Defence Committee

Oral evidence: Ukraine: one year on, HC 1193

Tuesday 7 March 2023

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 March 2023.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Mr Tobias Ellwood (Chair); Sarah Atherton; Robert Courts; Dave Doogan; Richard Drax; Mr Mark Francois; Mr Kevan Jones; Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck; John Spellar; Derek Twigg.

Questions 1-69

Witnesses

I: Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chair, Centre for Defence Strategies and Distinguished Fellow, Eurasia Institute, Atlantic Council, and Ed Arnold, Research Fellow for European Security, Royal United Services Institute. 

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Andriy Zagorodnyuk and Ed Arnold.

Chair: Welcome to this Defence Committee hearing on 7 March 2023, where we will be looking at Ukraine one year on. I am delighted to welcome Andriy Zagorodnyuk and Ed Arnold. Andriy is the chair of the Centre for Defence Strategies and a distinguished fellow at the Eurasia Institute at the Atlantic Council, but is currently beaming in from Kyiv. Thank you very much, Andriy. Ed Arnold, who is in the room with us today, is a research fellow for European security at the Royal United Services Institute. Sirs, welcome this morning; we are very grateful for your support. We are going to be exploring a number of aspects to do with Ukraine, but let’s begin with John Spellar to kick us off.

Q1                John Spellar: A number of the military have said that before the start of hostilities they had, in hindsight, overestimated the Russian army and certainly underestimated Ukraine. Many commentators fully expected that it would be not possible for Ukraine to resist what on paper appeared to be an overwhelming Russian military advantage. What are the key factors that have prevented Russia from making gains over the last year?

Ed Arnold: It is very difficult to single out one area where Russian poor military performance has been key, because it has been so comprehensive across all military functions. Political objectives and strategic, operational and tactical objectives have not aligned on the Russian side at all, whereas on the Ukrainian side they align perfectly: the political objective is to get all Russians out of Ukraine, and that can translate to military objectives on the tactical level. I think that is really key. Not to go too heavy on military doctrine, but in terms of fighting power and its conceptual, physical and moral components, it has been the moral components—leadership, ethical foundation and morale—that have really been the difference between the two sides. That is an area where Ukraine has been in the ascendancy, and Russia is completely deficient in the moral component of fighting power.  

Q2                John Spellar: You mentioned morale, which many generals in history have said is the key component of conflict. What is your assessment now of morale within the Ukrainian forces and the Russian forces, given that both of them have been taking significant losses?

Ed Arnold: To go back to your first question, the morale component is very difficult to measure, which is perhaps why there is an overestimation of Russian capabilities and an underestimation of Ukrainian capabilities. In terms of morale, the Russian side did not start at 100%—it is not like a computer game. A lot of the force had been deployed on the border since April of the previous year, and there were quite austere conditions over the winter before they stepped over the line of departure, so Russian morale was not in a good place at the very start. When the special military operation started to fail, it went further downhill, and there has been nothing apart from maybe last summer, when they managed to get some territorial gains in the east, but very slowly and at a very high cost. They are really the only objectives that they achieve militarily on the ground that would raise morale, and at the moment I just cannot see any realistic Russian military objective on the ground that will do that. Morale is infectious, when it is both low and high, whereas on the Ukrainian side they have had multiple battlefield successes and morale has stayed relatively high across the board because that is what they were prepared to do. As the fighting season starts again, they are very much in step with the political level of warfare, because they know exactly the job that they need to do and they have the capabilities to attempt to do it.

John Spellar: Fighting season almost gets us back to medieval warfare, doesn’t it? Andriy?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the invitation, and thank you for supporting Ukraine during the whole of this year. If you do not mind, I will start with the first question, because it is something that we are also studying a lot. What exactly happened, and what are the underlying reasons for the Russians’ bad performance in Ukraine? First of all, we can see that the Russians had problems all the way through with each element of their capability. They had problems with doctrine, leadership and the state of their weapons. Basically, they made an enormous amount of mistakes from the very beginning.

By the very beginning, I mean when the Russians started that war with forces inadequate for the completion of their operational plans. When they started it, they expected things to be very easy so, for example, loads of their troops were moving in logistical transport mode, rather than assault mode. Basically, they miscalculated the whole campaign from the very start.

On the question of why that all happened, there are some deep, underlying reasons, which get us to studying the internal organisational issues within the Russian armed forces that led to those mistakes, because those mistakes are systemic. This is a hypothesis, but probably provable: we believe that the key reason why is that, for years, for decades, the Russians had no external control over their armed forces—no democratic or civilian control, obviously, but no other control whatever.

Basically, the armed forces were developing as a thing on their own, without any challenge. Being unchallenged for decades, they were rotting from inside. We believe that is there to stay and why we believe the issues will not be fixed in a short period. That is why the commanders are returning, for example, back to their positions after they have been fired—you probably know what I am talking about. This will be with the Russian army for some long time, which is why our forecast is that they will continue to make lots of mistakes in the future and will generally underperform.

That produces low morale, because the Russians see clearly that their plans are not working. We saw a lot that, in general letters, text messages and whatever else, they clearly expected this to be a campaign of a few days. That did not work out, which severely hit morale. Right now, as you can probably see, any little progress that they make is attributed more to the mercenary groups, rather than the regular armed forces. The regular armed forces got stuck—they feel that and understand it, and essentially that makes morale very difficult.

Ukraine expects a counteroffensive. Ukraine has been extremely motivated, first of all because we have no other chance—we have no plan B, we need to defend our homes—so that gives us a huge motivation. We have also been motivated by the fact that we were doing better, much better than expected, and we made massive breakthroughs in certain parts of the front. We know that the Russians can be beaten. We knew that from the very beginning, but it was reinforced during the autumn counteroffensives. Right now, we know that can be done and exactly how to do that—we just need tools for that, and it will be done. That produces our morale.

Q3                John Spellar: You mentioned the mercenary forces, the Wagner Group. The history of mercenaries has been that when things go badly, they tend to fade away. Why is their morale holding up?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: They have a very different culture—completely. Most of them, especially currently, are highly paid mercenaries who stay away in a relatively safe place, directing the other groups—the main assault groups—or they have a lot of people who have a certain attitude to life. Basically, most of them accept that there is an extremely high chance that they will not survive. Recently, NATO intelligence reported—as reported by CNN yesterday—that their losses in Bakhmut, for example, are five times higher than the Ukrainians’, which is an astonishing number, even for us. Personally, I was shocked by that. That is the morale of people who are not holding out for anything, but the issue is that that cannot be scaled all the way across the armed forces. Basically, that is scaled on a substantial number, so I would look at that as a more niche organisation with very different, but very limited potential.

Chair: We have two supplementaries on this: Kevan then Robert.

Q4                Mr Jones: Can I pick up on the question of the Wagner Group? Ed might also want to comment.

In The New York Times yesterday or today, there are some quite strong statements being made by Prigozhin in terms of suggesting that his groups are being starved of ammunition and so on. There are clearly a lot of politics going on between him and the Chief of the General Staff, Gerasimov, and others. What are your thoughts? What is actually going on? Is it blame culture? Or what is it?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: In our opinion, the situation is this. First, Prigozhin is an extremely ambitious and very aggressive person, generally, and he is obviously attempting to convert his success into political success, even if that is limited success. Basically, he is trying to use that, and he is obviously advertising himself and his group a lot. He is criticising the armed forces. There are a lot of things to criticise them for, because they are underperforming, and underperforming in logistics. They depend on the armed forces for the supply of weapons and so on.

But we know that there is a rivalry between the groups. In Russia, it is a typical Soviet story, which continues in modern-day Russia. It is a rivalry between the uniformed services. They have a rivalry between the FSB and the army; they have a rivalry between the police and the FSB and the army, and so on and so on. So, obviously, there is a rivalry between Wagner and the armed forces. He is actively pushing the agenda of firing some generals, interfering in the decision making on particular generals, and was extremely aggressive against some of them—essentially, he tried to interfere in the overall command.

As I just said, the army is a thing on its own. It is a self-preserving mechanism in Russia, which has a close-knit and very tight culture. For decades, they found a way to co-exist with one another. Clearly, they don’t want anyone from outside to interfere, particularly publicly. They are rejecting him, and his group and their operations.

So, yes, they are undersupplying them, consciously. They don’t want them to scale. They don’t want them to grow bigger than they are. That is an internal struggle, which we obviously all look at with great interest. I believe that it will continue. Perhaps, it will damage their results.

Mr Jones: Are we likely to see Prigozhin fall out of a window sometime soon?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I wouldn’t be too surprised if that happens.

Chair: Right, okay. Robert.

Q5                Robert Courts: I want to ask about one particular aspect of what would in theory have been Russian military advantage but doesn’t seem to have borne fruit, which is aviation. On the face of it, Russia has a mass of approximately 10 times over Ukraine, to say nothing of an apparent technological advantage, which again doesn’t seem to have borne fruit. What do you both feel is the answer to this mystery?

There clearly is an aspect of Russian military aviation doctrine that is lacking—of combined control. But there also seems to be an element of it just having been held back and not deployed. It is a bit of a mystery, because it is one big factor that you would have thought they would have used more. I would like to get to the bottom of that.

Ed Arnold: In terms of the superiority in numbers, you are correct.

There are a couple of factors that I would highlight. In Russian military doctrine, and practice and culture, the land forces have priority. In terms of command and control, land forces had priority and they struggled, especially with communication and marrying up the land components. It was also made more difficult by electronic warfare fratricide. Effectively, air operations were not fully integrated with land operations.

Q6                Robert Courts: They don’t have a doctrine of command air operations in the way that way do, do they?

Ed Arnold: Not in the way that we do, no.

Then, also, I think there is an element of weakness in their targeting cycles and prioritisation, and how the air force went about the campaign. They did identify certain targets. A lot of the fixed targets that they had to strike, they fired missiles at, but they did not necessarily do the battlefield damage assessment, so they just assumed, “Well, if we have shot at it, it is therefore destroyed.” That was not certainly the case. Also, a lot of the assets that they were to target were mobile, and the Ukrainians knew that they had to disperse their assets to keep them alive. In the first couple of days of the operation, we saw a lot of air activity, but then that just sort of levelled off over the first couple of days.

A wider point on Russian military and something that has really dogged their operation is that they do not conplan, so once plan A had failed, they were not there already with a plan B or plan C fleshed out, which NATO militaries do in the course of their planning. Effectively, when plan A failed, they just did not have a plan B.

Q7                Robert Courts: Before we go to Andriy, can I just press you on one point? I gave you a premise there, which was: is it military failure or is it that they are reserving that air force for future operations?

Ed Arnold: I think it is military failure. They are not specifically trying to preserve their air force, or they were not at that time. In a war like this, you have to take certain operational losses to achieve your objectives, but I think it was the fact that once they tried to achieve their objectives in the first couple of days, without a conplan the air force did not really know what to do or how best to support land operations.  

Q8                Chair: We are going to have to make some progress. Andriy, do you have anything to add quickly to that?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: No, to be honest, Ed gave an extremely comprehensive answer; I completely agree.

I just want to say that, when they are not challenged, they are using their air force in full. For example, the city of Mariupol was completely destroyed by the air force. Because they were safe, they were like basically 10 minutes to fly and no one was challenging them there and they just levelled the city. They will do this with any other city if they are not challenged, so it is only about them being denied the opportunity.

Chair: Okay, let’s go to some comparators here. Sarah, do you want to take us forward?

Q9                Sarah Atherton: On morale, Andriy, you are on the ground there. What is the morale and the support for the offensive among the Russian people, particularly now partial mobilisation has been put in place in Russia with significant loss?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I am based in Ukraine. Obviously, it is not that I am on the ground understanding exactly what happens with the Russian people, but we do have some specialists looking into Russian society on a daily basis. I have to say that it is mixed. Different parts of Russian society are reacting to the war differently. The most intelligent and pro-western—not even pro-western, but pro-democratic, so to speak—are shocked, obviously. They have been shocked for a while. Lots of them have left, but they are not a decisive factor; they are not making or influencing decisions, so, essentially, they have been ignored. As you know, the Russian Government are not restricting anyone from leaving, so they are very welcome to go and many have.

At the same time, there is a larger part of Russian society that is quite complacent. Some of them support the war and some of them do not, but they are not really into any active movements or even active expression of their feelings. A lot of them are just accepting it. It is very difficult to say about the proportions, because any polls in a totalitarian state cannot properly reflect the situation. So we do not believe the polls, but the polls are certainly showing that a majority of Russians support the war. Certainly, a large part of them do.

Concerning mobilisation, as we can see, mobilisation was normally done among the parts of society with less income. Lots of them just accepted it and did so very quickly. We saw villages basically gathering and sending their men to the war without any understanding of what it was for or what was going to happen. Then they were complaining of lack of training and equipment but that did not really change anything. We do know that they are continuing mobilisation—not that publicly, but they are still recruiting people on a low-level, low-intensity ongoing basis. At the moment, that does not change the overall societal attitude to the war much. They are very careful, it seems, not to get to a situation like the one they had in the Soviet Union with Afghanistan, which was extremely unpopular and contributed to the demise of the Soviet regime, or anything like world war one, where they had total mobilisation and it failed, the war failed and then the people returned and that led to the fall of the regime. So there is nothing like that at the moment.

Q10            Sarah Atherton: We are entering year two and there is relative deadlock. How would you compare the war-fighting capabilities and the mass of the two sides?

Ed Arnold: First, it is important to point out it is year nine. This is the second year where military operations have significantly increased. The frontage at the moment is about 1,200 km, which is quite important in terms of understanding the military laydown. To refer back to one of my previous answers, yes, numbers are important and Andriy covered the mobilisation on the Russian side, and we understand about the losses that the Russians and the Ukrainians, to a slightly lesser extent, have taken over the first year, but this is all about sustainment and how long each side can go. It is all about how over the winter both sides have recovered for spring offensives, but this could drag on for a number of years.

I agree with Andriy’s assessment that there are systemic issues with the Russian force. If it was one or two issues—if it had been an intelligence failure, the plan had been bad or the execution of that plan had been bad, there would be something to focus on and fix, but this is pretty fundamental in terms of the Russian side.

Also, I think Russia has fewer options. We have seen operational tempo increase in terms of the inputs from the Russian side over the last four weeks, but we haven’t seen any operational outputs. They are still making very slow progress in certain areas that are not really that important to the wider campaign. Actually, Russia has very few options for this potential spring offensive. From the Russian side, I am unconvinced that they will be able to achieve that and turn a military objective into a political objective.

Chair: We will come on to the spring offensive in detail in a bit with Kevan Jones.

Q11            Sarah Atherton: Can I quickly pick up on tanks? The use and provision of tanks has been described as transformative. The numbers are quite low for Ukraine—2,500 compared to about 12,500 for Russia. Ukraine wanted 300; they have got 100. How is this going to change? How and when are they going to get the tanks there? How many will actually arrive there? How will that transform the battlefield?

Ed Arnold: On tanks, the first point is that the West were quite slow to provide tanks. The decisions that we saw in January should have been made last October, to give them time to be integrated and onboarded, so that they would be ready for a potential spring offensive. Because each nation is providing a certain package of tanks to add up to about 100 plus—that is probably the initial tranche; there might be more—Ukraine is going to get them in a piecemeal fashion.

It depends how Ukraine wants to use those tanks. I think the 300 number was from the Ukrainian defence planners. That would have been ideal, but they will take which tanks they have. The western tanks are superior to Russian tanks, and it depends whether they want to invest them straight into the fight now, either in the east or the south, or whether they want to keep them back and train them collectively at a higher echelon to give them that offensive power later on in the year.

Chair: Again, we will probably explore this in more detail with the tank question.

Q12            Sarah Atherton: Andriy, do you have any quick comments before we move on?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I fully agree. We have been talking about tanks for a long time. The fact that these complex tanks are supplied in the winter time for spring is quite late, particularly since they are an extremely difficult piece of equipment with loads of sustainment issues to support them. We will certainly do our best and any chance to speed up the delivery would help, but in comparison to the self-propelled howitzers, which we have been receiving, and the other pieces of heavy equipment, the tanks indeed come in a piecemeal fashion, which is a little bit inconvenient. But we will deal with what we have.

Q13            Chair: We will now move away from the Russian capabilities or thinking prior to the war, and look to the West. Before we do, I just want to ask a question about the FSB and perhaps the hierarchy in which these agencies—these big mass groupings—operate in Russia. You have these big names: Bortnikov, Gerasimov, Shoigu, Lavrov, Peskov. All these characters have worked around Putin for many, many years. Many are somehow connected to the FSB. Is it right to say that he did not trust the military to command the invasion, and therefore replaced some of the senior personnel with FSB leaders, battalion commanders and so forth? Is there any truth in that? Is not that one of the reasons why the initial invasion stalled—that those in command and control were not familiar with the military environment?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: From our knowledge, most of the military planning was still done by the military, but the war had to have a large pre-military sort of preparation stage. A very significant element was related to sabotage operations that were supposed to support the military invasion, so basically the military were only involved in pure movement of troops. The second ground was supposed to be prepared before that, and that has failed as well. I am not aware of the FSB commanders actually running the battalions like military battalions; that would be very unusual because these two organisations are not usually collaborating or sharing capabilities and so on. They were supposed to be collaborating and helping one another but that collaboration did not work, which, again, does not surprise us because they always had rivalry; that was one of the key problems for the Russians from the very beginning of the campaign.

Ed Arnold: Certainly, the FSB led on the intelligence preparation of the battlefield, and they had probably an outsize role in the planning of the operation, which was then partly handed over to the military. I do not think they were necessarily moving FSB into positions of command, but Soviet and then Russian structures also have sort of FSB embeds widely placed throughout the military. The false assumptions that Putin had about the fact that Ukraine would not fight in the way that they did was partly through the FSB’s assessment. That has started to change now, especially with the fifth directorate of the FSB, which does foreign interference; they got it so catastrophically wrong that I think the priority order has started to change.

Q14            Chair: Talking of getting it so catastrophically wrong, Kevan Jones on our Committee was saying prior to the invasion, “The Russians are not 10 feet tall”—I think that was the phrase he used. In other words, we should not assume that they will be these new, modernised armed forces with new doctrines and protocols that will be able to invade in the way that perhaps we are all frightened of. And yet the CIA—the American President, even—made the assumption that Kyiv would be overrun and offered President Zelenskyy a helicopter ride out. How was it the case that even senior western intelligence services made the assumption that Russia had this capability, which clearly it didn’t?

Ed Arnold: In terms of available data, we knew that the Russians underperformed in Georgia in 2008 and went through a period of modernisation. What appears to be the case now is that that modernisation really did kick off in the first four years, but then when Shoigu came in in 2012, the ambition sort of petered out. There are a lot of immeasurables, including, as I said, the moral component, but in Russian culture graft was also significant. We assessed it at a certain sort of percentage; it might have been double or triple that, and that was a real issue.

The other operations that they had done—Donbas since 2014; Syria, which was primarily an air campaign and then supported by lower levels of infantry; and then other operations conducted by Wagner in Africa—were all much smaller scale. When Russia does the large-scale exercises—Zapad was 30,000 to 50,000, and does combined arms manoeuvre—they are highly scripted, partly because they have to invite NATO observers. I think they believed their own hype in terms of the system, and we did as well because it is actually very difficult to assess how any military would do; this scale of operation is unprecedented, certainly in the last several decades.

Q15            Chair: I think there was an assumption that Donbas, Crimea and, indeed, Syria, were almost like the Germans in Spain prior to the second world war. It was almost like a training ground for them to explore new capabilities.

Ed Arnold: Successes there, especially in Donbas and other places, led them to move to the battalion tactical group structure, which was wholly inadequate because it is not how they train. They basically went and fought with a different structure to how they train, and that caused a lot of the issues.

Chair: Andriy, any quick thoughts?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I agree. From what I have seen, and from talking to some US analysts during that period, they mostly concentrated on numbers. Numbers of planes, numbers of tanks, and numbers of people, etc. Basically, by comparing numbers, of course the Russians had an advantage. They did not understand how different the Ukrainian and Russian armies had become over the last 10 years. Particularly since 2014, when the war in Donbas started, the Ukrainian army had changed dramatically in its approaches. A lot of people considered this as more like a soft subject; it could not easily be evaluated so it did not feature in evaluations. That led them to the wrong conclusions. I believe there is now some effort to understand why those wrong conclusions were made, so we will see.

Chair: There are some big lessons to be learnt. Let’s now focus on who is controlling the agenda the best.

Q16            Mrs Lewell-Buck: Andriy, can we explore how the delivery of western military support has shaped the conflict so far, and, in particular, how well that has been co-ordinated between Ukraine and donor nations? I am interested in the timeframes between when equipment and support is agreed, and when it is actually then delivered; is there a significant gap?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: First of all, on a general level, obviously the conflict has been extremely shaped by the supplies from the west. Ukraine was going to run out of ammunition and weapons quite soon, and so by May we already needed a substantial influx of weapons. As you know, they had been delayed at that time. They only started arriving in June or July and became combat ready then. That gap was the most difficult gap in the history of our country. May and the beginning of June was an extremely tough period.

Luckily, then the western weapons started to arrive and took their place on the battlefield. They are working very well. I have spoken to I don’t know how many soldiers who are working with them personally, and the vast majority like them a lot. They are more user friendly and better performing. There is a very positive attitude towards what the allies do.

In terms of logistics, of course it is a huge challenge. We are talking about tens of different types of similar weapons, coming from all different countries, all requiring different parts, and all requiring different training on the mechanics. Very often they come used. Very often there is a lack of documentation, such as how to support the equipment, and so on. Those issues are being resolved, but it provides some additional challenges to logistics, as do the mechanics of technical support.

On the question of how long between political commitment and physical delivery, in certain cases countries are slower. In some cases, countries are extremely fast. For example, I have seen an announcement made on one day, and then the actual howitzers arriving within a week. Sometimes it is really fast. It all depends on the country, its Ministry of Defence and the negotiations. Everything is handled by Ukraine through intense, personal communication between Ministries of Defence. I know a lot of Ministers are devoted to that. I believe they are doing a great job. They are following up the supply individually. Basically, each one is like a little project, and each project has different performance and results.

Mrs Lewell-Buck:  Thanks. Ed, do you want to add anything to that?

Ed Arnold: Just that we have seen the provision improve over the year, starting from the first UK-hosted donor conference, which was then formalised into the Ukraine defence contact group, which I think was on its eighth iteration on 20 January, when tank provision was one of the most important parts. We have seen an improvement, but there are still issues that need to be addressed to look at what Ukraine’s future requirements are. I also think it has highlighted the importance of the standardisation of military equipment across Europe, and also of defence industrial capacity, which are really important.

The only other point is that you also have to understand the US leadership in this, in terms of the sheer amount that it has donated. Its leadership has been quite collective around meeting those requirements. Critically, on US logistics as an enabler, the US were able to move things from mainland US into Ukraine faster than some European nations.

Q17            Mrs Lewell-Buck: Why was that?

Ed Arnold: Because they invest heavily in their logistics. They need to do that for a variety of reasons. We are just not up to scratch in that regard. There is a lot on military mobility and increasing logistics, but ultimately it is quite fragmented and very difficult. I hope there is a bit of a political driver to address those issues now, because moving equipment from west to east very quickly is obviously a key defence requirement for NATO.

Chair: Let’s move over to the air domain.

Q18            Robert Courts: Ed, there is a lot to pick up there. Perhaps you can hold that thought, because later we are going to come to the future and what we should be doing. You mentioned logistics and the ability to move equipment from one place to another. When we look at our own capability, I wonder whether you would comment in due course about the loss of C-130 and what that does to air mobility capability. I will leave that for the Chairman to come back to later.

For now, I would like to pick up the point that you made about future Ukrainian requirements. You just mentioned that the provision of tanks was the last big ticket request; Challenger is seen as having unlocked Leopard 2. The big ticket request now, of course, is for jets. That has not been responded to in terms by the West at the moment, although of course in the last couple of days the Americans have got a couple of Ukrainian pilots that they are training on F-16 sims out in Tucson. Is that something that you think is likely to change, and can it? Do we not, in any event, need to talk about which jets?

Ed Arnold: Yes. You are right that the provision of military and technical assistance to Ukraine has become highly political. There is obviously a lot of focus on who might initially donate to try to trigger other donations in kind. Apart from the US, no country has the number of airframes they could provide to make a real difference.

On air power, there are almost two things. One is support to combat operations this year and next year. I think that is perhaps less important for Ukraine at the moment, in terms of directly supporting ground combat operations from the air. This is an element of a long-term transition for Ukraine, because at some point the shooting will stop and this phase of the war will end. It might go to a period of negotiation and the shooting might start again. What is critical is that Ukraine can re-establish deterrence over Russia and then defence. To do that, they will need more modern equipment.

To go back to my previous answer, in terms of the present and the future, I see the air domain more as part of the future requirements. I think it would be a useful opportunity now for NATO, similarly to how it has Allied Command Operations for the current fight and Allied Command Transformation for the future fight. That is where we almost need to divest these questions and look for long-term support.

It is about having a boring, programmatic view of those future requirements. It is about looking at our kit and capabilities across all nations and at when capabilities are going offline, and starting to build up those financial packages, because that is ultimately what Ukraine will need going forward.

Q19            Robert Courts: Yes, and the standardisation point that you made a moment ago is pertinent across NATO.

Ed Arnold: Absolutely. On air power, it is less about the technical specifications of the aircraft themselves and more about the maintenance. The maintenance requirements are going to be more challenging for Ukraine than the actual airframes themselves.

Q20            Robert Courts: The reason I ask that question is that, of course, the F-16 is the one that everybody talks about, largely because there are a lot of them and they are relatively cheap and easy in the scheme of things. We, of course, have tranche 1 Typhoons, which are getting obsolescent—air-to-air only, very long runway needed, long logistics tail. We do not hear much said about Gripen, which strikes me as being the obvious aircraft for this theatre.

Ed Arnold: My colleagues who are absolute air power experts have identified that, from a technical perspective, the Gripen would be the one that is of most value to the Ukrainians at the moment, because of the ability for maintenance and also the ability to use short runways. That means it can disperse, which other airframes cannot at the moment.

Like I said, where the battle currently is, Ukraine would take any aircraft that we were able to provide. They are not necessarily going to be picky, but going back to my point on the long-term transition, I see it as inevitable, so it is good practice to start the training now. Then, obviously, when they are potentially invested or deployed is a separate question.

Q21            Robert Courts: You are very keen to point out that the short term, medium term and long term are different questions—without putting words in your mouth.

Ed Arnold: But again, my point is that it is almost inevitable that at some point in the future, Ukraine will get these jets. If that is the case and you do see it as inevitable, I think it is right that the training starts as early as possible.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I agree about technical platforms, and I do agree that we will be happy to work with any platform that comes earlier. To be honest, for us, it is not a matter of a long-perspective future; we would rather start as soon as, for a number of reasons. First of all, the jets would play a very practical role even now—I mean, they would play a role particularly with air defence, and perhaps some other combined operations. We have constant calls from our military that the jets are part of the much more advanced campaign plan, and if we had them, we would have a much better chance.

Also, a separation of our near plans and then the future plans should not be that defined. We would rather see this as a transition from one to the other, because first of all, it is very difficult to calculate the exact endgame of this phase—how exactly it is going to end, and whether it is going to end or whether it will transition into some other form of conflict, maybe not that intense. It is difficult to predict because it is still shaping up, it is still forming, and we would rather influence shaping this up than sit and wait until the first phase ends so we can start to work on another phase.

Also, the first phase depends on our readiness for the future, our enduring strengths, particularly if the Russians see that we are preparing for the long game—if we are already setting up complex systems such as Patriots, for example, which we do already, and fighter jets. We are preparing for the very strong enduring strengths of Ukraine in the long term. They would certainly understand that, because right now—again, it is a hypothesis, but probably a valid one—they want to outwait the West. They want to play the resources game, in that they have a lot more money, more people and more equipment than Ukraine. They expect, perhaps, that the Western support will be somehow diminishing or exhausting, or that we will run out of weapons, ammunition and so on. We need to prove differently; we need to build up already, now, for the longer future. That is why I believe it is important.

Q22            Mr Francois: Ed, can I start with you, and can I make an analogy with tanks? We are now talking about up to 200 Leopards for the Ukrainians from various donor nations. If you are going to form a powerful armoured brigade, it helps if you’ve got mainly one tank, but when we gave 14 Challengers, that was, in a sense, as much a political decision as a military one. After months of agonising among NATO nations and others, when we leant forward and gave the Challengers, that broke the dam politically, as it were.

If you use that analogy with aircraft, most of what the Ukrainians use are ex-Soviet aircraft—that is what they are trained on and experienced in maintaining. What they want are more MiGs—for instance, the Polish MiG-29s—and other, lighter aircraft like F-16s and potentially Gripen. Typhoon, if we were to give that, is a more complex aircraft and is more difficult to maintain. But politically, if we were to donate, say, half a dozen Typhoons—

Mr Jones: We haven’t got them.

Mr Francois: We do, actually.

Mr Jones: We don’t.

Mr Francois: We do, Kevan.

Chair: Let’s just say in theory, and keep going.

Q23            Mr Francois: I’ll come back to that tomorrow, mate. If we were to donate a half-squadron of Typhoons politically to break the logjam, would there not be benefit from that, even if, militarily, they might be difficult to operate?

Ed Arnold: Yes. The only caveat is that I don’t think the provision of Challenger 2 necessarily broke the dam on the tanks debate. That is what the objective was, but actually the German Government still effectively had to lobby the US to agree to send M1s at some point in the future, so—

Mr Francois: Yes, but we did go first.

Ed Arnold: Yes, we did go first. I think it grew pressure on the Germans, but I don’t think it necessarily broke the dam. On fighters, I think there is value politically in suggesting that we would provide Typhoons, in whatever numbers, to then have other nations also contribute. Going back to my earlier point, I see the provision of these Typhoons to Ukraine as inevitable, but it just might not be for the next couple of years. Step 1 is to start doing the training so that it becomes a realistic future option.

Q24            Mr Francois: To use a popular phrase, politically, you could look at it as using a sprat to catch a mackerel, if you see what I mean. Andriy, we had President Zelenskyy address Parliament extremely powerfully in Westminster Hall. He asked for jets. He was very clear. He even gave the Speaker a fighter pilot’s helmet, which he may need for Prime Minister’s questions at some point. From a Ukrainian perspective, if the UK could donate some Typhoons, would that help you? If so, why?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: It absolutely would help. Absolutely, definitely and clearly. Why? There are two parts to that answer. One is militarily. The sooner we receive working planes with trained pilots with some maintenance training and capability, the sooner we can deploy them to the frontline where they can make a massive difference. That is the short military answer. This is a common opinion among our military experts, air force and joint command, and even spoken behind the scenes, so to speak. So yes, absolutely.

Politically, we watched the story of the Challengers—basically a tank story—unfolding. I personally spoke to lots of Members of Parliament, politicians and analysts in Germany, and I can say that the Challengers did make a massive push for the Germans to agree on their tanks, at least in their experience. That wasn’t immediate—it wasn’t automatic. It was difficult. They still needed to go through lots of decisions and there was still a lot of pressure, but basically the Challengers were decisive in those decisions and for that pressure at that point.

I don’t know if we can draw the analogy 100% from there, but that certainly worked back then and perhaps it will work with fighter jets as well. From our side, it is a definite encouragement.

Chair: Okay, thank you. Robert, did you want to come back in?

Q25            Robert Courts: Andriy, very quickly, I will just set aside the political question of what a Typhoon donation would do—I understand entirely the point Mark is making around leveraging other things. On the military use of them, I am conscious that we are talking about an aircraft that requires a very long runway, is highly complex, has a very long logistics and contractor tail, and, at the end of that, a very limited air-to-air only capability. Is it that useful militarily, or would it not be better to look at what would be more suited further down the line?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Technically, what we would do is to set up a joint UK-Ukraine working group of specialists on this, which would look at particular runways and particular bases where it can be serviced, and how it can be serviced. They would make the decision. I would certainly avoid making my own statements here for definite.

From my perspective, yes, we can work it out, we can work with this. But there are probably thousands of technical questions to be answered before the final decision.

Q26            Chair: Thank you for that. We visited Warton, where they put these together and service them, up in the north-west of England, with BAE Systems. I did ask how long it would take to train a MiG fighter to transfer across to Typhoon and they said a matter of months, which is quite interesting. Therefore, if we had them—hypothetically—and slid them across the table, it would probably be more political than it would be providing military assistance.

I have a question for both of you. Yes, absolutely, there is a sense of urgency. With a spring offensive, you want the tanks and you want the air power, I think, rather than jets themselves—the air superiority. But you’ve got a real mixed bag of Haribos, haven’t you, with so many platforms on so many levels, and in the long term this is unsustainable?

Would it not make sense for Ukraine absolutely to request what is in the cupboard now but to also lock down what type of tank you want in the long term, arguably the Leopard, and what type of aircraft you want in the long term, arguably the F-16, to give clarity, recognising that there is political symbolism, which Britain could once again illustrate, were it to slide across the Typhoons? Ed, do you want to have a pop at that first?

Ed Arnold: Yes, and I agree. The main thing that drives it is availability of either vehicles or airframes at the moment, and the issue with availability is that it’s never what it is on paper. So, there is obviously a lot of analysis that—

Chair: We find that a lot.

Ed Arnold: Exactly. But it makes it a little bit of a challenge that no one can actually pin down the exact number of these. As a sort of aside, my position is that while these discussions are really important, actually the more immediate need of Ukraine is for simpler things, like ammunition and shells and so on. I think we can get distracted by talking about more technical capabilities, but in the long term I do think that Ukraine will get all of these jets when they sort of go offline. To go back to my earlier answer, it is almost like splitting it in half: the immediate fight and then the longer term.

Q27            Chair: We will come to the detail of what that longer term might look like. Andriy, any quick observations?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Of course, using a single platform for each type of weapon would be much more preferred. Standardisation is the key. Logistically, it is indeed very difficult. Working with logisticians on an almost daily basis, I see that it is indeed tough, but it is workable. It’s not like it cannot be resolved; it’s just more difficult. 

What is the trade-off between time and inconvenience? Is the time it takes to receive those available items more important than inconvenience? I believe that time is more important. That’s why we never complain about having lots of weapons at different times, but we did complain about the delays.

Chair: Okay, thank you for that. When we look at the number of countries that have actually joined in the sanctions against Russia, we that it amounts to only 34, which is a reminder that there is a bigger picture taking place here. I think that leads us nicely to the other stakeholders. Richard, do you want to take us forward on this area?

Q28            Richard Drax: The rumours or speculation that China is cosying up to Russia, perhaps with the aim of giving them weapons, has been condemned by both Jens Stoltenberg and the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and obviously by us. What are the military and political implications should China provide military assistance to Russia? Ed, can I come to you first?

Ed Arnold: In terms of the political consequences, it would be a highly escalatory move, and that has already been communicated, as you suggested, not just in relations with the US but in relationships with Europe. At the moment, China has provided non-lethal systems—navigation tools and so on, dual-use items—but they haven’t thus far gone for what Russia really needs, which we have already discussed a little. It would also potentially invite sanctions on to the Chinese companies that would be potentially supplying those things. China do not want that, and they probably do not want the focus. I think if they did, it would be a point of no return for China.

Q29            Richard Drax: If they gave weapons?

Ed Arnold: If they gave weapons, for example in a modest contribution—

Q30            Richard Drax: A point of no return in what context?

Ed Arnold: Politically—they would have gone towards siding with Russia. They would then also not have any mediation role. On 24 February this year they drafted a proposal, which was dismissed almost immediately, but that would not go on. The EU and the US have said in the last week that that would be a red line that would be crossed.

I think the potential advantages, although they certainly do not outweigh the cons of this, might be to focus the US a bit more immediately within Europe and slightly away from the Indo-Pacific, but China might also see it as an opportunity to test some of their military equipment for the future. A lot of their military equipment that they have developed over the last couple of years has been reverse engineered from things that they have been provided with by Russia, so there is an element where they need to perhaps test some of this equipment in a real operational environment.

Q31            Richard Drax: There was a very good article in The Spectator—I hope I have paraphrased correctly—where they implied what the Chairman has hinted at a lot in recent months, which is that there could be an opportunity for China and Russia to change the world order by themselves becoming what they would see as the powerhouse, with the west and the US in league two. Do you think they would ever grab this opportunity to try to adopt that position? That clearly is where they have always wanted to be—No. 1—isn’t it?

Ed Arnold: While that option may have existed just over a year ago with the discussion about a no-limits friendship, we now know that it certainly has limits. The issue with potential support through military technical assistance to Russia is that there is no guarantee that Russia would be able to use this equipment to have a decisive effect on the battlefield. They need 122 and 152 mm shells—they have a real ammunition shortage—but they also still need the operational ability to use that ammunition to enable manoeuvre, to take back territory and to achieve a political objective. At the moment, it depends on the volume of military support, but there is no guarantee that Russia would be able to translate such support into acceptable military objectives that could then be turned into political objectives. There is a lot of risk for China, especially in areas like the UN. China have put a lot of soft power effort into certain committees in the UN, and so on. All of that would be at risk if they take this step. 

Q32            Richard Drax: Andriy, what is your view? I am assuming that were China to use weapons, there would be evidence of that on the battlefield very quickly, which you would pick up. There is no evidence of that right now, I take it.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Yes, at the moment there is no evidence. We would of course pick it up through various sources even before it gets to the battlefield, but certainly when it gets there. We clearly see that Russian offensives have stalled, and basically they cannot move further. As we have just discussed, wherever they have some limited progress, that is not even their regular armed forces. They run out of weapons, they run out of ammunition and they have problems with the industrial complex. In the resources game that they wanted to play, they are not doing that well.

For sure, for the Russians, opening Chinese support would be amazing and hence very dangerous for us. At the same time, we highly doubt that China really wants Russia to win, because if it wins—first of all, it won’t win. This will just delay the war for a long, long time, and make it even more bloody. The Russians are not able—they do not have enough capabilities—but even if they had an unlimited amount of weapons and ammunition, it would still not be enough to win this war. China cannot win it for them, so essentially it is investing in something that is extremely damaging for China’s reputation while providing no assurance of any result whatsoever. The image that China tries to demonstrate and project to the global scene as a wise, peace-seeking nation certainly does not bring them any results. That is why there is a big question mark. To be honest, it is too early to say whether they are doing this or not—we will certainly see whether they do—but I believe that at the moment it is still in the decision-making process.

Q33            Richard Drax: Andriy, forgive me—your President is due to see the Chinese, is he not? He hasn’t done it yet.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Perhaps, yes, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Q34            Richard Drax: When is that due to happen, do you know?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I cannot comment on this; I do not know.

Q35            Chair: To pursue that point a bit further, Andriy, Russia is one of the few friends that China has. If China does lose, it would be significant for Putin. It would be significant for the direction of travel for Russia, and that would be significant for China. China cannot afford for Russia to lose, or it will be very difficult given where China wants to go in the world.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Perhaps for them it would be an undesirable effect if Russia collapses completely, and loses completely, except for that in this highly hypothetical scenario it is a question of how China might see it playing out in a case where Russia is collapsing. Again, we are talking about a scenario that is one of many, and we do not know exactly where we are at this point in time with this scenario. The question is then about what China can do about the global isolation of Russia and the fact that it is just a matter of time before Putin and his team are convicted criminals—for many very difficult crimes such as terrorism, crimes against humanity, war crimes and so on. Russia also cannot avoid economic sanctions or reparations, because they caused enormous damage to Ukraine. Again, it is just a matter of time before that damage goes back against Russia. China cannot save Russia from their own problems, which they created because they went too far. I believe that maybe at the beginning of the war, in the first months, it was possible, but after cases such as Mariupol, when they destroyed a city of half a million completely—after Russia crossed those lines—no one can save them right now, to be honest.

Q36            Chair: Okay. India and China are still supporting Russia, in one form or another. Russia is therefore hoping for the long game. The purpose of China coming in with its own deal, surely, is to stall any advance that Ukraine might be able to make to push Russia back.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Yes, and that brings danger, of course. They are not interested in Russia losing completely and they are not supporting the war, but they are certainly not condemning Russia like western nations do. Basically, we are in the middle of a point where some decisions will be made by the Chinese. As for whatever can influence that point, it would make sense to do it right now.

Chair: Ed, do you want to come in quickly?

Ed Arnold: In terms of support, apart from overt military technical assistance for Russia at this point, they can do more on technology exchange, for example. They can also do dual-use technology transfer—

Q37            Chair: And you see that increasing?

Ed Arnold: Yes. That would alleviate the sanctions that Russia has, which are a limiting factor on Russia’s ability to regenerate some of its capabilities. They can do that in a less overt way, but from a Chinese point of view, keeping this war going at a certain level might have advantages. If the US are diverting their now scarce resources, especially in technical equipment such as HIMARS ammunition, they cannot go to—

Chair: A useful distraction.

Ed Arnold: Exactly.

Chair: Thank you. Let’s turn our attention back closer to home.

Q38            Derek Twigg: Ed, I will come to you first. Obviously, we hear a lot about NATO unity, and the importance of that. Given that everyone—or most people—now believes that this will be a long, drawn-out war, where would you put the level of NATO unity at this point in time on a scale of one to 10? Does it have the resilience to stick in there?

Ed Arnold: I think unity has changed slightly. Even without the war in Ukraine, last year was a pretty significant year for NATO anyway with the fall of Kabul towards the end of 2021 and expeditionary operations not going well for NATO at all. What has happened in the war since last year has enabled NATO to go back to its basics and fundamentals of defence and deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic area and escalation management, which it had been doing since the Washington treaty was signed—that really is NATO’s bread and butter. I think that part of the unity is due to the threat that Russia has posed and to external factors, but it is also internal factors. We were due to have NATO’s new strategic concept in 2022 anyway. That said, what has happened since the war, coalescing around support to Ukraine, is a very high degree of NATO unity, in terms of both the provision of support to Ukraine and member states incurring significant costs—the cost of living, the price of commodities and so on.

Critical to that unity has been US leadership since before the invasion, when the US shared intelligence suggesting that Russia was planning a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and also what the US has done in terms of unlocking all the potential political blockers. Secretary of State Blinken has done a very important job of managing that, and now we are starting to see structures that are slightly independent of NATO, such as the defence contact group. I believe that that has about 52 members, so it is not just NATO. I am pretty optimistic about unity.

The other factor is that the EU and NATO signed the third joint declaration earlier this year. That was delayed, but there are many more synergies between NATO and the EU now than there were before the war. I think that they are also closer to de-conflicting their comparative advantages than they have been for a long time. So when you look more broadly across Europe, I do not think that it is just NATO. It is all other issues—the Joint Expeditionary Force, for example, on which again there is a high degree of unity. I think that what we are seeing will be sustained, but it is also dependent on what happens on the ground in Ukraine.

Q39            Derek Twigg: In terms of the future US position, the US elections are not too far away now. You have mentioned, quite rightly, how important the US is to all this.

Ed Arnold: Absolutely, and that is a risk. I imagine that it is also a worry for a lot of European nations at the moment. When Congressman McCarthy was elected as Speaker, there were reports that long-term support for Ukraine was one of the issues that they wanted to discuss. If there was a candidate that got the presidency in 2024 who was less sympathetic to Ukraine, that could have an adverse effect. I think that this is where NATO is also looking. You are seeing many more reports involving the language of a Europeanisation of NATO, and a recognition that European nations have to step up now. It is not acceptable to continue to rely on US security assistance.

Q40            Derek Twigg: Andriy, what is the view from Ukraine about long-term resilience?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Originally, we were a little surprised by the lack of involvement from NATO at the beginning of the war. Although the NATO countries had a massive involvement—they helped with weapons, set up the Ramstein format and so on—NATO as a headquarters was less involved. We assumed that that was because it wanted to avoid escalation and avoid being considered as a party to the war. Indeed, when I spoke to a lot of Government leaders and some analysts who were discussing the escalation scenarios, one of the escalation scenarios was that NATO would somehow be involved, and that it would be what in the US press was called world war three—multiple participants from different sides. I do not think that Putin is in any way really threatening NATO countries now. He is obviously barely coping with the Ukrainian front. I think that those scenarios are not that relevant.

At the same time, we saw at some point a lot of involvement and very significant work being done by the NATO leadership in terms of advocacy and explaining the war to different audiences. I think that the Secretary-General is doing a fantastic job in that. He was leading lots of nations, opinion leaders and societies through this period of war fatigue, which we had particularly in the summer time, in autumn and so on. Then NATO became more involved in other different aspects. At the moment, that is what we see.

It is difficult for us to estimate whether this is an ideal version of collaboration or not, but I think Ukraine and NATO obviously have a common future. There is absolutely no doubt about that. We probably would become a very strong partner for NATO for the near future and would be a serious contributing member to NATO in the future. I believe we need to keep on collaborating, communicating and partnering on the different programmes. I think that is the way forward. So far, the framework of the support is established, like with the Ramstein format and other working groups. I do not think it would make sense to change it, but NATO can play a great part in this.

Q41            Mr Jones: We have already touched on it, but what will be the impact of—I think Ed referred to it as the fighting season—the spring thaw that is clearly coming? It would be interesting to know what is going to happen in the conflict in the coming months, in terms of what the major developments will be.

Ed Arnold: On fighting seasons and the weather, there is an impact on military equipment, such as vehicle movements, radio batteries and so on—they run down in cold weather—but I think the most important part of this is that war is a human activity. Fighters on both sides have been in pretty terrible conditions throughout the war, so it is not necessarily just about when the ground enables manoeuvring vehicles, but about preparing the troops again to get out of pre-prepared defensive positions and potentially to go on the offensive.

The balance on the ground is that Russia currently holds around 17% of Ukrainian territory, up from 7% in 2014. That went to a maximum of around 30% towards the end of March, and they have lost about 50% of their gains. The point is that the military balance on the ground suits neither side. We know that Ukraine is very clear that they want that 17% to be 0%. From a Russian side, we are not entirely sure what they want. They want it to increase from 17%, but also you have to look at the ground and see what those potential military objectives are.

Thinking back to the moral point, Ukraine have not necessarily telegraphed what they are going to do, but they have options, which is the essence of making strategy. I think they have a very clear idea of how they need to go about military operations on the ground. I think it is much less clear on the Russian side. Also, I have very much seen a reduction in the quality of Russian soldiers over this mobilisation period. From some of the footage I have seen, we now hesitate to even call Russian fighters infantry in some regards. For me, speaking as an ex-infanteer, I think you need certain basic infantry skills, such as no movement without fire and pairs fire and manoeuvre, which I just do not see the Russians doing at the moment. To move from defensive operations to offensive operations and combined arms manoeuvre at scale, I am very sceptical that the Russians are able to do that.

Q42            Mr Jones: We are still seeing the Russians deploying armour without infantry, or with very limited infantry. Is that because they have not got it, or because they do not know how to deliver infantry and armour at the same time?

Ed Arnold: I think it is a bit of both. There is a 1,200-mile current frontline. Around 820 miles of that is currently contested. That is a lot. In terms of the breadth, this is an issue we have seen with the Russian operations. They are not co-ordinated in terms of designating a main effort and making sure that they have the ammunition and logistics support for offensives; again, I am seeing not much evidence that they are doing that. To your earlier question, we have to remember that it is Russian regulars—Wagner, other mercenary groups and militia units. Unity of command, one of the principles of warfare, just does not exist. The Russians have been really poor, specifically in the east. In the south, they were better at that.

As the time comes and the conditions allow for more offensive manoeuvre, I am very sceptical that the Russians are able to mass in the quantities needed to make a breakthrough whereas, on the Ukrainian side, I am pretty optimistic—mainly because of the counter-offensive in Kharkiv in September last year. It was intelligence-led; it was well planned; they probed the line and got lucky where they enabled a break in the lines, and they exploited it very quickly. They had the confidence to set a limit of exploitation and not get too carried away.

All those things point to operational art. If the Ukrainians have that, provided that they have the capabilities, I think they have the advantage.

Q43            Mr Jones: Clearly a lot of the fighting is going on in Donbas and other areas. There is an indication—around Kherson and other fronts—that they have basically built large defensive positions, in terms of the Russian position. Is it simplistic to say that one is defensive and the other, from a Russian point of view, is offensive?

Ed Arnold: At the moment, both sides have probably been on the defensive over the winter, because it also allows a period of recuperation and, specifically, to start to stockpile ammunition and put it where it is needed for when offensive operations resume.

Where the balance of power is on the ground at the moment—I mean, you mentioned Kherson. The Russians have also shown that they struggle with river crossings of smaller-scale water features. I think the ability to go further west—west of the Dnieper—is absolutely off the cards for the Russians at the moment.

They also need to protect the territory that they currently have. One of their operational objectives was to get a land bridge from Russia proper to Crimea, which they currently hold. They need to hold that, because if it is put under threat the whole position in Crimea is under threat. They are probably on the defensive in the south; they are trying offensives in the east but, for all the reasons I have outlined, they are effectively misfiring and they just cannot co-ordinate and designate a main effort to go forwards.

Mr Jones: Andriy?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: First of all, I agree with everything Ed said. I would just add that, indeed, Russians would be trying to make an offensive operation in the east. They planned for it for a long time, but it has not worked out so far. I do not think they have any political decision to cancel it completely, so I think they would still be trying. We expected it some time ago, so clearly they were not prepared or capable. They did not amass the necessary capability for it. For them, it is a critical political matter to show at least some results.

We commonly believe that the iterant goals they put in front of themselves would be to occupy the Donetsk region completely, which they would call a liberation of Donbas and highly advertise it and so on. That was their plan, but that plan clearly did not work out. I do not think it is going to be successful; I think we have enough forces there to make it fail. We have not seen any other plan so far, so I think that would be the only one. Theoretically, if they were successful, they planned to go somewhere else, and there were a number of options, but I do not think we will get to that point.

Now, with Ukraine it is rather simpler. We are preparing for the counter-offensive. We are clearly agnostic about the direction, because the direction will be determined when the intelligence at that point in time tells us where the Russians are least prepared for that offensive. Kharkiv, as Ed described, was clearly an opportunity-based plan. Russia has completely forgotten about Kharkiv; they did not include in the planning. They were concentrating on the east, most of all. We then started the preparations for the counter-offensive in Kherson; in some sort of panic, they started to throw their forces to Kherson, and we started an offensive in Kharkiv.

Basically, they clearly do not have enough officers—high-ranking officers and junior officers—to hold that long frontline. That is a fact. They lost a lot of officers during this war, and they did not have a lot of capable officers from the beginning. They will not be able to hold the whole frontline.

Importantly, they also do not have surgeon corps. As we all know, they still have this NCO doctrine from the Soviet times. They do not have them as an essential or defining part of the capability, so the whole burden of providing troops is on the officers and they do not have enough. That length of frontline is completely unrealistic for them to hold, which is why the forecast is that they will lose a lot of this in the springtime, or at least some substantial part of it. 

Q44            Richard Drax: Andriy, we hear—not often—that Donbas is full of precious metals. It is rich in them. Crimea has the port for the Russians. As I understand it, Donbas could bear fruit for the Russians economically in the years ahead. How true is that, and what impact or influence will that have on the Russians clinging on to that part of your country?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: It certainly has a lot of resources—that is true. Centuries ago, Donbas was always a very sparsely populated area, and it was populated specifically because of the development of mining and the iron industry. Originally, Donbas was built around that industry—all of it—so yes, there are resources and, for sure, the Russians will try to benefit. At the same time, it is sad to say, but all the infrastructure of Donbas—all the industrial facilities and everything—has been completely destroyed. You can google Marinka, for example, which is a village that literally does not exist anymore. The pictures were populated recently online, and unfortunately it is one of many settlements in Donbas that have been totally destroyed.

I do not think the Russians have immediate plans to benefit from the resources. They own the port of Mariupol right now—temporarily, of course, but nevertheless—which has been totally destroyed. The city was almost levelled. Mariupol was the key port on the Azov sea for the transportation of the Donbas ores to the world market. They have access to resources, and they have access to infrastructure, but all the infrastructure is broken. To be honest, I think the reason they are clinging to Donbas is because they originally had some medium success there back in 2014, when they occupied half of it, and they developed that whole story about the Donbas people, which is artificial in the information space. They developed this whole story about Donbas being something very specific and something that Russians are defending, which obviously is not the case. Now they just want to continue that story because, in the information space, they are failing, because they are not holding all the constructs that they were building. That is why they need some other story to sell. So that political/information part is key here—so far, at least.  

Richard Drax: Thank you.

Q45            Chair: Thanks very much indeed. I want to now step back and look at the entire picture as to where this is going. We are fond of quoting Sun Tzu on this Committee. He wrote 2,500 years ago that: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” We ask successive Ministers who come in front of this Committee, and indeed military leaders, what victory looks like and what our mission is in Ukraine, and it is slid across to say that it is for the Ukrainians to decide. If I were to say that our mission is to support the people of Ukraine in liberating all their sovereign territory, including Donbas and Crimea, and to help build the long-term security framework that can stand up to any Russian aggression in the future, would you agree that that would be a sound strategy?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Yes, absolutely. We have an absolutely clear plan, and that plan involves the liberation of 100% of our territory. This is not because we are opportunistic, and it is not because we are vengeful. It is because we clearly understand that unless this is done, the danger and the threat will stay with us forever.  

Q46            Chair: So why is Jens Stoltenberg, and indeed every other leader—including the United States President—hesitant to join in with supporting that clear mission statement?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I believe that is because it is a difficult job, and it is tough to calculate up front. That is why lots of leaders are careful when they endorse it. However, we see a lot of statements about the victory. We do assume that it may come in stages, and that it is not going to happen all in one day. At the same time, I believe the only hesitation that any of those leaders have is that it is a difficult job militarily, because Russia still has substantial forces and a substantial amount of weapons, including in Crimea and so on.

But if we were discouraged by difficulty, we wouldn’t have even have been able to start. Originally, if you remember a year ago, the consensus of the majority of the politicians and pretty much all analysts in the west was that Ukraine would fail very quickly, which didn’t happen. So we are used to working against the odds, and we will do that in the future. There is no other hesitation except the military toughness of the challenge. That is the only one.

Q47            Chair: Thank you. Ed, 2023 could therefore be a pivotal year. If we are saying that the mission is to liberate the entirety of Ukraine, that requires Ukraine to move very much on to the offensive, rather than defensive. It will need to punch through the defensive lines of Russia, which is why it has asked for tanks. It will require air power as well. If Ukraine is not seen to gain terrain, this ends up as a frozen conflict. Should that not provide clarity on the urgency of the equipment that we need to give to Ukraine so it can complete its mission this year?

Ed Arnold: Yes, I think there is a level of urgency. Going back to your previous point, I didn’t write down your full mission statement, but it is important that the second half of it is the long term. With everyone who is supporting Ukraine at the moment, and with Ukraine fighting almost a fight for national survival, if we were then not to provide that long-term support so Ukraine has deterrence in the future—

Q48            Chair: I described a security framework to support Ukraine.

Ed Arnold: Yes, but it is the future defence and deterrence by denial that will basically mean that no other Russian leader would attempt what they have done in, say, a five, 10 or 15-year timeframe. That is really important. There is an element of urgency, but going back to your point about the NATO Secretary-General, the Secretary-General’s job is to build consensus. NATO is a consensus organisation. That might have to move slower than we would like, but if you don’t have that consensus and there are splits—going back to the earlier point on unity—that is pretty difficult. The other aspect of this is that we need to manage escalation. Again, a lot of that is on the shoulders of the Secretary-General as the main spokesperson for NATO. Managing those two things, it is very difficult to get such a clear articulation of the mission statement at this present time.

Q49            Chair: But we are seeing Russia take an interest not just in Ukraine, but in the Slavic footprint of Europe. This does not end with Ukraine. This is a new era of insecurity where Russia is the aggressor. There is a deficit between our security envelope and our democratic map. That gap is essentially what Russia is after. The limitations of what NATO can do have been exposed by Ukraine. One of the first sentences that came out was, “NATO cannot formally get involved; Ukraine is not a NATO member.”

Ed Arnold: Yes, and I think Russia is seeking to exploit those potential fault lines. Again, going back to an earlier answer, it is not just NATO. NATO is the primary security provider within Europe and especially—

Q50            Chair: It is a coalition of the willing that has really stepped forward, isn’t it?

Ed Arnold: Partly, and also another grouping. The activity of the Joint Expeditionary Force has increased significantly. There have been three leaders’ meetings. I think the first one was the day after the invasion. The Tallinn pledge on 19 January was made by, partly, JEF member states, but also central and eastern European countries. There is a lot of political change going on in Europe at this current time. Warsaw is stepping up as a regional actor, which it wouldn’t have been considered as prior to the invasion.

Going with that are increases in defence spending: 25 of the current 30 members of NATO have already committed to increased defence spending, so there are a lot of changes. Going back to the consensus point, it is very difficult to manage all that, not just at the multilateral level, but at the minilateral, bilateral and trilateral levels. It goes quite slowly, but probably impressively quickly for an organisation such as NATO.

Q51            Chair: Thank you. Andriy, NATO is clearly where Ukraine wants to end up, but as an interim stage, perhaps the Joint Expeditionary Force would be that forward-leaning organisation. It is far more flexible and engaging, without the limitations and the consensus that hold back NATO. Would you like to see Ukraine be invited, perhaps with Poland, to join the Joint Expeditionary Force?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I would welcome every form of collaboration with NATO, absolutely. We shouldn’t be staying away from any NATO project suggested. As far as we go, we can contribute to a lot of NATO programmes. We are probably one of the most experienced, if not the most experienced, armies in the world at the moment.

Chair: That is true.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: We have been fighting a very different conflict from what most NATO armies have fought, against a very sophisticated enemy. Yes, we can contribute to NATO as much as NATO can contribute to us. Meanwhile, while politically it has been decided, we could perhaps also talk about the Membership Action Plan, even in only general terms. While that is happening, I would personally support any NATO project.

Q52            Chair: My question was specifically to do with the Joint Expeditionary Force.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: Absolutely, yes.

Chair: You would agree with that. Okay, thank you. Let’s now turn back to the tactics. Mark Francois.

Q53            Mr Francois: Ed, RUSI recently produced an analysis of the first three months of the war. It was a very good report. From memory, one of the points was that they estimated that Russia in two days fired off the equivalent of the British Army’s entire artillery ammunition stock. I don’t know how they got that figure, but that was their estimate. We have lent, or given, large amounts of artillery ammunition to Ukraine. What should the United Kingdom Government and NATO more broadly be doing to address the shortfalls in our own weapons and ammunition stockpiles, which have been exposed by the war in Ukraine?

Ed Arnold: When we talk about military technical assistance to Ukraine, it is important that is not gifting or donating; I see this as an investment. You only have to see, from an Estonian point of view—as a frontline state—that GDP on military assistance comes right at the top. There is an element that we are investing in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area through support to Ukraine.

Yes, it was a very good report. It shows that ammunition stockpiles across NATO member states and other European states are wholly insufficient for this type of war fighting. There have been a number of years of false assumptions made about what industrial fighting at this scale requires.

I think there are two things at the moment. There is providing the ammunition to Ukraine so that it can achieve its military objectives on the ground. It is also about rebuilding the stockpiles. Apart from the US, there is no one in Europe who is doing particularly well on that front. It is about how we go about collaborating together. At the moment, it is a bit of a mixed picture. Some nations have effectively gone on their own and put in their orders as early as possible because, with supply chain issues, which are a bit of a legacy of covid, for most of the weapon systems we are talking about—NLAW, for example—there is a year to a year-and-a-half gap from putting in the order.

We have seen some nations going on their own. What we are seeing with the EU, specifically on ammunition for artillery, is that they are starting to get together and look at scaling defence industrial capacity. Again, no one nation has the ability to do that at this present time.

Q54            Mr Francois: On that point, some of us would argue that, in defence, we have unofficially been operating the 10-year rule of the 1920s for several years. Maybe that is a bigger argument for another day. We have certainly not had the war stocks for any kind of protracted major war with Russia. Even the Chief of the General Staff has, in terms, acknowledged that.

You talk about industrial capability. I am talking about the UK now, and we have placed a small order to replace some of the NLAWs that we have given to Ukraine, but the Committee’s understanding is that the substantive order for thousands of them has not yet been placed.

On artillery ammunition, BAE Systems are our provider. They have not yet been given a major contract even to replace the artillery rounds that we have given to Ukraine, let alone to bolster our war stocks from a couple of days to much longer than that.

In the United Kingdom, is this not now a really pressing necessity? If you are going to open up new production lines and start to produce 155 mm ammunition, for instance, at scale, that requires investment and time. Aren’t you disappointed that, so far, the Ministry of Defence still has not done that?

Ed Arnold: I am disappointed, and I think there need to be those demand signals to the defence industry to start to scale production, and also that this isn’t a peak in demand that might level off—that this is moving to proper war production. On the Russian side, that is absolutely what their intent is.

Yes, there have been delay in some things, for example NLAWs. There have been other successes. Straight after the Nord Stream 1 and 2 incident, there was an order for two subsurface multi-role ships that can protect underwater critical national infrastructure, and we are committed in the Defence Command Paper to also protect our allies’ critical national infrastructure in the High North. So it is a slightly mixed picture.

Where we are in the UK specifically at the moment is a bit of analysis paralysis—the process we have decided to go for is an update to the Integrated Review. What I mean by that is an update to the document, “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”. That is more the international relations side—looking at Euro-Atlantic security versus the Indo-Pacific tilt—and only once that is complete, we then look at Defence Command Paper issues, and then, perhaps, if we are lucky, at the same time, defence and security industrial strategy, whereas I believe that we probably had the data in April or May last year to understand that we need to replenish the stocks—

Q55            Mr Francois: Sorry to interrupt, but I need to save time, because we have a very important statement in the House very shortly.

You have characterised it as paralysis by analysis, and I think that is probably right. Our understanding from industry is that they have been asked for all sorts of quotes for what they could theoretically do, but no major orders—no substantive orders—have been placed. At the risk of leading the witness here, would you agree that this is something that we really must address in the refresh of the Integrated Review and the associated Command Paper—that we are going to have to find the money from somewhere to massively replenish our stocks of weapons, ammunition, artillery and missiles if we are going to have a credible deterrent effect?

Ed Arnold: Yes, and there is an urgency. I wrote a piece for the RUSI website back in October to make the point that the Integrated Review should not be touched and we should just go straight into a very programmatic review of the Defence Command Paper, because we now have data on how Russia fights, which for the last 30 years, no European structure, whether that is NATO or the EU, ever actually understood how Russians fight and we obviously overestimated it.

I think we are certainly a couple of months behind where I think we should be. Also, this is quite complicated. I point to the example of Germany and the €100 billion special fund that was set up on 27 February. We are still not actually seeing many orders from that coming through the system, if any at all. There are other procurement issues, but when you are talking about the scale of this—

Q56            Mr Francois: We went to Berlin and we asked the question of their MoD, “How quickly are you going to spend this money?” They said, “We might spend it over four years, or we might spend it over seven or we might spend it over 10.”

As soon as you say that to a bunch of politicians, we go, “Ah, so you mean €10 billion a year for 10 years.” When we spoke to the German defence industry the following day, they could not have been more cynical about how quickly this money was going to be spent.

Is there anything you want to add on that from the Ukrainian perspective? We know that you are putting the ammunition to good use. Is there anything you want to add?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: I suggest that our key partners, including the UK, have a new policy of industrial collaboration with Ukraine. We are in a situation where we also need to involve our industry and the industries of our border countries. We need to bring a lot of the industrial projects to parts of Ukraine, or close to Ukraine.

There have been good examples. There have been some good collaborations. You may have heard about the Babcock collaboration with Ukraine, but it is just the beginning. We need to do more. For example, we can do many parts at home in Ukraine and save on logistics and actually close that logistics gap completely. We can do some simple—relatively simple to start with—weapons and some auxiliary equipment, etc. In this case, we may de-bottleneck a lot of the processes, but that would require a new vision and a new co-operation policy. I would suggest that we substantially consider that.

Q57            Dave Doogan: Ed, the upcoming Budget will determine where defence goes from here, with the allocation to MoD. We have learned a lot in the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine, and we have learned how quickly stockpiles are burned down and how capabilities that we thought were robust and enduring are actually insufficient and fragile. I wonder what your assessment is. Of course, this does not affect just the United Kingdom; this has been an issue for allied nations within NATO notably, not including the United States to the same scale. Everything is relative, of course, and if you are sending an awful lot more than everybody else, like the United States are, even they are having to resupply in a hurry from a supply chain that has atrophied to a greater or lesser extent.

Purely in terms of the United Kingdom, should the Secretary of State not be concerned that we may in fact be in possession—with no disrespect to the men and women in uniform; purely in equipment terms—of something akin to an ornamental armed forces in so far as it certainly looks the part, and has all the top-flight equipment, but we do not have enough of it, and we cannot resource it in time of need? When push comes to shove, it may prove to be not providing the capability to the same extent that we anticipated it would when push comes to shove. Is that something that we should be really concerned about in defence in the United Kingdom?

Ed Arnold: Yes, I think we should. I highlight NATO’s strategic concept: to defend every inch of allied territory. That is a substantive change from the previous direction. The NATO defence planning process, which is a four-year process that starts its new cycle next year, I believe, will be one of the drivers for that.

Specifically on the UK, going back to one of my previous points, I think there is a cultural element around this. For a long time we have gone for exquisite capabilities. We have also looked at platforms and then decided to put additional requirements on, and obviously Ajax is one issue where that has not gone well. The lessons coming out of Ukraine have shown, especially in terms of unmanned aerial systems, that these things do not have to be “the best”. For example, Poland has only the South Korean K2 tank. From a Top Trumps perspective, it is not as good as a Leopard, but you have 1,000 of them, and they are available now. There is a cultural element within the UK that we need to change.

You are also right in terms of credibility. We have been talking about a war-fighting division for a long time, and Future Soldier by 2030. Going back to the 2015 SDSR, it was Joint Force 2025, and we were supposed to have a war-fighting division ready by 2025 with an air group and a maritime group. Bearing in mind the security situation, that looks pretty good about now. But the other thing is that it has to be credible—credible in the eyes of adversaries for deterrence, but also credible to Allies. Could we put a division in the field now, which the Baltics have requested? Possibly, but is it credible? Perhaps not. That is the real issue, and that goes back to readiness issues which, as you rightly highlight, are European and US. This is not just an under-investment phase. I think it is also that we have been doing discretionary expeditionary operations for a long time, and that has bent us out of shape.

Q58            Dave Doogan: In terms of those decisions, I would list a couple of examples. It is new frigates being fitted for, but not with, complex systems. It is the order for E-7 Wedgetails reduced to three, which some professionals would regard as being so low as to be pointless. Is that part of the exquisite culture? We have to have these things, but we cannot actually fund them to do the job that we require them to do. We still need to tick the box.

Ed Arnold: Possibly, but I think the box ticking is more of an issue within NATO internal processes. The NATO defence planning process favours land forces and heavy land forces, which we just do not have at the moment. But we have a lot of exquisite capabilities, which are really important, that can be deployed in areas such as northern Europe, which our allies are really supportive of, and also capabilities that we can get together with allies—for example, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. We have a trilateral with the US and Norway to basically provide ISR coverage of that whole area, and that is effectively protecting one of NATO's flanks, and also reinforcement routes. So we make a real difference, and also our nuclear deterrent is under NATO command, and the French system is not.

We certainly spend a lot in these exquisite capabilities. I think we could do our messaging and communications about all those things a bit better, so that we can marry up that discrepancy—the fact that one process says, “I want a heavy brigade or division,” and we say, “Well, we’ve got an aircraft carrier.” Those two things do not quite marry up at the moment.

Q59            Mr Jones: I have to say, Ed, that I agree with your scepticism about the ability to deploy a brigade. Looking at the new NATO strategic concept, is it not time, especially with the Army and the MoD, that we actually try and form our future procurement, particular for the Army, to fit into that new strategic concept, rather than to keep saying, like a virility symbol, that we can deploy a division, when in effect we can’t?

Ed Arnold: Yes, and I think the issue with the sovereign war fighting division is also that it has become sort of an aspirational target that we have also signalled, primarily to the US—so, not just within the NATO context, but also to our NATO allies. In talking about it for so long, we have got wrapped up in the fact that that is exactly what we need to deliver. That is by 2030, but to provide a UK-led war fighting division, perhaps with a brigade from a Joint Expeditionary Force member, next year, or by 2025, is also good enough, I would argue. There is an element where we do not ever want to acknowledge that we have to go below the divisional level. Also—again, Future Soldier—with our brigade combat teams, there is a reason why we call them brigade combat teams, which is to plug into US constructs. So again, there are other options that we can go for if we slightly change the mindset about it, but a UK-led division with other assets from European nations would obviously be welcomed by the US and Europe.

Q60            Derek Twigg: Can I pursue that for one second? I notice you keep using the words “UK-led” and “other assets”. Is it your view that the UK could put out a UK fighting division today?

Ed Arnold: Perhaps.

Q61            Derek Twigg: I’m not on about UK-led; can we do it today?

Ed Arnold: Deploy a UK division into the field?

Q62            Derek Twigg: Can the UK provide a fighting division today of—is it 10,000 strong?

Ed Arnold: I think we could get the numbers of personnel, but in order to do that you would have to draw from 16 Air Assault and also 3 Commando Brigade, which leaves you with no contingent capability to do something like, for example, Operation Pitting. I think from a logistics point we would struggle, and also from a vehicle position, and not just in terms of tanks and armoured personnel carriers; we would also struggle with the logistics support for that. Again, it is the credibility in the eyes of adversaries and allies that—

Q63            Mr Francois: I’m sorry to jump in, but would you agree that the word “perhaps” does not have a very strong deterrent effect?

Ed Arnold: Yes, and that is my point on credibility.

Q64            Chair: To put this into context, the reason why the question is important is because NATO has increased the size of its rapid response force from 40,000, which we could make a major contribution to—you touched on 16 Air Assault and 3 Commando Brigade, for example—to up to 300,000, and we are still pressing the MoD for an answer as to what our contribution would be, given that the Secretary-General of NATO clearly believes the threat has increased. Therefore, the response needs to be larger. What would Britain do?

Ed Arnold: Again, the increase of the NATO response force means that it is very ambitious. Those 300,000 are to be held at very different levels of readiness, the same as the current NATO response force of 40,000. They are also more geographically focused. For example, we have Estonia as our multinational battle group. We did have an uplift of two battle groups, but we have now withdrawn one, which again optically I do not think looks good. We agreed with Germany that we would put skeleton brigade headquarters in our multinational battle groups, to scale up to that level if required, and Estonia and Lithuania are happy with that sort of arrangement for now, but I think you are right: they did ask for divisions and we deployed two battle groups.

Q65            Dave Doogan: To stick with armour, Ed, earlier you talked about your ambitions and/or frustrations with the failure to purchase commonality across European NATO allies. I assume that Challenger 3 would fall foul of your ambition for NATO allies to have commonality. For example, ideally, it would be Leopard 2.

Ed Arnold: Yes, in terms of availability. Again, this is a personal opinion, but I was always in favour of European joint procurement, because of the reasons we are seeing in giving support to Ukraine and because, as economic conditions worsen, the benefits of collaboration are significant. Back to my cultural point, we tend to look at things as, yes, needing sovereign capability for a variety of reasons, but we also seem to put a lot of additional requirements on kit and equipment, which is poor from a NATO standardisation process. NATO is now at the level where it will try to incentivise—not just economically, but with other methods of incentivisation—pooling these parts around certain areas of kit, because the interoperability advantages it gets are significant.

Q66            Dave Doogan: Beyond the procurement horizon, the upgrading of that equipment is shared on Leopard 2 across—I don’t know—a couple of dozen nations, whereas the upgrading and improvement burden of Challenger 3 falls on one nation, the United Kingdom.

Ed Arnold: Yes. From the news, it is currently ahead of schedule, which is advantageous.

Chair: We have one more quick technical question.

Q67            Robert Courts: I want to return to the point I asked you to consider earlier about the air mobility force and C-130. You made the point about the ability to move kit and how important that is at a strategic and tactical level. Will you comment on our mass availability? It seems to me that if we look at the heavy tasking of the air mobility force overall and the C-130J Hercules in particular, the absence of that fleet simply means that we will be relying behind the scenes on US backfill, will we not?

Ed Arnold: Yes. It is important to note as well that, though the main driver of the refresh of the Integrated Review is the war in Ukraine, the process started with the fall of Kabul. The C-130 hopefully is in that question. It is a wider European issue, apart from the US. Europe lacks strategic lift and air-to-air refuelling capabilities. If you look at French and European operations in the Sahel under Barkhane and Takuba, the things that they needed from the US—apart from just ISR and intelligence support—were strategic lift and air-to-air refuelling, because we cannot do them. They are really expensive. They are enablers, not shiny frontline equipment, but they are something that the Europeans will have to get around and say, “It’s not good enough to have to rely on the US for all this.” Yes, the US, to reinforce Europe, needs all this, but it has other priorities around the globe, so it would be very foolish just to rely on US capabilities in that regard.

Q68            Chair: I have a final question. I am conscious that there is a statement that colleagues want to get to. If I may, Andriy, to conclude, are we really taking this seriously enough? There are grand statements of support for Ukraine, but it has taken us a year to get main battle tanks to you. There are still political questions about air power. I think we kid ourselves about us being able to push Russia back in a timeframe, bearing in mind that they do have an ability to learn, to endure hardship far greater than the West, and to test our patience and commitment. Do you think the West really is awake to the sense of urgency that is now required to conclude this before, perhaps, western morale and western collegiate support starts to unravel?

Andriy Zagorodnyuk: First of all, yes, the West took it seriously. We received equipment and weapons worth tens of billions in any currency, and that support was absolutely crucial. The only issue is that we constantly see a lot of doubts from many politicians about where it goes, what the endgame looks like, what type of scenario we are going for, and so on. Those doubts sometimes self-defer politicians from making some decisions, and yes, indeed, the decisions on tanks and on some other weapons could have been done earlier. That is a fact as well, and we believe that we are currently delaying some decisions that would be critical.

Also, there are constant discussions of the scenarios of escalations. Many of those are no longer relevant, but they are still deterring the decisions, or at least delaying them. I believe that we could be more resolved collectively about this, and indeed, there is a lot of constant noise about some scenarios that are completely unrealistic—for example, when Ukraine is going to negotiate. It storms the press and information space, and I believe that it confuses the matter, because Putin is clearly not about negotiations whatsoever. He is clearly doing whatever he can in order to destroy Ukraine, and whatever the scenario, resistance is our only option, which we are pursuing. That is why we would welcome further collaboration and further support. We believe we can win, absolutely; we believe that mathematically, we have very good chances right now. We know how to do that

If I may remind the Committee, in 1940, Churchill spoke in your Parliament, and he talked about victory without mathematical chances like we have now. We have much better chances than the UK had at that time, and you were resolved completely to win. We are resolved absolutely, so let’s just do it. Thank you.

Q69            Chair: Thank you very much, Andriy. Ed, any final words?

Ed Arnold: Not for me. I think that was a good summary by Andriy.

Chair: Andriy, Ed, thank you very much indeed for such an informative session. It only goes to say that our thoughts and prayers are with all the people of Ukraine during this very, very difficult time, not least with what is going to happen in the next few months. We will do our utmost to make sure we can provide all the necessary support that you require, as I hope we have illustrated during this Committee session.

Thank you very much indeed to you both; thank you to my Committee members, and to the staff. That brings this session to a conclusion.