Hello and welcome to the battleground podcast with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

The big news from the frontline this week is that while Ukrainian forces continue

to expand their bridgehead on the east, that is, the left bank of the Denepro River in Kesson-Oblast,

southern Ukraine, Russia is trying to regain a theatre-wide initiative with several simultaneous

offensive operations in eastern Ukraine. They are, according to the respective think tank,

the Institute for the Study of War, unlikely to be successful. One of the reasons why is a lack

of manpower, an issue underlined by British military intelligence this week when it upgraded

its estimate of Russian military losses to 300,000 killed and wounded.

That's an astonishing number, isn't it, Saul? Meanwhile, Ukraine's main military effort over the

past seven days seems to be part of a wider strategy for the winter to interdict Russian

supply routes by using missiles, drones and partisan attacks to strike ships, ammunition facilities,

command and control centres, and high-value targets well behind the lines.

And on the diplomatic front, mixed messages are coming out of Germany.

On the one hand, the Schultz coalition government has promised to double Germany's military

aid to Ukraine to 7 billion. But on the other,

Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius, has warned that the EU is unlikely to meet its

promised target of delivering one million artillery shells and missiles to Ukraine by March. We'll discuss

the significance of all this and what developments we might

expect to see in the coming months. But first, what's been going on on the battlefield, Saul?

Well, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Ukraine has now established firm bridgeheads

in at least five positions on the east, that is the left bank of the Denepro River in

Kesson-Oblast, and is beginning to expand them is the left bank of the Denepro River in Kesson-Oblast,

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