Good morning. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and he has been fleshing out the newest evaluation of the state of the struggle in Ukraine from his division, the Ministry of Defence.
That is what he instructed Sky Information this morning when requested why the big Russian convoy heading for Kyiv appears to have stalled. Requested if this was due to logistical issues, or if this was a tactical determination, he replied:
Effectively, I believe it’s a mixture … What we’ve seen is that the ways weren’t appropriate, they had been fairly assured they’d take many of those cities in a couple of hours fairly than six days or longer. And when any military on the transfer takes longer to do issues, your logistical provide chain is stretched. In case you’re given sufficient rations for 2 days, and it takes you six, you’ve all of a sudden bought an issue. And I believe what we’ve seen is loads of these points are coming to bear.
They’ve additionally been stunned by the Ukrainian energy of the resistance. And the Ukrainians have been additionally finishing up a really intelligent plan. We’ve seen footage of Ukrainians utilizing UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] to assault petrol prepare convoys, to go off logistical strains. We’ve seen railway strains blown up. All of the issues that you simply and I take into consideration while you come to resistance, so I believe that’s successfully coming residence to roost.
However it’s also a change in Russian ways. The Russians have realised that the Ukrainians, by combating, are costing them plenty of casualties, and the Russians have taken important casualties, excess of they’d have deliberate.
What they’re due to this fact doing is making an attempt to modify ways. What you’re seeing now’s these heavy bombardments at evening. They gained’t come into the cities as a lot. They’ll, by the seems to be of factor, carpet bomb cities, indiscriminately in some instances. They’ll fly their air at evening fairly than daytime, as a result of they get shot down within the daytime. They usually slowly however absolutely attempt to encompass the cities after which both bypass them or bombard them.
That’s the brutality that we’re witnessing and it’s going to worsen.
I’ll put up extra from his interviews quickly.
Principally I can be specializing in the UK response to the struggle at this time, however there can be some non-Ukraine politics right here too. For extra Ukraine protection, do learn our world reside weblog.
Right here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Sir Tom Winsor, chief inspector for fireplace, provides proof to the Commons residence affairs committee on the state of fireside providers.
10.15am: Prof Graham Medley, chair of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), provides proof to the Commons science committee.
12pm: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.
12pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is questioned by the Scottish parliament’s convenors’ group (Holyrood’s model of the Commons liaison committee).
2.30pm: Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, provides proof to the Commons ladies and equalities committee.
5pm: Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, bishop for Ukrainian, Belarusian and Slovak Japanese Catholics in GB, and Olesya Khromeychuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute, maintain a press convention.
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