Hello and welcome back to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David.

The big excitement as we've been recording this, has been the

missile strike in eastern Poland right next to the border with Ukraine. For a moment, it seemed

like a vital threshold had been crossed that a NATO country had been attacked by Russia,

thus triggering Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which says that an attack on one is an attack on

all, and thus paving the way for a potential huge escalation of the war. Well, we can all breathe

again now. It seems that the storm has passed. The Polish president, Andre Duda, has said that

it was probably not a Russian missile, but a Ukrainian

air defense missile, one of the many fired that day against a barrage of incoming Russian missiles

onto Ukraine itself. Well, we'll have a closer look at that later on, but the big news for me is

still really Kerson. Wouldn't you agree, Saul? Yes, I would. As you say, Patrick, the missile strike did look

alarming for a moment, but a bit of a storm in a teacup. And the real news is what's happening at Kerson

and what might happen soon. It's clear now that despite all the talk of ruses and feints,

the Russians really have withdrawn from the only regional capital

they captured after the invasion in February, and they've now established new defence lines on the

far side of the Denepro River. The big question is what next? Is the abandonment of Kerson,

strategically cited close to the neck of the Crimean Peninsula, the beginning of the end for Russia's

war, or is it a sensible tactical move that allows its hard-pressed military to hold more

easily defensible positions in the south, while it moves troops to the battle that is raging

in the Dombas? After the break, we'll be putting these and other questions to Professor

Phillips O'Brien,

head of the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, and one of the most incisive commentators on the war, as proven by his huge and ever-growing following on Twitter.

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