‘Time on Putin’s side’ Russia regrouping troops to reline strategy on Syria playbook

Ukraine: Time is on 'Putin's side' warns Simon Mayall

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The Lieutenant-General shared insight into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s battlefield strategy for his “special operation” in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has entered the third week, with once populous cities being bombed incessantly by Russian artillery and civilian casualties continuing to rise. Sir Simon claimed that Putin was using a similar plan as his one in Syria and that Putin has time on his hands.

The Lieutenant-General told the Today programme: “So what is Putin’s strategy? Let’s hear more about that now, the defensive against Kyiv may be drawing closer as Lees was describing.

“But far slower than he’d anticipated and given the kind of difficulties that Russian forces seem to be facing, we have seen Putin turn to more extreme methods.

“Talk of his use of thermobaric weapons, and fears now about the use of chemical weapons. Russia has claimed that Ukrain is preparing those.

“President Zelensky says ‘that makes me really worried’ if you want to know Russias plans look at what Russia accuses others of.”

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Presenter Martha Kearney said: “Let’s begin with your overall assessment of what’s happening Lees talked about all of Ukraine being in Putin’s sights is that what you’re seeing?”

Mr Mayall said: “I think all of Ukraine that’s of importance to Putin is in his sights.

“And I think although we were very buoyed up by the tremendous stories of Ukrainian resistance early on, time from a military point of view, we can talk about the sanctions separately, is on Putin’s side.

“And this is a bit out of the Syrian playbook at the moment, encircle cities largely encourage the civilians to leave.

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Mr Mayall added: “Threaten the fighters and slowly strangle them.

“And so in many ways give them the capacity of the Russians to take pain historically.

“And the patience of which Putin is prepared to pursue his ambitions, one can see a strategy coming together even though it was tactically very badly mishandled in the first few weeks.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson- expressed his fears about the use of biological warfare with chemical weapons being used in the war.

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Speaking on Sky News’ Beth Rigby Interviews programme, Mr Johnson said: “The stuff that you’re hearing about chemical weapons is straight out of their playbook.

“They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans.

“And so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a sort of maskirovka — a fake story — ready to go.

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