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Security and defence analyst Michael Clarke has just finished answering your Ukraine war questions - thanks to everyone who followed along and took part.

Scroll down through this live page to catch up, or check out the key points.

You can also watch it back at the top of the page.

Professor Clarke starts the Kursk offensive did not work in the way the Ukrainians wanted it to, with their aim being to pull Russian troops from units in the south of Ukraine. 

But he says it did have some impact towards the end in the sense that it saw Russia's offensive in some parts of the south "grind to a halt". 

"Russia did eventually need to bring in paratroopers and the marines into the northern area, so it did have an effect," he adds. 

"I remember saying at the time that this is the most bold counterpunch strategy since the Inchon landings in the Korean War. 

"The Ukrainians took the risk and it didn't entirely work but it has given them some advantage, just not what they would have hoped." 

The Kursk offensive was a surprise incursion into Russia launched by Ukraine in August. Its troops seized control of Russian territory, marking the first time since the Second World War that foreign forces had occupied Russian land. 

But Moscow's forces, aided by troops from North Korea, succeeding in pushing  Vladimir Putin visited Kursk for the first time since his troops ejected Ukrainian forces last week. You can watch a clip of his visit below... 

Professor Clarke says cyberwar is similar to nuclear war, as "there's no defence against it".

Instead, he explains, you must deter it.

"It was always whispered that Britain was pretty good at this in the early 2000s," Clarke says. "I think it was in around 2010 that we admitted officially that we have a counter strategy, that we have offensive cyber capability. 

"We started to say out loud that we've got offensive cyber capabilities so that the groups out there know that we can mess them up in a pretty big way. 

"Have we ever used it? I genuinely don't know.  And if I did know, I wouldn't say! Because if we have used it, we will have kept quiet about it except to the victims, who we will want to know that it was us."

"Can we do it? Yes we can. Are we good at it? We believe we are. Do we use it? Don't know. Have we used it? Don't know."

Michael Clarke says Belarus, a key ally of Putin, is "associated with the conflict" because it's allowed its territory to be used to attack Ukraine and it has supplied some volunteers to the Russian army.

"I've always said, if Putin were to fall, then Lukashenko falls more or less the following day. 

"So Belarus is intrinsically part of this, but will they send their army over the border? Probably and almost certainly not.

"The Belarusian army is pretty hopeless. They've got on paper about 50,000 soldiers and the general view is they have about 15,000 who are combat available and they're not regarded as very good.

"And the Russians don't regard them as very good either. 

"So I don't think the Belarusians can make any real difference on the battlefield except to allow their territory to be used by the Russians as a distraction."

He says Belarus is "not a military power that can make a big difference to Russia".

Being a prisoner of war is nothing like depicted in films, Clarke says. and there are some differences between how they are treated in Russia and Ukraine. 

He says there has been "quite a lot of evidence" of Ukrainian prisoners of war being badly treated in Russian camps, with accusations of executions taking place under investigation by the United Nations. 

"You can see at the prisoner exchange. You saw Ukrainian prisoners coming back and they were ill. Then you look at the Russians coming back... and they looked pretty healthy," he says, referring to the biggest prisoner exchange of the war. 

Ukraine and Russia completed the "1,000 for 1,000" prisoner swap on Sunday after a deal was struck in Turkey. You can watch that moment below... 

Clarke points out that the Red Cross has access to Russian prisoners in Ukraine, but does not have access to Ukrainian prisoners being held in Russia. 

"I think there is a difference but it is no joke for anyone being a prisoner of war," he adds. 

"I couldn't make any difference to the war in a day," says Professor Clarke.

"So if I was ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y for a day, I'd spend it with my wife and family on the assumption that we may not be together for all that much longer.

"Since the beginning of this war, ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y and his whole family have been under a kind of Mafioso death threat. So if I had a day, I'd spend it with them."

"I think a lot of people would agree with you on that," Kamali Melbourne replies.

The Russian casualties have hit a million, Michael Clarke says.

He says it looks like there are around 600,000 dead and 400,000 severely injured on the Russian side.

"Usually the severely injured is much greater than the number of dead in wars," he says.

"In the case of Russia, it isn't regarded that way because so many people who would have survived are left to die because the casualty evacuation is hopeless. 

"And so injured men are just left on the battlefield."

Clarke adds: "The Russian casualties are widely believed, including by our own intelligence services, to have hit the million mark.

"Ukraine's very wary about this, but it looks as if Ukrainian casualties may be about 600,000.

"Their dead is probably 250,000 and there are maybe 450,000 severely wounded."

In terms of who counts the number of dead, Clarke says there are a number of organisations like the Institute for the Study of War and the UN.

"One good way, though, if you worry about this, is go onto Wikipedia. I'm a great fan of Wikipedia," he adds.

"For certain things Wikipedia is very good."

Throughout the war, both Russia and Ukraine have kept their death figures tightly guarded.

But on Monday, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia's losses had neared one million soldiers. 

Ukraine officials have been tracking Russian troops and equipment losses daily since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022. 

In February this year, Volodymyr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y said over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield since early 2022. 

He also said nearly 380,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been injured.

Professor Clarke says the fundamental fact here is that we're no closer now to a ceasefire than we were before Donald Trump returned to the White House.

"The Ukrainians have arrived at the point where they would love a ceasefire because they need a break, even though they don't expect this war to be over any time soon," he says. "The war to preserve the integrity from Russian takeover will go on for a couple of generations or more. They know that.

"But for the Russians, a ceasefire for them would be giving up an advantageous position because they believe that they have shown that they can win this war, that they can take more territory, even though the cost is getting higher all the time. 

"The Kremlin believes, and Putin seems to believe, that they've got more to gain from fighting than from talking." 

Putin 'riding a tiger he can't get off'

Professor Clarke says he's spoken this week to senior diplomats and former intelligence chiefs this week about Vladimir Putin.

"They all believe that Putin is almost riding a tiger, in that he can't get off now because he's judged by his success in this war. 

"He's given so much to it. He's turned Russia into such a war economy - it's a one issue country, and they've got to somehow prevail in this war against Ukraine."

"He's got to get more than he presently possesses in Ukraine to make it worth the sacrifices that Russia's already made. 

"He's only got one direction. He's only got one gear, one direction h e can go in, and he'll keep going until he's prevented by physical force, by the physical inability to go any further.

"Diplomacy won't stop him."

We don't know the details, Michael Clarke says, because that's a military secret but the word is that Ukraine has still got the remains of a $62bn package that was agreed in March last year.

"They've still got that and that will run through the summer. But they're getting towards the end of it," he says.

"They've still got the systems, most of them, but their ammunition stocks are low."

Clarke notes that at the start of the month Donald Trump approved a $50m aid package after the two countries signed a minerals deal.

Watch: Why is minerals deal critical to Trump? Ed Conway explains

"The fact that he had approved an aid package was symbolically important and may be the beginning of a bigger commitment," Clarke says.

The "bottom line", he says, is the Ukrainians will run out of their American systems by the end of the summer, and they're getting European systems which will replace some, but not all. 

But "the thing that they haven't run out of yet is intelligence help from the United States", he says. 

"The Americans are still giving them targeting help intelligence information and the Starlink satellite system."

He says intelligence and satellite links are as important as weapons, which the Americans are providing.

He adds: "If they go on providing that, then the Europeans could keep Ukraine going in other sorts of weapons just about for the rest of this year, maybe into next year.

"But without that intelligence help or Starlink, Ukraine will find it really very difficult."

The Kerch Bridge is used by Russia to transport supplies and weapons to its forces in occupied Crimea.

There have been two attacks on the bridge so far. The first was possibly from a truck bomb, Professor Clarke says, which did a "tremendous" amount of damage, while the second was from small UAV drones.

"The bridge is now very heavily defended," Clarke says. "But if they use Taurus, if they could get four or five Taurus missiles on the bridge, they could drop that bridge and put a big hole in it for quite a long time."

Why is the bridge important?

Before the bridge that connects Russia and Crimea was built, there was only a ferry linking the two, Clarke explains.

"After 2014, when the Russians took over Crimea illegally, they built this very long bridge, which is Putin's pride and joy. And he drove over it in a big truck to show how important it was. 

"The point is, the bridge is an absolutely legitimate military target because it's an illegal bridge."

Clarke says the bridge transports material backwards and forwards into Crimea, which then goes north into Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson for the war against Ukraine. 

"Dropping that bridge would have a strategic impact, but a big, big symbolic impact. And it would annoy the bejesus out of Putin," Clarke says.