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Richard Dannatt discusses the Russia Ukraine war

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu today told Vladimir Putin his forces had “liberated” the city of Lysychansk, the last area in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine that was still under Kyiv’s control. Ukraine has not yet commented on the claim, though did previously concede Russian forces were closing in on the area, according to CNN.

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Kiwi journalist Tom Mutch highlighted the “size of the territory lost [around 4.4 percent of Ukraine] isn’t the issue”.

He wrote in a post on Twitter: “It is that this small area contained many of Ukraine’s best prepared defences and well trained troops, hardened since 2014.

“The fall of Luhansk is a significant event in the war – wishful thinking to pretend otherwise.”

Writer Neil Hauer added that Russian attention would now “move to two areas”.

Question mark over how long Russia will hold on to ‘significant’ advance in Ukraine war. (Image: Getty)

Vladimir Putin. (Image: Getty)

These, he highlighted, were “the Siversk-Bakhmut line, where Ukrainian defenders are setting up now, and the northern approaches to Sloviansk”.

But some Western analysts have questioned for how long Russia will manage to hold on to its gains.

After Moscow last week took control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, one official told the Washington Post: “There will come a time when the tiny advances Russia is making become unsustainable in light of the costs and they will need a significant pause to regenerate capability.”

Boris Johnson also argued “Russia could come to a point when there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources”.

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Vladimir Putin. (Image: Getty)

Volodymyr Zelensky. (Image: Getty)

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Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Max Boot noted in a post on Twitter today following Russia’s latest advance: “With the fall of Lysychansk, the Russians control Luhansk province, but Ukraine still controls roughly half of Donetsk.

“Western analysts expect that Russia will soon exhaust its offensive capabilities while Ukraine is getting new weapons like HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems].”

It is, however, understood Ukraine will require extreme levels of support in order to regain areas from Russia.

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Russia vs Ukraine: the stats. (Image: Express)

An intelligence report by Ukrainian and Western officials, seen by the Independent, last month drew attention to the fact Ukraine is outgunned 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition against Ukraine.

It added that the range of its artillery was 12 times less than that being used by Moscow’s forces.

The situation has laid the groundwork for an increasing number of desertions, intelligence officials report.

Volodymyr Zelensky. (Image: Getty)

Upon meeting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv for the second time since the beginning of the war, Mr Johnson offered for the UK to launch a scheme which could train up to 10,000 Ukrainian troops every 120 days.

But officials noted that Ukraine was losing more than this number of men in the Donbas alone every 120 days.

This was before the UK almost doubled its military support to Ukraine by pledging a further £1billion.

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Richard Dannatt discusses the Russia Ukraine war

Russia has been waging a brutal war against Ukraine since February 24, refusing to bow to international pressure despite most of the Western world offering up military and monetary aid to Kyiv. Retired General Lord Dannatt suggested the Russian campaign in the Donbass could mark the end of the active attempt to advance, with Moscow potentially agreeing to peace talks if the war evolves into a “deep freeze”. The former British Army chief suggested Russian troops will then be “exhausted” and this could also play in Ukraine’s hands and help secure a ceasefire.

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Lord Dannatt told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We’re going to see that slow grind continue.

“They very nearly achieved taking the Luhansk province, and then they will turn their sight to try and get control of Donetsk.

“I think, probably, what we’ve seen over the past few weeks shows over the next few weeks and days, they will achieve that.

“At that stage, I believe the Russians will be exhausted.”

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Russia could agree to enter peace talks once the Donbass campaign concludes (Image: GETTY)

Russia has intensified strikes on the Donbass region in its latest push to take over (Image: GETTY)

He continued: “They won’t have won the war, but they will have achieved some of what they wanted to achieve, getting those two Donbass provinces.

“Ukrainians will also be exhausted so the Russians won’t have won, the Ukrainians won’t have lost.

“At that point, I think the war will effectively go into the deep freeze and that’s when meaningful negotiations are going to have to start.”

Moscow has been attempting to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in Donbass, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

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Massive explosion in Melitopol near Russian occupied airfield

Kyiv says Moscow has intensified missile attacks on cities far from the main eastern battlefields, accusing Russia of deliberately hitting civilian sites.

Thousands of civilians have been killed and cities levelled since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what Ukraine its Western allies say is an unprovoked war of aggression.

The Kremlin denies targeting civilians in what President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” its neighbour.

Russian forces seized Lysychansk’s sister city Sievierodonetsk, on the opposite side of the Siverskiy Donets river, last month after some of the heaviest fighting of the war.

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Russia has maintained they do not target civilian areas despite the damning evidence (Image: GETTY)

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Russian forces on Saturday claimed to have destroyed five Ukrainian army command posts in the Donbass and in the Mykolaiv region with high-precision weapons and also struck three storage sites in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The ministry, cited by Russian news agencies, also said the Russian air force had struck a Ukrainian weapons and equipment base at a tractor factory in Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine.

In Russian-occupied Sievierodonetsk, residents have emerged from basements to sift through the rubble of their city.

Sergei Oleinik, 65, told Reuters: “Almost all the city infrastructure is destroyed. We are living without gas, electricity, and water since May.

“We are glad that this ended, and soon maybe reconstruction will start, and we will be back to more or less normal life.”

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NATO on brink of WW3 amid Russia’s cyber warfare on West

Amid intense military fighting on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine are also waging cyber-warfare. In the early hours of Vladimir Putin’ s invasion, Russian hackers tried to cripple tens of thousands of satellite internet modems in Ukraine in a bid to shut down the Internet and leave Ukrainians in an information vacuum. According to Microsoft, Russian hackers also targeted Ukrainian organisations such as nuclear power companies, media firms and government entities. The cyber-attacks took down several major Ukrainian governmental and banking websites.

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According to Max Smeets, director of the European Cyber Conflict Research initiative, some Western countries targeted by cyber-attacks could interpret them as acts of war. As a result, a NATO member could trigger article 5 and a full-blown Third World War.

Mr Smeets told Times Radio: “A cyber operation can in fact lead to trigger, in the case of NATO, Article 5. And you can call it an act of war in case the disruption or destruction is highly significant.

“What is a bit trickier and what we wouldn’t call warfare for sure is indeed when you’re just kind of probing these systems when you’re getting access to them.

“But the open question, though, is, well, okay, maybe what see is sometimes operations that individually are not very, very significant but cumulatively can have great effects.”

NATO could enter a war with Russia over cyber warfare, a cyber expert warns (Image: GETTY)

Max Smeets warned NATO could trigger article 5 over a Russian cyber attack (Image: TWITTER/@TimesRadio)

“And the question is to what degree you can look at them as a whole and then still say, well, this meets the threshold of seeing this as an armed conflict,” said Mr Smeets.

“And increasingly, countries are veering in this direction, that we should think this not individually, but we should look at these operations sometimes in campaign sets up where we link them together.”

Times Radio’s host Hugo Rifkind then said: “So, look, on some levels, it’s a little surprising to think of nations like, well, North Korea and Iran, particularly having very impressive cyber forces, because we don’t necessarily think of them as being, you know, certainly in a civil sense, IT powerhouses.”

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A NATO targeted by Russian cyberattack could trigger article 5, Max Smeets says (Image: EXPRESS)

The whole NATO alliance could enter in direct conflict with Russia over cyber warfare (Image: GETTY)

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“What’s the link there? I mean, basically, do we develop fantastic military cyber forces by having a civilian infrastructure sort of there first to provide the manpower and the expertise? Or are they quite separate?” Times Radio’s Hugo Rifkind asked.

Mr Smeets said: “Well, what is really interesting here in this space is that it’s an uneven playing field. And what I mean with that is countries don’t abide by the same exact rules to operate in this space.

“Some countries care a lot more about collateral effects, about hitting maybe other targets that you don’t want to hit that other countries do. Now, when you think about the number of constraints, so if you want to be a responsible power in this space, then suddenly the requirements to conduct operations disproportionately go up.”

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Article 5 would plunge the world into a new world war (Image: EXPRESS)

Times Radio’s Hugo Rifkind clarified: “Clearly, basically, you mean, like, for example, if Britain is to probe the defence of Russia, we would be very, very concerned about for example, taking down a hospital infrastructure by mistake whereas in return Russia might be less concerned about doing that.”

“Exactly, exactly,” said Mr Smeets. “And that’s what we have seen in this space. So, we’ve seen, for instance, Russia deploying a worm that affected also many systems in the UK. It started in Ukraine in an accounting firm, but then it had implications for even shipping companies and many other companies across Europe. Because it wasn’t really the well-developed capability.”

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Russia ‘have to reconstitute military’ to take Ukraine says General

Russia has been reportedly struggling to strengthen its military forces after suffering unexpected losses in its efforts to take over Ukraine since February. Gen Mark Milley noted attempts to expand the advance back to Kyiv would require the Kremlin to plump up troops numbers, noting however Ukraine has shown its defence forces had been underestimated. Speaking to BBC Sunday Morning host Sophie Raworth, Gen Milley said: “This is a grinding war at great cost to Russia.

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“I would not categorise this in any way – operationally, tactically or, most importantly, strategically – as a success for Russia.

“The Russians have suffered significant military losses, losses in personnel, losses in equipment.

“They would have to reconstitute a significant amount of their military if they were to continue to attack to all of Ukraine to include the capital.”

Asked whether Russia had recently withdrawn from the strategically important Snake Island was really a sign of “goodwill”, Gen Milley suggested instead they were forced to retreat due to constant artillery strikes from the Ukrainians.

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Russia would need to “reconstitute a significant amount of their military” (Image: GETTY)

Gen Milley said the war has not been a success for Russia so far (Image: BBC)

He added: “I know the Ukrainians were inflicting significant losses on the Russians on Snake Island, with artillery strikes primarily, and the Russians decided to withdraw.

“I don’t know if that was a signal or a message of goodwill, or they were compelled to withdraw because of Ukrainian military action.

“I think it was the latter but I think it’s probably a little early to tell.”

The defence ministry said on Sunday, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that all of Ukraine’s Luhansk region had been “liberated” by Russian and separatist forces.

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Richard Dannatt discusses the Russia Ukraine war

After being beaten back in its initial attempt to capture the capital Kyiv, Moscow has focused its efforts on driving Ukrainian forces out of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the east of the country, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since Russia’s first military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.

The defence ministry said earlier on Sunday its troops had captured the villages surrounding Lysychansk, encircling the area, and were now fighting Ukrainian troops inside the town.

“Russian troops and units of the Luhansk People’s Republic are fighting inside Lysychansk, completely defeating the encircled enemy,” the ministry said in a statement.

Calls to the Ukrainian General Staff and Defence Ministry went unanswered. The ministry did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

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Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk have been the main target of Russia for months (Image: GETTY)

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The Russian defence ministry added that it had struck military infrastructure in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, as well as a base used by foreign fighters on the outskirts of Mykolaiv in the country’s south.

Russian forces seized Lysychansk’s sister city Sievierodonetsk, across the Siverskiy Donets river, last month after some of the heaviest fighting of the war.

Rodion Miroshnik, ambassador to Russia of the pro-Moscow self-styled Luhansk People’s Republic, told Russian television, “Lysychansk has been brought under control,” but added: “Unfortunately, it is not yet liberated.”

Russian media showed video of Luhansk militia parading in Lysychansk streets waving flags and cheering, but Ukraine National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told Ukrainian television the city remained in Ukrainian hands.

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