Our security and defence analyst Michael Clarke has answered your questions on the Ukraine war in his weekly Q&A. Catch up below - and submit your question in the box to join in next week's edition.
Wednesday 4 June 2025 14:25, UK
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It's a great unanswered question of the strategic defence review, Michael Clarke says.
"What nobody knows is whether the public will buy this because what the review has said is that we've got to stop thinking of ourselves now as in a period of prolonged peace.
"We are already in a sort of war with Russia.
"The Russians are already making war on us up to the threshold with cyber attacks and attacks on our pipelines and attacks on our cables and it could get a lot worse.
"We're not at military confrontation yet, but that is where we're heading, and we've got to be prepared for that.
"We hope to avoid it by deterrence, but to deter it, you've got to be prepared to do it and the other side's got to see you can do it and that you're capable of it.
"What we don't know is whether the British public will be on board for that."
Clarke says "we'll find out" in the next year or two when the sacrifices that have to be made to implement this defence review come into force, for example higher taxes.
Clarke says we are now in a situation where we have to make "big decisions" on defence.
You can read more on the UK's defence spending here...
Do you think it's a clever idea publishing for all to see especially Russia how you got your drones into their country?
That's a judgement for Ukraine's special intelligence service and Volodymyr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y's office, Clarke says.
"Do they get more out of showing the world that they can do this or keeping the Russians in the dark?" he asks.
"The Ukrainians will want to show the world what they can do."
He says Kyiv wants to show: "We are the victim in this but we're not dead and buried. We can carry on, we can fight, we can hurt the Russians. Look what we can do."
Watch: Ukraine targets Russian military aircraft with drones
How has drone warfare affected other forms of conventional war tactics/machinery that were used at the start of the war?
Michael Clarke notes that when we say drones, we are also talking about robotics as well.
"Drones have been around a very long time, and we often say the first really effective drones were the V1 doodlebugs that the Germans fired two against London in 1944," he says.
In 2020, Azerbaijan used Turkish Bayraktar drones against Armenia.
"The Azerbaijanis used lots of them and found they were extremely effective against Armenia's Russian tanks," he says.
Clarke says he remembers at the time talking to people in the defence ministry and "everyone was taking this seriously".
"What the Turkish drones showed is that really cheap drones and using hundreds of them could make a strategic difference," he adds.
"That understanding in 2020 is what went forward in 2022 and 2023 in Ukraine.
"And what we have seen since is an astonishing development of drones and robotic warfare."
Were the two bridge incidents over the weekend in Russia a sign that Ukraine has Taurus missiles?
Almost certainly not, says Michael Clarke.
The two bridges that collapsed in Russia in separate incidents over the weekend in regions bordering Ukraine appeared to have "pre-laid charges", he says.
Late on Saturday, a road bridge came down in Bryansk, bringing several heavy trucks on to a moving passenger train, the regional governor said. At least seven people were killed and at least 71 were injured.
Hours later another bridge collapsed in the Zheleznogorsk district of Kursk, derailing a locomotive train.
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for the German-made long-range Taurus missiles and last week Germany committed to funding the production of Ukrainian-made long-range missiles, but wouldn't comment on Taurus.
Clarke says: "I think they will get Taurus missiles, but I think we'll see them more clearly when we do - and the bridge attack weren't a sign of that."
Why is Trump so quiet?
Donald Trump is so quiet because "he's on the verge of failure in this peace effort and he's not going to associate himself with failure", says Clarke.
He says the US president "may come through with some rabbit out of the hat initiative" but "the more time goes on, the more likely it is that America will walk away" from pushing for peace between Ukraine and Russia.
"He's quiet because his instinct, I think, is that this is going to fail so stay away from it," Clarke adds.
Will Ukraine attack the Kremlin? It seems like they could very easily or at least put the fear that they can
Attacks on the Kremlin would "play to Putin's narrative that Ukraine is involved in a war to destroy Russia", says Clarke.
"I don't think there's much to be gained politically from attacks on the Kremlin.
"And Ukrainians have got to stick to the idea that they are attacking into Russia and they're sticking to military targets that make a difference to them.
"Things that will ease the pressure on them: So aircraft that can launch glide bombs, fuel centres that are sending fuel to the front line, railway lines and logistics."
Hitting the Kremlin would also be "playing with fire", adds Clarke.
At current rates of attrition, is Russia likely to run out of soldiers and equipment?
Russian forces are unlikely to run out of soldiers, Michael Clarke says, because "it is recruiting people from all over the world and because it's paying them large amounts of money".
Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, while around 400,000 Ukrainian troops have also been killed or wounded, according to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Moscow's war machine is paying soldiers from the east of Russia a lot to fight in Ukraine, as well as soldiers from foreign countries, Clarke says.
There are also foreign workers from Asia and Africa working in Russia's arms factories.
"It's a big war machine, but it's like a sponge: you can punch into it and it keeps resuming its shape, but the sponge itself finds it difficult to create a big offensive, it just keeps spreading out," he says.
"It's very hard, therefore, for the Ukrainians to stop it unless they have a lot more modern equipment and some different tactics."
It will strain their economy, Clarke says, adding the war has "bent their economy out of shape already".
He says that is one reason Vladimir Putin is "going for as much as he can this year".
He also warns the quality of the army could go down as Russia keeps bringing in more foreign nationals into their armies who have not been properly trained.
Is a Russian summer offensive under way?
In a word, yes, Michael Clarke says.
At present it looks like a "rolling offensive" and "it doesn't at the moment look like some sort of big strategic thrust".
"We are seeing the feeding in of different units all the way around the front," he says.
Clarke says there are operations towards the key city of in Sumy in Ukraine's northeast, and more pushes down in the south in areas such as Chasiv Yar.
There is also fighting going on along a key road between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka.
"They're fighting over that road," he says.
"If the Russians get control of that road, then they can push north to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
"And if they get particularly Kramatorsk and even Sloviansk, then they've got the Donbas,
"Then, the games up for the Ukrainians in the Donbas."
He says the "key thing" is this road.
The Ukrainians declared about 40 aircraft were destroyed by drones, but the footage released only shows a handful of aircraft hit. How accurate is that number?
Michael Clarke says satellite companies have shown that at least eight aircraft were destroyed at Belaya air base, which is what the Ukrainians said.
"What the Ukrainians are saying is we have destroyed 34% of Russia's strategic bomber force.
"Now, that is not verified. But what we've seen so far links into what they've claimed."
Ukraine's only access to two of the plane models they attacked, the Bear and the Blackjack, was in one of their aviation museums, Clarke says.
"They used their two museum pieces to work out where are the fuel tanks, where are the control system centred. Where do you need this little drone to hit the bomber to do the maximum amount of damage?"
Joe: