Send your Ukraine war questions to Professor Michael Clarke

After the first trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US of the war, and with Donald Trump (again) expressing optimism about the prospect of a ceasefire, military analyst Professor Michael Clarke returns to answer your questions on the conflict.

Send him your questions before the live session at 1pm on Wednesday in the box at the top of the page.

Presenter Kamali Melbourne will put the questions to Michael.

For the latest on the Ukraine war, catch up on our live page...

That's it for this week's Q&A.

This week Professor Clarke covered everything from Ukraine peace talks, to the threat of war in the UK, to whether or not Donald Trump's US will invade Venezuela. 

Watch the Q&A back...

Professor Michael Clarke, our military and defence expert, is back to answer your Ukraine war questions.

Watch this week's live Q&A now at the top of this page.

If you want to get in touch and put your question to Michael Clarke, use the form at the top of this page.

Then head back here for 1pm to watch our latest live Q&A about the Ukraine war, to see if yours gets answered.

It's time to get your questions in for Professor Michael Clarke, who's joining us at 1pm tomorrow for his latest Ukraine war Q&A.

There is, as ever, plenty to talk about, but if you need some inspiration, here's what's been on the agenda this week:

• European leaders claim "significant progress" has been made in the bid for peace after talks in Berlin with Ukraine and US envoys;
• While Donald Trump says we're "closer now than we have been ever" to peace;
• Elsewhere, the head of Britain's armed forces says there is a growing risk that Russia could attack the UK.

Come back at 1pm tomorrow for answers to those questions and more.

You can watch it back at the top of this live page, or scroll below to catch up on our summaries of Clarke's best answers.

Today he covered...

• The "two sides" to NATO chief Mark Rutte's comments on Russia;
• How Moscow will view the death of a UK serviceman in Ukraine;
• Why a European offensive on Russia would be "foolish" and what Kyiv's allies really need to do;
• What Trump cutting ties with Europe could look like, and why there's likely "no going back";
• Whether or not European leaders are actually weak;
• If it's possible for Ukraine to deter Russia from further aggression in the event of any potential peace deal;
• And how a failure from the EU could leave Ukraine in "big trouble".

Ukraine is expected to run out of money as soon as April, which has led European leaders to look for alternative funding, as America has halted its financial support.

Among the options is the use of frozen Russian assets that are currently mostly held by a clearing firm in Belgium.

However, Belgium fears it might be held legally responsible, as Russia has dubbed the plan "theft". The EU hopes to find an agreement on this by the EU summit on 18 December.

Asked about the prospects for a deal and the consequences of a failure, Michael Clarke says that Belgium is "under intense pressure to give in".

He adds:

"I think they'll go for it because they're looking at two or three different mechanisms to make it work, and I think the reason that they'll do it because they're desperate".

Clarke believes Ukraine will be in "really big trouble" if the EU doesn't proceed with the plans, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy's nation will run out of money to fund the war.

Despite this, Clarke says there will be backlash from countries as "Hungary will go berserk, the Russians will go berserk, and the Americans will be extremely critical". 

"But it will convey to Ukraine enough money to keep them going for the next couple of years," Clarke says.

He also believes the move would "show the Americans that we're not going to roll over in [the] face of their blackmail on other things". 

Efforts to seal a US-proposed peace deal for Ukraine continued this week.

As of now, it contains three documents, Zelenskyy confirmed, one of which will focus on security guarantees, one of the most sensitive issues. 

European officials have previously coined the phrase of turning the country into a "steel porcupine" to prevent another Russian attack after any future peace deal.

Asked how Ukraine could successfully deter a future attack, our military analyst says that no type of armament in isolation could protect the country from this.

"There is no physical solution to Ukraine's security problem."  

Even minefields could only slow an attacker down but not stop them, Clarke says.

He says there is only one solution:

"The only thing that would stop Russia is deterrence: the knowledge that either the European forces were sitting in Ukraine ready to fight for them, which is hard to imagine at the moment, and even harder to imagine that they are backed up by American forces."

"If Ukraine gives up the fortress cities in the Donbas, the only security they can have is by being heavily armed and being backed by their allies in some way."

American military support is implausible by now, he says, however.

Even a wider security guarantee, backed by European forces, is "a long term aspiration", that cannot be achieved by the spring of next year, he adds.

Another question on Trump's shift away from Europe asks what this means for the future of the US military presence and its bases in Europe.

The US had about 80,000 armed forces personnel stationed in European NATO countries by the end of 2023, according to then-president Joe Biden. 

Our military analyst Michael Clarke says the fate of the nearly 40 bases depends on how severely Trump wants to cut ties.

Clarke says around 15 of the bases are sizeable outposts and there's an expectation maybe 25% of the US force will be withdrawn.

But it's who is withdrawn that really matters. He explains:

"If they pull out their combat troops then Europe won't be so worried because combat troops can always come back pretty quickly. But if they pull out the logistics and their engineering and all the all the backup forces, then it doesn't matter with combat troops, they can't, you know, do anything."

So if these logistic forces are pulled, then that would be a problem, Clarke says.

But he adds that he thinks what will actually take place will be a "symbolic withdrawal" that would be "reversible".

Clarke also points out that pulling troops back to the US would cost the country more than keeping them in Europe.

Donald Trump's no holds-barred interview with American outlet Politico made headlines this week. 

In it, the US president made derogatory remarks about Europe, saying Kyiv's European allies were talking but "not delivering" for Ukraine.

He also said Europe was "decaying" and suffering from "weak" leaders.

Watch his remarks in the video...

But did Trump have a point?

Clarke says that European leaders really are weak in the sense that the heads of Europe's big four countries are facing domestic issues.

He says Keir Starmer has domestic problems, Emmanuel Macron, who is in his final term, is "essentially a lame duck", Friedrich Merz has "big domestic problems", even though he's a very "assertive, imaginative" man, and Giorgia Meloni, whom Clarke calls "a very strong character", has a "lot of coalition problems".

But our military analyst also says they are confronting these problems internationally "pretty well".

More importantly, France, Britain and Germany are confronting these issues in a "united way".

 "There's a sort of reality to all of this if you can get more than two of the big four on board, nothing tends to happen. But if you get three or four of them united on something, it tends to happen because it overlays the institutional issues, the EU issues, the NATO issues. If they agree that you've got to get on with something, it tends to happen."

Clarke recalls this week's meeting of Macron, Starmer and Merz in London: "In a previous era this would have been a huge event," he said.

"Either it's a sign of how poor Europe is in world politics, or it's a sign of how united they are," he said.