Vladimir Putin is discovering that Russia is no longer a superpower with his army’s series of failures in Ukraine, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said.
In an interview with the Standard, the Cabinet minister also stressed that the international community had to defeat Putin’s invasion to show that wars cannot be won by “shoving millions of people into a meat grinder with no rules, no regard for human lives”.
Following training by the UK and allies, he also argued that now “the basic Ukrainian soldier is better than the basic Russian soldier”, given the scale of losses suffered by Putin’s professional military and the deployment of tens of thousands of poorly-trained troops to the frontline after his 300,000 part-mobilisation.
Asked how he believes the conflict will end, Mr Wallace said: “I don’t know. I mean, superpowers have lost wars before: the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the United States in Vietnam. It’s not unheard of for big powers to have to reconcile a defeat in a neighbouring country, or another country they’ve been engaged in.”
Pressed whether he thought a superpower would lose again, he added: “Well, he’s not a superpower is what he has just discovered. That’s the key.
“One part of it is like, you believed your own hype, you believed your parade ground hype, you counted tanks on the parade ground and presume you are invincible and you are not.”
He believes Putin’s forces are losing in Ukraine on “their military capabilities” and their leadership’s flawed “strategic assumptions”.
“At every turn, people have underestimated Ukraine and overestimated Russia,” he said. “But he has got in his back pocket, millions of people he can shove into a meat grinder with no rules, no regard for human lives and innocent people and civilians.
“If that is successful, that will send a message across the whole world that that’s how you win wars. We cannot, the international community, accept that.”
With Putin keeping up a threat of resorting to nuclear weapons, more than 50 countries were gathering on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in Brussels from today to discuss bolstering Ukraine’s air defences, two days after Russian missiles rained down on cities including Kyiv in retaliation for the Kerch Bridge, linking Crimea to Russia, being partially destroyed. Former Scots Guards officer Mr Wallace, 52, said: “President Putin should be clear that for the UK and our allies, any use of nuclear weapons would break a taboo of nuclear use that has held since 1945, and would lead to severe consequences for Russia.”
The West is maintaining “deliberate” ambiguity about how it would respond on the basis that it is best not to “flag” what steps would be taken, but even China and India would be expected to condemn a nuclear strike by Putin.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive in the north east has “to some extent slowed”, the Defence Secretary added, but was still making “significant progress” in threatening supply lines, including rail routes, which the Russians “desperately rely on”.
In the southern Kherson province, Mr Wallace said that more than 40 days into the counter-offensive Ukrainian troops were “making progress, slowly but surely”. With thousands of heavily-equipped Russian troops dug in on the right bank of the Dnipro River, the advance was a “hard slog”.
However, Mr Wallace added: “We are pretty confident the momentum is still with Ukraine and Russia is facing catastrophic loss of morale, poor equipment, significant ammunition stocks scarcity and political fraughtness.
“His (Putin) strategic assumptions seem to be wrong all over the place. Even yesterday (Monday), firing scant missiles at random civilian locations, when you should be firing them at military targets, is not a strategic or a clever use of your finite resources.”
As a bitter winter approaches, Ukrainian troops were said to be better equipped than many Russian soldiers, including with night sights, better radios and warm gear.
With tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops being offered five weeks’ training in Britain, Mr Wallace said he “undoubtedly” believes “the basic Ukrainian soldier is better than the basic Russian soldier” now. “If you compare what the Russians have been doing… it’s scandalous, mobilised troops sent to the front, almost within days getting captured, poor equipment, rusted magazines, if any training at all has happened,” he said.
“If you’ve talked to the soldiery, the professional officer corps are really quite angry… on the total lack of leadership professionalism that is getting Russian soldiers killed in the thousands. If their army had any decency, these generals would be court martialed and jailed for what they have done to their own.”
Britain has previously estimated that up to 80,000 Russian troops have been killed, maimed, injured, deserted or gone missing since Mr Putin launched his invasion on February 24, with Ukrainian forces having suffered heavy losses, and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of civilians also killed.
As to whether there is an “off-ramp” for Mr Putin to end the war, Mr Wallace responded: “Leave Ukraine.”
But he stressed: “There isn’t an off ramp that he hasn’t failed to ignore.
“When you keep doing it… he’s all in.”
Britain has led efforts to maintain western unity in response to the invasion, even as Putin cut gas flows. The UK will continue supplying missiles for air defence platforms sent to Ukraine.
Mr Wallace added: “Ukrainians are showing success. It’s quite hard for the Ukrainians to suddenly decide they’re going to give that up. How far they go in their successes is a matter for the Ukrainians. The West’s resolve is to help Ukraine have a position of strength to choose its future.”
