Pressure building...17 May 2022 09:31
Russian defence analyst gives extraordinary 'damning' assessment of Putin's war on state TV and hints Ukraine will win.A feature of the ongoing conflict has been the seemingly unrelenting stream of footage from Russian state TV in which hosts and analysts engage in what has been framed as rampant pro-Moscow propaganda.
However, a clip has now emerged from a recent show in which defence analyst Mikhail Khodaryonok offers an extraordinary and highly critical assessment of the war, which the BBC's Francis Scarr - who has translated the video - describes as a "damning".
The arrival of European aid means "a million armed Ukrainian soldiers needs to be viewed as a reality of the very near future".
"We need to take that into account in our operational and strategic calculations that the situation in this regard will frankly get worse."
He says the level of an army's professionalism is determined by the level of training and its "morale and readiness to shed blood for the homeland".
Mr Khodaryonok says the idea that contracted soldiers are professional is "entrenched" in the minds of Russian political scientists, but that this is not the case.
"Far from it! Far from it!" he says.
"But a desire to protect one's homeland, in the sense that it exists in Ukraine, it really does exist there, they intend to fight until the last man."
He cites the "classics of Marxism-Leninism", saying "in that regard they weren't stupid".
"Ultimately, victory on the battlefield is determined by a high level of morale among personnel, which sheds blood for the ideas which it's prepared to fight for."
On NATO, and in reference to Sweden and Finland's likely entry into the alliance, he stresses the importance of maintaining "a sense of military-political realism".
"If you go beyond it then sooner or later the reality of history will hit you so hard that you'll regret it," he says.
"Don't engage with sabre-rattling with missiles in Finland's direction. It actually looks quite amusing.
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