One year of war in Ukraine. Presenter Liesbeth Staats discusses the what, how and why with BNR foreign commentator Bernard Hammelburg, Professor Rob de Wijk from the Center for Strategic Studies in The Hague, BNR European correspondent Geert Jan Hahn and journalist and podcast creator Floris Akkerman in De Alliantie.
What prevails among the four pundits is firstly the initial disbelief when Russia actually invaded the neighboring country and secondly the wholly amateurish way in which this happened.
No plans, no clues
“They didn’t have a good plan,” says De Wijk. ‘Why the hell are you doing this? We now know that a third of the Ukrainian military was thought to defect. They thought they would be greeted with bells and flags.”
In the field of intelligence in particular, the whole enterprise turned out to be a masterful blunder, and the Russians misjudged nearly every conceivable aspect of the war. De Wijk: ‘People have completely misunderstood Ukraine’s willingness to fight. So they entered without good logistics, without good information.’
“People started believing in their own story”
“Putin thought most of them were ethnically Russian and had warm feelings for Russia, says Hammelburg. “But anyone who asks a Fleming if he wants to belong to the Netherlands gets glazed looks, just like a French-speaking Walloon doesn’t want to be part of France. Putin thought it would happen.’
Fuck you
It seems as if a handful of people in the Kremlin, especially Putin and the FSB, are the only ones who don’t want to understand what fuck they were preparing,” says Geert Jan Hahn, who points out the failure of the intelligence services: “It is crucial that the intelligence services fight each other. GROE should know more about this, but Petrushev and Putin are from the FSB. So they actually pulled the strings.’
“The Russians used cards from the 60s. They bombed targets that didn’t even exist anymore’
“They have good flyers and fighters, but they don’t know where to go. Or where to drop their bombs,” says Hammelburg, which, according to De Wijk, only makes sense when using “maps from the 1960s”. “They bombed targets that didn’t even exist anymore.”
And according to Akkerman, this in turn has civilian casualties as a side effect: “The former barracks have been given a new purpose as a school or shopping mall. Which are then bombed.’
Listen to the entire podcast ‘The Alliance: 1 year of war in Ukraine’.
Source: BNR
Sharon Rock is an author and journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. She has a passion for learning about different cultures and understanding the complexities of the world. With a talent for explaining complex global issues in an accessible and engaging way, Sharon has become a respected voice in the field of world news journalism.
