 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to 31 Blystreet. I'm Michael Fully Love, the director of the Institute. Let me acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather today, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation. I pay my respects to their elders. I'm delighted to be joined on stage today by Zoya Sheftalovich and Mick Ryan. I'll introduce both of them more formally in a minute. In early March, some of you will remember, we brought Mick and Zoya together on this stage to discuss the first year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And that event was very well attended, and I can see today we're at capacity again today. That's a testament to the quality of these two speakers, but also to the urgency of the issues raised by the war. And I might say to the righteousness, if I can say that, of the Ukrainian cause. Some of you will recall that I was honored to host President Zelensky in this room last October, and you can still get that video on YouTube if you're interested. A lot has happened since you guys were here in March. Ukraine has launched its counter-offensive. We've had the bizarre spectacle of the Wagner Group mutiny against, well, the Wagner Group mutiny. We'll come back to that. The flow of more capable weapons to Ukraine's military, the NATO summit in Vilnius. Russia's continued air attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow's decision to terminate the Black Sea grain initiative. Another explosion on the Kerch Bridge, so it's all continuing to happen. And we want to cover as many of those issues as we can, as well as the local issues. That is, Australia's support that Australians have for Ukraine, the support that the Australian government is lending to the Ukrainian effort. And also, Australia's strange reluctance to send our ambassador to Ukraine back to Kyiv. So there's a lot to discuss, and I'm going to kick it off by asking these guys some questions, but then there's going to be an opportunity for you to ask questions too. Mick Ryan, let me introduce our panellist. Mick Ryan is a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute. Very proud to be associated with him. He spent 35 years in the Australian Army retiring as a major general. His operational service includes deployments to Timor-Leste, Iraq, and Southern Afghanistan. His book, War Transformed, was published in 2022. Zoya is a contributing editor for Politico based in Sydney. She's a regular commentator on the Ukraine War for ABC News 24. She's recently returned from Brussels, and she's been writing a lot on Wagner and other mysteries. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mick and Zoya. All right, Mick, I'm going to start with you. Tell us your current assessment of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Well, thanks for the great introduction. It's great to be here with Zoya again. I can sit here and listen to Zoya all day, to be honest. It's tough going. I know there are some out there who are wringing their hands and thinking it's failed. That's not the case. These things are extraordinarily complex. Indeed, the hardest thing a military organisation can do is one of these combined arms breaches through deep obstacle belts, which is what the Ukrainians are trying to do. And they're trying to do it without the benefit of air control. They're trying to do it without the benefit of the masses of engineer equipment that they need to do it. And they're trying to do it in an era of pervasive senses that we just have never seen before. I mean, the meshing of civil and military sensor networks have resulted in a battlefield that's not quite transparent but very close to it, which makes these operations more difficult than they've ever been. There's no historical precedent for the pervasiveness of the senses on this battlefield that both the Russians and the Ukrainians have. Now, that means the advantage is to the defender on the modern battlefield. And the Ukrainians have leveraged that for a large part of this war. They're able to overcome it in Kherson and Kharkiv in 2022. But the Russians had about eight months under Sorovkin and now Grasimov to prepare very, very extensive defences in the South. The Ukrainians, after the first month have kind of gone, listen, we're probably not going to penetrate as quickly as we want. We need to adapt and have adapted their tactics. Dave now evolved a bite and hold kind of approach, which is what the Brits and the Australians did in the second half of the First World War, to slowly work their way through very deep defensive regimes. And it worked, but it's slow, it's costly and it's bloody. But it does also preserve more of your force than other ways of doing business. So, you know, the Ukrainians are slowly working their way through in two axes in the South. They're actually making more progress around Bakhmut in the North and South. They now control the high ground. And we shouldn't forget the Russians are conducting a mini offensive in the North, out of Luhansk province. They're doing this for several reasons. Firstly, to draw Ukrainian reserves away, but secondly, they perceive weakness up there, whether that's right or not. So, you see all this going on with the offensive. It's slow going, but there is slow, but steady progress, just not as fast as most commentators would like, but most military professionals would recognise this for what it is. And then, of course, on top of this, you have the Russian air missile and drone attacks against Russian cities, also against Ukrainian cities, against Ukrainian people and Ukrainian infrastructure. And indeed, in May, June, we saw a very, very heavy weight of attacks against Kiev, heavier than any point in the wall. I'm happy to say that if you tracked Ukrainian progress and defending their skies at the beginning of the war, they had about a 20% interception rate in a lot of places now, not all, but in many places like Kiev. The air missile and drone defensive regime intercepts around 95% of incoming threats, which, again, is unprecedented and probably the best in the world. So there's a lot going on. There's more than just the offensive in the South. But once again, we need to be patient. These things take time. The Ukrainians have the patience and the perseverance and we should support them in that. Mick, what about the other intelligence military adventures that the Ukrainians are running? We saw a few months ago a drone attack on the Kremlin and there's been a lot of speculation about whether that was a Ukrainian operation or not. But I think the consensus is it probably was. You've seen another attack on the Kerch bridge last week and an attack on the highway. What is the value, do you think, of these operations? What kind of effects do they have? Yeah, I mean, General Budinov, the head of Ukrainian intelligence, is a crafty fellow and comes up with a few crazy ideas and some of them just work. So you've seen two different drone attacks in Moscow, the Kerch bridge twice. He also saw two Belgorod incursions. These had no military objectives, largely. These were political in nature. They are about saying to the Russian people, the war is actually coming home to you. This is not a special military operation that is restricted to the borders of Ukraine. This is a war that your entire country is fighting and you need to be aware of this. When it comes to the military implications of these, probably the Kerch bridge also has some operational impacts on logistics. The latest impact would be that a lot of Russian logistics now have to go through southern Ukraine, which makes them easier to target by Ukraine. Tourists also have to go that way. I note that the Russians didn't stop tourists. They just said go through southern Ukraine, which is not really the act of a responsible government. So it's going to clog up roads. But once again, it says to the Russian people, this is Russia's war, not just Putin's war. And maybe you should be doing something about it now, whether Russian people can or not, I think. It's a different conversation. But this is all about Ukraine saying to the Russian people, you're all in this war. All right. Zoya, let me bring you in. You've done a lot of reporting on the Wagner mutiny. A couple of weeks on now. What's your assessment of what that was about? What was the principal motivation? What frailties has it exposed in the Putin regime? And what happens to Wagner going forward? The mutiny was a fascinating episode. I think what it revealed was that Putin's grip on power is not as absolute as people think it is. And I think it was couched as a mutiny against the military leadership in Moscow. But in actual fact, it was an all-out rebellion against Putin because Putin appoints the military leadership in the Kremlin. There is no independent Russian state. It is really just a kind of mafia-like state which is run by the Don, which is Putin. So the purpose of that mutiny, if you look at actually the cause of it, basically what was happening is that in Russia you had these two rival camps. You had the camp that was led by Prigoshan, who is a creation of Putin himself. He was a caterer, sort of a nothing thug, who was then elevated higher and higher through various appointments by Putin as Putin recognized his various talents for capturing people's attention, for driving propaganda narratives in machines. So he's been created and molded by Putin himself. Prigoshan then formed various shadowy enterprises. Some of the media, one of them was this Wagner group of a mercenary army. Wagner never operated outside of the Kremlin. It is part of the Kremlin's forces. It was deployed in various places. It was deployed in the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. It was deployed in various parts of Africa to shore up Russian interests over various natural resources to prop up various regimes, such as the Assad regime. So it was operating in all sorts of places to essentially create additional value for the Kremlin. And Prigoshan himself became extremely wealthy as a result of that. But he also started developing his own personal brand, if you will, to speak of sort of an influencer kind of speak. So he started developing this brand. He became very well known among Russians. He became something of a hero to Russians. So you have this Telegram app, which is a very popular social media app that Russians use. And he would deliver these extremely hardcore missives via this app. He would rage against this thing or that thing. And he really developed this kind of brutish persona that became very popular among a large number of people. He then started also, of course, gaining power and money as well. On the other hand, you have the people who are actually technically running the Russian military regime, which is Gerasimov, who is the head of the military, and Shoigu, who is the defense minister. Now, those two were essentially fighting for control for public for money, for public support, et cetera, with the Wagner group. And the thing that people perhaps don't realize is that Russia is full of mercenary armies. And in fact, Shoigu has his own group of mercenaries. And Putin has his own group of mercenaries, multiple groups of mercenaries. So Shoigu has a group called the Patriot Group. And he has his own thousands and thousands of soldiers taking all sorts of action that's shadier and less visible and less accountability, let's just say, than the official forces. These two groups started essentially vying for influence. And for a while, it was in Putin's interest to maintain that kind of tension. Because the thing for Putin is that he needs for no one to have enough power to challenge him. So it was in his interest to have these two or multiple competing groups all vying for power for influence for money. At a certain point, the monster that Putin himself created became too powerful. So he essentially was able to control parts of the narrative independent of the Kremlin. And that was the Wagner group. Thousands of troops, loads of supporters, millions of people watching his various videos every day. Then you had Wagner, essentially. So in early June, Shoigu, the Defense Minister, essentially put forward this decree saying that what we're going to do is we're going to force anyone who is on the front in Ukraine to sign a contract with the military, the official military. And what that essentially was was a power grab. It was Shoigu saying, hey, we don't like that you've built up all of this power. We're going to grab those troops and they're going to fall under our command. You don't agree to this, then you're illegal. So it was essentially forcing a choice upon pre-Gorgen. The choice was have your soldiers sign contracts which essentially remove you from their chain of command, from the power, or do what you did, which is effectively a mutiny. And so we sensed that this was coming. So this edict came down in early June. Wagner had actually pulled out of the front line. So they were no longer in Bakhmut, which was the key battleground that they had been holding during the war. They pulled out. They were doing some R&R. And the deadline for signing those contracts was the 1st of July. So it was pretty clear that between that June edict being issued and the 1st of July, something was going to happen. What we didn't see coming was the extent to which it was going to be so significant as a risk and a threat to Putin. Because what happened was that pre-Gorgen, honestly, when you listen to the sorts of messages that he was leaving on that Friday night, he sounded kind of drunk. He sounded insane and unhinged to the point where I just wasn't even sure that I just didn't know what was happening. It seemed very, very strange, the sorts of messages that he was saying that he had shot down a Russian helicopter. It seemed almost unreal. I was speaking with a colleague of mine who was in the region. He was like, is it happening? We didn't know if it was actually happening. Saturday morning, of course, everyone wakes up and it did, in fact, happen. These Russian Wagner troops have gotten to within essentially 200 kilometers of Moscow. And what they demonstrated was not only, the most important thing that that demonstrated was that the Russians were willing to let this happen. Russian people, the narod, if you will. This is, Russians refer to the narod a lot, which is the people. So the reason the Russian Revolution happened, the reason all of these upheavals have ever happened in Russia is because you have the narod, the people, decide either that they don't care enough to fight or joining in. And that was kind of the demonstration of the weakness of Putin's grip over people in Russia. Because rather than taking up arms and shanking some Wagner troops or whatever it is that they were going to do, they just let them in. And in fact, the kind of reception that these Wagner troops got in Rostov-on-Don and in Voronezh and in other places which are in Russia, they got a Rockstar reception. And after Putin called them traitors, they got a Rockstar exit. So that is really, really significant. I mean, people were on the streets. They were chanting, holding up Nazi flags, and et cetera. But nonetheless, it shows a degree of weakness in that power that Putin has. What next for Wagner? Essentially, there's this deal with Belarus that was effectively, we don't know exactly the details. I doubt that this was a Lukashenko initiative. I would say that it was probably a multifaceted deal between the Belarus dictator and the Kremlin. But effectively, it allows Prigvazan to go about his merry way. It shows that the Kremlin either couldn't or wouldn't execute this huge threat. It leaves him at will. And he actually surfaced yesterday, published a video, and said he was going to be staying in Belarus, that the Wagner troops that he controls would not be returning to the front line in Ukraine. They would be propping up the regime in Belarus effectively, which has its own problems with the Democratic movement. So what does this mean? He said he was going to turn the Belarusian army into the most powerful army in the world. So that in and of itself is a threat to Putin. It's essentially saying, hey, this guy who's supposed to be your vassal is actually going to have a more powerful army than you will. So it really is a very, very significant threat to Putin, both on a symbolic level, but even potentially on a practical level. Because the thing not to forget is that Lukashenko and Putin are just friends of circumstance. They are not friends. So going back over the last 30 years of Lukashenko's rule and 24 or so years of Putin's, they have had some significant problems. They've implemented sanctions against one another. They're not buddies in the way that we might think they are. So it is very dangerous. Sorry, I could go on and on, but I won't. I'm sensing that. No, let me go back to the day of the mutiny. A friend of mine who's a historian of Central and Eastern Europe pointed out to me that Russia had two revolutions in the 20th century, and they happened very quickly. They happened in a week in each case. And you mentioned that the narod didn't rise up to stop the passage of the Wagner troops towards Moscow. Neither did the Russian military, as far as we can tell, or at least they didn't bring their main forces to bear, because you would think that they would be able to stop that advance. So I guess the follow-up question I'd have for you is how close do you think we got to regime change in Russia? Was it never going to happen, or was it really close? Was Putin really in danger in that 24-48-hour period? I think the thing to remember about the... So yes, the revolution, so to speak, of the fall of the Soviet Union happened very quickly. But actually, it started well before that. There were signs that it was happening before. And probably the most important sign was when there was an attempt at a coup, an actual coup in the early 90s, in 1991, basically there was an attempt at a coup. You had the military leadership try to take control, try to unwind some of the changes that had been going through that Yeltsin had been implementing. And you had this attempted coup that failed, but three months later the Soviet Union fell apart. So I think there is... I would say it's not the sort of thing that only happens overnight. I think it looks like it's happening overnight from over here. But from over there, there are signs of things falling apart, decay and so forth. In terms of how close Putin came this time, I think essentially not that close because they weren't in Moscow. In Moscow, Putin has his own. As I said earlier, there are all of these private armies operating in Russia. There's a National Guard that operates effectively to sustain Putin no matter what. I think the reason the Wagner troops stopped is because they realized that if they got to Moscow, then they would not be able to... Or if they got closer to Moscow, they would not be able to go any further and it would be a sort of a suicide mission. So I think from that perspective, it's going to be very difficult to physically remove Putin from office. But all it takes is someone within his inner circle who wants to remove Putin from office, who senses an opportunity. And I think this was sort of a test. It was a little bit of a test for everyone around Putin's circle and they saw that the emperor had no clothes. And so now the question is what sort of machinations are happening behind the scenes? Who is going to be allying with whom? And I think we have yet to see the repercussions, the full repercussions of this. So I think probably physically speaking, he could have held on. That said, I think really the reason why the military leadership did not fire upon the Wagner troops is because that would really look like a civil war. And that's something that Putin needs to avoid at all costs because civil wars in Russia are bloody, prolonged, dangerous, and everyone dies. So I think that's really the avoidance of that. So Putin's being even more careful about who serves him tea at the moment in the Kremlin. Mick, let me ask you to chime in both. What were your impressions as the Wagner mutiny played out? What did you think of that as a former military officer? And in the end, there was a lot of speculation at the time about what implication it would have on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war. What impact has it had so far, do you think? Well, I guess my initial impressions were I'd been in an overnight video conference and I just got to bed when he started this. I thought, couldn't you have picked a better time? You know, I wasn't terribly surprised. I think all the signs were there over months. I mean, multiple occasion, pregosion had threatened to pull these troops out. He'd actually pulled these troops out. There was a lot of back and forth between Wagner and the Russian Army, so there was no love lost there in Buckmoot. So what happened was a terrible surprise. You know, and to say the Russian military didn't resist isn't 100% accurate. The Russian Air Force did. It lost more aircraft than that day than it did against the Ukrainians in the first week of the counter-offensive. And if you think the Russian Air Force was gonna wait and see what happened, it was, it was gonna get in more. And the evidence is it was actually planning far more attacks on these guys as I come up the highway. I don't think that would have made it to Moscow. I think the Russian Air Force would have just obliterated them. So there is that, but what's the wider impact? Well, there's a couple of impacts on the Russians. You know, certainly Gorosimov is very weakened out of this. Far more than Shoyu. I mean, Shoyu and Putin are good mates. So I don't think you're gonna break that. Gorosimov is entirely dispensable for a range of reasons. One, he signed off on the evasion, didn't go well. Two, he's a commander. His big offensive for the start of this year didn't go well. Three, he was in charge of all the military reforms over the last 10 years, haven't worked out well. So, you know, if Putin is looking for a scapegoat for this entire war, Gorosimov is the guy. So, you know, I think he does not, he does not win out of this in any way whatsoever. You're seeing a bit of a mini purge. I mean, Surovikin has not been heard of since then. There are a couple other senior officers who've been called to Moscow for job interviews or whatever they wanna call them. That, you know, that ripples through the entire organisation. Militries are very sensitive to these things and we are the biggest gossipers you can ever imagine. So, you know, when something like that happens, it goes through the chain of command like that. So everyone's not just looking forward at the Ukrainians coming over the hill, they're looking over their back now. Now, how much of an impact that's going to have on the Russians in the short term? Not a huge impact, but it all builds up. It's this steady pressure that's building on the Russian system, both from the Ukrainians and from their own system and from their own lack of success and the degrading morale we're seeing. So I think there'll be a medium and longer term impact, but in the short impact, we haven't seen any discernible impacts on the battlefield. All right, what about European support, Mick, for the war? Tell us what you thought of the summit in Vilnius. What difference will that make? We heard Ben Wallace, the UK Defence Secretary, tells Zelensky that we're not Amazon. You know, you can't just keep ordering. Kit, are we starting to see some fraying there between the Allies and Kiev? I think that was more just statements of men who are very tired and under a lot of pressure than any indication of a systemic breakdown in the relationship. I mean, Wallace knew he was on the way out before he made those comments. And they're not very gracious comments when you think about it, when, you know, you say that about someone who's fighting for their life and say, you're not being very grateful for us. I just don't think it reflected well on Wallace. Now, I think Zelensky is out there just beforehand. He probably regrets that, but it's entirely understandable what he said. I mean, I think Ukraine leaving the Vilnius Summit without a clear pathway to NATO membership other than some vague promise and meeting conditions, which are entirely unclear, I think was grossly unfair. But I do think you're starting to see countries like Germany step up more now. I mean, a year ago, they weren't in this space, but you're starting to see countries like Germany provide a level of aid that is amazing. Poland has certainly stepped up in an unprecedented way. And I think, you know, most European polities have woken up to the threat posed by Russia. I mean, the Baltics didn't have to wake up to it. They knew, Poland knew, but a lot of other countries further to the West really needed to wake up to the threat. They're starting to do that. You're starting to see the right statements, if not the right budgets allocated to this. And, you know, that will make the Americans happy because they don't want to have to be sucked back into Europe in the same way they were in the Cold War because they've got a bigger problem on the other side of the globe they also need to deal with. So, you know, I think the Vilnius summit was a good summit, but not a great one for Ukraine. But if I may, the interesting thing, so I report mainly on European politics, and it's interesting because if you look at the EU support for Ukraine, it is an unprecedented level of unanimity about the need to continue supporting Ukraine. The EU can't agree on basically anything except its support for Ukraine. If you look at, there was a big EU summit, a big EU leader summit a couple of weeks ago now, and they had all sorts of things on the agenda that they wanted to agree on. And literally the only thing they agreed on was, it was a budget summit, they were talking about increasing the EU budget, and they agreed to increase the EU budget for Ukraine. So, not anything else, not even Green Deal stuff, but which is something that they've strongly, previously supported. But support for Ukraine remains a top priority. And just the night before last, there was like a really big development on the EU level, which hasn't been reported too much here, which is that the EU agreed that they were going to fund Ukrainians for the next, for the foreseeable future for around about five years to the tune of about 20 billion euro. And that's essentially, the way they're doing that is basically they are funding EU countries to replace kit that gets sent to Ukraine. So it's not direct funding to Ukraine, but it is funding for European armies effectively to replace the stuff that they're sending over. So that's a real long-term commitment to Ukraine that essentially acknowledges that this is going to take longer than this summer offensive or maybe even an autumn offensive. It foresees years of funding for this war. I think we shouldn't forget too that this support isn't just military, there's a huge amount of financial assistance that's being provided out of European countries. And the Americans, which is underpinning the Ukrainian government's monthly budget just to pay its soldiers and its civil servants and these kind of folks. And so when you look at all the aid that's being provided to Ukraine and the Australian government thinks about what it might provide, it's like, think beyond trucks. You know, there's a whole array of areas where you can assist Ukraine that isn't just about providing vehicles. A lot of other countries are doing this and it's essential to the survival of Ukraine just as the military assistance. Well, let's come to Australia's support for Ukraine as you mentioned it, Mick. How Mr. Albanesey announced a further package last week. How did you rate that and what marks do you give the Australian government in general for the support we're giving to Ukraine? Well, we certainly jumped in early and I think that was very commendable by the Australian government. The rhetoric early was very positive. I think the initial support with Bushmasters, APCs, Javelin Missiles, ammunition was very positive. It's what Ukraine needed and what it continues to need. The most recent packages, the $110 million package, I think probably some spanky maths in there getting to $110 million. How you can give 60-year-old armored vehicles and say they actually have a dollar value on your books anymore I think is only a federal government could do that under the Canberra Dream Bubble. Well, defence has its own account. Well, yeah, and if you understand that, please let me know because after 35 years I have no clue. But I think it wasn't a very good package. It was recognised as sloppy as sending second and third rate kit as an afterthought. The 30 Bushmasters, it's good and we've got a lot of them. We make them, we should send a lot more because they're simple to train on, simple to support and they save Ukrainian lives. But overall, I think the last six months their commitments have been too slow, too parsimonious, too far between packages. And the key things the Ukrainians need is things like budgetary support, money to buy more air defence stuff. We don't have to send them kit ourselves. We can send funds to buy into military systems like the Lithuanians did a couple of weeks ago to provide two more NASEM systems. So there's a lack of imagination in what we're seeing out of the government for the kinds of assistance we're providing. In the wake of the dam that was destroyed by the Russians, there was nothing from the Australian government except thoughts and prayers for too long whereas we could have sent $10 million to aid agencies like that. So there's a lack of imagination and I think, I get the sense the minister probably needs to be more directive with the department and say, listen, I think this is what the government wants. This is the prime minister's rhetoric, which I think is the right rhetoric, but you need to follow that up with action. But, you know, defence can't be the piggy bank for every foreign assistance mission. It can't be the piggy bank for the foreign minister for everything she wants to do in the Pacific, which appears to be the case. They need to also look at the defence budget and the foreign affairs budget to get on top of this. All right, let me ask you guys one more question and then I'm gonna go to the audience. This question of the location of the Australian ambassador, our ambassador hasn't been in Kiev, I believe, since the invasion on the 22nd of February last year. Other ambassadors from like-minded countries have returned to Ukraine. The DFAT secretary told Senate estimates in June that the danger of sending diplomatic staff into an active war zone was too great. What do you both make of that? And why... How do you explain this? It seems like an odd decision because, of course, there's risk. Everybody involved in this is facing risk, but it seems like a very odd decision. You know, I think the ambassador to Ukraine that we have who's currently resident Warsaw is a great ambassador. He spent a lot of time in Ukraine, speaks the language, knows the country very well. He should be there. Kiev is not an active war zone. I mean, please, not even close. Does it get attacked by drones and stuff every now and then? Yeah, it does, but, you know, if you have a look at death rate of people in Kiev, it's no higher than what you get in some cities in Australia, to be quite frank. It is not an active war zone. About 60-plus countries have already returned their ambassadors there. I mean, I've been there, it's easy. You book a train trip, you go. It's that simple. And it would enhance Australia's ability to understand what Ukraine needs, which is probably what they don't want. But it would also, you know, add an additional voice to the Ukrainian government, the amount of countries that are supporting it through rhetoric and through action. So that ambassador should be there. I have absolutely no doubt about it. It is nowhere near as dangerous as these folks who live in cubicles in Canberra. I think it is, it just isn't that. It's far less dangerous than Kabul was, and we had an ambassador there throughout the entire period we were in Afghanistan. It is mystifying to me why our ambassador is not in Kiev. All right, and I think it was, was it Zelensky who said at the end of last year, he said he hoped that the Australian ambassador would return to Kiev riding in a bushmaster. Oh, yeah, it's all like the Ukrainians have noticed. It's not like this is going under the radar. All right, who would like to put a question to Mick or Zoya? Please catch my eye. I'll start with this gentleman in the front row. If you can wait for the microphone, if you can tell us your name and any affiliation you have and then direct a short question at one of the panelists, please. Okay, so my name is Eric. I'm a graduate student at the University of Sydney. So thank you for the discussion. My question is, to what extent do you think Putin is holding out because he hopes that Trump will get elected in 2024? And if Trump does get elected in 2024, what effect do you think that will have on the Ukraine war? Thanks. Yeah, I think Putin decided towards the end of last year playing for time was the new strategy. You know, he watched Western countries get tired of deployments, places like Somalia and these kind of places. And there's a certain truth to that, but we also were in Afghanistan for 20 years. We were there for two decades before people started to get tired of it. Ukraine's only been going on for 18 months. So I'm not sure that's a valid assumption on his part. I think the hope that Trump gets re-elected is something that he's really placing a lot of faith in. And, you know, I can't see any reason why he won't be the Republican nominee at the moment, the way things are going. And, you know, Trump, in his most recent interview with Hannity, basically said, you know, I'll do a deal between Russia and Ukraine and we'll have this over very quickly, which is total nonsense, of course. But I think Putin really is hoping that a Trump White House will see a decrease in American military assistance, a decrease in American economic aid and a commensurate decrease in interest by European countries who are stiffened by American resolve at the moment. So, you know, I think Trump is this wonderful fantasy that Putin's engaging in at the moment and there's a better than 50% chance that it might actually happen. But the thing that I would add to that is that the EU has also is pricing in that Trump, potential Trump presidency. So, when you look at some of the things that the Europeans are doing, they are looking across the Atlantic. They're seeing that there's a strong chance that we may get less support, even if it's not Trump, that there may be less support, even just from the perspective of it being an election year in the US and Biden needing to potentially pull back some of that active kind of spending in case there's high inflation. So, the Europeans are seeing that as a threat themselves and that's why we're seeing the EU step up a little bit and we've got Ursula von der Leyen, who's the European Commission President, who is herself a former German Defense Minister who rumor has it might be the next NATO Secretary General. She's really pushing for additional assistance for Ukraine. We have similar pushes from Germany itself unilaterally as well as within the European Union. So, the Europeans have recognized that that's a risk and they are pumping more money and realizing that they're gonna have to be in this for the long term and may need to take some of those responsibilities financially from the US. That's good news, but the US I think is irreplaceable and I mean, just to intervene just for a second, I mean, Trump had a tortured history with Ukraine and domestic politics in the United States. We know that if he had been in the White House on the 22nd of February, it's very unlikely that America would have reacted in the way that it did. We know from everything he says and all his followers say about Ukraine that he doesn't care about it. So, it's not irrational in my opinion on Putin's part at all. So, thank you for that. Sorry, and just to add to that, there's also a strain in US foreign policy at the moment that thinks China first is China only. Like if to deal with China, they can only focus on China and some of it's Trumpism, but some of it's just this really pragmatic view, all they think is pragmatic that we just got to deal with China and everything else needs to not be worried about at the moment. Now, that's not gonna work clearly, but there is that strain in American foreign policy thinking as well. I saw this gentleman here with his hand up next and then I'll take Ryan Nealam in the front row. Thanks. Thanks Mick. One of the, my name's Nick, I'm not associated with anyone. I thought Naifo, but that's a different story. As you're aware, the Ukrainian government has regularly requested Hawkeyes. I understand they're being utilized currently in Operation Talisman Sands. Any thoughts about how they've been going in that and whether their use there has actually proven that their supposed break problems have been solved? Yeah, there was actually a government media release in 2020 or 21 that said the break problems have been resolved and you can still download that. It worries me that we live in a country that can't even fix breaks on a car anymore. And if we can't fix it, give it to the Ukrainians, they've done far more complex things and fixed breaks on a new car. And that's all we're talking about. The Hawkeyes is just a really advanced car with an armored cab. It's nothing more than that. It's got a digital backbone, but so they're being deployed on Talisman Saber, they're being used. And there's no reason we can't provide these things to Ukraine. But, you know, we also need to think laterally, there's a whole range of kinds of assistance, economic, military, humanitarian, and other assistance that we can provide to Ukraine that we're not. And I just wish the government would maybe look outside the Canberra Dream Bubble for good ideas because they're just not getting the creative thinking in how to support Ukraine from inside Canberra that they probably need. The Ukrainians do have a lot of creative thinking and the Hawkeyes reminds me that a couple of months ago, we hosted the Chief of the Defence Force, General Campbell, and a couple of hours before I interviewed him on this stage, the Ukrainians released this fabulous video about the Hawkeyes set to an AC-DC song. So their information operations, it didn't succeed in that case, but they're... Not yet. They're pretty effective. Ryan Nealam from the Lowy Institute. Thank you, and thank you to the panel. A question about the public support that underpins Australian staying power in Ukraine. This year's Lowy Institute poll showed that overall... At an overall level, there remains an overwhelming number of Australians that continue to support providing assistance to Ukraine. But when you look at the strength of that support, there appears to be some waiting, particularly in terms of providing military assistance and in terms of accepting refugees. Those both fell by 15 points in terms of strong support. My question is, do you see that as a concern, or is it to be expected one year after the shock of the invasion? Oh, I mean, it's always a concern, right? I mean, public will is part of any conflict, whether you're a direct participant or not. Like, so... Sorry. You know, when I see these things that Australians are war-weary from Ukraine, it's like, what do you mean war-weary? I don't see any Australian troops fighting there. You know, we've given $750 million over 18 months, which is about $0.07 per day per Australia for Ukraine. Where's this weariness coming from? Because I'm not perceiving or seeing weariness from this war. It's a lovely line in a media story, but it's not a reality. Australians are weary of inflation. They're weary of childcare costs. And that's real weariness, because that's a real thing and a daily concern. But I also think Australians understand deeply that life isn't just about the individual concerns, that it's about helping their neighbours. We saw it in COVID. You know, the way 99% of Australians stood up, I mean, this country, its citizens stood up and said, I'm important, but so is my neighbour. And they acted in that way in a way some countries did not. Some countries lost their minds. And I think Australians see foreign affairs the same way. They accept that there is a cost to helping their friends, whether in the South Pacific or whether they're in Ukraine. So it may not be 100% support. It may not be 95 or 90 or even 85% support. But the overwhelming majority of Australians, I think, understand as a prosperous, advanced, wealthy country, 13th largest economy in the world. We have an obligation to help ourselves and help others in their time in need. Zoe, did you want to add anything on that? I would say I think part of it is also perhaps a slight failure in framing the point of what is happening in Ukraine. Because the fact is that Australia has obviously, you know, Ukraine is far away, Russia is far away, it's unlikely that Putin will ever invade Australia. But that's not to say that we're not going to potentially have other issues closer to our doorstep. And what Ukraine provides us with is an unprecedented ability to study what drives a successful campaign, to test things in hot combat, to test weapons, to fix brakes on our hawk eyes and whatever else it is that needs fixing and tweaking. So I think it is an opportunity. And generally speaking, it's also a question of what kind of a world we want to live in. Do we want to live in a world where a country can invade a neighbour with no real repercussions and then just be able to claim a bunch of land as their own and continue going about its day to day? And I think that fundamentally is not something that Australians want. And so, you know, maybe it's not as vociferous and wholehearted a degree of absolutely agree in response to those questions, but I think ultimately it is still, we have a country that values freedom, that values sovereignty and the rights of people to not be murdered by a murderous regime next door. So I think there is still clearly a high degree of support, even if it may not be quite as wholehearted. All right, I can see it. Is that Julia Holman at the back? Yes, Julia, if you'd wait for a microphone. Thank you so much for the talk, Mick and Zoya. I just wonder how Russian people are seeing this conflict. Is there any threat at all to Putin? Is there anyone waiting in the wings? And if this offensive in Ukraine is successful for Ukraine, what does Putin do next? Will he be able to hang on to power in the same way he has? I would love to refer to the question of Russian, what Russians think about the war, as they see it, a special military operation. I was just visiting some family a few weeks ago, and one of my aunt is married to a Russian, an ethnic Russian, and his sister still lives in Russia, in Varunesh, actually. And she rang up, and we were talking about various things, and one of the things she said was, well, I don't want to talk about it, but I just pray every day that a war won't start. And that is how the Russians view what's happening in Ukraine. They don't really see it as a war. And I think we returned to what Mick was saying earlier. The reason why Ukraine is striking the Kursh bridge is because that is a bridge used by Russian tourists who are going for summer holidays in occupied Crimea and having a good time, like you and I would go to, I don't know, the Gold Coast. The reason they strike the highway is because it's people going about their life as normal, the reason why they strike the Kremlin. It's all to show Russians that this is a war, a real life war, and people are dying on the front, because for a lot of Russians, they just switch off. The Russian TV, state TV, which is where the vast majority of Russians get their news, they don't call it a war. The Wagner thing is another episode that really brought the war home to Russians, but even still, even after that, they just don't seem to get it. And I think that's why the Ukrainians are doing all of the things they're doing to try to wake the Russians up into understanding that their lives are irreparably worsened as a result of this war. Whether it's slow or fast, but essentially the ruble is falling, inflation is a sleeping kind of time bomb that's going to take off because the essentially buying power of Russians is going down the toilet again. So it is really one of those things where it's not currently understood widely in Russia what's happening. In terms of the risk to Putin if this counteroffensive succeeds. So the bottom line is that Russians will only hear what the Kremlin wants them to hear because the vast majority of them get their news from state-run TV and state-run radio and state-run newspapers. But the more you have these sorts of incepted opponents such as Wagner, such as Prigorshin tell Russians that the war isn't going well, which is what Prigorshin is now doing. He captured a million people on Telegram and now he's telling them that the war was started for reasons that were false and that the Russians are doing badly now. Those younger people who do get their news from Telegram, there is some hope that that message may get through to them. I think for now it's early days. A lot of young Russians left Russia in the wake of the war starting. Some of the best minds have fled. There is a known brain drain coming out and consistently has been coming out of Russia for years now. So I think the people who are left, the majority of them, the older folk who don't know how to access alternative forms of information, they may never wake up. Like they'll just wake up when suddenly, I don't know, Ukraine marches into Moscow or something. Yeah, I mean, I don't think Ukraine is gonna base its theory of victory on Putin being deposed. And you can get analysis saying Putin's actually been strengthened by what happened in the Prigorshin mutiny as well. Now, whether that's the case or not, he's had 20 years to really strengthen his position. We shouldn't be betting on him getting cancer or him falling out a window for Ukraine to win this war as entertaining a thought that might be. But, you know, is Putin vulnerable? Not very at the moment. And I think Ukraine has to fight as if he's gonna be there for the duration. And I would also say that even if Putin went tomorrow, it doesn't mean the war's over. You get someone even worse than him who's a hardliner and wants to fight the war competently. That wouldn't be a good outcome. So, Putin leaving the stage isn't the theory of victory in this war, unfortunately. I would add two points. One is that Bobo Lowe, who's an on-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute and a Russia expert did a podcast a couple of weeks ago with Sam Rogovine on exactly this question right after the mutiny and the elite politics in the Kremlin that people may be interested in watching. Second thing I'd say is that Putin may not be weakened or may not be vulnerable internally, but it's worth remembering always that internationally, he has completely weakened and humiliated himself. He is a pariah now. And I saw a story in the Times yesterday saying that even the South Africans, for example, are pleading with him not to attend an upcoming BRICS summit because there's an international warrant out against him and they're obliged to arrest him. And the Russians have told the South Africans that if the Russian president is arrested, then they will declare war. So these are the kinds of... This is the kind of thorny hedge that Putin has walked into and it's worth remembering that. And this is the good... If I can give you one piece of good news from my opinion, from my own point of view, 18 months ago, Putin was living in our head. We thought he was the great, he was such a brilliant strategist. Now, 18 months ago, we see him for what he is. He is weak, he is humiliated. He is not going to come back as a force in international relations that he was before this invasion, in my opinion. Sorry for the editorial. I'll take the question from the lady in the scarf, please. Thank you. My name is Lesha Holupko. I have no affiliation, but I'm an Australian of Ukrainian origin and I visit there regularly. I'm just reading about all the thousands of Wagner mercenaries moving into Belarus with their arms in recent days. Do you think there's a real agenda there which will affect Ukraine? I think it's unlikely to affect Ukraine. I think there is certainly a real agenda. The agenda is... Well, Lukashenko has an agenda in that he's the Belarusian leader. He has an agenda because he had a huge popular uprising that he quashed with Putin's assistance in the wake of fraudulent elections in 2020, and there were tens of thousands of people on the streets. And so he has a need to shore up his regime, particularly if he sees Putin as being weakened. He needs some other way of keeping himself in power. So he has an agenda from that perspective. But Egorzhin has an agenda in that he wishes to continue living his rich existence, and he doesn't want to be murdered. So he has an agenda to not be in Russia as well. And in Belarus, he has the opportunity to do what he did in Russia, which is gain power, gain influence, gain money, and go and operate and do his things that he wants to do in Africa. So I think there is obviously varying types of agendas, but I think at this point there is no way that Wagner can return to the front in Ukraine because no one else can trust them. And if you're in the army, as I understand it, having never been in the army myself, you need to trust the guy standing behind you. And I think that's gone, that trust is gone. And so I think there's no way that they can be reintegrated back into the Russian forces. Perhaps they can hold certain positions, maybe come in via the Belarus border and take some stuff for themselves, but they're not gonna be taking things for the Kremlin. I think their usefulness for the Kremlin is gone. Now, Wagner was very useful from about October last year to early this year. They kind of plugged a gap for the Russian army. It was exhausted, it was worn down, and it was Wagner and building lots of obstacles in the south that actually saved the Russian army plus slow Western military aid to Ukraine in the back half of last year. They don't need them now, they've mobilized, there's a crypto mobilization going on, they're bringing in 10 to 20,000 new soldiers a month. So they can drip-feed soldiers into Ukraine for the foreseeable future. They don't need Wagner anymore. I hope we see more of those Progosian disguises. That was great viewing. Yes, I'll see the person at the back with a hand straight up. Hi there, I'm Jodi, I'm a uni student at Sydney Uni. Back to the topic of Australia's embassy in Ukraine. Why do you think Australia hasn't reopened this, considering almost every other country has, and on top of that, do you think it's damaging Australia's international credibility that we haven't reopened? I'll answer the last question first. Yes, makes us look, I think it makes us look cowardly, to be quite frank, makes us look scared, like a scared country, and we're not that, but it makes us look that way. I think there's a range of different reasons. First, I think there's a preoccupation with the South Pacific in the current government and its foreign policy establishment. Absolutely focused on the South Pacific. Secondly, I think you've seen, over many years, a degrading of funding for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I think that's a tragedy, as Jim Mattis used to say, if you're not gonna give money to foreign affairs, you better give me money for more bullets. We shouldn't be in that game. We should be funding our foreign affairs establishment appropriately, and if you're going to trade and have some of your prosperity built on our relationship with Europe, you've also got to invest in its security, which includes having an ambassador in Ukraine and providing assistance to them. And I think, you know, the Prime Minister's narrative, when he went to Vilnius and when he was travelling through places like Berlin, about Australia's economic relationship and the importance of security in Europe to our country, that's the narrative for reopening our embassy in Ukraine. I just think there's a layer of extraordinarily risk-adverse public servants sitting in cubicles under the Canberra Dream Bubble that need to actually get out of that city a little bit more and see what the world's really like. Mick is not pro-cubicle, I'm getting. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take two or three final questions because we've only, we've got less than five minutes. So I'll take two or three questions and then you guys can answer them all at the same time. I'll take the question from Catherine Renshaw, I think it is, and then the lady here and this gentleman here with his hand up. We're gonna do three questions in one. Yep, I'll be super quick. It's just about cluster munitions. We haven't heard that discussed yet and I would love to hear the panel's views. Good question, yes, madam? If you could just wait for the microphone, I'm sorry. Look, I think it's probably early days but both sides are intransigent, right? Totally. Yes. And the Russians, Catherine the Great, invaded the Turkic area there, which is what now called Ukraine, 1784. And they left in the mid 20th century. Does this give them any sort of legal right whatsoever? As far as international law is concerned. All right, I will give this gentleman, this gentleman here, yes? First to comment, the economist- Just a question, sir, I'm sorry. We're almost out of time. What about the decision by Russia not to extend the grain deal? Yes, good question. And I have to take this gentleman because he's been trying to get my attention. So it's gonna be four questions. Thank you, Andrew Caldor, no affiliation. Has the picture changed or clarified as to how this conflict may be resolved or ended? I mean, everything seems to be getting slower. It's gonna be taken longer. Are we headed to a truce from exhaustion rather than a victory? Great, four fabulous questions. Let me remind you of what they are. I'll go to Zoya first and then to Mick. And you can choose which questions to address if I can put it that way. We had a question about what rights does Russia get from its historical, from its history with Ukraine? Does that give it any legal rights? We had a question about the decision by the United States to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine? We had a question about the collapse of the grain deal and then the final question from Andrew about is the situation clarifying what's the end game, I guess? So take your pick, Zoya. I'll do grain deal first. In terms of the grain deal, so yes, Russia pulled out of the grain deal. They're now hammering a de-support infrastructure to try to prevent Ukraine from exporting its grain. The good news is that the Ukrainians have seen this coming. The Russians have been telegraphing that they're going to be pulling out of this deal for months, if not for the full year it's been there. So they have shorted up various alternative routes such as through rivers and overland and it is estimated that almost as much grain will come out of Ukraine anyway. There is a short-term spike in prices but it's unlikely that there will be a long-term similar situation to what happened last time because there are alternative exit routes that have been planned. That's on the grain deal. Historical right, historical claim. So if we are to respect historical claims to territory, where do we stop? You could just keep going backwards further and further and further until we get to what? Like Alexander the Great or maybe we go back to the Ottoman Empire or maybe we go back to, I don't know, whatever it is, like the Vikings. Everyone has historical claims to all sorts of chunks of land. Maybe we should all go away and give the indigenous people back Australia. Like this is just when you start going back and revising history that way it doesn't work. There are agreements in place that everyone signed at the end of the Second World War where we agreed we would stop invading countries and taking over territory. End of story. On the question of the truth, oh the cluster munitions, cluster munitions, the Ukrainians need them to push through trench warfare. Obviously it's difficult because it needs demining but what's happening now is it's very retrenched. The only way the Ukrainians can push through is by demining tens and tens of kilometers of extremely heavily mined territory and then you've got Russian trenches. I don't know really much about this. I'm gonna leave the rest of it to Mick but the Ukrainians, that's why they want it. And on the question of whether a truth is more likely or less likely, I think regardless Ukraine gets to set the terms of this agreement, Ukraine has said what they want is the entirety of their territorial integrity pre-2014, I think nothing has changed on that front. I'll only take two of those in the interest of time. And you're gonna take cluster munitions. I do want to hear from you on that because there is a big debate about cluster munitions because we know they last for a long time and the civilian injuries and deaths. So that and that final question from Andrew about the end game. And Australia is a signatory to the convention on cluster munitions, both their development and their use. That said, I'm a supporter of them going to Ukraine firstly because there's a shortage of artillery and they need more of it. Secondly, there's no such thing as a moral weapon. Every weapon is immoral if you have that conversation, right? Anything that kills a human is not moral. And every weapon has a dud rate, just cluster munitions have a higher dud rate than normal. The Ukrainians know the weaknesses, they've accepted the weaknesses. Defence Minister Alexei Reznikov has laid down five rules for how and where they're going to be used. It certainly does point out that the remnants of war challenge after this is going to be massive. It's going to be absolutely massive. But the Ukrainians need them and we should accept them that they need them and how they're going to use them. On victory, the only way this ends is Ukrainian victory. The Ukrainian people do not want negotiations. None of the polls support any kind of negotiations. And if President Zelensky was to do it, he'd probably be out of a job in the next election if not beforehand. So the only way this ends is Ukrainian victory and I think there's a moral obligation on behalf of all of us to help us get there more quickly so less people die on the way to that. Fabulous speed dating round at the end. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, both Mick and I have been given the great honour of being sanctioned by the Russian government and appearing on those lists. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know, Zora, if you've been lucky enough. A girl can dream. You'll get there. Perhaps after this event, you will also be... You'll receive a battlefield promotion like Mick and I have. All jokes aside, I think it's been a fabulous event from two very knowledgeable people. This is the second of these events and I think if we can get Mick down from Queensland again and encourage Zoya back in, we might have to do another one later this year because this is such an important issue and it's changing all the time and it's so very interesting. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming and please join me in thanking Zoya and Mick.