Army of one million Ukrainians being set up for new counter-attack – as Russian wives’ plea exposes problem in Putin’s forces | Ukraine latest

Defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke has spoken to Sky News about the situation on the ground in Ukraine at the moment.

He discussed reports a force of one million people is being pulled together to help in the fight against Russia.

Asked if this is realistic, he said: “In the longer run it probably is, not immediately, because the Ukrainians are a country of 44 million people, and they have got a reserve force in which 300,000 of them – of the almost a million in the reserves – have served in the Donbas in recent years.

“I reckon that they’ve got potentially an army of about 400,000 troops, which is a lot more than the Russians have got there, and they can probably arm the people.

“They wouldn’t all be soldiers but they would be border guards, militia… internal security people. So yes, it’s plausible.”

However, Professor Clarke said there are plans to liberate the south of the country.

Should this happen, then the “pendulum will swing back towards them”.

“On present trends, if the Russians don’t do something pretty dramatic, then the pendulum will swing against Russian forces and towards Ukrainian forces,” he said.

Watch more from Professor Clarke in the video below…