Recent events on the Russia-Ukraine border have surprised many, and here in the Forest of Dean we are not immune to that sense of puzzlement. How could Ukrainian forces enter Russia so easily? What is their plan? Why have the Russians, with their vaunted military and superior numbers, not yet thrown them out? The answers show a side to this war that Western media have yet to embrace.

The key strategic element here is that Russia has chosen to wage war based not on intelligent analysis but on superior numbers of men and equipment together with the willingness to kill and destroy indiscriminately, whereas the out-gunned defenders have been forced to use their brains.

Also, two and a half years into this war, the realities have changed.The how and why of the recent Ukrainian strike provides crucial evidence of this last point. In particular, what was once the overwhelming force available to the invaders is no longer the case. Russia may yet overcome this reversal, but the effects of the war on manpower and equipment are significant.

Let me explain.Immediately after Vladimir Putin launched his ‘Special Operation’ on February 24 2022, to re-integrate the Slavic peoples of Ukraine into Mother Russia and start to rebuild the Soviet empire, his forces swept into the south and east of Ukraine, while a huge column of tanks headed the short distance south from Belarus to capture the capital, Kiev.

Three weeks later, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that Britain would supply the Zelensky regime with Starstreak missiles. These are ‘MANPADS’, or Man-Portable Air-Defence Systems, shoulder-fired guided missiles that had already been supplied without fanfare to the defenders of Kiev and had been crucial to saving that city, as early versions are even more effective against tanks.

This has been the story of the entire war: the humanity, resilience and inventiveness of Ukraine, coupled to the astonishing accuracy and effectiveness of modern western weaponry has been too much for the Russian war machine.Early in the war, there was pressure on Ukraine to show its gratitude more visibly for our tanks, missiles and air-defence, such as the American Patriot systems. What hubris! The Ukrainian peoples are defending our Eastern flank against the Russian Bear, and suffering mightily for it. It is we who should be thanking them.It has not all gone to plan.

Western military advisors, as ever fighting the last war, advised earlier a major tank incursion, which the modern Soviets decimated with drones. The Ukrainians took over strategy, learnt and adapted, and have embraced – and greatly advanced – drone warfare. These are fpv drones, ‘first person view’, equipped with cameras, communications and remote controls, and as a result the video game generation has taken over the war and streamed it to YouTube and Telegram.

Ukraine is now schooling NATO and the World in how to fight. For many months now, Ukraine has been following a strategy that has gone over the heads of traditional media. Ask your video-game playing teenage son what he would do with virtual high-accuracy high-explosive – if he could see the battlefield with the clarity of the best spy satellites. Ukraine has targeted, with devastating effect, the most advanced military equipment of its enemy and any gathering of its military leadership.

The results are stark. Russia’s current military leadership on the ground is inexperienced. Entire elite battalions no longer exist. Their best and hugely expensive anti-aircraft systems have been largely taken out by the missiles they were designed to repel – their failure was to be a generation of weaponry behind their opponents. What is left is retained to defend Moscow and the Putin bridge to Crimea.

Here those of a delicate disposition may wish to look away for a couple of paragraphs. Russia has reacted to equipment shortages in its army by sending in its infantry, now mostly poorly trained recent conscripts including significant numbers of freed convicts and mercenaries. Its largely failed assaults have become known as ‘meat waves’, which I think is about as graphic as we should go. This was a favoured tactic of Yevgeny Prigozin and his Wagner group, but now universal.

As a consequence of Western weaponry, Ukrainian military skill and this enforced change in tactics, Russia’s human losses are six to eight times those of Ukraine. It has even, gruesomely, put a strain on the supply of bullets from the West. India, which had loaned troops to Russia, is withdrawing them urgently.

Half a million Russian men are dead or incapacitated. This is the war crime by Putin, perpetrated on his own people and one that has not yet been discussed.Experts have wondered whether Russia has any reserve capacity left, and this incursion by Ukraine appears to have answered that. As to the intent behind the action, Ukraine has shown itself throughout to be a capable player of chess. What Russia does next will create a weakness elsewhere and hence determine Ukraine’s next move.

There is a wider consideration. Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine, but half a million casualties, added to all those who fled conscription, is devastating for Russian society and its economy in both the short and medium term.Slowly, incrementally, NATO has been ‘boiling the frog’, gradually turning up the heat on Russia with its technological supplies to their intended victims. For ‘jumping out of the pan’, read ‘pushing the nuclear button’ as the consequence to avoid. In the view of many experts, Putin is close to being cooked.