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We've had more strikes overnight in the context, is it not, of an escalation in this conflict in the last few days in particular
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Just bring us up to speed on exactly what's going on. Good afternoon, Bennett. It's afternoon here in Kiev
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It's been a difficult night as we had about 90 missiles, 600 drones launched towards the Ukrainian capital
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Two people dead, 80 injured over the course of the last 24 hours
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Those numbers may continue to rise. I've just been on the scene of one of the attack search and rescue operations continuing at a partially collapsed apartment building
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This comes off the back of a week ago. We had more than 20 people killed in a single apartment attack by Russia
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These attacks haven't been without reply. Ukraine has been targeting Russia itself using deep strike drones to target Russia's oil facilities and military production facilities
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And the Russians have accused Ukraine yesterday of launching a drone attack on a building in occupied Luhansk, which the Russians claim 21 people died in
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They haven't produced any evidence there, and you can't go as a reporter freely to occupied Luhansk and verify that for yourself
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So while there are problems in verifying Russian claims of attacks, there should really be no doubt that Russian people are also being now subjected to these drone and missile attacks by Ukraine
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Ukraine is insisting it's targeting military facilities, and I can show you for a fact that Russia has been targeting civilians here in Ukraine
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The point being that I don't really think of it as the word escalation
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because really I not sure there a bigger escalation than what happened on February 24th 2022 And we just still living with the consequences of that
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What's happened, though, is that Ukraine over the last four plus years has got a lot better at defending itself
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has got a lot more capable of inflicting damage on Russia. There's that old famous quote from Obama Harris about World War II
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is that the Germans stupidly thought they could enter into this war
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by bombing people and not getting bombed themselves. I'm badly paraphrasing it here, but the same thing goes for the Russians
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The Russians really thought, yeah. It's just people who haven't been following the ups and downs
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ins and outs of every sort of peak and trough of this conflict. Who's got the upper hand right now
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or are we still seeing the sort of stalemate that we've had for quite a while? i mean i suppose i'll put an ogy to people who who play chess you've got the white pieces
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and the black pieces now statistically speaking the because the white goes first the white
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generally has slightly better odds at winning the game than the black side does now russia is a
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larger country and russia is the invading force so the invading force uh has to have more manpower
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by default, to be able to win. The general rule is about three times as many invaders as defenders
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So that balance of power hasn't changed. Russia is still the stronger power, it's still the richer power
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it's still the power with more weapons, more guns, more long-range systems, more manpower
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However, the Ukrainians, as the defenders, have found ingenuitive ways of countering Russia
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particularly in the field of drones. Drones have been a great equalizer for the Ukrainians
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Now, Russia has been slowly capturing territory basically since the Ukrainians had their successful counter in 2022 liberated Kherson and Kharkiv Basically since the end of 2022 Russia has been very very slowly advancing
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I put a tweet up the other day that people got very annoyed about because they say that war doesn't work linearly
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It doesn't. But if Russia was to continue capturing territory at the same pace that it has been over the last four years
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it would take 140 years for Russian forces to reach Kiev. So the war is not going well for the Russians, even though they are very slowly advancing
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That said, the war has been going much better for Ukraine in recent weeks and months
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because their deep strike campaign has managed to really degrade Russia's oil production facilities
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and Russia is basically a gas station with nukes. That's how it sustains its war economy, by selling oil
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And also Ukraine in recent weeks, this is a very recent development
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has managed to attain fire control over the land bridge between Russian-occupied Crimea and
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Russia proper. So there's on the southern coast of Ukraine, where the Russians first advanced in
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2022, they've got that land bridge that goes through Donetsk and along the south coast to
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Crimea. In recent weeks, Ukraine have developed these drones that are now able to target the
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logistic lines between Crimea and Russia. So that is causing real problems for Russia on the front
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line in the south of the country. Russia is already stretched in the east of the country
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So the situation, while not amazing for Ukraine, we still have a huge manpower shortage. We still
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have huge economic, all kinds of problems here in Ukraine. But people have been closely following
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the war. ysts will tell you that since the start of, since the end of the winter, Ukraine has
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managed to turn a page and has managed to improve its position on the battlefield that doesn mean to say that ukraine is winning but it has certainly improved its lot and obviously been able to do that despite the fact that so many of their allies have been distracted for quite some time now by the war in Iran by the economic fallout of that by trying to sort of force the two parties the US and Iran to closer to some sort of peace talks
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Has that had a material impact on the ground in Ukraine, that kind of the stepping back, perhaps, and the lack of attention that that country has been getting from perhaps countries like ours and other allies
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To a degree. There'll be two things that are, well, three things that I'll say that are causing
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and they're not necessarily positive for Ukraine. Firstly, when the US and Israel targeted Iran
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Iran started targeting the Gulf states, and the Gulf states started using loads of air
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defense systems to protect their skies. Those are air defense systems that Ukraine desperately needs
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and hasn't been able to get because they've been diverted to the Gulf. That's number one
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Number two, the price of oil has spiked. And we've already discussed this, that high oil prices are very good for Russia
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So those are two things that have happened that have been quite negative for Ukraine
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The third very negative thing has been the US pulling its support for Ukraine
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And now Ukraine has its largest military supplier has now basically pulled all free support to Ukraine
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And the only support Ukraine receives from the US is when it's been purchased by NATO members
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And even with that, some of that's being diverted to the Middle East and the U.S. is playing shenanigans because of people at Elbridge Colby
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That said, there is one positive. The Americans said they wouldn't allow Ukraine to use long-range weapon systems to target Russia
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So Ukraine developed their own. And because they've developed their own, they've been able to inflict serious harm
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And there's nothing the Americans or Europeans can do about Ukraine's domestically produced long-range systems
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Fascinating. Oz, thank you so much. freelance conflict journalist currently in kiev so important that we don't forget
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what is going on and what the ukrainian people and their armed forces are fighting for
