Putin will be embarrassed and humiliated Analyst Sean Bell on Ukraines incursion into Russia

Our military analyst Sean Bell is here in the studio to give us a bit more insight into what is going on on the ground .

And , look , as I've been hearing from a couple of , politicians in Ukraine , morale is high because of this , and it it still caught everyone by surprise , even them .

No .

Exactly .

And I think that it's been caught everybody by surprise .

I mean , clearly , there's a lot of planning that went into this .

So , you know , for the inner sanctum cell .

I think what's been fascinating , though , that the information it's great to hear Deborah Haines talking from the country , but there's a wealth of information that's just been , you know , social media is going absolutely mad at the moment , but very little of this is based on facts .

We understand that , you know , all this started on Tuesday , but president Zelensky just tweeted literally just about an hour ago with a for the first time we've seen a formal engagement on this .

He's talked about three things .

Basically , that there have been dozens of attacks down the Donbas region , but his forces are repelling them and in control .

Secondly , he talks about the exchange fund has been replenished .

What he means by that is that the Ukrainians have captured so many Russian soldiers now that they are in a much better place in order to do prisoner exchanges .

And the third one , he says that they're working actively on a new support package of weapons .

I suspect that's because whilst the approval process in principle in America in approves a sort of an envelope of aid , they actually try and tailor it to the specific phase of the operation .

I'm pretty confident that the last lot of aid would not have expected this sort of incursion .

Therefore , there'll be different sorts of weapons in there .

But ever since that Tuesday , when just a 1000 soldiers went in , 20 tanks and the like , as we can see , the incursion of , Kursk .

Reason was unexpected .

All the fighting was down off the bottom right of the map , down there at all .

It culminated in the blow blowing of a bridge , which it was near Klitschkovo , there .

A pretty spectacular strike by Ukraine .

The video footage shows a bomb going in , and you can just see the bomb coming in the bottom left of the bridge there .

Yeah .

Initially , I thought that was a fighter jet delivering it .

But when you look at the geography , it's very unlikely in Ukraine , the fighter jets always straying so close to the border over Russian territory .

So it's probably an attack on or a storm shadow missile .

These bridges , vital resupply lines for Russia , for the peep for the ref on the ground .

But this is a in in strategic terms , it's a very small incursion by Ukraine .

Yes .

It's over a 1000 square kilometers , but in grand strategic terms , it's relatively small .

But , undoubtedly , it's gonna be rattling , the ability of , Russia to continue its military support .

Well , it it clearly shows weaknesses in their own defenses .

So what's president Putin gonna do next ?

One of the challenges I suspect is when Ukraine went in , I I'd be really surprised if they expected to get so far so quickly .

Yeah .

And what they found was a load of conscripts on the border , and that was it .

Now what Russia's president Putin , he will be embarrassed and humiliated by this .

He's seen as mister security out in Russia .

One of the options he's got is , if you look at the map , is , he's apparently bringing troops down from Kaliningrad , which is up near Lithuania up there into the region and also moving some folks up from Crimea .

A , that's a long way to go as you pointed out before , but also just getting any tanks or materiel equipment , it's a hell of a long way to go .

Also , they're not battle hardened , troops , and the Ukrainian forces involved are .

That will give Ukraine a significant advantage .

The other option , of course , he does is he takes away troops from the frontline .

Putin takes them away from the frontline and moves them up to deal with that .

Would it be a ruthless way of dealing with it ?

But , of course , that will ease pressure , on the frontline at the moment .

Now what appears to happen at the moment is Putin's trying to play both .

He's putting pressure on the Donbas , throwing some troops up there .

But the danger is over a 120,000 people .

We've heard reports up to 200,000 Russians have been evacuated .

They will spread the message into Russia that president Putin is not in control .

Suddenly , you're seeing president Putin's control of the narrative start to unravel .

Well , because Ukraine has changed their approach from defense to offense .

It's a cliche , but it's one as old as any , battle , writer , Sun Tzu and Machiavelli as well .

And and do you think there will continue to be offense on the offensive then , Ukraine , as a result of this ?

I I think it's very difficult from a military perspective .

I don't think they expected to get this far .

I think the real challenge is , do they hold out and expect a ruthless response from Putin , or do they elegantly withdraw having made their point ?

It's a long border .

Putin will be left asking , where next ?

Thank you very much indeed , Sean .