This tool will be a last resort and it will be used cautiously," she said.Ī fascinating insight into the current mood of Russian people has been offered by Greg Yudin, Head of Political Philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. "If we see that goods are going from the European Union to third countries and then end up in Russia, we could propose to the member states to sanction those goods' export. The EU's chief executive revealed the plan on a symbolic trip to Kyiv on Tuesday - a counterbalance to annual celebrations in Moscow of the Second World War victory over Nazi German.Įuropean Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the new sanctions would focus on cracking down on the circumvention of Russia trade curbs already in place, and were designed "in very close coordination" with Group of Seven nations. Several diplomats said widely differing perspectives mean a quick deal is not expected. One diplomat told Reuters news agency that talks among the EU envoys were likely be heated, with Russia hawks upset the plan does not go far enough but others wary of damaging their international ties. I will expect to see that when the offensive really begins.Įuropean Union states have launched discussions on proposed new sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine that would target Chinese and Iranian firms and allow export curbs on third countries for busting trade restrictions. The Ukrainians will have to take these on air-to-air in dogfights to keep Russian aircraft far enough from the battle zone. This is doing a lot of damage to Ukrainian frontline units and Russian aircraft can still be 50km away when they launch it. In particular, the Russians have improvised their new UPAB-1500B glide bombs, with a 40km range - just gliding to its target on GPS. The Russians will devote a lot of aircraft to trying to smash the armour at the core of the Ukrainian offensive, and the Ukrainians will need all their ground-based air defence systems, as well as the air force, to perform very well. It has lost about 25% of its available frontline strength so far.īut we can expect the Ukrainian air force to have a much harder time when the offensive begins (when and where we can only guess). That is enough to keep Russian aircraft out of Ukrainian airspace most of the time. Ukraine has been successful in imposing something close to a 5% loss rate on all Russian air attacks.
Airpower is fundamental to what happens in any offensive. We have been receiving your questions to put to our military analysts - this one comes from Steve and Professor Michael Clarke, former director of the Royal United Services Institute, has taken a look. "It's all to do with who is near to Putin, who Putin listens to, and Putin may now be beginning to lose his grip"
"The point is that Putin is running a sort of a medieval monarchy in the Kremlin at the moment. Putin did that in late February, but this time he seems to criticise Putin directly himself. "He's always used his friendship with Putin to make public criticisms of the military in order to get Putin to settle a deal between them. "What he's talking about really here is the fact that the Wagner fighters are being starved of ammunition. "He may have overstepped the line this time," he says of Mr Prigozhin. Sky military analyst Michael Clarke says the development is significant.
We brought you news earlier of comments by Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin (see 9.53 post), who appears to have directly insulted Vladimir Putin in public for the first time - in a reference to a "happy grandfather" figure who he said may turn out to be a "complete asshole".
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