Russian infighting 'out of control' in Bakhmut

The agreement, the understanding is that Ukraine will not strike targets on Russian territory. Well, this is the grey area. I mean, yes, the UK is saying we don't want these weapons to be used to strike Russian territory, but it's interesting that US, for example, so far has been reluctant to offer anything of the range of storm shadow. Perhaps where that grey area is crystallised is Crimea, because Crimea is de facto Russian territory now, but of course it's regarded by the UK and Western Allies as part of Ukraine still. So one thinks that that would be seen as a legitimate target in Western capitals, although obviously the reaction from Moscow would probably be pretty strong. Yeah, and it is true over the weekend that a Russian military aircraft, a couple of helicopters, a bomber and a combat aircraft were shot down over Russian territory. They were associated with the attack on the hometown of the Ukrainian Eurovision Song Team, but the missile, the attack weapons were launched in Ukraine, but they brought those aircraft down over Russia.

Yeah, there's all these sort of instances. This is the latest one where basically Ukraine seems to be quite effective at carrying out these sort of attacks. Possibly are they cross-border or whatever? It's very hard to work out in the fog of war who is responsible for them. Ukraine, I think, has subsequently blamed those on Russian air defence, but there's a degree of. You can raise an eyebrow at those claims as well. Right, now what about the value of British support in the form of Rishisunakhechekers today to Ukraine and to Zelenskine, when it comes to rallying and motivating, encouraging wider support in Europe and elsewhere? Well, that has been the British role through this war so far. You've seen it right from the beginning with the Javelins, which were the sort of shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles that unlocked other sort of waves of deliveries.

Then with the tanks, the UK went first. It's a smaller donation, but it helped sort of, in terms of diplomatically getting other countries to get round the table and also commit to giving tanks as well. Now they've gone first on long-range cruise missiles. So often it's not necessarily the quantity or the quality, but the sort of diplomatic effort of going first. I think the Ukrainians see it as absolutely crucial in having the UK as an ally. And that will be an important part of Ukrainian thinking when this counter-offensive comes. Some argue that some of it has begun already, but when it comes, it's going to be exhausting to Ukraine in terms of equipment and manpower.

If it is slow going with heavy losses on the Ukrainian side, there are going to be some of Ukraine's friends who will start, this is the worry at least, that they'll be wondering, look, how much longer can we support them for? Well, yeah, there's this debate going back and forth because this spring counter-offensive has been talked up for so long. Is the West applying undue pressure because of its own internal politics? And we think of the US in particular, the debate within the Republican Party about how much can American taxpayers afford to keep subsidizing this war. Is this undue pressure going to result in Ukraine going too early on its counter-offensive? You're now seeing a sort of pushback against that and saying, give them time, and perhaps this isn't going to be one last big push and Russia is sort of expelled from all Ukrainian territory. It might require several attacks, it might require more sort of drawn out process, and that's why the UK in particular is so keen to sort of rally other countries around to say, we need to stick with Ukraine actually for a while longer. And is the international pro-Ukrain community, George, stepping up? Because there's been an agreement among EU states to give support in a coordinated kind of way. In the next few days, there's a meeting with the G7 advanced economies in Hiroshima, Japan, and there's going to be steps there too. I think JETS is the measure, isn't it? It's key because JETS is a sort of slightly longer term aim.

It would take a while to train Ukrainian pilots to use F-16s, but so far the Americans are reluctant to sanction their delivery. If you remember last time Zelensky was in the UK, he was requesting British typhoons. I think now they've realised actually that doesn't quite suit the Ukrainian needs. So the focus is the ask of these F-16s. They don't necessarily have to come from the US. I think other countries like the Netherlands and Denmark are sort of involved in discussions of giving their fleet, but it does kind of require approval from DC, from the States. And lastly, George, I'm going to be going into this in my briefing room a bit later on in the program, but what do we know about the state of the conflict on the ground in Ukraine? Has the counter-offensive begun? Are we waiting for a big push? What's the state of things? Well, Zelensky last week was saying we need a bit longer, sort of implying it hadn't started, but definitely you can see things start to be moving in Bakhmut, where for several months we've been talking about a sort of bloody stalemate essentially being reached there.

Yes, the gains aren't measured in sort of tens of kilometres, hundreds of kilometres. They're more hundreds of metres, if not a few kilometres here or there. But it does seem to be that there is some movement on the ground there. And also you can see from the Russian side, I mean this sort of internecine conflict between the Wagner group on the one side and the Russian Ministry of Defense, is just sort of absolutely spiraling out of control to the point where now a pre-Gosian has been accused of sort of wanting to trade with the Ukrainians to give the positions of other Russian troops away because he feels that he's being stabbed in the back by Russian commanders who aren't giving him ammunition.

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