Front Burner - The next phase of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

The port city of Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, once home to around 400,000, has been effectively reduced to rubble by Russian forces, which have battered the city and surrounded its steel plant, where women and children are still trapped. A battered but stubborn force of Ukrainian soldiers is still holding out, made up of members of the Azov Battalion, a far-right group that has become part of Ukraine's armed forces. After Ukraine's early success in the north, especially its defence of the capital Kyiv, Russia has shifted its brutal campaign to other parts of the country. Today on Front Burner, we're talking to the Wall Street Journal's European security correspondent James Marson on Russia's changing tactics 61 days into its war with Ukraine — and what could happen next.

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, and these are the sounds of children under a steel plant in Mariupol, surrounded by Russian troops. The video was released by Azov Battalion, far-right Ukrainian fighters that are holding onto the plant.

It shows kids speaking directly to the camera about how they long to leave the underground bunker and see the sun. It's a harrowing stand in the fight for a strategic eastern city that has been decimated by war and looks to be largely in Russian hands now. The brutal focus on the east and southern parts of Ukraine mark a new phase of the war, a regroup of sorts on the part of Russia after taking heavy losses in the north and pulling their forces from around the capital, Kyiv, in recent weeks. Today on FrontBurner, we're talking to The Wall Street Journal's European security correspondent,

James Marson, about this new phase in the war and what could come next. Hi, James, thank you very much for being here. Hi there, my pleasure. So before we get into the situation on the ground in Ukraine, I want to ask you about some news that we're hearing out of Russia. You and I are speaking early afternoon Eastern Standard Time. And the news is that two fires have broken out at separate oil facilities in a town along the border.

And what can you tell us about what's happening there and how significant this could be? So there are two fires that have broken out in the Russian region of Bryansk, which is close to the border with Ukraine. One of them is a fuel storage facility, a civilian fuel storage facility. Another one is a military fuel facility. This was all reported by Russian state media, and there have been a lot of photographs and videos of this across social media. media and there have been a lot of photographs and videos of this across social media.

Now, Russian authorities say they're investigating this. This obviously could be many things. This could be an accident. These aren't unheard of. But what we've seen in recent weeks is kind of a pattern of events that suggests that the Ukrainians have been able to mount some kinds of disruptive activity within Russia to cause damage to their supplies and their ability to keep their forces in Ukraine supplied with fuel. Take, for example, an attack which was shown on security videos in which the Russian security officials actually spoke about in another region neighboring Ukraine, the region of Belgorod, where we saw two helicopters launch a strike against an oil depot. Now, Ukrainian officials haven't spoken about this. This has all been a little bit of a nod and a wink. President Zelensky speaking out for the first time about the attack inside of Russia,

what are we learning? He was asked specifically if he ordered that strike on a fuel depot on Russian territory, just across the border from Ukraine. I do not discuss any of my orders as commander-in-chief, the leader of this state. You need to understand that on that territory that you mentioned, you have to know. They were placing their shooting systems and firing those missiles themselves.

Potentially, Ukraine could be involved. The Russians say that in some cases they are involved, because obviously this is something that tremendously benefits Ukraine. This is debilitating for the Russian forces if they're going to run into problems with delivering fuel to their forces. And of course, there was the well-documented case of the Russian warship. The Russians say that there was an explosion on board, that it was caught in storms and that it sank. Some Ukrainian officials say that it was sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missile. The Moskva was the most important ship in Russia's Black Sea fleet.

Almost 40 years old, it's still packed to punch with 16 cruise missile launchers. American officials did their best to rub in the loss. They've had to kind of choose between two stories. One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them. But again, Ukraine at the highest level has been not directly taking responsibility for it.

So I think they're almost teasing with the Russians in a way that the Russians used to do with Ukraine. But I think the most important thing that this shows is that Ukraine appears to have the ability to strike the Russians where they least expect it. So Ukraine, which was on the defensive for so long and was defending its capital and people were worried, you know, US officials were worried there was an assessment

that Kiev could fall in days. And suddenly you have the Ukrainians able not only to push Russian forces away from Kiev, but to launch these kind of strikes, which are obviously hurting the Russians. James, just out of curiosity, you mentioned that the Ukrainians might be teasing the Russians. They're giving like a nod and a wink that they may or may not be behind these attacks? Like, why not just come out and say it? I think part of it is because, you know, you can put two and two together and draw your own conclusions.

And there are also some kind of lower level officials who are admitting to this. And I think you also want to keep a little bit of the fog of war. You know, this is what Russia has always done against Ukraine. Russia, for eight years, has pretended that there is a civil war happening in Ukraine, that there are no Russian troops present in the east of Ukraine. This is nonsense. There are no Russian armed forces anywhere in the east of Ukraine. There are no special forces nor instructors.

All these people are local citizens. in the east of Ukraine. There are no special forces nor instructors. All these people are local citizens. I also told my Western partners that these people have nowhere else to go and they will not go away. They are the masters of this land and it is necessary to talk with them. Whereas everybody knows that there were Russian troops in eastern Ukraine,

but the Russians always said, no, they're not there. So I think the Ukrainians were always trying to get the Russians back for that publicity. So, you know, you talked about how Ukraine was, you know, on the defensive and pushed back. They were able to do quite well in the northern part of the country. The Russians withdrew their forces from around Kyiv, and they have now shifted to the east and the south of the country. And you hear a lot of people talk about how this is a new phase of the war. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about that now. And perhaps we can start with what's going on

in the east. If you could just tell me what's happening there right now. So if you think of the very beginning of the war, the Russians tried to advance very quickly from three directions, from the north, from the east and from the south. From the north was the most important direction of advance because that was the one that was closest to Kiev. And of course, if you're able to take Kiev, then you can depose the government, you can install a puppet government. But that failed. The battered ruins of Russian military vehicles are scattered outside Kiev this morning. All Russian troops have left the region. The Russians came, they killed, they retreated. And so then now they're talking about taking territory in the east of the country

in these two eastern provinces called Luhansk and Donetsk. But it's been slow. You know, what they've been doing is they've been feeding extra troops into those areas, and they have been bombarding towns and villages, and they have been inching forward. Ukraine has a big force out there because it's been fighting a war against Russian proxies out in the east for the last eight years. So they had very strong defensive lines out there, some of its best units, best equipment. And so a clear Russian aim is to try to cut that force off. Now, while clearly that aim is much easier said than done, and the Russians are moving forward very slowly, and they're taking heavy losses. You know, Ukraine, it's much easier to defend than it is to attack. So it's going to be a war of attrition. It's going to be quite a long haul. And that's why the Ukrainians have been asking the US and its allies for bigger equipment.

So they're looking for tanks. They're looking for artillery, the sort of things that would be able to really stop the Russian armor that's trying to crash across the eastern part of the country and seized territory. Mariupol is an incredibly important and strategic location in this fight in the east. the russians seem hell-bent on taking it and in fact they've already claimed that they've won it and have they i mean in some respects yes they have they have taken that town there is a part of that town which is where the the azov steel plant is based where several hundred uh ukrainian soldiers just, just a real mix of different kinds of troops in there, defenders of the city, they're based now around that steel plant.

And the Russians say that, you know, in order to protect, this is what Putin said last week. He said, There's no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities. Block off this industrial area so that not even a fly can escape. The end to the fighting to liberate Mariupol is a success.

Now that would seem to indicate that the Russians were taking heavy losses trying to take this plant and trying to get the Ukrainians out of that. And of course, you can see the ability of the Russians to declare some sort of victory in Mariupol, to declare that they have indeed taken this town as some sort of Russian victory. On the other hand, the defenders of Mariupol have held out for an extraordinarily long time. It's been two months. The Russians were bombing us from day one, says this woman. They are demolishing everything, just erasing it.

This city is right on the border with Russia. It's been right in the sights of the Russians for a long, long time. One of the reasons why it's so important is because the Russians very much want to connect this stretch of land, which links Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, with the rest of Russia. So you're looking for this sort of south-southeastern belt of land. And Mariupol is a key to being able to take that. These people that are in this steel plant that the Russian forces have surrounded, what could happen to them? I mean, is the goal here to like starve them out if they're not going to go in and try and take it? They're in a sort of underground complex there, a series of bunkers and tunnels.

They've got food in there and some water. Not huge amounts, but they seem to be getting by. For the women and children trapped underground in the maze of tunnels, conditions are bleak. If it weren't for the Ukrainian soldiers, we'd have no food, says this mother. But they've been sending these appeals to the West, hoping that, you know, there are two potential ways out of this. One of them is the potential diplomatic mission where, you know, a Western country manages to persuade the Russians to let these defenders and these civilians evacuate. And the other option that they speak about is actually giving Ukraine sufficient weapons in order to be able to launch some kind of military relief effort. Both of those appear unlikely in the near term. So it's a pretty grim situation that they're in at the moment. 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. 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 Couples. The images coming out of Mariupol are apocalyptic. They look apocalyptic. I think that we still lack words about what we see and what we hear about Mariupol and what Mariupol is going through. A U.S. satellite firm has released images that they say are mass graves around the city. We haven't been able to independently verify these images, but the Ukrainians say that it's evidence, more evidence of Russian war crimes. And what did you make of those images? It's evidence, more evidence of Russian war crimes.

And what did you make of those images? I mean, I think the first thing to say is that the Russians, when they came into Ukraine, they were expecting that they would be welcomed. And that then led to a change in tactics for the Russians. They went into the mode which has become more familiar from the Russian military in Chechnya, but also in Syria, where the aim has been simply to obliterate any defense and also to target civilians in order to sap the strength and the will of the defenders. Putin has reportedly just appointed a new general, the guy basically in charge of the offensive, a guy named General Alexander Vornikov. And what does his appointment signal to you

about this new phase of the war and Russia's strategy? The initial Russian invasion had several difficulties, one of which was coordination, because they had several generals in charge. And now, if they indeed do have this one single general in charge, that seems to indicate that they felt that wasn't working. This guy was known for using quite brutal tactics against civilians in Syria. He participated in the Russian operations in Chechnya, which destroyed the city of Grozny

and killed uncounted numbers of civilians. He was one of the architects of Russian military operations in Syria, in combination with Assad, destroyed the city of Aleppo, barrel bombed, poisoned gas. So there's no holes barred. He's 44 years. There's obviously concern that would be something he would do. Although, to be fair, that's something, a direction that the Russian army was going in, in any case. And I think more of a question than who is in charge, the question is whether the Russians are going to be able to adapt the way they're approaching this war to the fact that they've had setbacks. They've had setbacks in part because they were just, they were feeding more and more troops and vehicles into losing situations. So rather than

gathering forces together for a big strike, they were pushing in more and more and more troops, which they just ended up losing. And that appears to be what they're doing in Donbas in the east of Ukraine. So it's unclear whether they've really learned anything from those defeats around Kiev. Just before we go, we've talked quite a bit about the east, but I wanted you to talk a little bit about the south, because there are reports that they are looking to take control of the entire South all the way to Moldova. And so, you know, whether or not they've learned their lesson and they're successful there, like why focus on this part of Ukraine? So there are several reasons why they would focus on this

part of Ukraine. One of them is ideological and another is strategic. So the first reason would be ideological because Putin has this fantasy of southern and eastern Ukraine as a bastion of support for Russia, and that these people are actually in lands that used to be Russian, and they were taken away from Russia. And what he's doing is simply reuniting them with Russia. That is the sort of ideological basis that Putin is working from on this, which is, you know, these are obviously part of Ukraine. Tim Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University. In his piece entitled By Denying a Ukrainian Culture, Putin Flattens His Own. Snyder writes, quote, Vladimir Putin wants to crush people into one. He says God told him that Ukrainian souls are Russian. History

revealed to him that Ukraine strives to be one with Russia. The very language he speaks entitles him to invade any country where Russia is spoken. And you speak with people in these areas. You know, I spoke with a lot of people in the south of Ukraine, a lot of whom are Russian speaking. They say, great, yeah, we speak Russian, but we're Ukrainian. We speak Ukrainian just the same as we do Russian. And we suffered from years of having to speak Russian during the Soviet Union. We were pushed into speaking Russian. So that's why we speak it, not because we have some great loyalty to Moscow. Then there's the strategic question.

The south of the country would obviously offer Russia the opportunity to cut Ukraine off from access to the sea. Ukraine is a very, very big grain producer. And a lot of the grain is then shipped out from ports on the Black Sea, particularly Odessa is a huge port. And if you could deny Ukraine access to those ports, then you're going to really, really undercut its economy. Because I think if you draw back to an even wider lens, then Putin's aim is still to take over Ukraine. He hasn't given up that big aim.

So when this general came out last week and said, we're looking to go even further to the south and to the west and take Odessa. Well, yeah, at this stage. But the eventual aim is still to take Kiev. I think they haven't given up on that. But at this stage, the issue is it's easy to make those statements, but what are the actual Russian capabilities? And it appears that, well, they were not able to take Kiev, and it appears that they haven't had a breakthrough in the east. So to talk about taking Odessa and this whole band of territory along the south of the country, it's much easier said than done.

There's another reason why they would want that territory. And that's because there's a region in Moldova called Transnistria, which is a separatist region, which is supported by Russia. And there are Russian, quote unquote, peacekeepers. It's what Moscow calls peacekeepers in that area. So if Russia were able to link up all that stretch along the south, then that would obviously be would be one of their aims. And it's one thing, you know, I'm based, I'm based in Brussels, and I'm being out at NATO. I'm speaking with some senior military officials there, they say that from the very beginning has been one,

one big aim for the Russians. You know, you mentioned earlier that we're probably entering into a war of attrition, right? And I just wonder, before we go today, if you could just tell us what you think that actually will probably look like, considering it seems like you know nobody's nobody's going to get a clear swift victory here right so the reason we're into a war of attrition

is because there's nowhere for anyone to retreat so ukrainians can't retreat anywhere because it's their country and so they'll fight for it but it's hard for putin to retreat as well because he's um said that he's going to achieve achieve a military victory, that he's going to, in his words, he's going to denazify the country, he's going to degrade its military. And he's been, you know, as a dictator, when you promise a victory, that's usually something you'd have to deliver on. So neither side has anywhere to retreat to. So what you get left with then is, as you say, a battle of attrition, but it's also a logistics battle. It's all about who can provide the ammunition and the supplies that you will need to keep fighting. And what you're having in that case is not only Russia

against Ukraine in that, one of the key resuppliers is the US and NATO, who have been providing large amounts of ammunition and weapons to Ukraine. And actually, today, the Russians appear to have targeted the Ukrainian rail infrastructure. And so, you know, that seems to be an attempt to make it harder for the Ukrainians to bring in more ammunition and weapons from the West. So this is, you know, when something goes into a long sort of long haul war, then a lot of that becomes about how well and how quickly and how effectively can you supply your troops with the equipment and the ammunition that they need. Devastating to think the damage and the lives that are going to be lost as this continues to play out. James, thank you so much for this. It was really excellent. Thank you.

My pleasure. Anytime. Always happy to be involved. Okay, so before we go today, remember last week when we talked about Elon Musk trying to buy Twitter? It was hard to say whether it would happen since Twitter adopted this poison pill policy to stop Musk from snapping up too much of its stock. Well, oh what a difference a week makes. Twitter's board has now accepted Musk's takeover offer. The $44 billion US sale will make Twitter a privately held company owned by Musk. In a statement announcing the deal yesterday, Musk talked about free speech, cracking down on fake accounts and opening up the site's algorithm. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.