Front Burner - Spies, grain and fuel: A Ukraine war update

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been raging since Feb. 24. The war has triggered a global food and fuel crisis, because Ukraine is a major exporter of grain, and Russia is a major exporter of oil to Europe. In recent days, however, a deal was struck to lift a blockade and allow grain to be exported from Ukraine. Russia also agreed to restart the flow of natural gas, fuel that is absolutely vital for countries like Germany. At face value, both moves appear as if Russia is taking a more conciliatory tack. But is it? Ukraine is also making advances to take back parts of the country it lost early in the war. But does it have the capacity to do that swiftly enough to turn the tide of this war? Its efforts are being hindered by reports of Russian infiltration in Ukraine’s sprawling spy service, the SBU. Last week, Ukraine’s president dramatically shook things up by firing two of his top officials — one of them his childhood best friend and the head of the intelligence agency. So we’re talking to the Wall Street Journal’s James Marson to unpack the latest developments and to get a better idea of who is winning — and where things could go from here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So there have been some major developments coming out of the war in Ukraine that we want to talk about. In recent days, a deal was struck to lift a blockade and allow grain to be exported

from the country. Also, Russia agreed to restart the flow of natural gas, fuel that is absolutely crucial for countries like Germany. Both may look at face value as if Russia is taking a more conciliatory tack here. But are they? Ukraine is also making moves to take back parts of the country it lost early in the war. But do they have the capacity to do that? And are they being hindered by reports of Russian infiltration and their sprawling spy service, the SBU? There's a lot to unpack here.

So we're bringing back The Wall Street Journal's James Marson to get a better sense of the state of the war. of the war. Hi, James. Thank you very much for coming on to FrontBurner. Hi there. Always happy to be with you. So there have been a couple major developments in the last few weeks that I want to start with here. Since the war began, of course, countries that rely on grain out of Ukraine have been facing a major shortage. Ukraine is one of the largest food exports in the world, but a blockade on grain has strained that capacity and really exacerbated a global food crisis, particularly in countries in Africa.

And last week, a major deal between Russia and Ukraine was struck to address this. And can you tell me a little bit about this deal and its importance? Well, Ukraine is one of the biggest exporters of grain in the world. But since the Russians invaded in February, the end of February, they've taken over the majority of Ukraine's ports on its southern coast, and they control the Black Sea with their with their Navy. And so Ukraine has not been able to export grain from those ports. Most of Ukraine's grain has been stranded for months because of a Russian blockade. There's a backlog of 25 million tons.

So obviously there's been a cutoff of supplies, and Ukraine has millions of tons of grain waiting to be exported, which the world needs. So this provided the impetus for the United Nations and Turkey to try to bring Ukraine and Russia to a kind of a deal, to actually get that grain out of Ukraine to the countries that need it. After weeks of negotiations, a landmark agreement. It will bring relief for developing countries on the edge of bankruptcy and the most vulnerable people on the edge of famine. This was then signed last week in Istanbul, but we're yet to see whether this is going to work. The idea is that the grain is brought out on ships, which can

then, because the Russians are worried that the Ukrainians would use ships potentially to bring in weapons, whereas the Ukrainians are worried that the Russians may use this as an opportunity to kind of strike at the Ukrainian ports. So Turkey is supposed to be acting as a kind of arbiter here and to check boats as they come in and go out, as they get the Ukrainian grain out. So, you know, the deal was hailed, you know, as a way to feed the world. But so far, you know, we haven't seen any shipments out yet. And what we have seen is the day after the deal was signed, Russia struck the port of Odessa with two cruise missiles.

Russia had promised not to attack any cargo ships carrying grain out of Odessa or two cruise missiles. Russia had promised not to attack any cargo ships carrying grain out of Odessa or the port itself, but local reports suggest today's strike damaged port infrastructure. Ukraine says Russia would be to blame if the grain export agreement now collapsed. Ukrainians said this happened. The Russians claimed they were attacking military facilities, but the Ukrainians say actually they were attacking port facilities. So the question there is, to what extent this deal is going to work, because they would appear to be breaking the deal by attacking export facilities for the grain. And then there's the broader question that brings up of if Russia signs a deal and then appears to break it the next day, you know, there are some calls from some analysts in in the west saying well is it time to sit down and talk with russia the war is it something of a stalemate at the moment so to what extent

can any deal uh with with with russia be trusted another consequence besides grain talking about deals with Russia, has to do with energy. And last week we saw Russia turn some of the energy taps back on, right, through in particular the Nord Stream pipeline, which supplies energy to countries like Germany. And so what is happening on the energy front here? This was another big Trump card that Russia seemed to control. That's right. So Europe is heavily dependent on Russian gas, in particular Germany, which over the course of recent years has built new pipelines coming from Russia directly to Germany. And part of this idea was that the Germans thought that if you tie

Russian business into a web of relations with European companies, they're going to become dependent on those relations. And so they're less likely to risk them. Now, that hasn't happened. And instead, it appears that the Russians are actually using this dependence of the Europeans to try to get some leverage. Germans on the streets of Berlin expressing their relief tonight as Russia resumed pumping critical gas via its largest pipeline after being shut down for 10 days. Russia did resume some supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline last week. But there's a bigger problem here, which is that during the

summer, Europe is supposed to be pumping a lot of gas into storage to prepare for the winter. And it simply has not been receiving the volumes that it would need in order to get through the winter. Obviously, this is for households. This is for electricity. This is for industries that use gas. So, you know, at this stage, there is no shortage of gas. But if you look towards the winter, that's going to be a problem for Europe, which is simply not going to have enough gas. Russia is blackmailing us. Russia is using energy as a weapon. energy as a weapon. And therefore, in any event, whether it's a partial major cutoff of Russian gas or a total cutoff of Russian gas, Europe needs to be ready. That's the president of the European Commission. Europeans are already talking about potential rationing. And this

obviously gives Putin strong leverage because European countries, European governments are accountable to their people. And if the people are having to ration the use of gas for heating, potentially electricity, this is obviously going to have an impact on people. And I think what Putin is looking at here is the potential to influence, to divide European governments. There'll be some who will say, well, you know, we need to stop supporting the Ukrainians because we need to make a deal with the Russians. We haven't seen that so far. All of the Western countries have been firmly behind Ukraine and said that, you know, this conflict only ends when Ukraine says it ends. Putin's behavior right now when it comes to how Russia is responding to this grain deal, and then also what they're doing with energy right now. Also, I saw over the weekend that Lavrov, the foreign minister, is talking about their end goal being to remove this regime from power, removes Zelensky's government from power, which is a more extreme rhetoric than their line earlier in the war.

And so what does all of this tell you about Putin's thinking right now? Right. I think for me, it's been clear since the very beginning. Putin has been very clear. He doesn't consider Ukraine a real country. He considers most of Ukraine to be part of Russia. He doesn't consider Ukrainians to be a separate people. He considers them to be essentially Russians. And so in the beginning, the aim was to take Kiev. The Russians sent forces towards the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, and they tried to take it, and they failed. So, after they failed, they undertook a narrow operation, which was aimed at taking the east of the country. So, they were very much focused on that, and they had some limited success in the east.

very much focused on that and they had some limited success in the east. They flattened a few towns and cities and after flattening them with artillery and planes they then took them because there was nothing left to defend for the Ukrainians and they decided to retreat because they were under such heavy bombardments. But even though Russia has had narrower aims then, Russia has not really changed its long-term goal, which is the domination and control of Ukraine. And Putin has always assumed that Ukraine means more to Russia than it means to the West. So he'll be able to outlast any Western support for Ukraine. Now, whether that is true is obviously one of the big, big questions that we'll see answered over the coming months and potentially even years. Mm-hmm. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit and spend a little bit of time

today talking about what's actually happening on the ground right now? Like what gains and losses look like? And maybe we could start with Kherson. Yes, so the city of Kherson was taken very, very early on in the invasion. Part of this whole band of the south of Ukraine along the Black Sea coast that the Russians took control of. But the Ukrainians have been very clear that they think they have an opportunity here to take that part of the country back. We will liberate Kherson, that's for sure. We will not give it away to the Russians.

That's why we're here, so our children won't have to fight anymore, so that we can solve this matter now and forever. The Russians have been focusing their offensive in the east, which had some successes. Russian forces now occupy large swathes of Ukraine's east. In the city of Severodonetsk, they patrol a landscape turned to rubble after their assault. Similar scenes across the river in Lysychansk, where buildings lie in ruins. Ukraine's forces retreated in the face of relentless attack. The Ukrainians feel that Russian forces in the south are spread more thinly.

And in recent weeks, they've been advancing slowly, village by village, with difficulty, but they have been taking some land back. And so their ultimate aim is to launch a counteroffensive, which would take back Kherson and as much of the south as possible. and as much of the South as possible. Part of the reason for that is that Russia took Crimea, the peninsula of Crimea, in 2014. And one of Russia's major aims has been to link up with mainland Russia along the south coast of Ukraine, what they call a land bridge. And so if Ukraine can cut that off, that will obviously have an effect on supplies

for the Russians and would be a major victory for the Ukrainians. It would also be something that the Ukrainians could hold up to the West and say, look, you know, the Russians have been on the front foot for a few months in this war, but we are now showing that we can, that the Western weapons we're receiving are having an effect and we can have successes here. So keep supplying us and we can kick the Russians off our territory. Right. Because I know Zelensky's been calling on the West to send more weapons. The US has sent in these missiles, these surface to air missiles, and they seem to have helped. Is that fair to say? So they have sent in service to air missiles.

But the thing that have been having a big effect most recently are these mobile rocket launchers. The U.S. has sent mobile rocket launchers, which are very, very, very mobile. They have a good range, so they can fire about 80 kilometers they're very very accurate and so what ukraine has been doing it's been using them at night it's been driving them towards the front lines backing them up firing off the rockets which have been striking major russian command posts ammunition dumps in particular there's a lot of footage out there on twitter and elsewhere showing just these ammunition depots blowing up in Russian-held areas.

And that obviously has been causing the Russians logistical problems because a lot of their ammunition is being blown up. And what the Ukrainians say is that's going to help them to strangle any Russian attempts at advance and potentially also allow the Ukrainians to advance themselves. pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast,

Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. Another major development in recent days and weeks has been what seems like a pretty significant hurdle for the Ukrainians, which is what's happening in the SBU right now, the Security Intelligence Services. And last week, Zelensky fired two top officials, one of them his chief prosecutor, the other the head of the security service, a childhood friend, basically the top spy in the country. The firings of Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova and the head of the Ukrainian security service Ivan Bakunov are being described as the biggest political sackings since the start of the war. More than 60 employees of the Prosecutor's Office and the Security Service of Ukraine

have remained in the occupied territory and are working against our state. And I wonder if you could tell me what's been happening there and how that's posing sort of additional challenges to fighting this war. happening there and how that's posing sort of additional challenges to fighting this war? Well, there's been a problem with the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine, for many years, because obviously during the Soviet period, it was the KGB. It was run with the Russians. And then there was a lot of questions about who it remained loyal to, who some of its staff remained loyal to after the fall of the Soviet Union. So it's been shot through with Russian spies for many, many years. Particular problem

since 2014, when the Russians had launched this proxy war against Ukraine in the east. It's been an aim to clean it up for years. But what Zelensky said when he dismissed the security chief, childhood friend, as you say, he said that the service is still shot through with traitors. And this is obviously a huge problem during a time of war. Now, I should point out that the SBU is separate from military intelligence, which has been playing the primary role in the war with Russia. But obviously, this is a big problem. And you've seen a few arrests of other leaders within the security service on suspicion of collaborating with Russian security services. You know, one of the big questions, I think, is we mentioned Kherson earlier, is how the Russians

managed to take the south of Ukraine so quickly. Because if you look at a map of Ukraine, there's a very narrow passage from the Crimean Peninsula, which the Russians have controlled since 2014, since they seized it from Ukraine, to get across to the Kherson region. By all military logic, the bridges across should have been mined and should have been blown. But that obviously didn't happen. And so the Russians were able to get across. And so a lot of people raising questions about why those bridges either weren't mined or why the mines were removed or why the bridges

weren't blown up. So given all these developments that we're talking about today, I wonder, and I realize this might be kind of a difficult question to answer, but big picture here, who is winning this war right now? You hear people talk about it being static, but how would you describe the current state of what's happening? Well, we've had kind of two phases to the war so far. happening? Well, we've had kind of two phases to the war so far. We've had the first phase where the Russians launched this rapid lightning attack, which was supposed to seize Kiev, to oust the government and to kind of take over the whole country. And that didn't work. The Ukrainians fought them off. So the Ukrainians won the first stage. The second stage saw the Russians target more narrow objectives. They were trying to take two provinces in the east of the country. They went town by town, really destroying these cities

block by block almost, so that the Ukrainians weren't able to defend them anymore and had to retreat. And then, so that was the second phase. And they were somewhat successful in that phase in terms of, you know, territory taken, although one can question how successful taking territory that has been completely destroyed is. But now we're moving potentially towards a third phase. Will the Ukrainians be able to launch a counteroffensive? Lots of talk among Western officials that the Russian offensive in the east is now exhausted, particularly as they're now coming under pressure from these attacks by these rocket launchers,

which are kind of sapping their strength, sapping their resources. But so the third phase could be, Ukraine hopes, will be a counteroffensive in the south, which will allow the Ukrainians to seize some territory back. And this will be important for several reasons. First of all, it will allow the Ukrainians to show to their own population, who are now in Russian-occupied territory, that we have not given up on you, that we can fight back, and that we can free you. So don't give up. That's number one. And number two, it will show to Western governments that, okay, you've given us all of this support, but we can have a successful counteroffensive, that it's not static, and we can take this territory back. So give us more and we'll fight the Russians off our land.

And do you think that Ukraine is in a position to do that right now, or does more need to happen? in a position to do that right now? Or does more need to happen? Well, that's the big question. I mean, when you speak with Ukrainians who are doing the fighting on the front lines, of course, they're saying we need more, we need more drones, we need more tanks, we need more armored vehicles, because obviously, advancing is a lot more difficult than defending. It takes a lot more ammunition, it takes a lot more men. It takes a lot more men. It takes a lot more armored vehicles to be able to advance. So far, Ukraine has been advancing slowly, village by village in the south. It hasn't turned into a kind of broad counteroffensive where they've got the Russians on the run. What we've seen in recent days is that Ukraine has targeted bridges in and around Kherson.

The city that is in the south is actually on two banks of the Dnipro River, this big river that cuts from north to south in Ukraine. And the aim is to prevent the Russians from resupplying the western bank of Kherson. So it looks like they're preparing to try to take back that western part of the city. We're a long way from that yet, but that seems to be what the Ukrainians are aiming to achieve. One final question before we go. I wonder if I could get your thoughts on Western commitment. I know we talked before about how all European countries are steadfastly saying that they're committed to Ukraine.

But how far do you think that will go, especially if some of these countries start to feel the pain of energy deficiency, right? Right. So that's the issue we have here. What is more important to Western governments and to Western people? Is it the price of the gas pumps? Is it the price of natural gas for industry and for heating homes? Is it inflation? Is it these kind of questions, economic questions that we'll be facing as a result of measures taken to counter Russia in part? Or is it more important to people in the West to stand up for democracy, to stand up for the sovereignty of Ukraine, to facilitate Ukrainians fighting this war, a war of existence, really. And as you said earlier, Russia has made quite clear it wants to destroy Ukraine per se.

So these are the kind of questions that we're going to be facing. And I think a lot has depended on the Ukrainians' performance. You know, before February the 24th, when Russia launched this full-scale invasion, the West was very nervous about giving significant heavy weapons to the Ukrainians because they thought that Ukraine would fall quickly when the Russians invaded. That wasn't the case. And so as Ukraine has been able to defend itself,

the West has poured in bigger, stronger weapons and more of them. Now the question going forward is whether Ukraine will be able to sustain its fight. Will it be able to push forward in the South? That would be a good sign to the West that yes, we can do this. This isn't going to fall into a war of static attrition that's going to go on for years and years. But it's something that more Western weapons could help us resolve. If we can push the Russians out, you know, that will be the way to peace, rather than trying to make some deal with the Russians, which the Russians probably wouldn't stick to anyway. James, thank you. Thank you very much for this. My pleasure. I was always

happy to do it. All right. So before we go today, an update on the Russian energy situation. Russia is further tightening its grip on gas flows to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. This comes after the flow was already reduced to 40% capacity. Now, Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom plans to have that starting on Wednesday. Well, Gazprom says that turbine issues are to blame. Many say it's a strategic play by Putin to punish and divide European leaders.

And with winter inching closer, as we talked about with James, there's fears Russia may cut off gas altogether as political leverage. Also, Pope Francis apologized Monday for the, quote, deplorable evil of residential schools with the help of a translator. I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry. Sorry Sorry for the ways in which regrettably many Christians supported the colonizing mentality

of the powers that oppress the indigenous peoples. I am sorry. I ask forgiveness. I ask forgiveness in particular for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools. The Pope's words on Monday went beyond his earlier apology. He took responsibility for the Church's institutional cooperation with the quote, catastrophic assimilation policy, which Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

has said amounted to cultural genocide. The Pope has several other events planned this week, and we are working on an episode for later in the week. That's all for today, though. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.