Episode 275: Hybrid Warfare: The New Normal with Cormac Smith

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil

Dive into the ongoing war with Cormac Smith today. Dominic and Cormac discuss Mariupol, whether the war can be considered genocide, the disinformation war, the reality of Russian aggression, war crimes, hybrid warfare, the need for unity, and more!

Today we are joined by Cormac Smith. Cormac works at the intersection of authentic leadership & effective communication. He travelled to Ukraine in 2016 to take up a special appointment as the ‘Strategic Communication Advisor’ to Pavlo Klimkin, the then Foreign Minister of Ukraine. Cormac was attached to the British Embassy in Kyiv but was embedded in Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the first foreigner to hold such a position. There he worked for the cabinet ministers of Health, Education and the Deputy Prime Minister. In addition, he worked with The National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine and the NATO mission to the country. In 2018, Cormac joined the National Security Communication Team in the Cabinet Office, specifically to advise on Russian Disinformation / Hybrid Warfare tactics, in the wake of the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury. In addition, Cormac is a communication coach & charity leader & Bobsleigh veteran!

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

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Transcript:

Cormac Smith: It’s very, very simple. if Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine.

Elisa Garbil: Welcome back to the International Risk Podcast, where we discuss the latest world news and significant events that impact businesses and organizations worldwide.

Dominic Bowen: Hi, I’m Dominic Bowen and welcome to the International Risk Podcast, and today we’re joined by Cormack Smith. He’s a former strategic communications advisor to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, and he was doing that between 2016 and 2018. He was actually the first foreigner embedded in the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he’s helped give shape its message literally.

And politically and figuratively whilst under fire and he’s since advised the UK Cabinet Office On Russian disinformation and on hybrid warfare. He’s also trained ministers and diplomats across Europe in strategic communication. And today we’re gonna explore how Ukraine manages risk and resilience under what is really systemic stress and what’s changing in Russia’s tactics today [00:01:00] and why strategic communication and authentic leadership is just as decisive As Air defense systems are Cormac, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

Cormac Smith: Dominic, it’s a great pleasure to join you. Thank you.

Dominic Bowen: Cormack last night was another terrible night in Ukraine, and, and Kyiv was hit, along with several other cities and electricity has been affected. Residential buildings were hit by Russian drones and missiles, but this isn’t the first time in the 1920s and 1930s.

So a hundred years ago, USSR Under Vladimir Lenin, he’d set up 900 concentration camps in Ukraine in an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian people, to remove the Ukrainian culture and the language and the heritage. Now, if we look at the legal definition of what genocide is, it’s the physical destruction in whole, in part of a, a group of people.

Is genocide occurring today in Ukraine?

Cormac Smith: I absolutely believe it is. Dominic I was predicting back in January of 2021 that, Putin would go in and if he did, it would be genocidal. Because what I can remember saying at the time was he would’ve no [00:02:00] compunction with murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

He had done it in Aleppo, in Syria, and he had done it in Gros, in Chechnya. now. Unfortunately that came to pass. the first city he decided to make an example of was Mariupol. Now, Mariupol is a city of, was a city, beautiful city on the coast of half a million, about the same size as Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.

Up has been virtually wiped off the map. 95% of the buildings destroyed. nobody knows exactly what the death toll is. The most conservative estimate is that 25,000 civilians died in about seven weeks of the siege of Mari Upal. but reports from the mayor’s office, go up to as high as now.

I know because a friend of mine, a chap Cole, Sean Pinner, a former British soldier who. Ukraine and married a Ukrainian woman and took out Ukrainian citizenship. And when the war was on the horizon, he used his 19 years in the British Army experience and he joined the [00:03:00] Ukrainian Marines. And Sean, you know, got his wife out of the way and his family, and he stayed behind to fight for his home.

And his city, he was ultimately captured. they treated him as a, terrorist or a mercenary. He was tortured horribly for about a year and a half. He was sentenced to death. he finally got out. Thank God on a prisoner swap. He has since written a great book called Live Fight Survive.

I was having a meal and a few pints with Sean in London earlier on this year, and he told me where the title of the book came from. He got one last phone call to his wife before he was captured and he was expecting her to break down crying and she screamed down the line at him, Liv.

Survive. just to put it in context, so I know a little bit about Mariupol apart from the band that I wear proudly on my wrist, which is a piece of the last steel ever produced in the, as of steel and iron works in Marial, where that heroic last stand was carried out in defense of the city.

These are sold now to raise funds for the, Ukrainian Armed [00:04:00] Forces Forces. This was a 60th birthday present from my closest Ukrainian friend two and a half years ago. I swore it would never come off until Ukraine has won this war, which in my heart, I believe they will. But we can talk more about that later.

to put it in context, what they have done in Mariupol is the Nazis in Mariupol in two years, in the Second World War killed 20,000. Russia has possibly killed a hundred thousand in seven weeks. Put that in context. And it was systematic. And I don’t wanna go into the detail because I have pictures in my mind of the sort of atrocities and, sexual violence that was perpetrated on not just Ukrainian women.

Men sometimes, but children and even babies by Russian soldiers in Mariupol, in, in Bucha, in many other cities, towns, and villages where the Russians have entered. and this was systematic. so yes, this is I believe, absolutely genocidal. You know, you mentioned one of the tests. There are five tests in there.

United Nations, Convention on [00:05:00] genocide. One of those is, and I can get the exact wording off the top of my head, please don’t challenge me on the exact wording of all five, but it’s taking children from the group and placing them with another group. Now, we know at the moment that this is the basis of the arrest warrant, which was issued nearly two years ago now for, Putin and one of his, I think.

Is head of children’s services or something, I can’t remember her name. but that’s been recognized and we know that again, the most conservative estimates are 20,000. But actually from a good source, I’ve heard a minimum of 35, possibly as many as 40,000 Ukrainian children have been stolen, kidnapped, Put into a Russian family spread far across the Russian Federation. And we also know that, children who are of the right age are being forced into the armed forces to go and fight against their own people. this is genocide.

we heard a lot of lies and a lot of disinformation as to why Putin invaded when I reel them off, ‘ cause I sat down with a good Ukrainian diplomat friend [00:06:00] at the beginning and I said, let’s identify the top five lies that Russia tells to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

Well, we’ve all heard it was NATO expansion. No, it wasn’t. Ukraine wasn’t even a member of nato. We’ve all heard that Ukraine was full of Nazis. No, they’re not. They had an election where 73% of the population, voted a, Jew of Russian heritage to be president, and Ukraine was the only country. That one stage had a Jewish president and Jewish prime minister who was, at one stage they said that was a war.

It wasn’t, it was an eternal feud that was fomented by Russia that they said Myan was a Russian backed coup. Well, I have spoken to literally hundreds of people who stood on the Myan for over a hundred days. It was organic. There’s no evidence we have all these lies. there were two reasons. One, Ukraine at the time of the USSO and always remember the USSO was a Russian empire. Ukraine was the jewel in the crown, although only one of 15 Soviet.

Socialist Republics, it accounted for up to 40% of industrial output on the [00:07:00] wealth of the Soviet Union. But also it’s recognized that the Soviet army, the Russian army is far, far less than the Soviet army was, and that’s because they don’t have the Ukrainians. And I think people can judge how effective the Ukrainians.

I befriended a man who was a colonel in the Soviet army, who fought in Afghanistan, who was also now a Ukrainian. People that I met and, and spoke to, so Putin wants you crown back for the riches that it has, the bread basket status, all of the rocket technology. that sent Russia to the moon.

That came mainly from Ukrainian scientists. Many of the athletes as a young athlete who were my heroes, I thought were Russians. They weren’t in latter years when I looked up, they were Ukrainians, the guy who still holds the world record, Yuri Sadek.

Oh, the Russian Yuri Sadek. Yuri Sadek wasn’t Russian. He was Ukrainian. And a totally piko one of the greatest super heavyweight weightlifters ever to live. Oh, the Russian. No, he wasn’t Russian. I found that many years later. He was from Kyiv. He was a Ukrainian from Kyiv. The list goes on and on. I mean, I could tell you this, but Putin wants [00:08:00] Ukraine back for the riches the, and the human capital that it entails, the biggest threat to the survival of Putin and his Kleptocratic mafia regime is the existence of a successful, thriving free democratic Ukraine on its doorstep. And that is why the Madan Revolution otherwise known as the Euro Maidan, or the Revolution of Dignity, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

we saw very soon after, the Russians manufactured an excuse to go into dumbass in the east and they illegally annexed Crimea. always important to remember this war did not start in 2022, February 24th. It started back in 2014 One more little story. I’m a very good friend of mine, actually. The guy who gave me this bracelet said to me back in 2016 when I went out to Ukraine first, he said, Putin wants Ukraine without Ukrainians. I didn’t quite believe or understand him. I understand him now. Another [00:09:00] great Ukrainian friend said to me in the very, very early days of the further invasion, he said, Komack.

It’s very, very simple. if Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine. Putin wants to wipe Ukraine and every semblance of Ukrainian identity off the map, and he is willing to murder hundreds of thousands of people who would oppose him to achieve that.

He has said this. He’s not even hiding in plain sight. He has told us We need to listen to what he has told us. He has told us Ukraine is a fake country. We have been told another great Russian lie is that Ukraine was a invention of the Soviet Union. A thousand years ago, Kyiv, when Moscow was a forest, Kyiv was one of the great world cities.

Dominic Bowen: it’s a very interesting history and I do encourage anyone that, is interested to have a look at the history of Ukraine and, and how Ukraine was actually the first, country to have a printing press, to produce books, to produce Bibles well before over a hundred years before Russia even started.

We talk a lot about Russian culture and Russian history, but the Ukrainian [00:10:00] culture is actually much deeper and, and much richer and actually goes back much longer. But I also just wanna emphasize the point. You made Cormac about your, friend and, and Henry’s book and, and what he and his family went through in Mario Apol, I was in Mario Apol just before the invasion and, and I had dinner and I remember going out for, for drinks, one night and people were out dancing and having a good night.

And I remember saying to my Ukrainian colleagues. Do people not realize what’s about to happen here? And then, you know, throughout the next couple of days, meeting with people literally on the street and in businesses and synagogues and churches. And I remember once in one of the main streets in Mary Po and it’s also important to remember the main street in Mary PO is no different to the main street in Oslo.

or Stockholm or cope. These, these, these are proper big cities. Don’t think Eastern Europe, small villages. This is a proper big, beautiful city with waterfronts and beautiful restaurants and, and culture. But I remember actually drawing, in a bit of dirt on the grass to, an old lady. And I remember drawing a map of Ukraine and drawing.

The Don bass and, and drawing, you know, uh, Crimea and, and what was gonna happen. I said, look, do you not accept that marry Apol would be such an amazingly rich [00:11:00] target and a rich city that Putin would wanna take? And she, like, every person we spoke to just went, no, no, no, no. It won’t happen.

It, it won’t happen. And this is exactly what we. We see in Sweden, in Norway, in, Denmark. But people think it won’t happen to us. That’s exactly what happened in Ukraine and that’s what we’ve seen in so many other countries around the world. People say it’s a them issue. There would never happen to us.

There won’t be war. Our backyard. And I think it’s a really important message that our listeners and business leaders and politicians need to hear the fins understand. The fins take it really strongly and the, the current leader of the Finnish government makes the message very clearly, and even some Swedish politicians have been saying, along with NATO leaders.

That business leaders need to be paying attention and they need to prepare for war, which in Sweden has really shocked society that politicians would use such a vulgar language. But It’s the reality today. And we know that, that Russia’s war against Ukraine is also against Europe. And it’s not just on the battlefield, it’s in the minds.

it’s in our societies. I’d love you to tell us, Cormack, how is disinformation shaping the reality that we think we’re [00:12:00] seeing? And how close is Europe? ’cause we know that, whilst America innovates and China replicates, Europe is really big on legislating, you know, that’s our muscle. We can legislate, we can create lots and lots of laws.

But how good and, and how strong is Europe when it comes to maintaining a healthy fact-based narrative? Are we losing that to Russia?

Cormac Smith: short answer, yes, and I’ll come back and explain more about that in a moment. I just wanna make two brief comments on you’ve just said about Mariupol in particular.

a good friend of mine, a friend who I’ve made she’s a Ukrainian refugee with her young daughter and she’s a journalist. Very smart woman and, and you know, she has gone through several countries on the refugee trail and ended up in the UK and got herself a good job where she can support herself and her daughter, but in her own time.

Then she does her journalism work and her activism work and, does what she can. What Elena told me recently was we were having a similar conversation to you and I, Dominic, and she told me, you in the lead up to the war, people could not believe that this would happen because they had family members in Russia. They had [00:13:00] seen themselves as, brothers and sisters They could not believe that Russia would do this. I’ve heard so many stories of people just breaking all family ties because what they got was they didn’t get sympathy from family and friends In Russia.

What they were getting was complete support for the invasion. Complete support for. Putin and having completely swallowed the disinformation narrative, which of course Putin so easily pumps out having absolute control over the Russian media as he does and as the Kremlin does.

I was talking earlier on about the five great lies that Russia tells, and I think I only got to four. Well the one that I left out was there was not just discrimination, there was genocide against the Russian speaking minority.

Well Ukraine, as you well know, ’cause you’ve been out there, is a bilingual country. what I think started to happen more and more since 2014, people started to, become a lot more aware and, nationalistic and proud of their own language. but it was still, I mean, [00:14:00] in Kyiv you’ll frequently hear both languages spoken.

Now, Mariupol was a Russian speaking city. My friend Sean Pinner, originally a Brit. The first language he learned wasn’t Ukrainian, it was Russian. So not only was Mariupol a Russian speaking city, Mariupol was a city where the local politics was very, very pro-Russian, and a lot of the local politicians were pro-Russian.

So Putin moved in. One of the reasons he was moving in was to protect the Russian speaking minority. And what did he do? He wiped a city of half a million people, a beautiful city off the face of the map, and in doing that, murdered possibly a hundred thousand people. The world forgets. I was involved in a piece of research recently and we find that most people across the political spectrum in the UK going from neighbor lib dem and conservative supporters across to, reform supporters and Tommy Robbins and supporters, and people who lap up, Russian disinformation, that was actually one of the groups that this research looked at.

Of them had forgotten about. They’d forgotten about Cher. They’d forgotten about your pen. [00:15:00] People have very short memories. I’ve given you two examples of this information about the effect that it had on the Russian people and the great lie that he was going in to save, the Russian speaking minorities.

So why did he pick a city that was Not only Russian speaking, but far more? Well disposed towards Russia, then further west, and he wiped it off the face of the map and committed some of the most thickening atrocities against civilians. I can never get out of my head and I never will be able to get outta my head because one doesn’t think that humans are capable of such barbarism and such cruelty. This has been carried out. I have another good friend who is a senior Ukrainian diplomat in the ha. So he is very, very close to all of the, crimes investigations.

And I frequently ask my friend, what’s the latest number? How many war crimes are being, investigated now? And it goes up and every time I ask him, it goes up in 10. The last time was about a month ago. It was over 180,000 war crimes are being investigated by the Ukraine Prosecutor General with the aid of the international [00:16:00] community.

We’re losing the disinformation war. there’s a number of reasons.

One, we are facing an enemy who last year I was speaking to, Ukraine’s Deputy Ambassador to the uk, about three weeks ago, and he told me that identified the Kremlin last year, spent $1.4 billion on alone. That’s not just with, you know, Russia today, Sputnik, their troll farms, which were originally set up by Prgo in, uh, Moscow and St.

Petersburg, but all of the other, the operations they do to sow narratives into western society, to support elements on the far right and the far left, very often in the same country. Because what they want to do is they want to sell division. They used something, which in the British government, we call a fire hose of falsehoods.

So to give you an example, when, uh, they tried to murder, Sergei Riau in Salisbury in 2018, this was something I worked very closely on because I I was still in Kyiv when it happened, and my first thing was to. Speak to my ambassador, the British ambassador, who was my boss, and say, right, we need to get the [00:17:00] Ukrainians on this.

And first thing in the morning, I went into my minister and said, right, you know, Ukraine needs to be one of the first countries to come out in support of the UK on this because you keep telling me that Britain’s your best friend. And they did I started working on it in Ukraine and when I came back to the UK I was asked to join the National Security Communications team based out of the, cabinet office and working closely with the foreign office to, advise on Russian disinformation and specifically work on it.

And that’s what I spent most of the year. Before I decided to, move outta Whitehall. But you know, we had an open source unit in the foreign office monitoring Russian disinformation, and they identified at the time 47 false narratives coming from the Kremlin as to who had tried to murder Al.

The list went on and on. The strategy of Russian disinformation is not to get us to believe any particular narrative. It’s to give us so much. Rubbish that we don’t know what to believe in, we’re confused. it, muddies the [00:18:00] waters. I believe we’re still not winning this because I every day I see evidence in our societies of people who are still swallowing the Russian narratives.

We have leading politicians who have, very recently said, well, it’s the fault of NATO expansion. That, Russia invaded. It’s not, Finland, joined NATO in 2023, Finland has a border of 1,340 kilometers with Russia.

What’s the first thing Russia did when Finland joined? Despite all the threats, they withdrew their troops from the Finnish border to redeploy them to Ukraine. I spoke to my friend in the Hague, told me they had counted 120 times that Russia had rattled the nuclear saber.

And unfortunately, every time they’ve done it, weak western leaders have backed down. so no, I don’t believe we’re winning the, information Warren. The reason is because we are facing a unified, focused strategic. Machine campaign with the Kremlin, they are not [00:19:00] bothered by the difficulties of democracy, they can decide what they’re going to do.

We have very, very little in the way of government programs in any of our countries that are set up specifically to counter disinformation during the Biden era. a department was set up in the United States to counter this information, and it was fairly soon closed down.

And, the accusation is it was anti-free speech. And we see narratives that are pushed by the likes of, Elon Musk by the likes of the Vice President Vance of the United States, who comes over to Europe and lectures us on not having enough free speech and so forth. basically Russia uses our democracy against us.

They are far more unified and strategic in their approach. What we lack as a coalition 20, 30, maybe 40 nations, if we take the entire Transatlantic alliance and, other friends like. New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South [00:20:00] Korea. If we put all our friends together, we’re not united.

And, The Russians are making hay with that. So I’m in the communications game, so if I’m not doing interviews or podcasts, I’m on as my partners as I’m 62. He said, you’re like a child. You’re always stuck on your phone. Well, I’m always looking at my apps and I’m always looking at news coming in, and I’m putting out social media posts and the amount of time that I’m.

These old lies. Oh, the latest, the latest lie that we have seen is, to add to what I call vat bullshit bingo, is that, Joe Biden was, directly responsible for, Russia invading Ukraine. That Biden, Unfortunately with the level of critical thinking skills that we have in our societies, which, spoiler alert. It’s not very good.

Dominic Bowen: Mm-hmm.

Cormac Smith: people are just very, very vulnerable to what I call this fire hose of falsehood. So no, we’re not winning. We need We need to be more united. We need to spend a bit more money on it and a bit more time.

Dominic Bowen: tell me how communications and information actually compliment Europe’s defense [00:21:00] activities and what does Europe, and what does the West, and what does Ukraine need to do differently right now to avoid even bigger problems?

Cormac Smith: I sit here in my comfortable, safe London home and I am very reluctant to criticize anything Ukraine does, Ukrainian people do, or the, or the Ukrainian government. however, let me start off by saying something I’ve been saying for over three years.

There has never been a war in history where the information sphere is so important and so critical, and I think you and I would already suggest that we’re not winning that war against the Kremlin clearly what we need to do better in Europe is we need to be more joined up.

And we know that in the European Union, you know, it’s a challenge to get, what is it, 28 countries on the same page anyway, as it’s a challenge for NATO to have all 30 members on the same page. But when you have a situation. In the European Union where you have the Slovak Prime Minister, FICO is a, effectively a Kremlin and, Orban in Hungary [00:22:00] is effectively a Kremlin and have frequently voted against or done what, done what they can to frustrate.

Efforts support Ukraine. This makes things very, very difficult. Us Again, this is an example of Russia. Buy and to gain influence in our societies and to divide our societies. So quite simply, I think we need to find a way to be more united with the divisive issues that we face in both the eu, I’ve mentioned them with FICO and Orban and in NATO with the United States.

that changes from day to day. I think we need to have much more of a. Focus what we have come to call the coalition of the willing rather than each of those bodies and we’ll draw from those bodies as we’ll. And you know, the coalition of the Willing, probably led at the moment by the Brits, the French, the Germans.

we still have this bloody arrogance in Western Europe to forget about our eastern and our northern neighbors. And I was saying back in 2016, I started saying, we need to see [00:23:00] Russia through Ukrainian eyes and through the, other than through the eyes of the other people in what I always call the eastern neighborhood.

And those, I mean the, the three small Baltic states. Who are among the firmest allies of Ukraine, the polls, and also Finland and Sweden. Finland and Sweden. By the way, joining NATO two years ago, that was not on Putin’s plan. That’s something that has made, Nato, far, far stronger, Finland, tiny little country.

Same population of Ireland. Where I come from. But Finland, with a population of 5 million, can put almost a million men and women at arms in the field. Within 24 hours, At least last time I checked, they have more artillery pieces than Germany and France combined.

And these people, I dunno if you’ve been to Finland, it’s one of the most impressive countries I’ve ever been to and fins that I’ve known have been very impressive people. Russia tried messing with Finland in 1938 in the winter war. It didn’t go too well for them. We need more unity. We need more unity of thought. We need more joined up [00:24:00] thinking and our leaders need to find a way to get there. And I’ve tried to do this in my own time As a communications advisor to Ukraine’s foreign minister when I worked with colleagues across Europe in a group called The Friends of Ukraine, and I know how hard it’s to get that unity.

We need to get more unity and actually we need to spend more money on it. ’cause it’s not, you know, this is not free. our leaders need to decide to put more resources into it. And at a time when, certainly here in the uk, cost of living is a major, major problem. The truth is, if we spend more on defense, we’re gonna spend less on other services. Or we’re gonna raise taxes or we’re gonna do both. and because we’re not winning the information war, we don’t necessarily have the massive support among our population.

I hear al too often, it’s not our war, it’s a war far away. It’s not gonna come to us. We still hear this far too often. I’ve been saying for three and a half years, this wolf will come. This wolf is at our door but secondly, you asked me about Ukraine, and I’ll be honest, I think Ukraine can do better in their government communications and in how they [00:25:00] communicate with their people.

I think they need to be more. Strategic. I think they need to be more joined up. I think there needs to be possibly greater devolved leadership, there’s a very, very strong grip on the message held by bank, which is the headquarters of the president.

Now, one understands this. I am not gonna say what I think Vladimir Zelensky should do different because for all his faults, which we all have, this man is probably the greatest war leader of the 21st century. most of the Ukrainian government Ukraine wasn’t supposed to last more than three days. they have confounded the expectations of most Western leaders, I’ve gotta say, they haven’t confounded mine. I came to believe in the Ukrainian people in the two years that I lived among them and worked among them and had the great privilege.

To work at the heart of their government and not just work for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but to work with four other cabinet ministers and organizations, society and I into a short period of. Of time. So [00:26:00] yes, I’m sure the Ukrainians could do better, but look, they’re fighting for their lives. as I said, I’m sitting here in a very nice, very comfortable home in London and I’m semi-retired and I have a lovely life.

I cannot bring myself to criticize, anything. My friends in Ukraine are doing, or the Ukrainian people or the Ukrainian government are doing, because as much as I empathize, I’m not in their shoes.

I woke up at seven this morning and I immediately had a message from my closest Ukrainian friend lives in iv. Another bad night, just another bad night in Kyiv, and sent me about a dozen photographs. Burning buildings and burnt out cars and bomb damage and everything else. And, this is Putin’s will to break or Putin’s effort to break the will of the Ukrainian people.

He’s using precision munitions on a almost daily or a nightly basis to target civilians and civilian infrastructure. To destroy and break the will of the Ukrainian people. Spoiler alert, he won’t achieve it.

Mm.

what Ukraine does. At the [00:27:00] same time, scrupulously To use their long range strikes to attack elements of the logistics chain significantly.

At the moment, the oil industry, which is, having the west prevented them from using the long range weapons that we gave them for too long. What do the Ukrainians do? Will do it ourselves. They have now developed a cruise missile. The flamingo with a range 10 times of anything. We have given them 3000 kilometers and its warhead is over twice.

Scalp and storm shadow. Storm shadow, which the Brits were the first to give them long range But the Americans under Joe Biden stopped them using it not just elements of the logistics chain, bomber basis where the bombing raids on Ukrainian civilians were being launched night, after night, after night.

And Joe Biden said, no, You can’t use weapons that have our guidance, and systems in them because we think that we might poke the bear and it might be escalatory. It has been bloody, on behalf of our leaders for three [00:28:00] and a half years, and on behalf of the Americans in particular and the Germans and others.

Yes. We seem to be changing late in the day. Remember, Friedrich Mertz this time, last year when he was campaigning to be Chancellor said if he got the position of Chancellor, he would give Putin 24 hours to cease hostilities or he would flood Ukraine with tourists. I was in the office of Ukraine’s Ambassador to Berlin two years ago, on his mood board in the middle of it was written Taurus.

Well, Ukraine still has not been given Taurus by the Germans. Olaf Schultz, that great military, tactician. Said last year that he didn’t believe that Ukraine needed Taurus. So, I’m afraid we are changing, but we’re changing too slow. And if you empathize as I think you do as well the people who are really suffering on this, infuriating.

Dominic Bowen: It definitely is Cormack and you mentioned that the, the wolf is at the gates, and I think I might push back on you a little bit, working with, companies across [00:29:00] Europe. I, I’d say that Wolf is, is well and truly running around our back, and our front yard. and I think over the last few years we’ve definitely seen a surge in hybrid operations, a across Europe. We’ve seen sabotage in Denmark, in Sweden, in Norway, we’ve seen GPS jamming affecting aircraft over the Baltics. We’ve seen Russian drone and aircraft incursions over Poland and Romania. We’ve seen Russian led disruptions to maritime infrastructure in the Baltics and in the North Sea.

Now, none of these alone are headlines on the front cover of the paper, but together they form a really, really clear pattern, and it’s undoubtedly a persistent campaign, which is designed to erode confidence to blur attribution. Really to test what NATO’s thresholds are. And as you said, NATO’s thresholds are, blurred, they’re slow, they’re really not strong enough.

So Cormack, you’ve spent years inside the British government and, and supporting Ukrainian government and, and helping leaders navigate the gray zone between all out peace and all out war. And this is where truth, perception, deterrents all, all come together. So when states like Poland, Romania.

[00:30:00] Denmark, Sweden, Norway face these constant breaches, cable cuts, GPS, interference, drone over flights. How should these governments be responding without overreacting, but at the same time without normalizing and inviting further aggression?

Cormac Smith: Well, I don’t think there’s any question of overreacting or inviting further aggression with all due respects, and I know it’s not your words, but they’re the words and the tone of the appeaser and always remember what that Great Britain Winston Churchill said about Appeasers.

He said the Appeaser was the one who fed a crocodile hoping he would be eaten last. already seen, incursions into NATO airspace several times. We’ve now heard some very, very strong words That we may actually move to shoot them down next time we await to see this.

Putin is constantly probing to see how far he’ll get. that’s what bullies do. But you know, it’s not just in Eastern Europe. spoke to a good friend of mine who’s a former former colonel in British military intelligence. We do some work together. I spoke to him before I came on this and he said, you what we’re seeing in [00:31:00] the UK at the moment is a tactic by Russia where they, they seem to be hiring local criminals, so we’re having arson attacks.

we had cyber attacks on Marks and Spencers on John Lewis partnership on other, high Street names. They haven’t been unequivocally, linked or, proven to beat Russia yet, but we know this is in the Kremlin’s playbook. We know that, and I’ve been told this on Good Source.

We we know that they’re hybrid attacks on us are absolutely incessant, and they are constantly. Probing to see what they can get away with on the one hand, but two, they’re looking to cause us as much expense and disruption and difficulty as they possibly can. In fact, almost eight years ago this, month, I was out in Halifax in Canada at a major security conference with Pavlo Plimp when he was Ukraine’s foreign Minister. And there was a press conference where people were talking about, oh, is this a new Cold War? And Pavlo told basically anybody who was listening, the journalists in the world that no, we’re not in a new Cold War.

We are in a hot war. You [00:32:00] know, it’s just a slightly different type of war. It’s hybrid war and you know, it’s only in the last year or so. We hear what I call some bigger people talking about this, former heads of the security services, colonels, some, former senior diplomats talking about gray zone warfare, gray zone warfare, hybrid warfare of the same things, and that extended to the assassination attempts on the script.

It’s many, many very questionable. Of arson, which we are seeing up and down the UK and other countries at the moment. It’s cyber attacks. It’s all sorts of attacks on our infrastructure. Our security services, including G-C-H-Q-I five, MI six, they’re doing everything they can to keep us safe, but I’ve been told that it’s absolutely incessant and rising.

Russia knows they’re at war with us. We don’t seem to have quite. Copped onto the fact that we’re at war with Russia yet, and the sooner we, the sooner we do this, the better. said I was a professional communicator. Well, I was for most of my life. And I love my [00:33:00] soundbites because I think if you get a good soundbite, people remember, but then you’ve gotta go in.

Some of our leaders, you’ve gotta put real meat on the bonds and you’ve gotta give the data and the facts and the proof points. Well, one of my soundbites that I’ve been deploying for nearly a year now is. It’s our money and guns today, or our daughters and sons tomorrow. It’s still not too late and I go back to 2021 when Alexi Resnikoff, who was the last minister of defense of Ukraine, went on CNNA few days before Christmas.

And I can still remember him saying, we don’t want or expect your boots on the ground. Just give us the weapons we want and we will do our own fighting. I think I thought arm Ukraine to the teeth and sanction Russia back to the stone age. Well, we still have not armed Ukraine to the teeth. Properly and we still have not sanctioned Russia back to the Stone Age properly.

And I believe, and from an industrial point of view, Dominic, you will have an even clearer picture of how much damage, is currently being done to the Russian economy by the combination of sanctions, but more importantly, what [00:34:00] Ukraine is now doing to their oil industry. ’cause remember, Russia has been described as a.

Petrol station with nukes. They have very, very little else. the Ukrainians have now pushed them to a point where they’re having to import petrol. this is doing two things this is bringing the war home to the Russian people. It’s holding their feet to the fire. And I’ve said many times, the thing that Putin fears most is the Russian people.

Every czar in history, if they have fallen, they’ve always fallen to the Russian people. But it is also, seriously interfering with their ability. Their front line to get troops around, to get supplies, to get ammunitions and everything to their front line.

Ukraine will help Ukraine. They know they’re on their own. You know, they’re kind of, they will be very polite and they will thank President Trump and everybody else for everything that they do, but in their hearts, when you really get close to the Ukrainians, as I am and with, with many, and you, you have an honest conversation.

They know they’re on their own they’re bitter about it. And they know they’re in an existential [00:35:00] fight for their life now, you know, I’ve got to say, as a proud Irishman. I immensely proud of what Britain has done from the start. we have been the first ones we have led on this from the start, and that leadership seems to have carried on through the change of government last summer, into Kir, SERS government.

We in Britain are seen as Ukraine’s best friend. I’m very proud of that. I’m very proud to have played small professional part in it. And I now, obviously as a private individual. I do what I can because it matters. I fell in love with the country. I made friends for life, but also I see that this is the greatest threat to our way of life that we have faced since 1945.

And this, is the point that’s so hard to get across to people, and this is why, I was so interested to come on today and speak to you, Dominic, in fact, you specialize in the area that I probably know least about, which is the the industrial sector, the private sector, you are telling me that actually people in industry are really waking up to this one, they realize the existential threat. It’s to [00:36:00] us, because let’s face it, if we don’t have thriving, successful industry, bango are standard of living.

We won’t have a standard of living if we don’t. make sure Ukraine wins this war before we have to actually start fighting ourselves and that will come if we’re not careful. That this is a major threat.

Putin will not stop at Ukraine. To put the Russian Empire back together. Part of this is, I’m trying not to use invective. Part of this is arrogance. On behalf of the West. And the attitude was, this is how we do things in London, Rome, Paris, Washington, dc and if you do it like this here, then you’ll get better. It’s not like that because well, I found out before I ever went out, but I found out that you’re dealing with the most sophisticated, highly educated, decent, warm, but also hard as nails.

People who have faced, things in the last 80 years that we have no idea about. We don’t know. We’re born. As I said earlier, we need to see Russia and the wider world through [00:37:00] Ukrainian eyes and through the eyes of their other friends in the Eastern neighborhood, and we need to be a little bit more humble.

We need to drop the hubris and we need to drop the arrogance. I still see far too much of it.

Dominic Bowen: Thanks for raising that cormack. And one of the things that, I do when helping organizations and business leaders across Europe do when looking at crisis preparedness is I’ll talk about the five phases of war that’s from all out peace to all out conflict, and of course the phases in between. Before Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, when I’d talk to business leaders and executive groups about where do they assess we’re at based on the five phases of war. Normally they’d put up one finger, two fingers after. Russia’s invasion in 2022 of Ukraine, business leaders and executives started talking about, oh, we’re probably in phase two, maybe phase three.

Now, when I run these workshops in mid and and late 20, 25, people are consistently putting up three and four fingers. Which [00:38:00] is really, really interesting that business leaders recognize that on the five phases of war. We’re probably in phase three or phase four now, which is really different to where Europe was just a few years ago. But thanks very much for coming on the podcast today, Cormack. I think that was really insightful.

We appreciate your passion, we appreciate your interest and your insights. So thanks very much for coming on and talking about the war in Ukraine as well as the implication for all. European Nations. Now, please to our listeners, you can find our content on YouTube. Please remember to subscribe. That’s critical for our success.

Thanks very much for listening today, and we’ll speak again in the next few days.

Elisa Garbil: Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit the international risk podcast.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, blue Sky, and Instagram for the latest updates, and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time.