Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, plays a nautical theme. Blunt, enigmatic and sharp as a captain’s hook, he exudes many of the qualities that have made HUR one of the most talked about secret services in the world. But he sounds troubled as he assesses Ukraine’s battlefield prospects. Things, he says, are as difficult as they have ever been since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. And they are about to get worse. He predicts that Russia will first press on with its plan to “liberate” all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a task unchanged since 2022. He says...