The surprise coming for Crimea that will shock the West | Ex-diplomat Cormac Smith

He said ordinary Russian people must now meet ordinary Ukrainian people, i .

e.

they get a taste of their own medicine.He's losing in the region of 35 ,000 per month.Crimea is going to be made a living hell.And we're already hearing tens of thousands of Russians who came in are fleeing the peninsula.

Thank you for joining me today, Cormac.Would you mind introducing yourself to our viewers, please?

Dominic, thanks very much for having me on.Yes, I'm Cormac Smith.I'm a former British diplomat.I served for two years in Kiev.I was embedded in Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a special communication advisor to the foreign minister who was Pavlo Klimkin at the time.And quite simply, that was a life -changing experience where I made some fantastic friends for life and fell in love with the country.

So since this further invasion, At the request of my friends, actually, I've probably done somewhere in the region of 400 interviews across 10 countries.

Ukraine's Minister of Defence, Mikhail Fedorov, has recently warned that he wants to turn Crimea into a living hell and he wants to turn it into an island.As we all know, it's a peninsula and it's being cut off at the minute through attacks.But what do you think he means by living hell?

well you know Ukrainian friends, I'm Ukrainian friends with serious connections have been telling me for some time, there's a surprise coming for Crimea, and it may not be what everybody expects.The thing I'd say about Crimea for, you know, most of the last four and a half years, in fact, back to 2014, most people in the West have assumed that Crimea would always be a step too far.People have always talked about Crimea being existential for Russia.And I've been trying to tell people for the last four and a half years, having lived among these people.for two years, that Crimea is not a step too far and Ukraine will eventually take Crimea back.There's no question about that.

I think it was Zelensky who said about a year, year and a half ago, he said this war began with Crimea and it will end with Crimea.It is absolutely It is absolutely existential for the Ukrainians.And what they're doing at the moment is they are effectively cutting off Crimea, the land bridge between Donbass and Crimea.The Russians are losing between four and five hundred fuel trucks and other logistics trucks per day.Crimea is being made completely untenable with and for quite some time.the Ukrainians have been preparing the ground for this by taking out air defense, which means that they can, once they take out the air defense, they can use their own long -range drones and also their own cruise missile, the Flamingo, which, you know, it's interesting to reflect this is a cruise missile which they have developed themselves and we gave them Storm Shadow.

but we always said that they couldn't strike behind enemy lines with Storm Shadow.Now, Storm Shadow has a range of 500 kilometers and a warhead of half a ton.The Flamingo, which the Ukrainians themselves have developed, has a range of 3 ,000 kilometers and a warhead of over a ton.So twice the warhead that's carried by either the British Storm Shadow or the French Scalp, which is a similar warhead.which is a similar piece of munition, but it's probably not as effective.So what they need to do, and they've been doing this for months and months and months, and I've been, I've discussed this with Philip Ingram, I think well, well known to, to viewers of the Sons channel.

I'm a good friend of mine and I speak to Philip on frontline a lot and myself and Philip have been discussing how they've been, they're slowly but surely preparing the ground.So yes, Crimea is going to be made a living hell and we're already hearing tens of thousands of Russians who came in are fleeing the peninsula.

We're seeing reports that Russians or the Russian military are seizing motorbikes in Crimea because they sound like drones.And that seems to be a ruse to effectively steal them.How desperate are the Russians in Crimea now?

Well, from everything I'm hearing, the Russians in Crimea are extremely desperate.There are massive fuel shortages.They are under constant attack from from Ukrainian drones and in some cases Ukrainian cruise missiles.I mean what the Ukrainians are doing, everybody keeps asking when is the Kursk bridge going to come down.Well the Kursk bridge has already been significantly weakened to a point where I believe it cannot anymore take heavy traffic.So the Ukrainians probably don't need to take the Kursk bridge out yet.

They will take it out at a time when when they deem it's fit to take it out of no doubt about that.But at the moment, everything is about, as the as the defence minister has said, making Crimea a living hell.Because of course, what Russians have done since 2014, theyput a lot of Russian people in to bring the Russian majority on the peninsula up.But what we're hearing now is these people are packing up and fleeing back to Russia.This is an all -out war.

It might seem to some Western ears and eyes that the fact that Ukraine has pledged to make Crimea a living hell, might seem pretty harsh but you know Russia has made Crimea a living hell for over 12 years for the Ukrainians and the Tatar people in particular who are a minority who have been oppressed and persecuted right back to Stalin's time and they continue to be persecuted.When I was in Kiev I had the great privilege of meeting the leader of the Crimean Tatars the day after he was let out of prison.I met him with his wife and his lawyer.His lawyer, by the way, was a Russian, but, you know, incredible people.So, yes, I think what a Ukrainian friend of mine said yesterday, and this was in relation to the attacks on Moscow, which we'll talk about in a bit, but it applies equally to Crimea.He said in typical Ukrainian syntax, he said ordinary Russian people must now meet ordinary Ukrainian people, i .

e.they get a taste of their own medicine.What Ukraine has done, they've opened up two more fronts.In my civilian way, I describe it as the three points of the Trident.You know, the Trident is the national symbol of Ukraine and the Trident has three points to it and the first point of the Tridentis the front line where, and listen to this figure, Ukrainians are currently killing between 6 to 1 and 8 to 1.

Zelensky has said 5 or 6 to 1, no less than Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, came out a few weeks ago and estimated that it was 8 to 1.May was the first month since I think 2023 when Ukraine actually took back more land than it lost.We know that since December Putin has been unable to recruit sufficient new recruits to replace the number of men he is losing.He's losing in the region of 35 ,000 per month.Now to put that into perspective, that is twice as many casualties in one month as the USSR lost in Afghanistan in 10 years.Let that sink in.

And this has been sustained.That's the first point of the Trident.It's going very, very bad for Russia.And we hear we hear reports of just horrendous morale and very poorly trained soldiers being fed into a meat grinder and being very badly treated by their NCOs and their officers.The second point of the Trident is the logistics chain, which I've already alluded to and the figure for that is, and I've been watching it every day as I say, I'm sorry I didn't check it before I came onto it, but it's running between four and five hundred logistics trucks, mainly along that land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.So this ties into the conversation we were having about Crimea, but also what they're doing is they're hitting safe, previously safe places where

they rotate their troops, where their troops can go to get a little bit of rest and recovery and so forth, they're not safe anymore.The soldiers don't have enough food.because they're hitting the logistics trucks.They don't have the ammunition.They're absolutely decimating the morale of the troops with what they're doing at the logistics chain.That's the second point of the Trident.

The third point of the Trident we're probably going to come on and talk more about is the long range strikes.We've seen Moscow hit twice, but we saw the absolute devastating attack on Moscow yesterday, and as I've already quoted a good friend of mine with that wonderful Ukrainian syntax, it is time that ordinary Russians meet ordinary Ukrainians, i .e.they get a taste of the medicine that they've been dishing out.But still, remember, the attacks on Moscow have been, there was one iconic picture, you may have seen it, where the lid of one of these massive storage tankers was blown literally hundreds of meters into the air.And of course, the Ukrainians who have a wonderful, wonderful sense of humor and making memes have turned it into a UFO.

They have turned it into a they've turned it into Zelensky's Jewish skullcap.Yes.And they have turned it into a skateboard with with I mean, all sorts of things.But yeah, I mean, I can only describe the mood among all of my friends as absolutely celebratory.

Yeah, on that Moscow attack, the biggest one in the war so far from Ukraine, just what do you make of the air defences?We saw Russian military personnel firing manpads on a highway.What's happened to the S -300 systems?Aren't they meant to be the best in the world?

No, they're not, clearly.Look, again, reports I'm hearing is that the air defence has been absolutely chaotic.Ukraine struck Moscow with, I believe, over 1000 drones and other missiles.Russia is claiming to have shot down less than 200.Now if I think when there's a massive attack on Kiev there will be maybe six, seven, eight hundred drones and other missiles fired at Kiev or other cities and the Ukrainians are claiming to have shot down 90 % of them.So it would seem and I've also heard reports you know about Russian aircraft chasing drones in vain and failing to shoot them down.

There have been reports about Russian anti -aircraft missiles crashing into their own apartment blocks.It would seem that their air defense has been overwhelmed and it would seem that the coordination has not been very good.That's my impression.there will be people out there who will be far better qualified to comment on that from a technical and from a military point of view.But certainly, if you look at the figures, over a thousand drones and the Russians are claiming to have shot down less than 200.That's 80 % getting through.

You compare that to what happens when Ukrainian cities, you know, I've heard reports of six, 700 drones being fired on Kiev and andof them being shot down.But the ones that did get through still caused great carnage and devastation.So yeah, Russia's not doing very well at the moment.

What was also striking about the attack was it was near urban areas.So lots of civilians, lots of Muscovites witnessed it, filming it.is the war coming home to the Russians?And just what was Putin's compact with the Russian society?And how is that being absolutely ripped up in front of his eyes?

All right, Dominic, I think, look, two main points on that.Firstly, yes, this war is being brought home to the Russian people.And, you know, the thing that I learned when I was out in Ukraine is the absolute iron grip that Putin has over communications.And we know recently one of his actions has been to shut down the internet or to shut down Wi -Fi signals and different platforms.And this has caused a huge amount of disquiet and unhappiness among the population.So yes, very importantly that this is now bringing the war home to ordinary Russians who for most of the last four and a half years, any polling that has been done has seemed to indicate very, very high support for the war and for Putin.

The most recent the most recent polling that I saw indicated that 60 % I think it was of the Russian people were now in favor of ending the war.So it is clear as andyou know, I'll say something very, I'll be very, very blunt here.It's been very, very clear from the start that if there was any disquiet among Russians, it wasn't because they were, it wasn't because they were opposed to what Russia was doing.in Ukraine to ordinary Ukrainians.Remember we're talking about, just to mention something else, we're talking about well north of 200 ,000 war crimes being investigated currently and that rises every day.

The Russian people have not shown, the vast majority of the Russian people have shown no inclination to care about that.They care when it starts to affect them.What you're having at the moment very, very visibly, this will be known all across the Russian Federation now, because as you say, ordinary people are out filming it on their phones and they can see it.But there's something else that's important.And you said, you know, the compact between Putin and his people.Well, I believe that one of the most important compacts between Putin and his people is, in particular, the people of Moscow and St. Petersburg, right?

And to date, the people, the Russian people that have suffered the most have been from the regions.And there is almost an unwritten...Moscow and St. Petersburg are where the middle classes live, where the wealthy Russians live, where ultimately the class that Putin depends upon for his support.So he has never drafted from Moscow and St. Petersburg.We saw, was it two weeks ago, the Petersburg International Economic Forum where, you know, where Russia is putting togetheron display as a great world power and a great investment opportunity where, you know, the Ukrainians struck right in the middle of the forum when the world was watching.

And that was important because it was bringing it home to the people of St. Petersburg.And what's happened this week, of course, is bringing it home to the people of Moscow.So I think it's important for two reasons.It's important because it's bringing home to the Russian people in general, but specifically, it's bringing it home to that critical class of the Russian people who live mainly in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the middle classes.And that is where, that is what is, I spoke to a Ukrainian friend recently and I said, look, you know, will the, you know, will the Russian people rise up?And he said, no, man, he said that they're serfs.

They'll never do that.Very senior diplomat, by the way.And he said, no, he said, but it's his inner circle that will rise up against him.Because his inner circle will, they're the ones that are in direct contact with the wider middle classes.And in particular, as I say, around those population areas of Moscow and St. Petersburg.So I think it's beginning very dangerous for Putin.

And of course, what we're hearing now is he very, very rarely appears in appears in public in recent months.And when he does, it is with a massive security detail and bodyguards surrounding him.So the general reports that we're getting is that he is becoming increasingly paranoid and increasingly fearful for his own safety.So yeah, watch this space.

What exactly is the Compact?It seems quite alien to to where I'm sitting, you know, we've got the by -election results today and we have a deadlock.society.What's this deal?What is it?

As it's been explained to me, it's an unspoken or an unwritten deal between Putin and the middle and the upper middle classes, and those people that, as I say, populate St. Petersburg and Moscow in particular, that their commodious life, will be protected and their sons and daughters won't be sent to the meat grinder.They will send the sons and daughters and the sons mainly of people from the from the far -flung quarters of the Federation.Remember, there's a, you know, Moscow and St. Petersburg, these incredibly wealthy cities where you have a lot of very, very wealthy people.Russia is a country where 50 % of homes do not have an inside flush toilet.It was, you know, there were jokes, but it was true when the in the early days, and when we had all those horrible atrocities in Bucha and Irpin and Mariupol, of course, and the Russians were looting, the Russians were looting and stealing anything they could find.They were, they were actually stealing toilet bowls.

There was, but I mean, that is true.50 % of, you know, the huge proportion of Russians are extremely poor.It is a country that has, I would go as far as to say, has never had a history or a tradition of seeking after freedom and democracy as we have in the UK.as we have in Ireland and we fought against the Brits for 800 years.You've heard that story, right?And many other countries and the great traditions of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence.

And this always has freedom at the heart of it, right?And when I went to Ukraine, the thing that struck me most was everybody talked to me about freedom.And the Ukrainians understood in a way that most of us have forgotten.I had granduncles fought Hitler.I'm sure you did as well.They were Irish, but there was estimated 300 ,000 Irishmen, both from the island of Ireland and the diaspora, both in the UK and America, fought against Hitler in the Allied armies.

But we have forgotten about it.And even the memory we have, when I went to Ukraine, I found these were people who had grown up with the horrors of the Soviet Union.And they had got their finally got their freedom in 1991, but they still hadn't got the Russian boot off their neck.And they really there's a there's a I always think of this great mural just on a building overlooking my dam, which is the square in the middle of Kiev where the revolution was centered in 2013, 2014.And it's a chain breaking.And it simply says freedom is my religion.

And, you know, when I met my minister for the first time, Pavlo Klimkin, And we had a meeting that went on for about two hours when I first sat down to, you know, to meet him.And I remember I said to him towards the end of the meeting, I said, there's one question I want to ask you.I ask every leader that I meet, whether it's a minister or a council leader or chief executive that I've worked with over the years.And I said, what do you want to be famous for, minister?Now, when I've asked people this before, some people have given me some brilliantown or girl's own fantasy of how they want to see themselves, or some people don't feel comfortable answering it.

And he just thought, he said, this is a very good question, I need to think about it.And he proceeded to talk to me about freedom for about 10 minutes.And what it meant for him personally, what it meant for the Ukrainian people, what it meant from a government point of view at every angle, and was so thoughtful.And then he proceeded to say, that's probably not a very good answer, but that's, I said, no, you know, it was a great answer.So I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, but I'm going to come back to where Ukraine, this is where Ukrainians are so different to Russians.They have this, they have this, they have this thirst, hunger for freedom.

Russians don't.Russians throughout their history have, have, have, have, have thirsted after a strong leader.They have always looked for a strong leader.There is very, very little tradition in Russia, and I would say it does not exist today for freedom and democracy.I can well remember long, long before I really started to understand this part of the world, after the fall in the 90s, listening to diplomats and other people being interviewed on the radio and television, when we thought that Russia was going to embrace Western democracy and capitalism.And I can well remember one interviewer Russian MP, maybe, but it was a Russian person saying, look, you know, you want to impose your Western ways on it.

We're not interested.This is not right for Russia.And the Germans were more, the Germans were more guilty than any, than anyone on Angela Merkel.And they had a, they had a policy called Wandel durch Handel, which in German translate to change through trade.And there was a belief that if we just traded with them and everything else that didn't work,that they would see that our ways were better.

And of course, it never happened.So I think that's that's and I've got a lot of confidence in saying this.The Russian people do not thirst after freedom and democracy in the way that you and I do.Only most of us have actually forgotten what it's we don't know the real value of it and the price of it.Ukrainians are people that I learned when I went out there in 2016.They knew the value of freedom.

They knew the price of freedom.They had already proved since the war began in 2014 that they were willing to pay that price.And my God, how they have proven to the world for the last four and a half years how they are willing to pay that price.We can learn a lot.You know, we talk about sometimes about our own, you know, democracy being under pressure or whatever.we can learn an awful lot from Ukrainians.

That for me is the fundamental thing.Russians do not thirst after freedom and democracy, they thirst after a strong leader.Ukrainians thirst after freedom and democracy.