Sean, despite all the diplomacy, despite
the nice words between Trump and Putin,
the war, the bombs, the missiles, the
drones continue to keep flying and
continue to take out infrastructure and
also harm people's lives.
>> Yes, Gareth, over the last few days,
we've been talking a lot about
international summits, haven't we? The
Alaska summit, um European leaders
flocking to the White House for a series
of meetings, but as you say, the war
continues. Last night, you've seen drone
attacks against Sunumi, injured 14 so
far. Uh and as you say, tragically,
there was one of the children was five
months old that was uh injured u last
night. Costantinoka, which is one of
those three main hubs of the city in the
Donetsk region, glide bombs. There's
three still under the rubble there and
they're not quite sure how they're going
to fair. Um and also the Russians are
still doing the ground offensive trying
to encircle Pogarovsk. Interesting. You
also talked about across Adessa, there
was a gas distribution center struck.
Um, Russia's been attacking the energy
infrastructure. Normally that does it in
the winter to try and make life as
miserable as possible for Russians. I've
been looking at the stats and actually
there've been 2900 Russia attacks on
Ukraine in the last 5 months alone on
their energy infrastructure. All of that
is not about the population, it's about
energy, the industry because obviously
Ukraine is building a lot of drones at
the moment and Russia is specifically
trying to stop that happening.
So whilst that's happening on the front
line over in Washington, military chiefs
are meeting and I I guess to put
logistical decisions against the
politics and the policies that have been
mooted and talked about by politicians.
>> Yeah, I think this is quite fascinating
actually. I mean there's two meetings
happening today. One is the NATO chief
so that's a virtual meeting. The other
one is as you say military chiefs of the
sort of coalition the willing admiral
Tony Radicanin will be representing the
UK mod at that stage. Um and it's very
clear now there's a more coherence about
what the political end state remember
all that military can do is deliver a
political end state to this before these
summits of this last weekend European
leaders had a disperate view. Some
didn't really want to get involved in
security guarantees. Now America has
said they are prepared to do that. um
there is much greater coherence and I
think what you're going to see with that
meeting is that the military chiefs are
going to have to develop options for
their political masters. political
masters have said right we need
credibility and we need teeth what are
the options and Tony Rkin will be
meeting with his other um colleagues
there to work out well what assumptions
are there what role should Ukraine play
how do we grow Ukraine's own forces to
be credible over what period of time and
what the rules of engagement going to be
because we don't want to get dragged in
to a major conflict ourselves and of
course also the risk because the more of
NATO assets you pour into one country it
fixes them and therefore potentially
means we're more exposed elsewhere but
it is a positive sign because actually
now all of a sudden it's putting a bit
of meat on the bones of exactly what the
politicians are seeking to achieve.
You've been in that position to some
degree surely from your your previous
experience in the RF. You've flown jets,
but you've also looked at logistics and
decision-m and leadership and planning
and implementation. What's that like
trying to balance looking after your
resources and your people and and doing
what is operationally achievable, but
then also trying to fulfill the
political will that, let's be honest,
the bosses are are cascading down to
you.
>> Yeah. A lot of it to be blunt I mean
this is not a unique situation as you
say before we go to Afghanistan before
we went into conflicts that have
littered my career and continues to
litter the career. Part of the issue is
how much risk is prepared to be taken.
It's quite one thing a politician to say
yes, we've got to stop the killing and
we've seen a lot of that happen um um by
our politicians and European leaders
understandably, but actually what are
the military options that have some
credibility because if you're going to
put our soldiers, sailors, and airmen
into harm's way, you need to make sure
you've thought that through. And I think
that's where Admiral Tony Ratakin, who
is a very seasoned um war fighter, he's
been involved in operations the whole of
his career. He's very well placed to be
able to put a these are what we can do,
but here's the risks involved if you do
this.
>> Sean Bell, appreciate it as ever. Thank
you so much.