capture the whole of the Donbas region, but he’s still having real difficulty in doing that.
“The reason for doing that was to open this land bridge from Crimea up through the Donbas and into Russia and if the Ukrainians manage to successfully counter-attack in Kherson and then can push further south, they can cut off that land bridge into Crimea, putting Putin in a very, very difficult position indeed, and he will be trying to fracture international support.
“That’s what he’s doing by using gas as a weapon and using grain as a weapon. It wants the international community not to support Ukraine, because it’s that support that is hurting Russia economically, but also hurting Russia militarily on the ground.”
Asked about whether support for the war might fade in the West, he said: “I think in some countries that might start to wane but I think in the majority of the countries and the majority of countries that have got real influence, it won’t, and it can’t, because if we let it win, and the Russians begin to win, they’re going to come back again.
“This crisis is going to come back in three, five, seven year’s time and worse than it is – and actually, if we give in other countries like China will turn around and say ‘oh, well, the West gave into Russia in Ukraine, and therefore that’s a green light for us to do things in Taiwan.
“So on a global basis, if we don’t see this through to the end, it could potentially be hugely worse than we’ve got at the moment.
“Unfortunately, a war in Europe like it is coming on the back of a pandemic, there is going to be pain and the population are going to suffer it and we’re suffering it in our pockets.
“We’re not suffering it in the same way that Ukrainians are suffering it where they are losing children, families, housing and everything else being destroyed and the horrors of their suffering are frightening.”
Asked what the end of the war would look like, he said: “Well, the end from my perspective in Ukraine has to be the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial boundaries to pre-2014 levels.
“So that is the recapture of the disputed Donbas region, pushing Russian and Russian influence out and the recapture of Crimea again and pushing Russia and Russian influence size, which would inevitably lead to the toppling of Vladimir Putin.”
