Welcome to Pushback. I'm Marin Mate.

Joining me is Jacques Bo. He has served in a number of senior security and advisory positions at NATO, the UN, and with the Swiss military.

He is also a former Strategic Intelligence Officer with the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service.

Jacques, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for inviting me.

Let me just start by asking you to talk more about your background and how it has

your, how it has informed your visibility into the crisis in Ukraine.

Well, as I, as you said, I just said, I'm a strategic intelligence officer. I used to be in

charge of the Warsaw Pact forces in strategic. That was during the Cold War, but still I have a good

visibility on what's going on in Eastern Europe. I used to speak and read Russian as well,

so that gives me some access to some documents.

And recently, I have been seconded to NATO as head of the struggle against proliferation of small arms.

And in that capacity, I was involved in several projects from 2014 onwards with NATO in Ukraine.

And so I know the context quite well.

I was also monitoring the possible import of influx of small arms or arms or armaments in the Dombas in 2014.

And I have also worked because in my previous assignment in the UN,

I used to work on the restructuration of armed forces.

So when the Ukrainian armed forces got some problems,

I mean, problems with personnel, issues with suicide,

with all this kind of things that you had in 2014,

also problems in recruiting military.

So I was asked to participate in for the NATO, on the NATO side, on several projects in restring Ukrainian armed forces.

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