Analysis: Putin’s price for losing war momentum

Analysis: Putin’s price for losing war momentum

ukraine is a pretty big country uh 44 45million people when the russians decidedto invade it
by on all fronts it was clear they weretaking on a pretty ambitious
operation and western analysts said thatif they’re trying to invade and hold acountry that doesn’t want you there umthe forces that they were deployingdidn’t really look enough
so i think what we’re facing now is theproblem that mr putin has if you don’twin quickly you begin to lose
politically.

a quick military win is what’s requiredif you don’t get it then the politicalcost mounts quite a lot and that’s wheremr putin probably finds himself today solet’s have a look at what’s happening inkiev of course
kiev is still not surrounded.

and forces that are trying to get tokiev um are being attacked their linesof communication are being disrupted theukrainians are putting up a reallystaunch.

series of attacks on those lines ofcommunication and they’re moving reallyquite slowly in kharkiv which shouldhave been the most vulnerable city rightnear the the russian border quitepro-russian in its background andhistory they are still fighting inkharkiv it hasn’t fallen and if we handand now have a look at uh chenehev inchenahive this is a place that therussians said on friday they had takenturned out they hadn’t then they thoughtwe thought that they were screening itso that they could move around it andcarry on moving towards kiev um but infact.

if you screen a place and move on you’vealways got the danger that it will startfighting in that seems to have happenedagain today so again the lines ofcommunication look as if they’re beinginterrupt interrupted and eventiv justhave a look at evankiv.
northwest of uh kiev
in vancouver it’s about 40 miles fromkiev we have a video of an armoredconvoy moving really very slowly it’snot dashing towards kiev to complete thecircle around the city so there are someproblems there let’s have a look at thedown in the south here the russians aredoing much better they have takenberyansk and that’s confirmed by theukrainian government that is the theirfirst.
proper military objective that they haveachieved so they’ve got bernie ants butlet’s have a look at this look at mariopaul and kirschen they’re still fightingin an area that they expected to takeeasily and mariopol marriopon was themost vulnerable of all places.
in ukraine it’s right next to theseparatist entity um an important portit was already strangled as a port thefact is here we are on day five mariposshould have fallen within hours we don’tknow what’s happening in marriott butwhatever it is it must be quitesomething when this is all over onesuspects they’ll be making hollywoodfilms about mario paul the fact is markthat president putin is facing the theproblem that he now has
this operation should have been over inthree days in fact this is day five forevery day that the ukrainian governmentis still on its feet that’s a politicalvictory for them
yeah and uh i mean i i assume that we’regoing to
the nuclear
talk about putin and his defense forceson alert nuclear alert is posturing butuh you know if what you say is true thenputin will be getting pretty frustratedone imagines how dangerous could afrustrated and uh
angry president putin get
it ratchets up the tension uh anothernotch mark i mean maybe more than onenotch but the fact is that these sortsof threats have been made before in 2008and 2014 when russia moved into georgiain 2014 in the crimea crisis andpresident putin always meant it as asort of symbol to tell the rest of theworld keep out this is not your problemthis is this is something we’re going todeal with they always did keep out inthis case the line is getting a bitblurred between keeping out and gettinginvolved so i think there’s an elementof desperation in what he says but alsoit is dangerous because we don’t reallyknow what sort of mental state he is inbut at the moment it’s just uh it’s justa piece of rhetoric but believe me thewestern nations and intelligenceagencies will be watching very veryclosely for any movement of nuclearwarheads in in
or around russia
yeah it’s all uh just so fascinatingmichael thank you very much indeed