Donnacha Ó Beacháin

And there was, of course, the conflict, which almost nobody remembers.

Brutal one in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

That was the first conflict.

real testing ground for drones in many respects.

Back in 2020, 2023, it concluded there was around 250,000 people were ethnically cleansed from the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

But what was remarkable about that, again, was the importance of drones.

And these were, at the time, the Bayaktar drones from Turkey.

But as I said, the Iranian drones are important.

The Russians and Ukrainians are now producing their own drones.

So it has transformed warfare

in a way.

And we are left with this stalemate.

Unfortunately, Russia has shown no signs that it wants to give up on its objectives to acquire as much of Ukraine as it can.

Unfortunately, it's been emboldened by the administration of Donald Trump, who has

try to coerce the Ukrainians to hand over territory which the Russians have not been able to acquire, you know, despite trying for 12 years.

Because really the first invasion goes back to 2014 and there are cities like Kramatorsk, for example, in the next region, which they've been trying for 12 years to acquire and they haven't been able to.

And Donald Trump is saying, you know, if you're interested in peace, you should hand these over to Russia.

But the Ukrainians know part of the fact that

there are people living there who don't want to be part of Russia and they've seen what happens to people when they are forcibly occupied by Russia.

They also know that strategically it would be a killer blow for Ukraine because these are fortress cities which protect Russians from further advancing and after that you have relatively open plains.