united services institute for defense and security studies. he joins us up from oxford. welcome to the program. as we heard that conflicting numbers when it comes to casualties, but of course, by any stretch of the imagination, this is a significant attack. what's your understanding of what's happened here? well, i think that obviously you, wayne was answering to the wave of that. miss allen drums drank it, occurred in the capital against a 1000000 infrastructure ger on either side of the new year and debt ukraine couldn't have responded to one a few ways. you could have responded by striking russian territory again. i could get it angles around christmas time. work of stab responded by striking targets inside on bass. i could stand repeatedly. the interesting thing about this attack is that mackie fca is a stronghold for russian conscripts typically attacks of this nature. and because now and other parts of the front line we're targeting warden are mercenaries. and how unusual is it for russia tool to admit the casualties on this scale? according to the russian defense

for you gradient. i put that question to ed arnold. he is the european security research fellow with the royal united services institute. no, don't think so. what we saw yesterday is a significant defensive capability in the form times which has to be used with all of the other and military assets of the western provided, linking through fighting vehicles and artillery. and that will have real use come spring and summer when ukraine is going to go on the significance offensive in terms of the strikes that we're seeing as the last 24 hours, which has been striking the civilian targets for months now. and so i don't think that those 2 things are linked in terms of escalation of what they did in terms of the time commitment yesterday. and then on the 3rd and final points. yes, we're still taking some ground, but it's incremental. it's not much ground. it's of no strategic value in that bank and very, very heavy cost for or you could bids then that when once we reach a certain number of tanks in ukraine, that we will see the gradient military. they'd be able to not only hold these front lines, but be able then to push russian forces back. if the i mean, are you convinced that's going to happ