 Ladies and gentlemen, excellencies and distinguished guests will begin in the usual way by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional land we meet. I'm here at the ANU, that's the Nanguwal and the Nambu people, and by paying our respects to their elders past and present. Welcome to this evening's public lecture, two years on how Russia's war on Ukraine ends. My name is Brendan Taylor and I'm the head of the Strategic and Defence Study Centre here at the ANU, and it's my absolute pleasure and privilege to introduce to you tonight my friend and my colleague and my mentor emeritus Professor Paul Debb. It's very often said that a speaker needs no introduction, but I think it's fair to say that in Paul's case this is absolutely true. Paul's CV will be known to all of you, he has of course previously been the Deputy Secretary in the Australian Department of Defence at the head of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, at the head of the National Assessment Staff, if my memory serves me correctly, at the ripe old age of 34 I believe, and he was also of course the author of the 1986 review of Australia's Defence Capabilities, often referred to as the Debb report whose findings and recommendations still continue to resonate very strongly today in our strategic policy and debates. He was also the longest serving head of the Strategic and Defence Study Centre, serving in that role for 13 years, and Paul I can assure you that that particular record is certainly safe for the foreseeable future. But I thought tonight I'd like to say something new in introducing Paul, because all of that will be very familiar to this audience, and I think there's one of Paul's accomplishments that's probably not known to many, if anyone in this audience, and that's that he recently joined the ranks of the world's social media influences. According to the very latest information that's been provided to me by the ANU Media Office, his last public lecture here at the ANU in August 2022 has received no less than 2.2 million views on the university's YouTube channel. It's truly a remarkable achievement and I think that that in itself must be a record for an academic. Paul the bad news is that that sets a very very high bar for what we can expect from this evening's lecture, but I have no doubt knowing you for this many years that you'll rise to it. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb to the podium. On that 2.2 million I did say to Brendan a few weeks ago when I learned about it, perhaps in future we'll just charge people a dollar each and we'll have 2.2 million dollars for the SDSC budget. The talk of, if I may, defense and that infamous review of mine and my colleague Breb Smith who was key person and Steve Merchant who is also here on that. As I was preparing for this I learned the following about Russian defense spending. It is 10% of GDP if you include the intelligence services, ours is a bit over two. It's 30% of the budget and it's just gone up by 50% from last year's defense budget. And Putin has got the defense industries working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and paying accordingly and wait for this, this is especially for Defense Minister Richard Miles. Putin last week in front of a gathering of defense industry said he instructed the Russian Ministry of Defense to pay the companies who are making weapons 80% in advance of the manufacture. Now there's one to sort out speed of decision making over the thought. Okay we've just been discussing in the atrium there that how it is in Australia, have you noticed that this nasty war which has been going on for two years has fallen off the ABC national news both TV and radio. I was supposed to be talking to ABC national radio tomorrow morning at 8.30 they've cancelled it for some other priority. I'm not dismissing the Middle East and what's going on there but you've seen how it's slipping off the priority listen people are getting a bit bored which is unfortunate because it's not boring it's very dangerous. So as Russia enters its third year of this war against Ukraine we need to ask how will it end? I'll examine the prospects for a military end to the war and let me stress I'm not a military person and what are the realistic chances of a ceasefire or even an enduring peace. I'll then examine what are the risks that this war extended further in Europe and my view is there are real risks of that real risks and finally I ask the question how can Russia be defeated? There's an increasing view in this town by people with no background in Russia or the Soviet Union let alone their weapons systems and saying we meaning the West must see Russia defeated. I want to discuss with you and I'd welcome different views how do you defeat a country with 1,500 strategic nuclear wall heads and another four and a half thousand in various states of storage and reserve. Most days I watch an American daily assessment of the war it's called the Institute for the Study of War it's fairly right-wing I've got to say to you it produces tremendous overwhelming amounts of information battlefield by battlefield weapon by weapon but on Saturday the anniversary of this war that daily report said the following to me and I quote the situation today is grave but it is far from hopeless Russian forces have gained the initiative across the theater and are making gains now for that organization to admit that is quite revolutionary they are seriously for obvious reasons not just anti-Russian but very careful what they say about Ukraine. Also of the weekend from my social media sources I find an American assessment that says as we speak Russia is setting conditions to conduct hybrid warfare operations in the Baltic states and Finland doesn't say they're going to war it's saying they're stating the conditions of and you might also not know in the independent country of Moldova which is between Ukraine and Romania there's a breakaway province which has occurred since 1991 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union called Transnistria and there is word that that is Putin's next objective to make that a separate state of Russia so there is a lot going on before I start let me just recap with you for those of you who did read the August 22 speech what are Putin's excuses and explanations for going to this war because it's important both as an academic and in my previous profession of intelligence officers you need to be able to get inside this person's mind you don't agree with the person I certainly don't I think he's a nasty piece of work and his his reasons are as follows first the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the most serious geopolitical catastrophe in modern history he says and we need to remember that the Soviet Union in the first year of Russia the GDP in one year fell by 40 percent inflation was 1900 percent people savings meant nothing Russia lost half its population of 280 million 180 140 million separated and it lost 70 percent of its territory which is most of Australia as a comparison certainly a bigger chunk than Western Australia he does not accept that there is a separate country called Ukraine even though the then government under Yeltsin in the famous meeting in the Bielorussian woods the leaders of Russia Bielorus met and they decided that there would be separate countries one of Yeltsin's advisors hauled him back and said you haven't discussed with Ukraine the situation in Crimea he said that will be handled later in international legal discussions while it hasn't been handled with international legal conditions second and associatedly Putin believes there's no such countries Ukraine even though his country under Yeltsin agreed there was an independent country with independent boundaries in a piece he wrote a year and a half ago whether he wrote it or it was ghosted I don't know he he says we are one country one people one language one Russian Orthodox faith well demonstrably if that was ever true which I don't think it was it's now certainly not the case in Ukraine you can imagine what people's attitudes are but it tells you about with both the catastrophic disintegration of the former Soviet Union as a great power the humiliation of Russia and his view that he wants to rebuild it Solzhenitsyn not some left-wing communists before he died and the Soviet Union had disintegrated called for a new country called which combined Russia great Russians Ukraine little Russians and Belarus white Russians he called for that before he died as for the rest he said who's interested in Kazakhstan the Central Asian republics or the Caucasian ones they're not Russian so you know there are there's complexities in this third Putin's view that NATO's expansion to the borders of the Soviet Union former Soviet Union is an act of military aggression and look many of you may have different views I had the Russian ambassador here in Canberra Moiseev say to me in 91 as the economy was collapsing and inflation was rampant Paul you in the west need to have a martial plan of economic aid because we are in a bad shape and it's going to get worse and if you're not careful if you don't help us financially you may end up with a thymine republic well where are we now teetering on the edge of it in my view and there were people in the American administration the George Bush senior administration he was a serious president unlike some others we can think of and his secretary of treasury said to George Bush he answered to a question can you get a martial plan together the secretary of the treasury I've forgotten his name said to the president no mr president I think we shouldn't be helping them at all we should put them in the direction of being a third-rate country economically and with all that means militarily so there the main reasons he articulates the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union no such country as Ukraine NATO's expansion to the very borders and Ukraine's ambition to have been a member of NATO seen by Putin as a first-order strategic challenge a spear aimed at the heart of Russia is the sort of language he uses in addition to those four main excuses explanations he has of late introduced a fifth one you remember at the very beginning he talked about the now Nazi vacation of Ukraine whatever that meant it had some truth in the second world war but certainly not since then but now the new theme is which is going down much better with the Russian population and 62 percent of a reasonably reliable opinion poll are saying that 62 percent of Russians I believe there is a new strategic threat to Russia holy mother Russia from the west the west is seeking to destroy Russia and Russia is now fighting for its quote very survival unquote 62 percent okay I might turn then to the issues of the war and how it's going and so on just bear with me for a moment you'll notice there have been two phases of this war at the very beginning 24th of February 2022 most of the pundits and I was getting advice from colleagues former colleagues that there was 175,000 Russian troops on the very border and then once I was told very discreetly that we detected the movement of blood banks and hospitals up to the border that was good enough for me and I went public and said he's about to do it I since learnt that a couple of weeks earlier in a classified briefing of the congress the then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said exactly the same 72 hours they'll be in kf kf game set and match and how could we get it so wrong there's been an intelligence failure in the west it's happened before by the way on allied intelligence assessments of the Soviet Union has been this military superpower with no weaknesses when in fact it had plenty of weaknesses so the issue of what's going to happen in future there was round about the northern hemisphere summer last year could you remember there was a talk of a massive Ukrainian offensive well it ain't happened has it it has not happened and that's not a criticism the Ukrainians I think there was over expectation as usual from our American friends they wanted to impose on the Ukrainians maneuver warfare and with unless you have air superiority and electronic warfare superiority you're not going to do that you've got to remember there's still the dna in the Ukrainian military of their Russian heritage the new commander in chief of the Ukrainian army was trained in the military in Russia and he was born in Russia you know and one would be surprised if there aren't some issues there so that huge maneuver to evict the Ukrainians out of Ukraine has not occurred not that Putin has done well from the very first day the name of the suburb where the airport is outside of Kiev I've forgotten but that's where it all started when you know Ukrainians got hold of weapons systems both military and civilians and the Russians made no real impact at all including a particular special force that I've been watching for years the 71st airborne guards division the elite of the elite who went into Afghanistan and killed the then communist leadership and put in another one they went into georgia in 2008 and they were dropped into Kiev and had to scuttle out and this is one of the elite divisions you can see that Putin's hanging on to Crimea I by the way my personal view is he ain't going to negotiate on that and with apologies to any people of Ukrainian descent here 90 percent recurring of Russians will believe that Crimea is Russian won't bore you with too much of the history but at the time of Catherine the great and her great lover Pachomkin she said to him my predecessor Peter the great has just defeated the most powerful country in the north of Europe Sweden and we've got access to the Baltic we now need to go to the Black Sea well the then Crimea at that time in the late 1700s was occupied by I guess home Muslim Turks and there were three major battles all of whom Pachomkin won and he had a bit of a classical Greek background so he created the following cities and listen to them you will know them Mariupol, Kersom, Odessa, Nikolayev and Catherine the great said to him this is new Russia Nova Rossiya just cross the border and that's how the word Ukraine was derived and there's debate about this Ukraine beyond the border and it was very lightly populated black earth rich soil agricultural great potential bread basket of the Soviet Union it should have been so I don't see him giving up Crimea under any conditions when the little brown men and women with no badges of rank went in in 2014 you recall there were huge crowds organized of course by Putin's people in the main cities in Russia chanting Krim Nash Crimea is ours Krim Nash repeating so it remains to be seen if Russia can now turn the military tables and transition to a victory of sort over the Ukrainian forces my personal view is as a non-military person is I don't think there's any victory in sight either side I just don't see that it is almost classic First World War now isn't it what is it trenches trench warfare anti-tank devices huge minefields and yet the equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gerasimov who is the senior military person to this day in wartime Russia wrote a piece before all this happened just a few years before said in future there will be no such conventional conflict of armies it will all be done remotely with drones and overhead intelligence and there'll be no face-to-face battle well how wrong can you get it how wrong can you get it one of our Australian commentators McRyan who was a major general until relatively recently in the ADF has written a piece in the American Journal of Foreign Affairs who and he's not pro-russian it's called the article Russia's adaptation advantage and he's saying that the Russians really got caught flat-footed and it was a dismal defeat in those early months but now with this trench warfare and it's more than just trench warfare they've adapted and at present we have a stalemate and it may well exist for quite a significant time he goes on to say McRyan that if Russia's strategic adaptation continues to persist without an appropriate Western response meaning the 60 billion dollars of American military aid that's clogged up in Washington are great and powerful are I without an appropriate Western response he says quote the worst that can happen in this war is not a stalemate it is a Ukrainian defeat by the way in the article he does not go on to look at not only from his view defeat is still a possible outcome for Ukraine but he does not address what the implications are of a Russian victory for the future strategic stability of Europe which I'll turn to shortly but before I do moving on to the military situation you've heard mutterings in the press around the world that there's a possibility for a ceasefire negotiations aimed at an enduring peace Zelensky's tried that on with a bunch of developing countries and others but no Russians present there's been some rumors recently that Putin may be interested in a ceasefire and territorial negotiations I think that is a KGB trap he is not interested in negotiations he's not interested in a ceasefire it's a ceasefire he thinks time's on his side he's got a population of 140 million Ukraine's is significant less than 40 it used to be 40 about 6 million people have scouted there's been some speculation in the UK financial times an honorable newspaper of late that Ukraine might have to bear the bitter price of a permanent peace in which Russia retains power to all of its occupied territories in other words Crimea Donetsk Lugansk Zaporizhe and so on but I would observe that that would turn Ukraine into a weak truncated state nominally independent but at Moscow's mercy so I just don't see it happening on the 22nd of January this year Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia open quote has always been ready for negotiations unquote but he went on to make it perfectly clear that quote Russia is only interested in negotiations that result in the removal of the current Ukrainian Ukrainian government from power close quote Putin himself consistently refused to recognize there's any such separate country and he refuses to recognize that he will be in negotiations with Zelensky Zelensky doesn't exist I think half Putin's problem is unlike in the old Soviet days it doesn't have a Politburo a ministry who you will recall voted Khrushchev out of power there is no such Politburo no such group of ministers they're just his acolytes his sidekicks who he ridicules in public like on the morning five o'clock in the morning of the invasion he said to the chief of intelligence Naryshkin stop stuttering going on say something I can understand on international TV this bloke is the czar of all the rushes like nothing we've seen other than Stalin the said Sergei Naryshkin the director of SVR the Russian foreign intelligence agency said on the 28th of January quote the Kremlin is not interested in any settlement short of the complete destruction and eradication of the Ukrainian state so I don't see Putin under any circumstances and I could be wrong not for the first time of him handing back Crimea to the Ukrainians the only way I can see and perhaps conceding to return the 18% of Ukraine's territory that Russia currently occupies is a decisive Russian defeat on the battlefield what does that mean even then my view is that rather than concede victory to Ukraine Putin is more likely to perhaps broaden the war to a war in Europe against Russia's neighbors such as Poland Estonia Latvia and Lithuania just remember the Baltic republics now independent countries vibrant democracies I have no criticism were part of the Soviet Union and Poland as Medvedev Medvedev the former prime minister and president sidekick as recently said Poland is a traditional enemy of ours and he goes back to what Putin calls the time of troubles you may not believe what I'm about to tell you on Australian historical standards but every Russian secondary school educated person knows what the time of troubles is 1606 for 10 years there was a disintegration between the end of one czarist dynasty the rural kids and Ivan the terrible and the takeover by the Romanovs for 300 years and there was a succession of short-term czars the nobility couldn't really agree and it meant that because of the instability at the very top in the Kremlin foreign states took advantage of a weak and distracted Russia this is Putin's point Sweden invaded the medieval city of Novgorod where elements of democracy amongst voting nobility first started more importantly the Poles militarily occupied the Kremlin let me repeat that the Poles militarily occupied the Kremlin and said to the nobility we've got a new czar for you this new czar is known in history as the false Dimitri also told the Kremlin he's Russian he speaks Russian and he's orthodox the nobility rapidly found out there was his Russian was heavily accented Polish even worse he was a Roman Catholic the orthodox church does not get on with the Catholic Church and so they chopped him up into pieces while he's still alive stuffed his remains down a couple of cannons in the red square and shot his remains in the general direction of Warsaw look I'm sorry to bore you with something that's 400 years old but if you think Russians don't remember this they do and he plays this like a violin now this vision is in a particular room inside that glorious Kremlin I've only seen a few rooms it's called the faceted chamber dates from the medieval times that's where Ivan the terrible murdered his son and Putin's going into all this history he saw in that recent interview with that extreme right-wing American TV journalist who asked Putin a question 30 minutes later Putin's going on about the time of troubles on the 11th of this month the secretary general of NATO Jen Stoltenberg warned that Europe needed to and I quote arm itself for a possible decades-long confrontation unquote with Russia about the same time the defense minister of Denmark warned that open quote it cannot be ruled out that within three to five years Russia will test the strength of article five of NATO solidarity close quote so this brings me to the subject of what are the risks of this war extended further into neighboring NATO countries I am not underlined arguing here that Putin would casually enter in such into such a high-risk military conflict but as I have argued at the beginning of this essay Putin will simply not accept the existence of a separate nation state called Putin under any circumstances on its borders and becoming a full member of the EU and NATO one possibility we might have to face up to is that he might decide to use tactical nuclear weapons he's got about 2000 landmines torpedoes aerial stuff the Americans have virtually got known both he and Kremlin leaders such as former prime minister Medvedev as well as international security adviser of a Russian contact of mine Sergei Karaganov are increasingly and repeatedly being raucous about threatened use of nuclear weapons now a lot of this is for effect it's for threatening but the current director of CIA who was the man who said you need to get inside Putin's mind before became director he was ambassador in Moscow and a good one and he says that you cannot dismiss the possibility that russian might go nuclear it doesn't say as crudely as that so I've mentioned Poland and so on being traditionally a historic enemy and it's been talked about as such in recent months there's been recent threats to the Baltic republics about them forcing some of them their Russian populations to undergo a local language test if they are to continue to be Russian citizens they are in what Putin calls the near abroad the former Soviet Union and he's using that like a violin domestically on the other side of my argument Putin has not yet attacked NATO countries such as Poland and Germany who continue to facilitate very sophisticated advanced weapons from Europe and the United States through to the Ukraine I don't exclude him doing that so my bottom line is that if push ever comes to shove Russia will not accept a battlefield defeat in Ukraine that's just my view and the fact is that if push ever does come to shove escalation to a full-scale war with Europe cannot be casually dismissed I've quoted you the current director of the CIA it would be foolish to dismiss escalatory nuclear risks entirely quote-unquote but people like the CIA director seem to casually pass over that by describing Putin's war as a strategic failure which has exposed Russia's military weaknesses quote-unquote all that that this may result in itself in Putin escalating to the unthinkable that brings me to the question of if the aim of the US and its NATO allies is to defeat quote-unquote Russia how will this be achieved as I've said against a country with 1500 strategic nuclear warheads I'm just looking at the time and what would a defeated Russia look like would it be a Weimar Germany remember what happened to Germany after the Treaty of Versailles and Germany was for what were thought to be good and moral reasons by the French the Brits and the Americans forced into huge financial retribution costs and were not allowed more than a very small number of people in their military we all know what happened after the Treaty of Versailles 29 at 1919 1933 Hitler's in power 39 were at war would it be a Weimar Germany looking for revenge make no mistake about the unique sense of Russians about their Russianness the problem is they don't know where Russia begins and ends because unlike us surrounded by water it begins and ends wherever you think it should or might so I think these imponderables by themselves should leave us deeply concerned and we need to pay more attention to it unlike our newspapers but can we conceive of other outcomes under a new Russian leadership if Putin were overthrown well Prigoshin denies that he was seeking to overthrow Putin but you saw how angry Putin was accused Prigoshin of treason then hauled Prigoshin a few days later with his second in command to talk and then Prigoshin gets into his private airplane and all of a sudden it explodes you know my own view is that if there was any such new Russian leadership it would be more likely to be Putin Mark II God bless us than some form of Western Democrat with all that means for a peaceful outcome there are people in this town no names no pectil drill who believe we mean in the West because we're not making much contribution we need to see Russia defeated we need to see Putin killed and then I presume an Avalli Mark II comes in and introduces Russia to democracy for the first time since the very early months of the end of the Soviet Union and the early stages of the Russian civil war there's not going to be a democracy foreseeably in my view there might never be one so what does all this mean for Australia just got a few minutes left Ukraine in itself and the challenge to the international rules based order whether you believe in it or not I do to the sacred board borders of an internationally recognized state recognized by the United Nations and Russia itself amongst others called Ukraine is not to be sneered at I am not saying by the way that Ukraine I've never been there when I used to go to the Soviet Union as a declared intelligence officer and an undeclared one I used to think that this place is really impossible to understand where does it begin and end do they see themselves as Europeans a lot of my friends in Russia do but a lot a lot increasingly now is a dismissing Europe why 64% believe that Europe is wanting to dismantle Russia and they're calling themselves Eurasians I mean it's an even more silly phrase than the Indo-Pacific in my view Eurasians what does that mean well it means obviously China and who's the dominant power there well it's clear but it's a clear move to the east we should not make the mistake if the balloon does go up we have a small pathetically small defense force 60 000 you know about half a decent crowd at an AFL Grand Final in Melbourne we've always had about six battalions about 11 surface ships about six submarines and about a hundred combat aircraft yes they're all more modern and more capable but that's where about we are if the balloon goes up in Ukraine that's for NATO that's what article five is about we need to be getting ready for and I'll come to this if China invades a dramatically democratic country Putin's view of Ukraine is gross and stupid but although it's had six changes of leadership since it became an independent state it has been a corrupt violent country recently you know Zelensky sacked all the heads of military recruitment in Ukraine 16 of them for corruption he recently has put on trial the chief judge of the supreme court for guess what corruption they're making progress let me not be just you know too critical they're making progress but the democracy you go to Taiwan I've been there four times met two presidents the democracy is a vivid democracy changes of government no fixing the ballot boxes a proper judiciary and so on that should be our focus not that it would be trivial either secondly it is crucial and the world is watching is the United States going to weaken over Ukraine are they going to use the excuse of the $60 billion held up in the Congress and in any case if and it's not just to be dismissed we get a second Trump he might do a deal with his friend authoritarian mate Putin and that would be the end of the game for nearly 50 million Ukrainians so it's importance for the US alliance the world is watching finally and seriously there's the issue of weather the weaknesses of Russia's military performance have had any impact at all on the attitude of China's present Xi Jinping toward going to war with Taiwan I would hope that Xi Jinping would understand what a poor military performance is Russian friend for life present Putin has shown to the world she needs to understand that some of the inherent weaknesses in the Russian military establishment are also deeply reflected in the DNA of the Chinese People's Liberation Army given their common origins these weaknesses include the distrust by authoritarian leaders in both Russia and China of delegating tactical Beckelfield decisions to NCOs because they don't have NCOs that's how much they don't trust battlefield decisions the corruption of both countries of their logistics supply and their defense industry in both Russia and mark my words in China invading Taiwan across the 200 kilometers or so of the straits of time Taiwan is an infinitely greater military challenge and walking across Ukraine's borders with Russia infinitely greater challenge authoritarian leaderships in both China and Russia are typified by deep-seated despotism and pervasive corruption that sets the fighting strength of their armed forces most recently present Xi has sacked his foreign minister his defense minister and eight senior generals including in the strategic nuclear rocket forces in what the strategic nuclear rocket forces for what corruption moreover it's more than 44 years now since China has absolutely used military power i remember as an intelligence officer december 79 we watched four chinese divisions we had the call signs come across the north vietnam's border and teach a communist vietnam lesson which he failed at so china has no experience of combat so all right having pretty little exercises that is not the same so Xi in my view needs to consider the clear risk in any serious military conflict between america and china over taiwan there is also and i'm sorry to harp on this a clear and present danger of devastating escalation to the use of nuclear weapons those in this town who say that will never happen an america will quit beforehand well if that's the case that's not america we want to be an ally with thank you thanks so much for that paul is a lot of a lot of food for thought in that but you've also been characteristically disciplined and and left us about 15 minutes for for questions so if i could maybe invite questions for the four i know many of you have been asked before but just as a courtesy if you just identify yourself when you're asking a question all that we much appreciate it well thank you much presentation i'm jerry up in the fence just wondering if negotiations have to do happen would you be able to sit back yeah look i've never been there as i say i'm not sure on the current conditions i particularly want to and i'm one of the 120 crit critiques critiques of russia who is permanently banned forever visiting russia again zelenski's popularity as you know is very high it's you've got to take your hat off from a person who was a comedian in a show acting to be a president to actually get elected and the seriousness which he he he handles high level international meetings at the highest levels and deliberately wears you know a khaki t-shirt and trousers and not many others would get away with that in the white house or elsewhere and he is very popular but so is the now departed senior general zalozhnyi and you've heard me say that his person was taken over from miss got a name like skritzky born in russia militarily trained in russia i'm not saying is an agent but don't tell me there aren't agent russian agents deep inside ukraine so i think the answer to your question is we're in a no-go situation it's not just the russian side but for reasons i understand and accept the ukrainian side and that then leaves us with either escalating military stuff with all the dangers i've outlined or we just live permanently with a long lingering conventional conflict you saw this morning zelenski announced there have been 31 000 ukrainian soldiers killed he will not give the numbers wounded because that as he says would reveal the state of the population demography to the russians the latest british intelligence estimate that i've seen for the russians is about 88 000 dead and a total dead and wounded over two years of 200 300 000 while i think about it one important thing i forgot to say to you if you'll forgive me so compare putin strutting around and the most important holiday in russia is the patriotic set second world war defeat of nazi germany in which the russians lost 27 million dead 13 million of whom were german so here we're precisely at year two of this war in ukraine at year two in the soviet union's war against germany it had reoccupied the whole eastern part of ukraine including kiev karkov forgive my russian pronunciation and down the neeper river to jesson kersoc two years two years and six months the battle of stalingrad occurred and that was the beginning of the end for the german army surely putin if he compares where he is now and of course he can't be exact he's not using total mobilization like staling did but there he stands measured a draw after two years with a country that in his own words is a pathetic non-entity quite in the center of europe you have hungary as perhaps the most mattering member of the european union and of nato what do you think would now most watch from victor orlard look again i've never been i never went to any orientation europe again for reasons you would understand the only place you went to was moscow um he's clearly a problem for the eu and nato um he's significantly right wing and there's some other worrying right wing elements occurring have you noticed germany is it called the alternative for germany the right wing organization well even the sort of ain't faint hint that there's now a significant group of germany voting right wing is a terrible nightmare so i think on the good side another thing i got wrong i thought nato would just go to pieces when the mighty red army went in in 72 hours sorted out kief put in a public government game set in match ucrine welcome back to the soviet union nato has been remarkable i mean they've got some background they are actually as a total expenditure both military and economic marginally outspend in america but when you come to the military kid there is no comparison and there's other people in this audience will tell you that's because american military kid is by and large so superior to most of the european stuff not all of it so i think that issue that you've raised it remains to be seen how nato would stand together if and i hope i'm wrong putin decides to have a crack at poland or the baltic republics the baltic countries are small countries from the nearest nato border in estonia to st petersburg is camber to kuma now if you're a defense planner you would really focus your wouldn't it you know camber to kuma that's what happens when you share land borders yes sorry my hearing is not brilliant yeah look i'm not sure the bricks amounts to much quite frankly you know um uh it is one that russia increasingly seems to have influence over but when push comes to shove it's clearly china's um you know a lot of these international organizations um the talk shops and when it really when push comes to shove militarily um for 11 years on behalf of foreign affairs i was a member of the asian regional forum 26 countries on a particular issue called preventive diplomas it was a total utter waste of my time the asian countries when academics use the word agency other than that and curate um we have a selection of christmas nuts for you paul they've been specially curated for you it's set on a bottle recently and when a fairly well known senior southeast asian academic professor said to me i'm writing a book about how asian will have decisive agency for southeast asia i burst out laughing i said have you ever negotiated with them they can't agree on the time of day i'm not saying the bricks is as bad as that the shanghai corporation organization which was conjured up by china and russia has some utility but increasingly now putin particularly things start you know this this stalemate continues on is looking by like the supplicant to zhijing ping isn't he the supplicant that's where the economic power is they can handle russia's oil and pay whatever price and they can even send some carefully some military equipment we've noticed zhijing ping has been very careful about not endorsing russia's war on ukraine careful i think this is the lady at the back and one question and what i understand is that there is no hope is that uh because if you say uh putin has quite highlighted would attack everybody around ukraine that would be one market space and so on but we also agree that if ukraine don't weekend then it would really encourage you to go there and if you would not know jim zelensky then obviously once russia can dictate who the president can be yeah that's not the state that's game set match so is there anything that can go right in this case look let me stress i'm not an expert haven't been to ukraine and uh putin is stupid and you would know this infinitely better than me to dismiss ukrainian language history culture um it was deliberately crushed by pachomkin and the zarina that sent him there um in as late as the 19th century there were great ukrainian poets and literature peoples i recall it not that i've read any i've read you know till stoy dostoevsky and all that stuff um and the russians you know deliberately crushed that in in ukraine um so it's got a proud history of its own i don't speak the language but obviously the ukrainians believe it's significantly different it is it's what yeah of course yeah yeah um and as you well know the unit orthodox faith is very different from the russian orthodox correct me if i'm wrong the unit orthodox faith is orthodox in the procedures and the language but it looks to its leadership to the pope in rome and of course for the russians that is a no go area so look i do hope that i'm wrong i you've got a very good ambassador here is working hard on you know second hand helicopters bush rangers uh hawk eye vehicles and so on but you know you've it's i think it's hard for him to understand i've tried to turn this we have a small defense industry most of it is foreign owned and some very good companies but when you look at the australian owned ones and even the foreign owned ones are actual manufacturing capability is very small so we don't have the european background and the europeans are struggling you know germany's promise in a million 150 mill artillery shells and it's recently admitted it hasn't even started yet and it may not get there so look i do hope your country of birth um is successful because if the opposite is really serious for world peace i think we've got time for one one more question it's okay thank you i have a question about your thoughts for the lessons of australia's defense industry are in the war in ukraine as we have seen the war in ukraine has really typed the western and even american defense industry in trying to fulfill the weapons and ammunition needs for ukraine and now that our current region is also facing the threat from china what do you think that australia's defense industry policy should be in preparing in doing what sorry yeah look it's a long time since i've been in harvest harness in defense but i keep reasonably up to date um our primary focus of strategic concern as the defense strategic review has recently said and it's not new it's been like this for 30 odd years is the defense of australia it's a continent we're the only country with a continent and to ourselves sparsely populated it includes the northeast indian ocean approaches including coca's keeling islands where we need to build longer airstrips for the p8s includes the whole of southeast asia both continental and maritime in other words including places like vietnam and the whole of the south china sea with all that that implies and includes the whole of the south pacific certainly far out as fiji and we often forget not that is primarily military but we have claims to the southern ocean parts of antartica so that's for a country of 28 million people that's frankly more than enough if if things start to go wrong and you know it's common statement now and i don't disagree with it that we're now in a much more difficult challenging and uncertain strategic situation than when i was working 30 years ago reviewing australia's defense policy 30 years ago we knew that short of nuclear war there were very few countries that could seriously damage us the following countries in asia were not capable of building the massive conventional forces to attack us japan china india they just didn't have the capability and we would see from intelligence sources of which we have plenty and seriously good ones several years for them to build up the unique fingerprint of a long-range amphibious assault force which you would meet as they came further and further south with their vulnerable logistics resupply with strike that has all changed i worried a bit about an indonesia going bad honors which it had under sycana when it was armed to the teeth by soviet jet fighters that were better than us soviet bombers that were better than us and soviet submarines that were better than us that's why we bought the f1 11's strike aircraft and that's why we bought the over on submarines the situation now is seriously more uncertain than that the problem i see is and it's easy to climb on the bandwagon but there's something badly going wrong in my former department in relations between the minister and the bureaucrats it is the first time we've had it splattered across the front pages of the newspapers kim bezley could have done that with me given that for a year the then secretary and chief of defense force the two more senior advisors couldn't agree on the time of day about four structure priorities for the defense of australia he didn't he gave them to me and we never mentioned them in our report how it has got to this situation and talks of defense not reaching excellence is deeply disturbing the issue of long range strike is a contentious one my personal view is we need long range strike missiles with ranges in excess of 2 000 kilometers so we could hold off a potential threatening force at distance i see we're putting in some orders for those and there's talk about some manufacture but it certainly won't be at that level it takes the department of defense now three years from the hint of a decision about buying something to actually come to a contract i'm not saying we should have some corrupt you know acquisition system you need checks and balances but i think it's all gone far too far and in the end we're playing the violin while rome burns and it is china frankly i think thank you all so much for coming along this evening i think you agree that we've been treated to um a real masterclass paul and your my opening um introduction for you i i outlined the kind of three main pillars in in your career and i think that those pillars have been very very evident in your your lecture tonight you've had the clarity and the sickness of a policy officer you've had the real country expertise and depth of an intelligence officer but you've also had that that real rigor of um of the wonderful scholar that you have been here at the ANU for many years and we're still very fortunate to to have you here so thank you so much for all the same thing and if you're joined with me thank you for