 So, hello and welcome everybody once again to this webinar the war on Ukraine explained here from our experts, organized by the School of Security Studies from Queens College London. And traditionally scholars of the defense studies department and the different department of war studies, gather on Tuesdays, virtually at the moment for what we call strategic Tuesdays. And in this context we discuss questions of foreign policy grand strategy, world order conflict and war. Dr. League over who was also on this call here suggested in very early January that we could do a meeting on Russia. Nobody of us anticipated that we would hold a virtual around table in the face of a new war in Europe. January 24 has for sure created a watershed moment for European defense for international security. And many pundits did indeed not see this coming. And that is what leaves us, as well as publics around the world with many questions with uncertainties, but luckily, although our political solutions for the conflict are not on the table today. We have put together a great panel of experts here from the Defense Studies Department and the Department of War Studies from Kings College London, who will provide us with some insights on all these questions. And, importantly, how did it get to there. How could the situation as played in the way it is escalating today. And also, what does it mean for us for international security for the future of the conflict, and also how can we move on from here. So, once again, I'm delighted to be joined here by my co-chair, then only only as well as seven great speakers from the School of Security Studies. And without further ado, we are going to kick it off here. Just a very quick remark on this webinar is on the record. And whenever you want to ask questions, please feel free to do so to through our Q&A function. And now that we are starting this virtual roundtable, the first section will focus on key takeaways from different perspectives, and we are going to kick it off with Dr. Opa Friedman, who is a senior lecturer in war studies, and focuses on Russian strategy. So over to you. Okay, thank you very much. And everybody welcome. I was asked to speak about Russian strategy. And, unlike many experts who have been commenting on all different news channels for last week and a half or actually two weeks already. I would like to take a different approach. Everybody is trying to say what we know what is going on. How is it been proceeding I will try to reverse it around and actually focus on what we don't know. So, we don't know what is the strategic plan of putting we need to acknowledge that anyone speculation of any expert is as good as anyone else. We don't know what is the strategic goal. But first importantly, we don't we don't know how does it go so far. The only thing that we do know if we can see the progress of the troops on the ground, we can see the slow progress indeed. And to assess whether it goes well or not, whether it goes according to the plan or not whether to put in achieving his goals or not, we need to know his goals plans, and so on which we don't know. We kind of assumed we were bought into the narrative that Russians are stuck in the mad, they don't progress well, and so on. We don't know what was their plan to start with the only way to kind of trying to assess their progress is to try to compare their progress to progress in similar operations or at least on on a similar scale, not necessarily maybe conducted by Russians. And the closest operation that comes to mind in an attempt kind of to assess its the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The same operation on the same scale more or less American led coalition was consist of almost 180,000 troops, which is more or less the same size as Russian force, and the balance of power between the US led coalition and Iraqi forces and the balance of power between Russian forces and Ukrainian forces or more or less the same it's a significant imbalance in favor of the invader. But this is where this comparison ends. Because, well, Iraq is almost 20% smaller than Ukraine, the Americans enjoyed airstrike preparations which Russians didn't do. The invaders morale of Iraqi forces was very low while Ukrainians morale is very high. The invaders morale of American army was very high. While the morale of the Russian army we can put it in between medium and low. Obviously, American within this comparison American invasion, the invader enjoyed much better conditions than the Russians and still it took five weeks and four days until the end of the invasion. And also it took between 4000 to 7000 civilian casualties. The Russians obviously not in the same favorable positions as Americans were in Iraq. So we somehow convinced ourselves that Russians were planned to march across Ukraine in three, four days. And after 11 days where they didn't stick their flag in the Kiev, we all assume this does not go according to the plan. Well, we don't know what was it. I think we have a problem with the sound here. Yeah, can you hear me now again. I think we just love connection for a second. I think we need to take a step back for a moment. And acknowledge that we don't know much more than we think we know for minutes. And thank you very much and that is a perfect transition we don't know much more than we think we know, but nevertheless we have to deal with the consequences for NATO for Alice, and that leads us to our next speaker Sophia Ricky who is a PhD student at the East Department and will provide us with some insights and takeaways from the conflict on the balance of power. Thank you. I'm going to focus more on the political. So Russia has always said that it views NATO as a hostile allowance and alliance and a threat to its own security, believing that a sphere of influence is necessary to protect their security and ensure a balance of power between them and NATO that is favorable to them. NATO doesn't consider this a legitimate conception of the international order anymore, or consider themselves an actual threat to Russia. They believe that more of a sphere of democracy if you like, protect security. There is therefore fundamental difference in how the international world is viewed, how it should work. And it doesn't look like that is changing anytime soon. Russia cannot be allowed to run roughshod over its neighbors desires but neither can we ignore the reality in which we have to work, refusing to acknowledge Russia's concerns doesn't make them go away. So, when policy needs to, if policies to be effective it needs to understand, we need to understand the concept, the context in which it has to operate. And I think to be honest, up until now the balance of power in that respect has rested in Russia's favor because there is a clarity over Russia's position, NATO perhaps less so. I think we need to consider that the political cannot be separated so much from the economic and from the social. Perhaps after Crimea, Putin assumed that if it had been a quick operation, it would not have faced particularly severe response in the West. So I think this has highlighted weakness in the West in in how it responds to attacks on the international order from non-democratic states and shows that we need to look at dependencies. Our supply chains and exports, where our values are not shared or abided by. And I think we need to strengthen regulation, particularly around finance and slaps. So, strategic lawsuits against public participation so like Catherine Belton facing lawsuits for her book, Putin's people. In order to ensure political credibility so that credibility then comes from consistency in that values that are presented by the West are stood by and they are promoted and supported as well. Thank you very much Sophia for these insights and this more global perspectives and whenever we're discussing global balance of power there's one elephant in the room that we haven't mentioned yet, which is China. And the question of how China can potentially flip this balance of power, or even as it was discussed over the last days potentially into V. So, with that, I turn it over to our doctor Natasha court who is a lecturer in international peace and security at the Department of War Studies and focuses on exactly the question of Russia China relations. So we are very keen to hearing your insights on that question Natasha. Thank you so much. Yeah, the dragon in the room, I guess. So, this is a very interesting time for Russia China relations and I think a very difficult time for them, a testing time. China, I think is on the horns of a dilemma in a way, because really the Russian aggression, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don't know. There's a lot of speculation about whether, you know, Putin said, whether, sorry, she said to Putin, please can you hold off until the Olympic Games have finished. I mean, I think the timeline doesn't really matter but point is whether she had advanced warning of this invasion and I'm not going to speculate about that. I certainly think that the fact that Beijing abstained China abstained on the motion at the United Nations on condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine is significant. It couldn't really vote against the motion but you know it didn't be to the resolution. And this is consistent with Chinese behavior really if you go back to 2008. When South Asseti and Abkhazia declared independence in the wake of the Georgian war, you know, China refused to recognize the independence of those two entities and then further in 2014. China also had a very muted kind of reaction and again abstained on condemning the annexation of Crimea in a United Nations Security Council resolution. China since then has not given any explicit recognition to Russia's incorporation of Crimea. So for some people this somehow now today when we look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine, for some people this is very important in terms of Taiwan, what lessons does China take away regarding Taiwan. I mean I think the two situations have very different dynamics, you know and there's no kind of inevitability really about events in Taiwan. But obviously China may be looking quite closely at the way that this plays out militarily for Russia. So Russia, as we've already heard from others, Russia has got quite bogged down militarily and it hasn't really secured the kind of swift victory that maybe it was expecting. It's also very interesting for China to see because I think after Syria, you know China kind of viewed Russia as sort of you know back on the stage as a fighting force, you know Russia was projecting global military power. So, you know that could make China more cautious as well about doing anything on Taiwan, although I do think the events, the situations are not necessarily identical. They do around also the kind of durability if you like, the robustness of their relationship quasi alliance whatever you want to call it. You know the sanctions on Russia are clearly far reaching, you know, and given the kind of close friendship between the two one would perhaps assume that China would come to Russia's aid. But so far there's not much sign of anything like that. And, you know, China might be able to get more concessions from Moscow economically. I'd also suggest that, you know, China will probably be more likely to go along with sanctions, but also sanctions on Russia make life difficult for China so you know in many ways. I don't think that this invasion is good news for China and it's not good news for the relationship. Thank you very much Natasha for these insights from China. And with with that we're turning back a bit more to a Russian perspective. And what it basically means in terms of what can be taken away from that from people who are working on strategic culture of Russia and with that, I'm ready to introduce Elena Grossfeld who the PhD student at the Department of War Studies and works on strategic culture of Soviet intelligence. So, we are keen to hear from you on what this basically means and what has to be taken away from your perspective. So, in terms of Russian intelligence. I think we cannot, of course, say definitively because we don't have the documents, but from what we're able to see on social media and being reported in the news. Russia is facing some issues with its intelligence. And on the tactical level we saw it manifested in several failed operations, for example to capture the airport. They were not aware of the Ukrainian forces and assets that are going there. As a result suffered significant casualties. And on the operational level we see that they underestimated both Ukrainian armies preparedness and the Ukrainian citizens willingness to fight and despite it being the second week of the Russian war you could say Ukraine still retains its major part of its air force and is able to operate and attack Russian convoys and inflict significant damages. So, if it was an intelligence failure and of course we cannot say it for sure but indications point to that. What were the reasons for that is it because Russia was failing at collection of data, for example, their human intelligence efforts failed. And to that there were rumors of an investigation starting in Russia, checking what happened to the almost $5 billion that were spent on collection efforts in Ukraine since 2014, or it could be because of inappropriate or missing Russian satellite coverage because it's so much lower than in US and they do not enjoy the same access to commercial satellite options. Or it could be a problem of the intelligence analysis because as we know up until the 80s, the Soviet intelligence did not have any analytical function and were required to provide raw data. To that point, there is now a letter supposedly leaked from an FSB analyst and I think it was yesterday also published at times that claims that the intelligence analysis in Russia currently is both inadequate in terms of the policymakers do not provide the conditions that they expect to operate within, but also the intelligence analysts are encouraged to provide answers that the policymakers or their superiors want to hear. Alternatively, it could be a problem of the policymakers they might not ask the right questions of their intelligence organizations. However, the intelligence organizations do not have access to the policymakers and we still don't know who makes decisions within Russia, whether it's President Putin himself or there is an opaque group of advisors who, who participate in that. But we all saw the very public humiliation of Naryshkin who is the chief of SVR that was televised in the Security Council meeting when there was a decision about the Donbass area. We chief who is also a former KGB officer reportedly has a good relation with Putin but again there is it's not a structure that we can see, as in United States where there is a single party that is responsible on aggregating and analyzing the intelligence so it is unclear why it happened, but it will be very interesting to investigate. Thank you very much. Thank you Elena and that's basically closely linked to what we started this webinar with the question that there are many things that we do not know, and apparently also that Russian intelligence. That's not not now. In fact, we are now zooming out a bit again, and looking a bit at the regional perspective, more precisely, on the Black Sea, and with that, I'm turning it over to Dr Deborah Sander so as a reader in Defense and Security Studies at the Defense Studies department and focuses on maritime security issues in the Black Sea. Thank you so much. And it's clear that the war Russia is fighting isn't the war they wanted or expected, or as we've seen planned for, where Russia has had some success, however, is on the south coast of Ukraine. Although Ukrainian resistance is notable here, as well as in major cities, there's not been a walk in the park, given that Russia has seized huge swathes of Ukraine's coastline. What does this mean for the Black Sea? Well, focusing on Ukraine, what does this mean for Ukraine? Well, it's clear that Ukraine has lost the Sea of Azov. In many ways, this was always a minimum that Russia was going to accept from this war. Over the last few years, Russia has engaged in aggressive action to limit Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov, from building a bridge across from Crimea, to imposing an inspection regime on all Ukrainian commercial vessels, transiting the Kursh Straits, to actually attacking and capturing Ukrainian navy sailors. Russia has long wanted a land bridge linking Crimea to Russia, and now it has one. The loss of access to the Sea of Azov for Ukraine is quite serious, and there's no doubt that in particular the loss of its key ports of Burdansk and Mariupol, depending on which way the wind blows there, will have a damaging effect on the Ukrainian economy, as Ukraine is highly dependent on the maritime export, and much of its grain and sunflower oil transits by sea, particularly out of these ports. These losses will of course affect Ukraine's ability to rebuild economically after the war. In addition, the recent demands by Russia that Ukraine accept the independence of the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, one of Russia's recent demands, will also reinforce the loss of Ukraine's access to the Sea of Azov, and the loss of its commercial ports there. The institutional border of Donetsk, in particular, as opposed to the former line of contact, will include Mariupol. So if Russia seizes Mariupol, then, and Russia and Ukraine is forced into exceeding to Russian demands, then it will lose Mariupol as a key port. The cost to Ukraine, which I think is worth mentioning as well, is the loss and the damage inflicted on its very small navy. As we all know, navies are difficult and very costly to build, and Ukraine has faced many challenges rebuilding its navy since the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The scuttling of the Ukrainian navy's flagship was a huge psychological blow to the Ukrainian navy and a clear sign of the immense challenges all small navies face when confronted by large hostile powers engaged in conventional operations. Ukraine's ability to rebuild its navy will ultimately be dependent on the outcome of the conflict and what ceasing military action, one of Russia's other demands, and neutrality actually mean in practice. The initial point here is that the change in the Ukrainian constitutional to enshrine neutrality, if enforced, could also have a pernicious effect on the ability of the Ukrainian government to rebuild its military power, including, of course, its maritime power. The Ukrainian navy has benefited enormously from capacity building, most notably with the UK, the donation of maritime platforms from the US, and from the Ukrainian navy's participation in NATO maritime training and maritime security operations. It's not clear if any of these options will be allowed under Moscow's interpretation of what constitutes a neutral state on its border. Thank you, that's my four minutes. Thank you very much, Deborah, for this perspective, and which is particularly timely because it has us understand a bit more the strategic implications of Mario Paul particularly, and the fighting that has been taking place there over the last two or three days. So, with that, and also with the perspective, focusing a bit on Ukraine, we are shifting it back on by focusing on the Russian navy with a perspective and the key takeaways from what we see so far from Ryan West with a PhD student at the Department of war stats. Thank you very much. So, most of my research focuses on the Russian navy and as part of that I spent a lot of time reading what academics and Russian naval officers are saying internally as they debate these concepts back and forth. And so I'd kind of like to start there today. One thing that I found remarkable as we've looked at what's going on in Ukraine is how consistent Russian messaging has been over the past 20 to 30 years. They've been very consistent in their complaints about NATO expansion. And this really goes back much like over was talking about to a study of the Iraq invasion and even further back to the Gulf War in 1991, where the Russian academics have really looked at the way that NATO engages in warfare. And one of the first things they've seen is that in the NATO way of war as they see it the first step is always long range missile strikes to detect to decapitate command and control structures and and leadership in the capital city. And as Russia has looked at this especially in light of the INF treaty coming apart recently, they're starting to see major vulnerabilities if NATO was able to move troops into Ukraine and Eastern Europe to where they could range some of these command and control facilities in Moscow. And this has really driven a lot of the Russian thinking as to why they need a buffer state. And a lot of it goes back to the letter Gerasimov in 2019 wrote a very excellent article where he talked about the concept of active defense, where he looked at the way that Russia had waged war in the past by giving ground until they were ready to turn to offensive operations, something in line with what's fetching would have talked about with the strategy of annihilation. And I'm telling this to follow on to that which is active defense. The idea that when Russia sees that they're about to be attacked that they need to attack first. That explains a lot of what we're seeing today. Some of it is also economic. One thing I just to build a little bit on what Deborah was talking about. There are some very significant operational level issues across the Ukrainian Black Sea coast. The first is is her son. That's where the canal that provides water to Crimea is located. That was a major objective of the push through southern Ukraine to make sure they can turn the water back on to Crimea so they can grow crops again. The other things to watch around the city of Mika live. That's where the Soviet large dry docks were located where they built the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. Right now Russia does not have the capability in the North Fleet to build large surface combatants. Those big shipyards in Mika live would allow them possibly depending on what how many people stick around and what condition the equipment is in, but would give them the opportunity to start looking at larger building projects. Additionally, we've also seen that prior to 2014 Russia was importing all of their marine diesels and gas turbine engines from the Ukraine as well. That was cut off as part of the post Crimea invasion sanctions. And Russia set a very, very difficult time building up their naval power in the wake of that. They lack the dry docks they lack the engines. They lack much of the technical capability to build the kind of navy that they would like to have to compete with NATO in the west. So it's very significant as we watch the southern push as they're trying to get toward Odessa to look not just at the cities they're trying to take but the industries that they're trying to grab at the same time. Whether that's from the nuclear power plants that we're seeing in southern part of Ukraine down to a lot of the industry from the Donbass and across that coast. There will be a lot of very significant moves coming up in the near future that I'm going to be watching very carefully and I know most of you will as well. But it is worth considering that these are very rational objectives that Russia is going after here. And they're doing it for rational reasons in their mind in defense of the motherland. I think that's about my four minutes so thank you. Thank you very much Brian. And that idea that there are rational objectives and rational ideas that guide Russia's action here are the perfect transition to our last speaker here on this round table for the input. Who is Professor Tracy German reader in conflict and security on the defense studies department, and we are particularly delighted to have her join here not only because of outstanding expertise on Russian foreign and security policy, but also because Professor Tracy German is the first female professor in the defense studies department which is worth mentioning not only on International Women's Day. So thank you very much Tracy for joining us and over to you for a perspective, wrapping up everything that we heard, or rather giving further perspective on how we can understand what's happening from a perspective, focusing on Russian foreign and security policy. I'm going to circle back to what a couple of people have talked about, and over is started talking about what we don't know and raised Iraq 2003 and Ryan also has mentioned Russian observations of Western interventions. And a lot of my research in the last couple of years is focused on Russian views of the character of conflict and what's changing and I've been immersed in some rather pessimistic literature that the Russian military theoretical literature over the last few years, trying to understand the lessons that they've been drawing, particularly from Western interventions and I think it's really interesting because obviously there's so much we don't know about what Russian intentions were and are with regards to its operation in Ukraine. But I think what we can see is this kind of big gap between theory and practice, because the Russian military theorists have been very focused on long range precision strike. And what it's seen the West trying to do in Serbia in 1999 in Iraq, Afghanistan, and this belief that that is how actors go about seeking to achieve their objectives and trying to fight a distance. And I think what we saw in the first day or so of Russia's invasion was actually an attempting to put that in practice, but clearly that has not gone to plan at all. And I think what we've then seen is them circling back to more tried and tested methods. And obviously over the last couple of decades we've seen Moscow's readiness and willingness to use the military lever in pursuit of its strategic objectives everything from Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, where we've seen them very happy to use military power and force when they feel it's necessary in pursuit by strategic and foreign policy objectives. Very interestingly, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister claimed back in 2019 that the Russians had learned to fight in a new way in Syria. And I get this sense that they were quite confident about their performance in Syria and that they felt that first power projection operation moving forward was very positive for them and obviously what we've been seeing over the last week kind of has perhaps undermined some of those conclusions that they've reached. Obviously moving forwards means to be seen really what they seek to do, but they're clearly suffering some problems in areas where they often had problems in the past, such as logistics, troop failure and air superiority. And for me it's almost like going back to what I wrote my PhD on in the 90s and the first invasion of Chechnya and there's an awful lot of echoes there in terms of what we've been seeing in the last couple of days. So I'm going to end with starting where OFA started and that's what we don't know. And there's still an awful lot I think that is very unclear with regards to what they're exactly seeking to achieve and what Putin hopes to get out of this. Thank you very much, Tracy for wrapping it up and kind of bringing us back to the starting point, but thank you very much also for all the speakers for your kickoff remarks. And what we see here is that we basically have a lot of known unknowns and that we now know where we have to dig deeper. And that is exactly what we are going to do now during our Q&A. And with that, I'm handing it over to Zeno Leoni who is commemorating this webinar with me and will now take your questions. So if you want to ask questions, please feel free to use the Q&A function on the bottom of your screen and our speakers will do the very best to answer them. Thank you very much, Gesine for your fantastic moderation. Thanks everyone for being here. It was great to listen to you so far. So I've tried to very quickly to group lots of the questions that come through. Hopefully by the end of the session, I will have a chance to ask at least a question to each speaker. That's my endeavour, certainly for the next 40 to 45 minutes. And perhaps we could start again from the unknown, as it was said. And I was wondering whether here Tracy and perhaps Offer who alluded to that, talking about the political end state. So there's various questions here asking what will be the best end game scenario for Russia. What is the medium term prognosis for its occupation of Ukraine. How will it manage and incorporate Ukraine so essentially I guess the question is, even if Russia was to win the military conflict. What's next tracing and perhaps offer it feel like and if there is anybody who feels that really should should needs to answer this question please just come in we are here to listen to your thoughts. Sorry, do you want me to get it fast. Yeah. So obviously, Russia's stated end state. It would like to see a neutral Ukraine as they term it. So essentially, it wants a sovereign state to agree to not seek NATO membership and to fit in with Russia's foreign policy aims that's, you know, this sense of needing a sphere of influence where I would see it its interests are privileged over those of others including some of these states we're talking about. And I think with regards to political victory, that is very, very different to a military victory, and even if, and I think it's still a big if Russia manages to secure a military victory. Securing a political victory with regards to Ukraine now I think is going to be incredibly difficult. And, you know, these stated objectives puts out when it goes into these ceasefire talks are completely unacceptable to the government in Kiev. Thank you, Tracy offer. Yes, please. Yeah, I would like to make a small intervention here and just remind everyone. What is going on this conflict. It's not about Ukraine, right. Ukraine is instrumental here. And the goals that the Kremlin has been trying to achieve a much beyond Ukraine. And here we also need to think for a moment. What the Kremlin was trying to do it's to reshift the European or maybe global security arrangement. And to the extent he already achieved that. In terms of the global security arrangements have changed. It's not way back. Probably it's not in the direction that he wanted. But the system has been shaken. There is no way back from that. So when we're talking about what next to Ukraine or whatever victory or, again, we need to understand, which we don't know, and it's not known unknowns. These are things that I don't know but somebody doesn't tell it. Put in knows what he was want to achieve. Right. And there are several levels of here and we just need to take kind of higher view on what is going on. For the West it has always been about defending the principles of liberal democracy and freedom and so on. For Russia, it has always been always for the last 20 years it's about changing the global original at least security arrangement with expansion of NATO, and so on and so on. These goals from Russian perspective, the changing the framework has been achieved. There is no, there is no way back. Let's hope it's not in the direction that put in hopes, and it doesn't seem that it goes in the direction that he hoped. So also kind of considering other things that we've been said here about the tactical miscalculations and intelligence. I think the greatest miscalculation on the strategic level. It's not about whether the plane was shot down here, or whether it took a few more days to take Mario. It's about the grand strategic miscalculation about the reaction of the West and how the West took the initiative to navigate the new arrangement in its own direction. Thank you. Thank you very much offer Deborah where were you going to anything I can see right yes. I'm on the issue of end states or political objectives that Putin is looking to achieve I think it's very difficult to try and work out and even if we had an extensive interview with President Putin I'm sure you would come up with very many different explanations, but I don't buy the explanation that actually this is about stopping Ukraine's progress towards NATO. And I think that we've got to be very careful not to take that lesson away because that will have strategic ramifications in how we respond to other states like Russia or Moldova or other states that seek NATO membership. It seems very clear to me that actually Putin was threatened by the non existent prospects of Ukrainian membership of NATO. Ukraine was at no point closer to joining NATO prior to the Russian invasion there are any other point since 1997 when President Kuchma signed the distinctive partnership, which actually moved Ukraine closer to NATO. In 2002 and President Kuchma said that actually Ukraine had declared its intention to join NATO Ukraine had made progress in terms of interoperability with NATO, but it was no closer to NATO membership, even in 2008 and President Bush was very favorable towards Georgia and Ukraine being given a membership action plan that did not take place. So I really don't buy into the whole idea that this was about stopping Ukraine's move towards NATO. I think I'm probably more in favour of what Lord George Robertson was saying was that this was about curtailing democracy in Ukraine. This is about stopping Ukraine's move towards the West. I would be holding up a mirror and how this reflects on Russia and Putin's concern about the development of civil society and the development of democracy in Ukraine. I'm sorry in Russia, and then further in the near broad and the threat that that pours to his regime, and also his, I suppose his policies going forward. Thank you. Deborah and the offer was mentioned that the security landscape is changing. I wonder whether that's an illusion also to how the military expenditures have been going high in Germany I wonder whether this will have implication for, you know, a military union in Europe. And for another webinar, and Deborah you just mentioned NATO. There were quite a few questions on this, which perhaps I can throw at Sophia Ryan and eventually feel like I did anything. Please do join them. One was is NATO sending. Sorry, let's start from the most important one. Are Russia's concerns legitimate, which is what Deborah was discussing or this is just an excuse perhaps perhaps we can hear more from Sophia Ryan that and also is NATO sending the wrong message and creating false expectations in Ukraine I mean, promises that won't be delivered. Yeah, I can go on that. Yeah, yeah. I think you can have legitimate concerns. But that doesn't make the action legitimate. So, you know, Russia has spoken about its various security concerns in Europe. But, you know, the NATO Russian count NATO Russia Council that was suspended after Crimea, you know it was their action that stopped that it wasn't sort of a threat that NATO was posing in the same way sort of, you know, number of forces in Europe it was it was Russia who left that treaty. So while I think you can argue that, you know, states do have security concerns and, you know, no state wants to see a massive army on their border. Your actions then contribute to that. And, you know, take away from that legitimacy because if Russia was threatened by the idea of NATO troops on its borders. I don't quite see the rationale with the solution to that is massive troops on Ukraine's borders. So, yeah, that would be that would be my response to that. Thank you, Brian. So I have a little bit of a different take on that. Again, going back and looking at what Russians are saying internally. There is a long history of Russia being invaded by everybody in Europe and Asia. When you go on the streets of St. Petersburg you can walk on the main street is named after Alexander Nevsky who defended against the Teutonic Knights. And to live on Marshall Zhukov Street, you know the great defender and the great patriotic war. This is a constant reminder of the outside world is out to get us and I hate using these tropes of a national or a collective psyche or fear. But you do see that fear inside the military organizations that they look very carefully and say we could be overrun at any time. They are very clear worrying about missile strikes they're worried about NATO getting too close. And really it's about these precision guided munitions you see that a lot. When you're talking whether you're talking about Donovan checking off whether you're talking about what's good awesome office writing. These are very common thoughts and feelings that they have. So when I look at, you know, one of the, one of the key things I think that has led to where we are today was the breakdown of the INF treaty. This idea that not only could NATO get closer but they can get closer with precision guided munitions. I've, I've talked a lot about Crimea as being the key to controlling the Black Sea, where NATO ships carrying Tomahawk or long range precision strike weapons could range Moscow. The same is true of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. They're trying to build up this defensive perimeter to keep these weapons that they see as being decisive in the initial period of war, as far from Moscow as they can. What it is, as you've started to see, especially after the Medan revolution of pivoting toward the West of joining the European Union, all these little turns are opening Ukraine up to become a possible place where NATO forces could, if not part of NATO they could exercise their or cooperate there in bilateral agreements with the Ukrainians. So from the Russian point of view, they saw this as a very, very distinct and very real threat so I would say that these, these, these concerns are legitimate, and Putin's actions are rational, even if they don't necessarily look that way from the west. Any, any further point from, from the panel on this understand with, we still have a bit of time and understand that these are important questions and also on the, on the aspect of whether nature is giving Ukraine is promised, promising Ukraine, well it's not promising anything to Ukraine really but it's giving Ukraine the wrong expectations. Sorry, I was using the function, but I don't know if you can actually, sorry, I can just raise my actual hand. Yeah, I mean I think it's a good idea also to go back to 2008, and think about Georgia, what also Ukraine of course but, you know, I mean that was really a lesson to Russia that, you know, actually, you know is the West really interested in taking these countries in as members, because it seemed also that Russia was able to defeat those plans, you know with its intervention in Georgia. And so, you know, you can also look at. I mean I'm not, I also don't really see it as being about NATO NATO is part of it but it's kind of part of a big bundle of different things you know I don't see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as being explicitly linked only to NATO enlargement because as we've seen there wasn't actually a promise to Ukraine that they would become a member of NATO. You know, they said the door is open but you know there was no promise to Ukraine to become part of NATO so. I think, I'm not saying it's a red herring but I just think that it's about other things as well, and partly what Ryan was just talking about. You know, I think Ukraine as a kind of prosperous, well liberal democracy next door to Russia, you know, perhaps at some point part of the EU, maybe, in some ways, the more dangerous option. Russia, maybe we can, we can carry on with you because one of the other questions was on China which whose position, you have explained already. The question was specifically asking, is China able, does China has the strength to channel Russian aggression. And is Russia now not more dependent on China. Well, Russia has been dependent, quite dependent on China for some time that's nothing new economically. You know, it's been a kind of asymmetric relationship economically that's for sure. You know, at the same time obviously Russia profits, well, the certain circle of people profit immensely from the oil and gas that they can sell to China. You know, although that relationship economic relationship took quite a long time to really get going, you know, for a long time it was lagging behind the political relationship but it's only really since 2014 that the trade and kind of relationship has been boosted, you know, obviously, you know, to plug the gap, you know, left by, you know, sanctions and so on after 2014 and Crimea. So, you know, but essentially, you know, Russia has a lot of eggs and China and China's basket in the Chinese basket. But China, you know, it has diversified its energy supply, for example. So it's not really dependent. It is dependent to some degree on Russia, but it's certainly not as dependent on Russia as perhaps Russia might like to think. So in that sense, yes, you know, there is a certain dependence there but there's a quite a big asymmetry in relations and, you know, Russia has benefited to some degree from China's rise and China has has offered loans and credit to Russia, especially on energy projects, but I don't think that China is a kind of all-weather friend to Russia economically speaking and I don't really see China coming to Russia's aid over sanctions. Thank you, Natasha. Perhaps I also wanted to add that, I mean, the reality of states, I think, normally, you know, it's not enough for somebody in Beijing to pick up the phone and call Moscow and say, stop whatever you're doing. I don't think that's how it works, especially given that Ukraine is so much high priority. It seems to be high priority for Putin. And we've seen how many times the US in, you know, in the past decades was unable to influence as much as it wanted some of its closest allies. And so I don't think the fact that some people, I guess some people, and even the US, they think that China is powerful, so it will have a leverage. I don't think it's so we can make that equation so easily in an international system of states. No, I agree. Yes, or interrupted there. No, it's fine. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I don't think there's any way in which Xi could really, I mean, he can call for restraint. That's the kind of standard Chinese position on pretty much everything really isn't it? You know, but they can and they can show some kind of solidarity with Russia by, you know, they've both come out with those statements about, you know, being against colored revolution. It's the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, they're against the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine and so on so that, and they are against, you know, Western sort of hegemony and mega firm diplomacy. And, you know, China has also said NATO, you know, should respect the sovereignty and security and the interests of other countries, you know, and said Russia has legitimate security interests in Ukraine, but that's as far as they've gone. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think that China has influence over Russia in that sense but, you know, China will certainly not benefit from the kind of chaos that might come to global markets and so on with, you know, the sanctions, you know, with what is resulting from, you know, all of this kind of fallout really from the invasion. Thank you Natasha. We shift the focus slightly and wanted to throw a question to Elena about information. So, two questions really. So one first question is what do you make of the fact that it seems that Ukraine has been as has showed superiority in controlling the media narrative in the West. I wonder whether it's the West that made the narrative superior whether actually Ukraine was good that was really good with it. Then there's a follow up question about the cyber war IT war. Does this have any bearing on the intelligence failure Elena mentions and what is what is happening in this realm. Sure, I mean the cyber war or the cyber attacks that Ukraine suffered. It's really very interesting because for a number of years since 2014 for sure and probably before Ukrainian government organizations businesses and infrastructure were under constant cyber attacks from Russia. And even before that you know that the not Petia and the, the all the fallout from that. So you would think that if Russian intelligence organizations managed to penetrate Ukrainian networks so far, they would be able to at least realize the preparations and the modernization efforts and all that good stuff that was ongoing in Ukraine. And I think one of the potential explanations was that, since there are multiple intelligence organizations in Russia, and basically they're in a constant competition with each other. So, in the example of the DNS penetration in the 2016 American elections, it turned out that there were multiple organizations involved in in the hacking. Perhaps the same thing happened there the, you know the GRU managed to break into some networks and attack and wipe stuff, but they didn't update the FSB or whether the FSB did the same, you know, and the internal competition between the intelligence organizations did not allow for effective work and effective intelligence warnings to be generated and to inform Russia before the invasion. On the media management Ukraine is definitely leading. And there are several reasons for that so first of all they are the underdog. So it's, you know, it's natural to sympathize with them. But another factor is that, if you remember the 2014 downing of the Malaysian airline. And the subsequent investigation by Bellingham that followed that allowed to identify the book missile launcher that was involved in that all was based on the social media analysis of the soldiers and the participants. And as a result of that, Russia issue the law that does not allow soldiers to post social media posts during conflict or, you know, during operations. Russian soldiers upon before entering Ukraine where stripped of their of their cell phones or smartphones. And that is some of the reasons that they are unable to sort of illuminate their side of the conflict. There is intense media war going within telegram and tick tock, but I think the only people who most of the people who see the Russian side are within Russia and within the parts of Donbass, the Ukraine part that was predominantly leaning to the Russian side anyways. So I think that's my take I think offer wanted to add something to that. Sure. Yeah, just, just to just two points. Which are kind of interconnected. First of all, I will be very careful to say that Ukraine is leading the narrative. Obviously, Ukraine is leading the narrative but Russia doesn't fight in the narrative. Russians do not try to explain themselves to us. They're not trying to win over our hearts and minds. It's a kind of Ukraine is fighting on its own and obviously winning. Right. And by the way, if you go back to the Georgian war and learn the and read what lessons Russians learned in terms of information space from this Georgian war one of the lessons was if you can't win don't fight. And there is no war over the heart and mind of the Western audience. It's completely taken by Ukrainian narrative and Russians even don't try. Now, they obviously try very hard to preserve the hearts and minds of the domestic population and isolated from any foreign influence. Right. But in the way in the West, there is no fight. There is no information war between Russian Ukraine or anybody else. Russia just don't fight. And this what leads to another very interesting observation kind of connects to the unknown knowns. We can say many things about Russian ground forces, air forces, missile strikes, navy. There is one thing that we know for sure that very good in electronic warfare and they're very good in cyber warfare. Right. There were attempts in that an electronic warfare which basically jumps every. There is one thing that I still struggle to answer is why, and everybody was talking about that before the invasion that the first thing that Russians will do that will shut the information space in Ukraine. Right. They will blackout Ukraine from internet and other services and they haven't. So on the one hand, it's kind of will be again going to this knowledge if they don't know what they're doing or they're muddling in the in the mad or they've been surprised. It might be, but maybe they want Ukrainians to galvanize the West. They won't. They don't fight it. They want the messages of Ukrainians about the attacks about the images of destruction to go to the West. Sure. And this somehow takes it back to get the fact that we don't know exactly about their, their end game. I think we could, we can stay on this on this terrain because there was a question on what's the lesson for conventional and irregular warfare. What does it tell us, I'd like to add, we've seen Russia in 2014, perhaps wait, not perhaps waging a sort of irregular warfare. And nowadays a different kind of warfare. And so I was wondering whether there are any lessons here offer please you go ahead but perhaps others would like to jump in after you. What about the regular in the regular. Yeah, what was the lesson. Yeah. Well, the lessons we will learn lessons after this ends. We can we can learn, we can learn lessons now it's still, it's too quick, because we don't like you know lessons learned from performance which was either good or bad or in the middle. And we don't know what was the performance because we don't know what they wanted to do. And we can say for sure that Ukrainians a perform amazingly against, I think, our expectations definitely they perform much better than weeks, we expected them to perform, and much better than I think also they expect themselves to perform, but we don't know how Russians expected them, and they present a very difficult, I would say, mix of regular and irregular forces, capabilities, methods and tactics to Russians to face. And then we say, and everybody else can we say that is this a reminder that conventional warfare is still very much a thing nowadays. I guess that's what the question about lessons alluded to, given that irregular warfare has been a lot of debate and publication about it has always been a thing I don't understand like it has always been a thing. There will always be a thing until state until states will kind of use these, these tools. Right, we've been in our kind of in the western discourse we've been all dragged into reinventing and inventing all these new, new titles of, you know, hybrid and gray zone and surrogate and, you know, one colleague of ours from University of Reading actually made a very good analysis there, more than 56 different names of warfare, which basically they say they reinventing the wheel every time. So yes, conventional warfare has always been there will always be here, and you know it's, it's part of a part of the tools. Okay, I can see Tracy, Deborah and Ellen and they want to jump in. Please do go ahead. Yeah, so I think one of the issues we've had over the last, well, since 2014 is this real Western focus on hybrid warfare or gray zone warfare when it comes to looking at Russia. I mean a lot of people who actually, you know, look at Russia saying you really need to be focusing very much on the conventional side Russia has never stopped focusing on its conventional forces. And I think, you know, what we've seen is that there was almost an expectation in the west that are they'll, you know, it'll be sub threshold, it'll be a hybrid, and actually, you know, no conventional land forces and I do think for me, it's very much about Russia. And we see it timing again of mirror imaging of imposing our own frame frameworks templates thought templates on adversaries and I think we need to be very careful about that indeed. Thank you Tracy, Deborah. Thank you. Yes, a similar point in many ways. I think, despite the emphasis on gray zone hybrid warfare, it's become very clear that actually conventional military strength, particularly at sea thinking about the maritime domain, as well as on land is the real currency of deterrence and real currency of the future and it's the lesson I think that we're forgetting what we have forgotten. And Germany seems to have reminded itself of the need to spend 2% on defense recently, and the only effective way to deal with hostile powers is to have sufficient, I know that's a contentious term, but to have sufficient conventional military power. But I did want to pick up on the issue of insurgency because at Staff College, as you're all aware, the coin kind of went out of fashion, after the rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan, we were moving away from studying coin counter insurgency. And I think that what we'll find as academics is that the debates around insurgencies will be reinvigorated and quite interesting. And what I would say from my knowledge of the Ukrainian armed forces and from how they performed so far. I think that the Ukrainian armed forces and the people are not equipped or trained to fight an insurgent campaign, and I have legitimate concerns about that. It seems to me that the US Army urban doctrine says that Russia will need three to five times more forces to accomplish a task, such as dealing with a counter insurgency campaign so we'll need to up the empty. And to which the Ukrainian people are prepared for a counter or for an insurgent campaign, I think remains to be seen as it's extremely costly economically. And it damages the economy of states are engaged in this or stateless they're engaged in this destroys economies as I said it can take times we've seen with the Taliban in Afghanistan and perhaps most importantly can cause huge casualties as well to the civilian population. And we have to think back to church near and gross me and the huge casualties that resulted there, of course, and of course the over half a million Afghans died between 1978 and 1989 so the cost to society are immense. So academically I think it's very interesting should the campaign and adopt a an insurgent type response, but actually politically economically. I think it's extremely costly and I don't think the Ukrainian military or the people are prepared or understand perhaps the consequences of engaging in such a campaign. Thank you. Thank you Deborah Elena. So back to what Deborah was saying, I think it's quite unprecedented in the modern times for states to do what Ukraine has done when it basically started distributing arms and ammunition to citizens who are not part of the military, and who publishes, you know, publishing recipes for the best mode of cocktails including like the best substances, and the creation of their IT cyber army that they basically said well if you can't fight you know, then, and your proficient in computers can, you can join our cyber forces, and they did cause damage to Russian sites, whether them or anonymous, but you know multiple Russian governmental sites were in unresponsive sorry for several days. I do agree with Deborah that this type of citizenship resisting puts them at danger because they become part of the armed conflict and you know Geneva conventions rules no longer apply to Russian, Russian soldiers will be so scared of you know civilian population that they might not honor those rules. But on the other hand, Russians have not been known for honoring those rules even in places where the citizens were not part of the military campaign. You know, while Ukrainians probably do face a lot of damage and casualties, they're still willing to engage in it. Elena, sorry. Also the fact that some states told their citizens, you know if you want to go and fight. You can, right. Yes, I thought that was unprecedented as well. And although they do not put it out as an official you know cold to arms. They do not prevent their citizens from joining Ukrainian forces in the same way that they did with, say, ISIS or al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. From what I understand there is a number of both American ex-military and British ex-military and Israeli ex-military who are now joining forces with Ukrainian military, perhaps not as combatants but as medics and other support tasks, but nevertheless I think it's very unique. Very much. So we are approaching the end. I will ask you a question in a minute about, well, there have been questions about World War Three and different sorts of questions. We will get to that one. Firstly, from a colleague came in a question from Ryan, which is if Gerasimov was actually killed. What do we make of that? And the question would be what a general of that rank was doing so close to the front that he would trade on a mine. Let's just be clear that we're talking about Vitaly, not Valieri, right? Yeah, because there's been confusion on Twitter. I've seen people tweeting, but yeah, he got it. Gerasimov is dead, you know, so make sure we're talking about the right one. Yeah, so like Natasha said, Valieri Gerasimov, the chief, the general staff has ensconced in a very comfortable bunker somewhere in the Urals right now. He's fine. Not related to him. Major General Vitaly Gerasimov who was one of the deputies of the 41st combined arms army has been reported to have been killed on the front and I get nervous talking about these unconfirmed reports, but it seems that may have been the case. And the key takeaway I would draw from that is, and this addresses a lot of the questions I've seen in the Q&A is this idea of operational art and planning and what's going on with the Russian high command. And what we're seeing a lot right now is some breakdowns in communication, both of the staff levels and on the front. So you probably had a general up at the front trying to get things moving again where things are stalled, meaning they're probably having some difficulties communicating back and forth between the rear and between the elements on the front lines. We've also seen some issues with Russian communication systems that rely on cell towers that have quit working after they blew up the cell towers. Which is more of a staff problem where the communications folks are not talking to those in charge of choosing targets. We're seeing a lot of these these breakdowns and we know that Russia is very good at operational art Alexander Spetshin invented operational art. In the Western world we take a lot of the things that the Russians started and we have adapted them and and very successfully implemented them. These ideas do exist, but it seems that either they were a little bit negligent possibly, or we're overly confident that this is going to be a quick operation and did not do the due diligence to some of these staff processes that probably should have been done. The answer to that is I would imagine this is a communications breakdown where things were not progressing as as desired, the commander sent his deputy forward to fix the problem. And sometimes these things happen. Thanks. Thank you Ryan. Thank you everyone. We are in the last entry the last 10 minutes. I was wondering whether we could close with with a question relating to World War three, it has come up a lot in the narrative I wonder whether it is fair to make the sort of comparisons. The question from the audience was, what would it look like, how likely, what are the risks for, for the UK but probably we should think eventually beyond the, what are the risks for people, cities and beyond the UK. I guess it's the last question so I was wondering whether I might open it to, to the floor to whoever would like to jump in. And if not, if you have any further point about lessons from what we've been discussing today and what we have been seeing over the last few weeks please just feel free to to share your thoughts in a concise manner perhaps. Sure. I can go quickly. Yeah, sure. Well, World War three. I mean, I think if we have no fly zones, that could be a possibility. You know, although it would be great to have no fly zones. I think a lot of people who call for those no fly zones are not completely kind of familiar with what a no fly zone actually is and. I mean, you know, if you look at Iraq and other places of no fly zones, I mean, you know, we're talking about needing quite a lot of military concerted military power to enforce those but also, you know, we had no fly zones with Bosnia, but you know, Milosevic didn't have nuclear weapons so this is quite a different scenario from that point of view. Thank you Natasha Deborah. Thank you. And yes, I think that's unlikely to say the least. I think I would have genuine concerns about Russia getting closer and closer to borders and accidents happen. And as we've seen, I don't know whether the attack on the nuclear reactors were accidents or cook up who knows conspiracy or cook up who knows. But I do think what's interesting about that is that the closer Russia gets to the borders with NATO states, the more risk we have of missiles hitting NATO members and how that would be explained or justified I think would be extremely difficult. And so that would be my only concern vis-à-vis potential escalation of this conflict. And I got asked recently about Moldova and whether or not Russia would push, try and join up with Transnistria and push into Moldova because Moldova is also of course not a member of NATO, whether or not that would escalate this conflict, pushing it into the soft underbelly of Europe. And I suspect not because I suspect, as a lot of my colleagues have said, the problems that Russia has faced in the military domain, I'm impressed that actually pushing further extending its supply lines, illicit logistics, its command and control, its fire and manoeuvre, all of the problems that we've seen mean that Russia doesn't want to extend the territorial expansion any further. And whether or not Transnistria would actually support an invasion into Moldova I think is also moved because I think what's more likely to happen is the Transnistria elite, the government there, will recognise this on a sweet deal. And it is on a sweet deal because the EU association agreement that the EU has with Moldova has a positive spillover effect in terms of Transnistria and it will be, I suspect, and willing to upset the apple cart with any very small gains that it might have with a join up of Russian backed supported territories in Ukraine joining Transnistria over. Deborah, sorry, very briefly you've seen that report about Japanese commercial ship hit by a missile in the Black Sea, but I guess if it's a commercial ship that you know it doesn't lead to the implications are obviously small. I think that's the only interesting thing is that many of our flagged vessels are with obscure states who of course aren't NATO members, which is probably a good thing. And I think it's probably too early to come out and with a clear idea of exactly what happened there. The Ukrainians have done a great job of spinning us who knows who knows what the truth is we'll find out probably in 10 years time and suggesting that actually that was a Russian vessel using a commercial vessel as a means of attacking the shore and getting a little bit closer in. If the Russians are adopting such a tactic then it is extremely problematic because the Black Sea is heavily dependent on the transit of maritime commercial vessels in and out to supply NATO member states as well as NATO partners thinking of Georgia and of course Turkey. So the last thing we want to see is any attempt to curtail the movement of commercial vessels in and out of the Black Sea over. Thank you, Elena, and then offer and I think we will close and trace you as well. If we could have some brief final conclusions points that would be great. I just wanted to. Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to point out to the questions about the Third World War and danger for other current NATO member states. Is that given the operational issues that Russian military seems to be having now in Ukraine, you know the communications failure and even the tire trucks and the equipment maintenance and I don't believe they have bandwidth to turn anywhere else before regrouping and re collecting their, you know, collective thoughts about it. And I was having a very long argument with somebody, the state of Russian equipment probably points to the fact that their strategic and nuclear missiles and you know systems are not in any better shape than what we can see right now. So I don't know if it's offer seems to disagree but in my experience. The same rule applies to the majority of systems. So with that I will pass on to offer. Again, I will kind of come and say here. Let's get free. Let's free our, our mind from an assumption that Russians plan to ride of Ukraine into three days. They are, they are slowly progressing with their slow progress is comparable to same size operations, especially taking in consideration the level of resistance that they face, they do suffer casualties. You know, the tires and got flat. And sometimes there are problems in it's normal. This is how military operations on that scale look like to expect to expect that they will ride across Kiev to love in three days, it's a pre it's a it's a fruit of our imagination. Right. There has never been such a space in human history of wars, and the most comparable military operation conducted the more by the most high tech equipped high morale military. Only 20 years ago, it's took five and a half weeks for a territory which was 20% less. And it was provided which was twice provided twice less resistance than than Ukrainians. So these operation goes relatively okay. There are problems here and there. There are problems of supply there are problems of communication there are problems of coordination. It's, this is how war look like. This is the first one the second one around the third world war to say that we are going or not going to the third world war it's like to say when well, let's go back to the last world war. Who was the who thought that when Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, it will look like it look like in there. Definitely not the allies definitely not the Soviets. And definitely not Hitler himself. So we don't know, we don't know where to go. The only thing that we can see now, watching this tectonic geopolitical shifts occurring in Europe, occurring in in Russia and all around Russia. There are wave shocks that we will see in the energy costs food costs, raw resources costs, and so on, with the supplies, which are going to dry of food to Africa because UN food, food programs were buying grain from Ukraine and Russia. Now, now they have no food to feed. They feed Africa. Now, these are tectonic shifts. And they're only the only thing again without being too much pessimistic here. My only gonna insight or foresight or an advice for the next few years to come is to brace brace for everyone everywhere. Thank you all for that wasn't very optimistic. Tracy, the final word on all this to you. Yeah, so I actually I was going to talk about the risk of wider global instability triggered by rising prices price of oil food food insecurity let's not forget the Arab Spring Tunisia that was food, you know food prices rising. And I think we haven't yet begun to see the real impact of this invasion and what it means. And if there's one lesson moving forward, we've been talking about EU reliance on Russian oil and gas. There's one issue we've not talked about and that's EU reliance on phosphates from Russia that's for fertilizers. And it's a really huge issue that is not being tackled. And I think moving forwards, these are, you know, they're known unknowns. Let's end with offers, you know, beginning framework here, but I think these are much longer, longer term issues that could cause huge global instability. Thank you, Tracy. Unfortunately, we need to end the webinar here but it sounds like there is enough. There are issues and critical matter to to have another one at some point in the future. On the implications of the conflict. I'll refrain from making any, any conclusion at this stage. It was great to listen to you I just wanted to thank all the speakers because you have come on to this webinar and told but at the same time you've been really there were there were many of you and surely you refrain from sharing more ideas that probably wanted to share and also the same time I wanted to thank those in the audience. It was a huge audience and I'm sure they've got a very comprehensive grasp of the current war in Ukraine. And I also hope they enjoy their time you enjoy your time with us. Thank you very much. Have a good day have a good evening. Thank you.