Ukraine's allies start to move on tanks | Ukraine: The Latest | Podcast

I'm David Knowles and this is Ukraine. Today we look at new Russian attacks in Ukraine, bring you the

latest

diplomatic updates from across Europe and talk to Professor Dominique Arau, professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, about this horrific and barbaric adventure by Vladimir. Putin must end in favor Putin's war in Ukraine has destabilized energy markets around the world no one is going to bankrupt us we are strong we are Ukrainians abroad we sit down with top journalists from the Telegraph's London newsroom and our teams They report from the field to bring you the

latest

news and analysis on the war in Ukraine It is Thursday, January 26, day 338 and with me to discuss the latest events in Ukraine and around the world.

I'm joined by our associate editor Dominic Nichols, our assistant comments editor Francis sternley. Our guest is Professor Dominique Ahel from the University of Ottawa in Canada and we would also like to welcome our senior foreign correspondent Roland Oliphant to the discussion, as the anniversary of the large-scale invasion looms, we will talk a lot in the next . few weeks about the war in Ukraine before February 24, 2022. We will talk to journalists, academics, eyewitnesses, everyone we can to help us understand the crucial background of what has been called the large-scale invasion that began in February from last year. To chart how Ukrainian society and politics have sometimes changed drastically and to shed light on a bloody, difficult and complicated war, the topic is sometimes controversial and of course it can be difficult to look back at the recent past through the lenses today, especially after a year of unprovoked conflict.

Cruelty, war crimes and horror perpetuated by the Russian Armed Forces Today we speak with Professor Arel about his new book Ukraine's Nameless War and welcome our senior foreign correspondent Roland Oliphant, who reported from Ukraine at the time. Well, hello David, hello David and hello everyone. It's been a busy morning in Ukraine with a lot of air strikes with missiles and drones, so firstly several Russian Tu-95 bombers, so the Tubalev bombers took off from a base in Momence because it's right on the Polar Circle Arctic and, as assessed, fired more than 30 missiles throughout Ukraine. This comes from a Ukrainian military spokesperson.

Reports are that one person is dead and two others injured in kyiv so far. Earlier, the Ukrainian Air Force said it had shot down 24 Iranian-made drones, we believe all Shaheed 136 drones supplied by Iran to Russia. it looks like they were launched, excuse me, from the Sea of ​​Azov area, so the Sea of ​​Azov is that part of the Black Sea in the northeast corner north of the Kirsch bridge and up to the coast where Mario Polly is the Sea of ​​Azov, so It's not clear if they were launched from the Surface Fleet or from the ground, but that seems to be the area where they came from and the Ukrainian Air Force says they were all shot down now something hit the Odessa authorities there in Odessa, so in The southwest of the country says that two energy facilities were attacked, so we think it may have come from the tuple of bombers because, for example, all the shaheeds are considered to have been shot down now.

Gen. Valeria Zolusny, head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said that 47 of the 45 Russian missiles launched this morning were shot down and that the attack included kh-47 Kinzal hypersonic missiles. She published it in her telegram. Missile channel 20. were shot down around kyiv, she said and was quoted as saying: "the Russians' goal is to keep the psychological pressure on the Ukrainians and the destruction of critical infrastructure unchanged, but we cannot be broken." The bombers have come from that, obviously, after remembering that last month in December they had had to leave the Engels base in the interior of Russia, about 600 kilometers northeast of the border with Ukraine, but on the 5th and 26th December that base was attacked by something that we think are long-range drones that we are not completely sure about, whether they were produced internally by Ukraine or modified or what they were, but those air bases that helped maintain the um or the base for the 295 and the is that I think it's a 160, isn't it 160, the type of large strategic bomber that can carry nuclear weapons?

No, there is no suggestion of that in this war so far, but it seems that those bombers have been withdrawn because they are obviously vulnerable if they are if they are being attacked if the base has been attacked twice in a month then they have been

move

d to this base in the Arctic, so there's a long way to go, would you? I hope you like to think that they were seen coming and that there is some kind of suggestion of Western intelligence assistance to Ukraine, not directly in terms of shooting them before they get anywhere near Ukrainian airspace, but at least in terms of a eye star surveillance so smart Target acquisition and recognition feature that lets them know they were coming, so no, there is no suggestion of that, that was my speculation, but the news yes, there are more waves of attacks this morning, uh, launching missiles and drones, thank you very much Tom.

Francis, can I come to you? He has several updates for us from the diplomatic and political space across Europe. Thanks, David. Well, yes, after the prolonged and inevitable fall of the German government yesterday, the debate has

move

d on to where the

tanks

should be sent. which

tanks

are being sent and by whom, so there is now increased attention on France this morning. Macron is under pressure to send French Leclerc heavy tanks to Ukraine after Germany announced the decision to send the Leopards yesterday, something I know you covered in depth. He said he welcomed Germany's announcement, adding that it built on Francis' promise on armored vehicles earlier this month.

France committed to sending AMX 10 RC armored combat and surveillance vehicles that many would call light tanks in French, but, as I say, there are now more and more questions about the nature of the next tanks that should be sent from France and whether these tanks more heavy tanks are going to arrive now, I think it may be inevitable, as in the case of Germany, that these liquor tanks will be sent, but I think it all falls into the context of what exactly is France's approach to the invasion? I think for many of us who have been following the war from the beginning, it is a rather disconcerting stance, while Macron has been consistently outraged since February last year by his approach to the solution.

You could argue that he has been less than consistent: he tried to talk to Putin earlier in the war and as recently as December said that Europe's new security architecture should give guarantees to Russia, so while Germany has been the subject of many criticisms, I think it is important to emphasize that Some of the criticisms made of that country could also apply to France and I spoke earlier in the week about the review that France has done and has announced how it plans to improve its military in the coming years in response to Ukraine , but there has been a lot of conversation behind that saying that actually a lot of it is still in cyberspace, a lot of it is quite unconventional warfare and there are some who say well, actually, if this war has proven anything, particularly in this second phase.

Conventional warfare, tanks, heavy munitions, they really matter and there are some who are questioning France's real commitment to this question of long-term military support, of course, France is a nuclear power, it is important to frame it in this context, but there are some that are a little bit skeptical about what exactly the French position is and how strong Macron is right now, so I wanted to address that question first because there's been a lot of conversation about that this morning. I talked about Germany a second ago and of course we've been We're talking now and monitoring this ongoing German spy scandal and there's an update in this space where German authorities arrested a man who they said acted as a courier for a double agent and delivered secret intelligence to Russia, so this is now the second. person detained in connection with this ongoing espionage scandal that has rocked the country's intelligence service.

Now Germany has a lot of strict privacy laws, so we can only identify him by these rather vague nicknames, but the suspect, identified only as Arthur E, was arrested at Munich airport last Sunday after arriving on a flight from the United States. Joined. German prosecutors have said he brought to Russia documents given to him by Carson L, the alleged double agent whose arrest last December marked the beginning of this ongoing trial. saga now Arthur E is described as an acquaintance of Carson L, who is a high-ranking agent in the BND, which is Germany's foreign intelligence agency, our equivalent of MI6, and, as I say, he was arrested on suspicion of treason shortly before Christmas, now like me.

I've talked before that the discovery of these alleged double agents at the heart of Germany's foreign intelligence service has really caused quite an uproar within Western espionage that has raised a lot of concerns about intelligence cooperation between Ukraine's Western

allies

. I talked about some who have speculated. that Ukraine has been concerned about the strength of the German intelligence services for some time and that may have influenced the amount of intelligence they shared before the war, so that is just speculation, but it is nonetheless revealing in as to how some view German intelligence. services and we consider them perhaps less than reliable compared to some of their counterparts, so it is an ongoing story that, but when will we continue to monitor because it has quite big implications for how Germany is perceived, in addition to, of course, the ongoing saga around tanks that has now just ended?

Finally, in the diplomatic space, speaking of a complex panorama, I wanted to look again at Turkey today. Listeners will know, of course, that Finland and Sweden's NATO candidacies are still rumbling, but what seemed inevitable in the coming weeks now seems less likely in the short term. term as a consequence of Turkey, so the last thing is that Sweden should not expect Turkey to support its application for membership in NATO, according to Turkish President Erdogan, he said this yesterday and this is a response to a copy of the Koran burned in a protest in Stockholm. Now I won't go into all the details of what this protest was.

It was a protest that was sanctioned by Sweden because they said it was allowed under their freedom of expression laws, but they did not allow there to be a burning of the Koran and that is what it is and that an effigy of Mr. Erdogan is hung there and it is called something like that as a diplomatic incident and as erdogan is very upset said that Sweden should not expect support from us for NATO, it is clear that those who caused such misfortune in front of the embassy of our country can no longer expect any benevolence from us with Regarding your request, since then this morning, according to the Foreign Minister in Helsinki, there needs to be a time-out in these ongoing talks and, as I say, there is a kind of noise and there is a lot of anxiety about what Turkey is doing here and what he is saying and what is now a quite sensitive moment in the war.

I think it's really important to contextualize this in the fact that there are going to be major elections in May in Turkey and I think there's a strong possibility that Erdogan is trying to appeal his core vote before his court is the missed call vote uh uh al do this and then it seems likely that there may be some wiggle room given either immediately before that election or maybe in the short term, who knows, but I think that's what it's about, that he's trying to appeal to his core vote to show that you are upholding Islamic values ​​and, um, I think it's important to record the frustration that men experience by many Western powers in response to this because they feel that, as you know, Turkey is a member of NATO, They should not make these kinds of comments, so they should not say that they are going to be delaying the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO, that this is extremely damaging and probably also false.

I think the pressure is such that it is almost impossible for them not to come together at some point, so it is a political grandiloquence that many feel, I think from President Erdogan it is so fair. taking a moment to reflect on Turkey's positioning, of course, there was also a meeting last week between Putin and Erdogan, they talked on the phone about the exchange of wounded men in Ukraine, the creation of this gas center in Turkey that I have spoken and export. of Black Sea grain now that is also coming thanks to Turkey refusing to join, of course, Western sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

There are still manyRussian airlines operating in Türkiye. Russian money has arguably helped plug the growing hole in Türkiye's foreign trade. foreign reserves, so there is still a lot of work to be done with Russia by the Turkish government and you can imagine what kind of reaction there has been to that, but Turkey has generally still supported the independence of Ukraine and the territorial integrity of the country, even in what could become that nucleus. Crimea issue and I think what's really happening here is that, as always, and I've talked extensively about this in the past, I won't talk about it again, Turkey is a key intermediary between the East and the West and I think the West is basically willing to allow Turkey to do certain things that it may not like in order to maintain that relationship, that dialogue with Russia, which only Turkey is in a position to do, are of course vital to ensuring that the grain deals continue. and I think that's part of it and I also think that they feel that when things get tough, when there are key decisions, Turkey will probably back down from its relationship with Russia on certain key things and support the NATO line, so it is a complicated scenario.

David on Turkey, but I wanted to come back to it because I think it's becoming more and more relevant exactly what Turkey is doing at this point in the war. Well, thank you very much for that whole speech by Francis, which was incredibly comprehensive and I think just what we needed is a bit of a sweep of European diplomacy and the latest updates. May I ask you to comment on two more stories? We don't have to touch them too much because I want to get back to Dom before we go to our guest, uh, Professor Arel.

So Francis, obviously, you know, we have added criticism to the diplomatic positions of Germany and many other countries, but there has been a scandal that broke out over opening the Open Democracy website in Britain, which is absolutely fascinating, can you talk? us through that and then just to finish, President Zelenski gave an interview to Sky News in the UK last night, some interesting facts came out, could you talk to us about those two things? I'll definitely try to review them as soon as possible. you're really telling an ongoing story that I imagine hasn't really made it to the international press, but it's something that's very interesting here.

British lawyers were given permission from the government to evade sanctions in order to help Bragosian, of course, the head of the Wagner group, sue a journalist according to documents made available on the Open Democracy website which he has just accessed. allude there, the documents refer to a defamation case he bought against Elliot Higgins, the founder of the research group bellingcat in 2021, and you can imagine that these Revelations will raise some pretty big questions about the controversial use of defamation law here in the United Kingdom by super-rich non-nationals and yesterday British Prime Minister Richard Sunac had to respond to this in the House of Commons and said they are looking into it.

James Cartilago, who is Minister of the Treasury. has said that his Department is also going to examine the licensing system for sanctioned individuals because it appears that a law firm has found a loophole here that will allow those under sanctions to continue prosecuting and defaming members of the British journalistic establishment This is a very interesting story and one that will have some pretty big implications I think in the way we approach this question and I think there may be some changes that come from it so we have to watch and yes lastly you mentioned the Sky interview of Zelensky.

There are some pretty interesting lines that have come out of this, obviously yesterday was president zelenski's birthday and he was asked if he would support Boris Johnson representing the UK in Ukraine as ambassador and he laughed at the suggestion that he said a good guy which he knows gladly, gladly, but then, when asked further whether he would support Mr Johnson in another attempt to become Prime Minister, Lindsay said, and I quote, I think it is not right for me to support Johnson for Como Prime Minister we have good relations with Sudak. I think we had longer relationships with Johnson because he spent more time.

I saw Johnson in different situations. I didn't see it in the war and then in a full-scale war. That's why we have special relationships. It was a pretty fun exchange. He wouldn't make a big deal out of it, but he still shows that they are not willing to not bother the British government too much and to give some praise to Prime Minister Sunac, perhaps because of Boris Johnson's light attitude. Controversial independent trip to kyiv last week and I think they are just trying to smooth things over so that this is the terrain, the diplomatic and political space.

Well, thank you very much for that, Francis um Dom Nichols, can I come to you right before? let's go to our guest um you've obviously been looking at tanks uh in the midst of the ongoing tank saga with Germany that seems to have actually been resolved. I saw you yesterday at your desk working on a document titled Tankerty Tank, so I know you have a lot of ideas and things to offer about this, but I wanted to ask you about your personal experience. You are a former tank commander in the British Army. What was your experience with these vehicles and what kind of things? you tell the ukrainian soldiers that they could meet them and train with them for the first time uh thank you david don't give away all my trade secrets the tankerty tank is a trademark document um yeah so what would you say it would be?

Basically, watch out for the turret monster, so operating in tanks is very strange in any armored vehicle because not only do you have to familiarize yourself with the intricacies of your vehicle and then you have to work. with other tanks we normally have three or four tanks in a troop and then three or four troops in a reinforced squadron in wartime, so the numbers vary depending on NATO, but a basic component of a squadron or company is the same . size just different terminology and some armies of around 12 to 14 tanks, so working as a squad and then having all the other pieces, the infantry and all the other combat arms, is also huge, can be enormously complex and, Of course, if you think about being in a tank, the hull could be moving in one direction, the turret could be moving in another direction and you, the commander, could be looking through one of your episcopes, the ones that basically don't wanna. say Periscope, people will know what I mean, if I say small periscope windows, you could be looking in the third direction, so know where you are, where you are traveling, where your gun is and where the enemy is, I mean, you can be hugely complex, well sorry it's hugely complex, it can be very confusing and this is how it is, it takes great skill and time to master the ability of your own vehicle let alone work with others and then you know when the enemy

start

s to shoot.

That adds another layer of complexity, so it's not just a simple matter of getting on these vehicles and charging into enemy positions, it's a very quick way to die, but it takes a lot of time. to know the vehicle and know the standard operating procedures, the Sops as we call them, I mean really basic things like where you sleep, so we used to do that, for example, in our tanks here. when you lie down in a hide at night and put all the thermal nets and camouflage nets on top, the driver usually slept in the cab of his taxi, so he would lay the seat of the Lay down so that he is in a horizontal position and you can sleep there and then the other three crew members, so the commander, the gunner and then the loader radio operator would sleep on the rear decks and, if you've been driving all day, they are friendly and warm, You don't really need a sleeping bag, except as a sort of padding between you and the hard metal surface, but it's warm enough under there, especially with a nice, warm thermal sheet, but you know everyone needs to lie down. you need to sleep in the same position every night with um so the way we did it the commander would be on the left side of the decks the loader radio operator would be on the right and the gunner would be on the back rear of the The deck is kind of a line crossed through the hull and that way, when you're, you have a night stack so that someone is awake or someone is always awake during the night, you spend an hour or two on the Stags radio or you just listen in silence.

Keep an eye on the radio for any orders coming in or any emergencies so there's always someone awake and then you have to go find the next person, wake them up and tell them you're single, those famous three famous words, everyone, every soldier. I love hearing that you're single, oh, another five minutes, no, um, and to get to the other person who might be in one of your other tanks, you need to know exactly where they are and of course you can't use the light. You can't use white light or red light or any other torch light at night, so you have to fumble in the dark, find the other tank and then if you know you're going to wake up.

That vehicle commander or that gunner or the loader radio operator, you know exactly where they're going to be, so don't go and wake up the whole tank troop looking for the next person in the deer because then you're not really popular. knowing exactly where to go in the vehicle and then waking them up and leaving, so this kind of thing sounds very basic and is pretty easy in daylight, but believe me, when you're in the woods at night, everything just takes on another complexity. , then the whole thing about living and operating in tanks and other armored vehicles, but tanks in particular, it's all so complicated and takes a long time to understand now that the Ukrainians are not coming.

To figure this out with a blank sheet of paper, they have operated in tanks before, so they will know many of these considerations. So they have just mastered the individual intricacies of the tank they are in. operating just so you know, I'm not saying go from scratch, but it takes some getting used to. I think I'd better take a break. I can talk about tanks, because why wouldn't I? You, um, and there will be plenty of time to do it, I'm sure, but I just want to do it before we move on to today's guest, I just want people to be up to speed on the tanks because things are moving quickly, uh, it's not a pun.

I just want to keep us up to date with the numbers and the news so that the Germans Germany Germany's defense minister, Boris Pastorius, has said that the two leopards that Germany has offered for the 14 Freedoms will arrive at the end of March or beginning of April and He said training of Ukrainian troops on the Marda infantry fighting vehicles will begin in the coming days, giving them an idea of ​​how quickly they will get underway. US Abrams tanks are believed to arrive in months, not weeks. There is a longer chain, but I just want to take you to the state now for some numbers.

I'm not going to delve into the different tank variants because our heads will explode, but basically I'll just look at the base model so that the As far as we can confirm anything, it seems that Germany has committed to sending 14 Leopards two Poland 14 Leopards two Portugal four Leopards 2 and Norway has said up to eight leopards two so there you have it, those are numbers that we believe We can confirm that this is in addition to Briston sending 14 Challenger 2 and the US-31 Abrams or M1 Abrams, okay, but the leopards are obviously in most still to be clarified.

Spain, Spain, we believe also has 53 leopards, whether it is or not. They have offered everyone whether or not they are useful and able to go in a short time, we don't know, but we are waiting for clarification on these 53 leopards two from Spain and then waiting for news of or like they have made noises, but but. We still have to delve into the details: Sweden speaks of 14 leopards, two, the Netherlands, another 14, Finland, 10 and Denmark, six, and we still have to take into account that it is possible that Ryan Metal himself, the spokesman for the German arms manufacturer. said yesterday that they have 29 Leopard 2 available in April, May of this year, another 22 Leopard 2 available later this year and early 2024 and 88 of the previous Leopard One variants, which, you know, are older, clearly they are not as good as the two, but they are still good and numerous, so from NATO those countries that operate leopards throughout NATO we have not heard from um uh Austria Canada Greece Hungary Switzerland Turkey Slovakia and the Czech Republic and, as you just said, Francis France has not yet said anything in his tanks Le clerk macron has Brave, as he said that president macron previously said that nothing is excluded, so there could be a movement in clerk France we think he has around of 200 in operation question mark would it be useful to have another small fleet with a separate logistics chain and, um, just that, Sebastian Lacorno, theFrance's Minister of the Armed Forces, on French television, said that tanks are being discussed, but then strongly hinted that France might actually be in a better position to provide more air defense and artillery than we know they have. already provided 1.5 mil Caesar self-propelled artillery, which is very, very capable, very, very accurate, um, instead of tanks, so there's a lot of discussion there.

He would suggest that I think France is not going to Waffle the administrative tanks because they offer numbers and are Another logistical burden if a different type of vehicle is introduced, but France has offered very capable material elsewhere. I think that's where we should look and as I say, as any of these numbers solidify, I'll let you know because things are moving to PACE now and we just need to stay on top of it. Thank you so much honey, thank you Francis too for your updates. Well, it is a great pleasure to welcome our guest Dominique Arrell, associate professor of political science and chair of Ukrainian Studies at Oswa University in Canada um Professor arel, has written a paper, his new book is about to be published, a co-authored book, Ukraine's Nameless War Before the Russian Invasion of 2022, we're coming up, as we said at the beginning of this space, to the anniversary of the full-scale invasion last February, so I thought it would be a good time to look back, before the full scale invasion, to the war that began in 2014, as you see it as key to understanding today's events, so to begin, could you give us a brief summary of the events main from 2014 to 2022?

Well, thanks for inviting me, the book came out two weeks ago. said the anonymous war of Ukraine, but this is the war that preceded the massive invasion of 2022. So, briefly, yes, what was this war? How did it come about? I mean, we have to go back to the Maidan protests in November 2013 to February 2014, where a huge amount of violence occurred and ultimately that led to the collapse of the Yanukovych government in 2023, now in a very different Ukraine , but back then, in early 2014, the Ukrainian government was actually considered in quotes. in quotes pro-Russian um and this was a government that essentially came out of uh don Bust or Donetsk, the capital of the regional capital of Donetsk province, so the relevant thing when thinking about uh to maidan is that there is a point that we make in the book that may be a little controversial but the truth is that the police used violence and the violence began with police brutality that intensified with the sniper massacre in February 2014 and that is incontrovertible, these are the facts, but there were militants at Maidan that he made a strategic decision and that did not arise from any type of organization or a top-down decision by Mike Dunn's officials.

It was highly decentralized, but they made the strategic decision to respond to violence or government decisions. At some point in January 2014, the government basically tried to copy under the Russian press, basically, the copied Russian laws by banning any kind of demonstration and trying to put an end to what I did and these militants

start

ed using non-lethal violence against the police and that violence intensified during February and, as I said, led to the collapse of the government and we should say an irregular transfer of power, not illegal but an irregular transfer of power in the sense that the opposition came to power after the collapse of the government It was a parliamentary vote, a constitutional vote, the government, the president was removed, but the transfer of power was done outside of a regular election, so there was violence that had been used strategically by the protesters and then a change of government , and why is it important?

It is because it raised doubt among a certain electorate in Ukraine, but particularly in Donbass in Crimea, the very legitimacy of the new government and that led to the more well-known invasion of Crimea by Russia, but ultimately what we call in the book that you know in comparative terms. The terms are a pretty standard concept that led to an insurgency, which means that some people in Donbass, in particular, I should say in parts of Dunbas, but in the industrial core, then Donetsk, it all started when Donetsk took up arms and seized government buildings and that ultimately led to a decision by the new government to send in the army and that is the beginning of the Donbass war, we are talking about April 2014.

Could you potentially pick us a few more moments of importance after 2014 before 2022 who believe that our listeners should be aware when we see this in the context of the large-scale invasion. I think one of them is that we're making a couple of points here. Let me start with a point that will undoubtedly be less controversial but very important is that we put in our book let me put it that way I put our book tries to clarify the political meaning of the Russian speakers this whole idea the concept of the sultan of the Russian speakers or the Russian speakers There are many Ukrainians who prefer to speak Russian instead of Ukrainian and particularly in Eastern Ukraine, why is it important?

Because already in 2014 Putin, although it was a little more implicit, became extremely explicit and then, in a sinister victory in 2022, essentially Putin's message, which is, of course, the official position of the Russian state is that if you speak Russian , if you prefer to speak Russian, that makes you loyal to the Russian States, so you are not Ukrainian, to the extent that Ukrainian is decoded in Russia as fascist nationalist and anti-Russian, etc. I think we know the drill. the propaganda of 2022, so in 2014, Russia and Putin expected Ukraine to collapse on its own, after what happened on Maidan, meaning that half of the country where Russians live, the so-called Russian speakers, would eventually secede from Kiev and would meet with them. -called Russian World yes um maybe it even belonged to the Russian state but anyway it would no longer be part of Ukraine and what the books show what our book shows um is that it didn't happen it didn't happen how come the Russian The speakers, in in a sense, they really became politically Ukrainian and so big that they started mainly on the streets of Odessa and the streets of Hardikiv and Nipro, etc., so that is a story that we are telling and of course it is something that was never processed in Moscow it is true that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are Ukrainians who are even willing to fight for their Ukrainian state, but at the same time and that is where we enter a little more dangerous territory that it can have and can become as it progresses this war.

A little more current is the identity of Russian speakers in Crimea in parts of Donbass, well, in Crimea you had no resistance, so basically there was no war, there is still no war, although Ukraine has now been able to attack military bases in the In the last few months, the famous Scourge brothers and so on, but in 2014 there was no war of any kind, basically there was a not entirely hostile takeover of the Ukrainian government in Crimea, 75 percent of them simply became Russians, politically Russians, um and most of the army. and the security services, but there was an insurgency in Dundasan that led to a war and that led directly to a Russian military intervention in the late summer of 2014.

But what we have to keep in mind and our book goes into great detail. Actually, it is the first very detailed account of these events and, since we are talking about Donbass here, you could say that the Ukrainian state at least the security component of the Ukrainian state, so the police and the army collapsed in Donbass, but that was before. the regular troops were actually sent by Russia months before and why did Ukraine lose control of parts of the dunbas? Simply saying that it was aggression from the beginning, all manipulated by Russia, etc., doesn't quite fit the idea. historical records and what we have actually discovered and this is actually a very clear link to 2022.

It is that Russia has no idea what was happening on the ground in Ukraine, the Russian leaders and they certainly express it very poorly and then, To put it mildly, they understand it. Russian Ukrainian society and politics let alone identity, so Russia was actually reacting to events on the ground, they didn't even anticipate that there would be an insurgency in Donbath, they thought it would all start in Harkins, Donetsk and Crimea, well , they were wrong. with harkif and in Odessa I said don't ask sorry I meant harkif Odessa in Crimea and they didn't think that something would happen in Donbath and eventually and the whole war doesn't end so that's what we are trying. to establish in the book, well thank you for that, you said that obviously some of that is somewhat controversial, so we might try to come back to it if we have time at the end.

You mentioned some of the assumptions that the Kremlin had when they got involved and came in and how they got things wrong about things like Ukrainian identity, Russian speakers and Ukrainian identity, what lessons do you think political and military elites on both sides of the aisle learned? 2014 to 2021 and how did that affect what we do? I've seen it in the last year, let me start with the Ukrainians, you know, we were just listening, of course, to this fascinating discussion that they had earlier, which we're all talking about now the big breakthrough with the tanks and so on.

We have witnessed for 11 months the almost heroic resistance of the Ukrainians and the remarkable ability of the army to absorb in real time all these new weapons and technology, as was discussed and that was not a great army in 2014, it was the reality , the Ukrainian army was almost an empty shell in much of the fighting that took place and very quickly it became the kind of conventional warfare that you know with artillery and then and these big missiles and so on and cities. They were attacked, um, but on the ground, I mean, in a kind of combat troops, these were volunteers, we called them volunteer battalions, so on each side of the beginning of the war in this kind of de facto front that was was creating around the main one.

In the cities and in Donbass there were people with very little experience and great enthusiasm, certainly on the Ukrainian side, but without much combat capacity, and when Putin finally sent about 2,000 soldiers to the army, a very limited number of troops, the Ukrainians were not rival, I mean. led to a massacre and in 10 days there was basically a ceasefire and then the first version of the so-called Minsk agreement because the Ukrainian army could not fight the Russian army, so if you ask me, the first lesson is that the Ukrainian army In fact, the army became a very powerful army after eight years of fighting because, as we know, the Donbass front, the Donbass war never gave way, what changed in 2014-15 after the second Minsk agreement is that the defect of a board no longer changes, so there was like a static war, but it was not the type of situation or, for example, the one we had in Cyprus, the one we have been having in Cyprus for the almost 50 years that in In reality there was a live war throughout the territory. de facto front and here there were literally hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers gaining experience and training, in particular, by British troops, Canadian troops, etc., without getting many weapons, that's a different story, but the first lesson was to basically build an army real that makes Putin's decision, even 11 months later, incredible: he could have thought that it would basically be the kind of walk in the park that unfortunately was more or less the case in August 2014. in February 2022 and then they could even taking care of that is the first lesson from the Ukrainian side from certainly the political point of view of the Russian side.

I can't really speak to what military officials really believe because it is a very different system as we know it well in Russia, but clearly on the political end and that puts the type of power in a mess and I don't want to make easy or exaggerated comparisons , but no Russian ruler has accumulated that type of power, almost perhaps not absolute, but immense and direct. control of all police units personal control since um well, the Russian leader of the world born in Georgia, uh, World War II back then in the Soviet Union, so it all essentially comes down to what Putin, uh, how Putin and decode this. it's figuring out the situation and clearly none of what actually happened on the ground matters to him or he couldn't process that and then he still believes that what he was facing in 2022 was exactly the situation in 2014 that he couldn't fully understand. very good, except I was right to send very limited troops back then, you know, it only took 68 Special Forces soldiers to take over the Crimean Parliament and the entire government in February 2014 and that was pretty much 68 and then like I said a couple thousand troops so he was very cautious in 2014 to send the army when he wasn't expecting resistance and he was right and then he was completely wrong in 2022 because of the incredible transformation of in particular the army Ukrainian.

Well, thanks for everything. I only have one more question about that. I think I know we have several.questions from our other guests and it's a pleasure and an honor to have a senior foreign correspondent from Roland oliphantly Telegraph Roland is in Ukraine at the moment in hakive um but Roland actually reported on the war that you wrote about so I think it would be very interesting for him to join and share some of his thoughts and his questions um my question um it just goes to the heart of your book really the name of the book is Ukraine's Nameless War why did you choose this title and what are you trying to get at and understand describe it as nameless?

That is a very good question. Know? War, um a. War has a lot to do with hardware, we're talking about tanks, now it has a lot to do with morale and I think the Ukrainians have had this advantage and will continue to have an advantage over the Russian troops in terms of, you know, they're fighting for their lands where the Russian troops really are not very clear what they are doing why they are there in the first place maybe Crimea yes and the war is not yet in Crimea but if we talk about the true meaning of territorial the almost mystical values ​​of the territories and in the Russian national narrative and Crimea as a place I don't know about Donbass and its son.

I don't think so, so you have that morality. but it is also, as we all know, a narrative, so let's call it information warfare and it has to do with legitimacy, what is legitimate, what is legitimate and it is ironic that the Ukrainians until 2022 refuse to consider that they were officially in war. Everyone knew they were at war, but they wouldn't call it a war, so until 2014 they called it an anti-terrorist operation. Well, Russia did terrible things starting in 2014 in the East, in the territories they were occupying and you, let's call. The local insurgents also did atrocious things to them, torture and so on, although since February the level has been different.2022, but if by terrorism we understand that terrorism can mean many different things, but if we have in mind, you know, putting a bomb in a cafe and attack the civilian population, well the war was anything but terrorists, actually, between 2014 and 2022, the Ukrainians Don't call it war um and after 2019 it took a different name that I can't even remember because it was very complex, but they wouldn't call it a war except they would say, of course, they were fighting Russian aggression.

Russia was calling it Civil War, which the way they described it was ridiculous in the sense that to them Civil War meant that we have nothing to do with it, all we are doing is humanitarian aid to our Russian speaking brothers. that they're being savagely attacked and so on, a lot of what we're describing on Tuesday is trying to frame a narrative of war without actually saying that we're at war with each other and what's ironic now is that, of course, the Ukrainians now they would say that they are at war with Russia, it is quite obvious that this massive invasion, but we all know that Putin does not want it to be called war, it is a special military operation for the protection of Donbass, um, so that is. the nature of that's why we showed that title thank you very much for all that Dominique, as you said, I think we have quite a few questions and things to raise, Roland, if you want, thank you very much for joining us. um, Roland, would you like to go first?

Oh, hello, I just listened with um, with great interest, actually, a lot of what Dominique has said, you know, it kind of sounds like my own experience of reporting what happened in Crimea and Donbass in 2014. I think it has right to point out that it was really complicated and to say that the war in Donbass from the beginning was a Russian invasion is some kind of gross oversimplification. It's a kind of feeling, you know, when I'm asked to summarize what happened in 2014 in, say, one sentence in a news story because I have to write the context while I'm reporting on something else, it's a kind of written history.

Now the best way to do it is to say the first invasion of Russia in 2014, but within that term there is a great deal of subtlety and complexity. I mean, there were elements of Civil War, there were elements of Civil War, there are elements of counterrevolution, elements of insurgency elements of foreign intervention elements of invasion it was incredibly difficult to separate these threads, many of them were not mutually contradictory and, similarly , it wasn't entirely clear to me at the time to what extent Moscow was controlling what was happening, how much its own representatives were out of its control and how much there was conspiring and I think we could talk about this at length and I don't think Let's get down to it.

I mean, I'm interested in where to draw the line, but there was this. I think it was yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights made a decision on Ukraine's request to sue Russia over mh17 and one. One of the conclusions was that as of May 11, 2014, that was the date that the self-proclaimed DNR and lnr had their referendums in which they declared independence from Ukraine, so the ehcr says that that effectively means that From that date areas of Don Bass were effectively under Russian administration. Dominic, it sounds like you're saying that might be a little early. I mean, at what point is there a clear point for you where you can say okay, this stopped being this huge mess of interference of the Civil War, the Uprising, the Insurgency? covert operation and when you can say no actually this is a Russian intervention this is a Russian war is that date is the um the May 11 referendum is the ice intervention when conventional forces crossed the border later that summer or It's still a very difficult line for you to draw in history, it's an excellent question and I'm honored to be on a panel with Roland who we actually quoted quite extensively, I think, in the book and by his reporting in 2014 and then, listen, about the recent ruling, hopefully, we will eventually have access to a little more about the Court's reasoning, but what I understand is what they are saying, okay, by May 11th we will have the self-proclaimed People's Republic from Donetsk and then the same in Luján, so Diana lnr and then, as we can remember, there is a kind of Russian official self-proclaimed prime minister of this DNR, so the guys from Moscow and many seem now Russia is under control is taking the control of the situation the court may be saying well, from that moment Russia then like the political responsibility that can be translated into legal responsibility for that type of ruling, which is fine, but of course that is not the question we are asking uh, Jesse and I, Jesse Driscoll, my co-author from UC San Diego, is that at one point Russia is effectively in control and, first and foremost, in military terms, and that's certainly not since May 11, um, there's no question. that regular troops are not sent before the end of August and that was covered by Roland and many international journalists.

That is the first direct intervention of regular troops. People would say that I remember this Girkin Austral came with the command of him and the Slavian road in April that actually unleashed the army. Invasion I shouldn't say Invasion, that's a terrible word, the military intervention of the Ukrainian army, I mean, it really broke out now that the conflict became like a military conflict. Sorry for the invasion, I don't know why I said that sometimes mistakes are made. but Gerkin's status is still extremely unclear, but what we know for a fact is that it is a commando of about 60 soldiers, they actually came from Crimea and some of them were from mainland Ukraine, so it is not a Russian invasion, like we know. that in the middle of summer so we are talking about July uh slovensk is abandoned Gerkin goes to Donetsk and now for the first time the Ukrainian army is advancing it is starting to besiege the big cities starting with Donetsk so now the war is on a different level and The Civilian casualties are increasing enormously by hundreds and eventually by thousands, thousands and we know that Russia provided very, very heavy equipment.

We all remember MH17 and that Russian responsibility is now legally established. We are talking about mid-July. and we know, and um elgas Higgins and Ben Katz have been mentioned above thanks to their work, we know that Russia since mid-July had again been systematically bombing Ukrainian troops from across the border, basically avoiding destroying the units of the border guards. So we know that it is mid-July, that is, at the end of August, with the actual military intervention. I would tend to opt for the latter. The reason is that the actors on the ground until mid-August now face this development.

The Russian army clearly had the momentum, as weak as the Russian army was, but remember that these insurgents, even getting weapons and with thousands of Russian volunteers, were still quite chaotic and weak in terms of military units. They really thought that was it for them. They were pleading, they were begging Russia to intervene, which Russia finally did, that's the turning point, when the war really becomes a war between Russia and Ukraine from a military point of view, of course, politically, that was before, but militarily. William, would you like to come back? About that, it's hard to have 2015 in your head and report on this war because you know things have changed absolutely dramatically and it can be hard to remember how completely chaotic things were back then, um, and I still feel, I mean, I think it's good, you know, The Dominics are in a book.

I feel like there are so many things you know, so many things still in the shadows and smoke, and maybe things that will never be understood about what happened back then, but I'm so. I'm so glad you're covering it today, David, because you're right, this is what it all goes back to. Thank you Roland Francis Stanley. You say there was very little effective resistance in Crimea in 2014 and from that you say that it suggests perhaps more sympathy towards Russia than the contemporary narrative, but doesn't that downplay the shock factor of the invasion that it simply isn't comparable? to what happened in 2022 because there was so little warning in 2014 of how can people prepare for resistance when at that time?

It was believed to be a geopolitical impossibility for Putin to invade Crimea, that's a fair point and we should add when we say that Jesse and I say in the book that we tried to make the case that Russia didn't have a very good feeling at all. Regarding the situation on the ground in Ukraine, that was also true in Crimea. I mean, a few days after the invasion there was a special envoy. His name escaped me, but he was a deputy of the Minister of Defense Shoigu, basically to go to Crimea and appear. figure out who, basically, they should know who our

allies

on the ground would be, they had some idea, but eventually they settled for this, head of a small pro-Russian faction, Russian nationalist faction, actually directly, who is still the officially the man in charge in Crimea um, but he had a militia, he had formed a militia in the streets of uh simphiropo and uh, the point here is that you're right, there was complete preparation, total shock, but a lot of um, let's say a lot of what What was happening here was on the street, well, first the Maidan was the right street and then there were all kinds of my dance throughout Ukraine, demonstrations and then counter-demonstrations or militias that formed pro-maidan militias, anti-maidan militias in Odessa and Finally, one of the stories, as I said, from our book is that the pro-Ukrainian street won everywhere except in Dunbas.

The point about Crimea, I'm talking about continental Ukraine, but when we go to Crimea, that war, there are no pro-Ukraine militias, the presence. on the streets was pro-Ukraine in any, let's say, a considerable capacity actually came from the Crimean Tatars, so there were massive demonstrations the day before the Russian invasion in February 2014 in Semfiropo in Crimea, in which large some of the 90 percent of the pro-Ukrainian crowds were Crimean Tatars and then there were pro-Russian guys and there was some violence, in fact a couple of people died, but not from gunshots, but from uh, I think they were pressured in this situation extremely tense, um, so that's the first point.

Ukraine did not have a presence on the street um I'm not saying that public opinion there was no public opinion favorable to Ukraine I'm not talking about public opinion I'm talking about the ability here to uh um to have a presence on the street when politics suddenly it moves to uh the street which is the In the first point, then there was a transitional government, the Minister of Defense had been appointed literally the day before the Russian invasion in kyiv and they discovered very quickly that there was a Council meeting of Homeland Security and then kyiv within 48 hours of the invasion.

They later published the minutes, so we signed that in the book, literally at the time the transcripts even and the Minister of the Interior, Minister of Defense, said that we cannot control our troops, we cannot find, there is no one anywhere considerable capacity that is basically ready to fight for us, norWe don't even trust our own police, that's what they said to each other when they were receiving diplomatic help from the United States in particular, please don't get involved, no. participate, do not provoke, etc., so they did not have the diplomatic support, even if they wanted to make a show of resistance in Crimea, so that is what happened in Crimea and in these fateful days you could say that the game ended in three days. in Crimea, even if it took a little longer politically before you realized this, you know, ridiculous referendum and so on, um, and the official annexation of the Russian side in the next three weeks and that's our Crimea chapter Thank you, Francis, thank you. you Dominique Roland and Dom something else from you uh one for me if I am May uh Professor Riley is Dom here thank you welcome uh welcome to the international society of the population of Dom two at this time others welcome you say that there you were uh were you Describe a desire in the Donbass for separatism and insurgency.

You said it was organic and I wonder if, first of all, in this context, could you define the insurgency for us, please, and if there was such a groundswell of opinion, why did Russia need to send? the little green men, yeah, that's a tough point, right? A surge of opinion again, we are distinguishing opinion from the ability to mobilize in some way, non-violent, violent with militias on the street, the Ukrainians clearly, the whole history of Maidan. It is this incredible ability to mobilize not only in KF but throughout the country and even in key cities of eastern Ukraine, which for those of you who have read the law have known a little more, remember a little more about the recent history of Ukraine, there was the Orange Revolution.

Ten years before I did it, when there was no violence, but back then there was a very calm eastern Ukraine because of the events in kyiv, it was, you know, a fraudulent election and the election had to be done again thanks to the Massive Resistance. Violent mobilization in KF, so in a sense it was the first Maidan, but as we all know, my fact is the name of the Central Square, so it took place in Maidan and the same thing in Western Ukraine, which we observed in 2014. that had not been in real time, it was difficult to establish the scale of that.

It has been more documented since then and we showed in the book that the pro-Ukrainian presence in the east in terms of demonstration was quite significant, not as much as in KF and in the west , but significant in terms of it being the first time really that in the recent history of Ukraine we could see Eastern Ukrainians mobilizing, but in Donbath there were basically street clashes, so there is a strong pro-Ukraine presence, but they were not rival in the streets for the pro-Russians, that is what they call forces or militias. They finally managed to get weapons, how do they get such big weapons?

Basically, the police allowed them to have guns. The SBU, at some point they went to the SBU and took the weapons and then took over the buildings. The key question here is a very difficult or sensitive question and who are those guys, so you have a narrative that, well, they were actually Russians, they were busting and stuff. I don't think so, maybe some, but again, you're talking about huge cities, Donetsk was one of them. Well, I should say it was due to depopulation, but it was one of those major cities and the whole Ukraine had a million and a half population and it went down well, so who were those guys and didn't those guys come from the top rungs? of the government existing at that time, as we remember the party of the regions because all the leaders left and then the party of the regions actually what was left in the hands of the regions party of the local level pro-Ukrainian state even if they were labeled as pro Russians in The Cauldron here of Russian intervention in Crimea and then basically violating territorial integrity.

Integrity, they actually remain loyal to the identification of a united Ukraine, um, but they were quickly overtaken by events, as much as those guys who took up arms and took over. The buildings we're talking about are April and then you have Gerkin is clearly not Ukrainian and you brought back an entourage of about 60 Crimean soldiers, but then he joined hundreds of locals to take over Sloviansk and a nearby town. To the extent that those guys had Ukrainian passports, they were actually territorially Ukrainian, although clearly by taking up arms they no longer consider themselves politically Ukrainian. So we have an insurgency which is an insurgency when there are people who take up arms against other people. who before the hostilities basically share the same status, so the same legal status in a sense, they were all Ukrainians, if by Ukrainian women in the territorial sense, you know they are of Ukrainian citizenship, I was about to say nationality, but It has a different meaning in the east, an ethnic meaning, although as we know in the west, when we say nationality, we certainly mean affiliation to a state, your legal status is that of your state, that's why we call it insurgency, well, thank you.

Um, I'd just like to go to Roland sooner because time has passed and we've really run out, unfortunately, I would say we've covered a ton and we'll go back and try to look at some of this stuff in detail and talk to a lot of different people before the unfortunate anniversary that will be held in February in February Roland Oliphant, would you like to go back to any of that? So I'll add something else. Yeah, I mean, I think these are good points, but Tom's question is a really good one, so if there was a groundswell of support in Donbass for the DNR, why did the Russians end up having to send in the army?

And I think the answer is because the groundswell of support was not universal; In my opinion, it is genuinely there. I mean, I met enough people, enough local people that joined and signed up for DNR. DNR wasn't something anyone really wanted. What people wanted was the Crimean setting. They looked at what happened in Crimea and thought, "Oh, great, so all we have to do is get out and the Russians will show up and that will be it and something you know, some things are as simple as pensions." they are better in Russia, you know Russia was a richer state, you would know why not, so all that kind of channeling information was not universal, yeah, it was about street presence at the beginning, um, but it's also about of some kind of sponsorship systems, so in Kharkiv, where I am now in April, it's April 2014.

There was a car in the People's Republic and it lasted about eight or twelve hours and what happened was a group of guys broke into the um, the the administration building in a square, do you remember at the beginning of the war there was a Russian missile attack on a huge, beautiful Stalinist imperialist building on top of the scare and the car Kevin, you'll remember the video of the rocket launch? down, um, so I think in the Target regional administration building that was stormed by a group of guys who declared the khaki color of the People's Republic and literally within hours I was on the train from Moscow and when was happening, we headed into town. you know, I don't know when there is a night train at seven and eight we arrived at the square and the places surrounded by the proper police in the 70's the police just broke in threw them out, Bush office, that was what never happened in Donetsk in Danette because they were taking over the administration building, then they left it, then they took over it and the police left, oh, I don't know, we want to all get involved gently, all this, what was the difference?

I think one of the differences I'm right, I think one of the differences is that Arson Avakov, who became Minister of the Interior after the Maidan revolution, is khaki, was a businessman from Chicago, had some kind of sponsorship system here, I mean, he, as I understand it. he showed up that day and I was like, no, not in my city, ready, he wasn't an authority in Donetskin Dinettes, you had different authorities, you had people like um, you know, I think he was the richest man in Ukraine at that time and he owned the football team. He owned most of the companies, you know, basically, he was seen as the power behind the party of the regions and you know, there are all these unanswered questions about, you know, what he was doing, who he was sponsoring, what were some of these many militant groups that appeared in the following working for him, did he think they could work with them?

There's a video of him showing up trying to say, okay, I'm going to talk to you and convince you of something, but what happened in the next one? was that those traditional patreon systems are just, I mean, they just collapsed, like you know, this oligarchy type system that we had, you know, extremely influential moguls that could say well, basically, I broke a power here, um it turned out that They didn't. and among those pro-Russian militants there was a big mix of people, some of them were kind of messianic, you know, we believe in the Russian world and Orthodox and all that, some of them were looking for a counter-evolution, some of them were like you know, real lefties unconditional who are as if they had left us behind.

This is the Rust Belt that we've been neglecting for years, etc., etc., and it's all because of the oligarchs, etc., etc., and they have their you know, Western Ukrainians have theirs. here, well, we're going to have our own thing here and we're going to do it differently, but it's basically the same thing, all of that is happening, so those kind of traditional sponsorship systems collapsed and then this question of things arises. the street, so Dominique was speaking there, you know, a presence on the street in Donetsk in April there were a series of very large pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.

I mean, there was a pro-Ukrainian sentiment in Donetsk and one day I forgot the date. The Ukrainian demonstration was basically assaulted by this mafia, this highly motivated pro-Russian mafia and absolutely pulverized basically in the most violent way and that was it, the police bought the right police, they literally stood next to the firecrackers that went off in a terrifying moment for everyone involved and everyone who witnessed it, but that was it, that was the moment when the pro-Russians took their rivals off the streets and it was We Own the Streets Here Now one of these shows of strength and which for me was the moment when Donetsk was lost, we could talk for hours and hours about this.

I'm going to stop there, but thanks for mentioning it. I think this is something very important. If I can answer briefly, these are great points, let me say this. Um, the insurgency started in Netsuke, it started in the Slovenians but in Donetsky in a parallel time when basically these insurgents or like you said, these mobs, uh, but the mods there is no evidence that these mods were actually from Russia, I mean , that is absolutely no evidence. After all, they were locals, they took up arms and then went to take over the building but they were armed.

The same thing happened in Luhansk and Luhanshu actually had a big battle to take control and take up arms, but they took up arms anyway, that's the key and while in this very short lived attempt to do the same in Herkif to proclaim a heart, give it the People's Republic, those pro-Russian militants who took over the building were not armed, they were not armed, they were armed. in the Nets and in Lukansk, surprisingly, despite the fact that Ivakov, who was now the Minister of the Interior, as Roland said, and former governor of uh of and there was also the minister of the new minister of um, there were other high-ranking officials Who were you?

It came from the Harkins police, so they were very, very well equipped. They knew the people on the ground. They didn't trust their own police in April. It was not Harkov's police who cleaned up the government building that had been seized. On the part of the unarmed militants, they had to bring in troops, police troops, specialized troops from abroad, which turned out to be a kind of area that shows how shaky the situation was for Ukraine, but then on the ground, as it turns out. The pro-Russians, call them mobs or militias, were eventually overtaken by the pro-Ukrainians and who the pro-Ukrainians were, but they were basically the core of what would become because, historically, it comes from Harkif, like we know we know Marigopol and so on, and also football, what are they called in England, the Ultras, the oceans, yes, yes, who joined and basically they basically had the former street experience of fighting the police and therefore the street.

It became a little pro-Ukrainian thanks to those guys, but in Donetsk they had done it in a KF delegation, they brought a thousand special troops to Donetsk because the local police would not storm the buildings and the external troops refused to do it, why? they didn't want to get into a bloodbath, I mean, what had happened in my case in February was clearly on the police officers' minds and I think that's the context, it's not that I want to defend Ahmetov here, but when he says : I know I was trying to be some kind of moderator here, your message is that we don't want a bloodbath, but instead of a bloodbath you ended up having an insurgency in thewar because they are militants, they literally never left the buildings and then the Ukrainian state, which is the security wing of the Ukrainian state, effectively collapsed in that part of Donbass thereafter, very quickly, if it was an insurgency, then , why should Russia intervene well?

Insurgencies don't always succeed and clearly Putin made the calculation that there was a danger of the insurgency failing and then there was direct military intervention and we're talking about August, so four months later, Ukraine, the latest is an original

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