Front Burner - The state of Russia’s war in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

It’s been almost a month since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The UN Human Rights Office says at least 902 civilians have been killed between Feb. 24 and March 19, but warns that the real death toll is actually considerably higher as it has not yet verified numbers from several badly hit cities, including the besieged Mariupol. Still, as the war rages on, the capital Kyiv and much of the rest of the country remains in Ukrainian control. Today, the Wall Street Journal’s European security correspondent James Marson explains the state of Russia’s war in Ukraine now, where Russian forces have advanced, and the strength of the Ukrainian resistance.

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. It's been almost one month now since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There are countless devastating stories coming out of the country, where the UN Human Rights Office says at least 902 civilians have been killed since February 24th.

The office warns that the real death toll is actually much higher, as they have not yet verified numbers from several badly hit cities, including the besieged Mariupol. On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia's military had bombed a school sheltering some 400 people. Less than a week after an attack on a theater where hundreds of civilians, including children, were taking refuge. New satellite images show Mariupol's main theater. In front and in back are signs in Russian that read children. They're large enough to be visible from the air. Russia struck the theatre anyway.

It is still unclear how many died in those bombardments. But elsewhere in the port city, the BBC reports bodies are buried in the streets. I hope there will be some sort of reburial. And this is just temporary, he says. But the military told us to put the bodies somewhere in the cold. And the only cold place now are our basements. But there are people in the basements, so we buried them here. This brutal war is raging on.

But still, the capital Kiev and much of the rest of the country remains in Ukrainian control. Today, I'm talking to The Wall Street Journal's European security correspondent, James Marson, about the state of Russia's war in correspondent, James Marson, about the state of Russia's war in Ukraine now, where Russian forces have advanced, and the fierce Ukrainian resistance. Hi, James. Thanks so much for making the time today. Hi there.

Always happy to. I think it's fair to say that this invasion so far is not really going as Russia had planned. And what do you think Vladimir Putin thought was going to happen when he launched his so-called special military operation last month? Well, Russian officials, including Putin, for a long time have boasted about the ability of the Russian army. And they very much thought that the military would be able to achieve its objectives in just a few days. Their aim, as they said from the beginning, was to demilitarize Ukraine. It was to topple the government. And they believed they could do it very, very quickly.

They thought that the Ukrainian army was not up to much. They didn't show a great deal of respect. They thought it would collapse very quickly. was not up to much. They didn't show a great deal of respect. They thought it would collapse very quickly. And it didn't. And as a result, the Russian army is now bogged down across the country. It has some areas where it's having more success than others. But the idea of toppling the government and taking Kiev now is looking like something that would take a much bigger and more brutal effort of city fighting than they'd initially intended. I know there was this early battle at an airport that you've reported on that sort of embodies what you're talking about here, that this was much more difficult than perhaps Russia believed it to be. And can you tell me about the significance of that airport and what

happened there? That's right. So this is airport, which is about 20 miles from the center of Kiev, the capital. So it's just on the outskirts. And it's called Hostomel Airport. What the Russians did was they landed a unit of paratroopers there in several helicopters, and they managed to take over this airfield. And what they were trying to do was to hold this airfield so they could then fly in hundreds more paratroopers, which would have then allowed them to bring in a greater force. Either they would have been able to make a move into Kiev on their own, or they would have been able to link up with armoured units that were coming from the north. But the Ukrainians, first of all, they held them off for a long time at the airport. And then after the Russians had

taken over, different Ukrainian units from different brigades themselves were able to launch an attack on the Russians who were trying to hold this airport. And they were blasted out of there by artillery, essentially. So that scuppered their very early plan for a very quick dash into Kiev to sort of topple the government, came over in a day or two or three. That obviously hasn't happened. And now around that airport, the front line hasn't really moved. It's moved back and forwards a little bit every day, but without any really significant advances into Kiev for the Russians. And this is more than three weeks later at this stage. Can you tell me more about what the

Ukrainian military's resistance to the Russian invasion has actually looked like so far? Like, I understand we're not talking tank meets tank and open battlefield type warfare here, right? That's right. That's exactly what the Ukrainians are trying to avoid. The Russians have a significantly larger and better equipped army. So what the Ukrainians are doing is they're adopting skirmishing tactics. They are trying to avoid these head-on collisions with a bigger and better equipped military force. So to do that, they're in smaller units, they're trying to ambush the Russian armored columns that are coming into Ukraine. You may have seen some of these videos on YouTube or on Twitter.

They're all over because it's happened so many times where the Ukrainians are using either artillery or they are using these anti-tank weapons that they've been given by Western supporters to smash up these Russian armoured columns. So they're not trying to take the Russians on head on. They're using the equipment and the advantages that they have, which is that they know the terrain, they know the country, and they're trying to blunt the Russians in that way and to simply bleed them of their armour. And not only are they attacking tanks and other armoured vehicles in that way, they're also attacking supply trucks, fuel trucks, ammunition trucks, which is preventing the supplies from getting to the front lines for the Russians, which is also, you know, another way of stopping the army

is if they're not fed, watered, and supplied with fuel and ammunition, then they can't fight. I suppose it's not just that they know the terrain and have this artillery, but also they really believe in what they're fighting for here, right? And is that clearly contributing to some of these successes? Absolutely. And I think that's certainly something that Vladimir Putin underestimated, because his thesis that he's repeated many, many times is that the Ukrainians and the Russians are one people, that Ukraine is an artificial country, and that it's simply ruled by a nationalist group that has been brought into power by the United States, which is nonsense, of course, as the

Ukrainian response to this invasion has shown. People are fighting for their country and they don't want to give in to an invader, someone who's come to smash their homes up with artillery. But of course, as you mentioned before, this isn't to say Russia's military has been totally beat back. And so, yeah, how much of Ukraine do Russian forces now have under control today? Yeah, so we shouldn't go over the top here. And when we're noting Ukraine's successes that it's had, you know, in certain areas, the Russians have also had their successes. And of course, they do have a significantly larger military than the Ukrainians do. They have been particularly

successful in the south of the country. So they have controlled Crimea, they annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. That's a peninsula that reaches into the Black Sea. So they poured over the connection between Crimea and mainland Ukraine. And they were able to take a large city, relatively large city called Kherson in the south of Ukraine. And then they moved to the east, and they're trying to link up with Russia, with Russian territory. And at the moment, there are big fights going on around a city, a city that used to be home to around half a million people, a city called Mariupol. In this footage from Sunday, you can hear the sound of the

bombing as these terrified civilians seek shelter, which, as you've been hearing, has been surrounded by Russian forces for weeks, leaving people without supply lines for food or water, without internet connection to the outside world as they face airstrikes, shelling from tanks. It's just awful. At the same time, we shouldn't misunderstand what the Russian advance looks like. When you see the sort of blobs of territory shaded in as Russian-held territory, that can be a little bit deceiving. It's better to think of it as sort of spider's legs, that the Russians are advancing down these roads, and they might not control all of the territory. And the Ukrainians are ambushing them from the side, and sometimes the Russians get pushed back. So it's actually very difficult always to know exactly where the front lines are.

But yes, the Russians have advanced in certain areas. So in some places, it looks like they've advanced a little bit too far, a little bit too fast, and they've ended up getting pushed back. Right, right. These blobs that you talked about, I've seen blobs of red along parts of the northeast border, east border, southeast border. But basically, you're saying that doesn't necessarily represent entire territory occupied. Right, because it takes a lot to occupy territory. Even cities that the Russians have occupied, Kherson, Melitopol, places like this,

which have a couple of hundred thousand people living there, a lot of people are coming out to protest. Thousands are coming out waving Ukrainian flags, shouting at the Russian army in Russian, get out. This is our home. We don't want you here. So obviously, this is going to be a long term challenge for the Russians, who rather assumed that when they came to Ukraine, they'd be welcomed, you know, as brothers. But in fact, they're being rejected as invaders. And an occupation, obviously, would be a completely different challenge for them, and a huge one at that. You mentioned Kherson, one of the bigger cities that Russia has occupied. I wonder if you could just tell me a bit more about the significance of taking this city. Right. So Kherson is a regional capital in the south of Ukraine, just north of the

Crimean Peninsula. It has been the only regional capital that the Russians have seized so far. And from there, they've tried to send troops both to the east and to the west. Going to the east is going out towards Russia to link up with the rest of Russia. And they've been quite successful at driving along that road there and taking control of territory there. But going westward, they did initially have some success going towards Odessa, going towards Moldova, Ukraine's neighbor to the west. But in recent days, the Ukrainians have actually managed to push them back. There was heavy fighting on the edge of another regional capital called Mykolaiv. The Russians are trying to blast a path through this city

in order to seize the whole Black Sea coast. But Mykolaiv is proving obstinate. That defiance is echoed by the local governor, who tells us the Russians are actually in retreat here. Just a few days ago I was speaking with someone who was telling me he was in a village halfway between Mykolaiv and Kherson saying the Ukrainians had just taken it. So the Russians have clearly got overextended, they were getting hit hard and they were being pushed back. So again it's a very mixed picture out there. These very quick victories that the

Russians were looking for haven't happened. Obviously, the Russians were regrouping, they're resupplying, and they're maybe looking to alter what they're trying to achieve. Of course, Kiev remains the prize, you know, because if you have Kiev, you're holding the capital city. That gives you a lot of sway. But on the other hand,ussia is having more success in the east and so that opens other possibilities for them

talking about uh the east you mentioned uh earlier too Mariupol, where there has been really horrific shelling that's taking place there. And Russia has demanded Ukrainian forces in that city surrender. And as of Monday afternoon, when you and I are talking, Ukraine has rejected that demand. And can you tell me more about what's happening in Mariupol right now? has rejected that demand. And can you tell me more about what's happening in Mariupol right now? So Mariupol is in the southeast of Ukraine. It's a port city. It's on the Sea of Azov. And obviously, it was one of the first places that the Russians attacked after they invaded at the end of February. And they had the city surrounded very, very quickly. I've spoken to several people who've come out of the city since then. And the picture you get just gets worse and worse and worse.

So it starts with, you know, first of all, the city starts getting shelled on the edge of the city. Then it starts getting closer. They start to knock out heat, electricity, water. Then they start airstrikes. Then these become more frequent. And in the end, they're happening so frequently that people are just spending all their times in bomb shelters. People are pleased to see snow because the snow they can take

and they can melt it and drink it. People are drinking from the radiators, from their heating systems. And then the Russians, according to people in the local authorities in Mariupol, have started even targeting places like hospitals. Despite being an apparent war crime, medical facilities have been repeatedly hit by Russia. City officials say 17 people, including children, women and doctors, were injured. Since then, at least five people have died.

They've been targeting areas where people are taking refuge, people who've already been made homeless by the bombing. They've then been targeted, for example, when they were in the city theatre, they were hiding under there, people already homeless, and's residential buildings are damaged or destroyed. They say around a third of all the residential buildings are beyond repair. This man in Kiev weeping over a body, wordless anguish, after a missile intercepted over the city slammed into an apartment building. The death and destruction in civilian areas continues to grow. And while it's not clear whether it's intentional or indiscriminate, it doesn't change the result.

And so the situation there is grave. The Ukrainian defenders are still holding on. They're vastly outnumbered, but they're still holding the center of the town. And obviously that's going to be very difficult for the Russians to take that because street-to-street fighting is brutal and it's always at the advantage of the defender. James, I wonder, as the Russian military's advances

have stalled someone in other parts of the country, I wonder if you see what's happening in Mariupol, these bombardments, if you see them as possibly a sign of a disturbing strategy here on Russia's part. Right. Well, I mean, this is the strategy that Russia has employed in recent years in Syria. It's also employed in the 1990s in Chechnya. So it wouldn't be unusual for the Russians to do this. This would be repeating the strategy that they've used before, which is essentially to use unguided bombs to pulverize and pummel a civilian population into submission. And Mariupol, of

course, is the starkest example of that. But it's happening in other cities as well. You know, I've spoken to people from a city called Chernihiv, which is to the north of Kiev, where this is happening. There are villages and towns along the edge of Kiev, which have been hit very hard in this way. Many other cities across the country are getting hit very hard in areas that are residential, where you speak with the locals and they say, well, we just had, you know, we didn't have any military targets around here. We had, you know, pharmacies, pizzerias, butchers, and post offices. And so what the Ukrainians say is that this is clearly aimed at terrifying people and trying to get them to submit. 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, and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. Do we have any kind of accurate sense at this point of what kind of losses these militaries are taking, both on the Russian side and the Ukrainian side? Yeah, it's very difficult because the theater where this is happening is so large, it's very difficult to say. The U.S. has made estimates in the high thousands. Ukrainians say they've killed more than 10,000 Russian military.

But the Russians are still taking much greater losses than they would have expected. And a lot of these, there have been reports that a lot of these, the dead and the injured are actually being taken to Belarus, because this is not good for Putin. You know, Putin promised a quick victory. Putin said, you know, that Ukrainians would welcome them. So if Russians start seeing large numbers of their soldiers coming back dead and maimed, then that could start to become a problem for Putin. to become a problem for Putin. I saw an advisor to the Ukrainian president tweeting about how a whole bunch, six Russian generals have been killed. These are, you know, very high ranking individuals. And has that been confirmed? And if so, like, what does that tell you?

Right. Yes. I mean, that has obviously been a big problem for the Russians, actually. And part of the thinking is that the reason that these high-ranking officers, these generals, have had to come into areas where they can be targeted is simply because things aren't going well. So because things aren't going well, the generals are having to come into areas where they are putting themselves into danger, simply in order to try to fix things and get the wheels rolling again on the military front. But that's obviously been a boon for the Ukrainians. And it's not just generals. They obviously hit a large number of colonels and captains and lots of elite Russian troops as well have been killed. It's very hard to get a clear picture of what the losses actually are, because Russia's

committed a lot of its airborne forces, which are their elite, elite fighting forces. And you see that those have really been pummeled in the initial phase. Is it clear just how much of the Russian military is already deployed in Ukraine right now? It's a large chunk because they were bringing units around Ukraine, building up their forces at the very beginning of the year. If you remember, everyone in the world, I think, was tracking very carefully what units were where around Ukraine. They got up to estimates around 190,000 service members around Ukraine. And they were bringing large numbers in from far, far to the east. And now most of that, almost all of that force has been committed to Ukraine. The latest estimates from the US is that 10% of that force that went into Ukraine is now out of commission. It can't be used. So it's either been destroyed or it's unusable.

So now what the Russians are having to do is they're going to have to resupply. They're going to have to bring forward new vehicles. They're going to have to bring forward new troops, new ammunition, etc. That's why we're seeing a little bit of a pause at the moment in the fighting around Kiev. Yes, there's a lot of shelling still going on, a lot of airstrikes, but there aren't so many attempted big advances from the Russians at the moment. They seem to be digging in, resupplying and then probably getting ready to have another go. digging in, resupplying, and then probably getting ready to have another go. Well, given that, and given everything you've talked about today, I wonder just how much longer you think it can go on like this, I guess. Is there an end in sight?

I don't think so. Because at the moment, the Ukrainians feel like they've given the Russians a bloody nose, that Putin has not achieved his victory, that Putin is now bogged down. On the other hand, Putin can't, having declared his aims, it's not so easy when you're an authoritarian leader then to say, well, we lost or we didn't achieve them. So he's got to take something back to the Russian people and to his own inner circle, which looks like a victory. So it's very difficult for him to pull back. On the other hand, the Ukrainians have got nowhere to retreat because this is their country. So I think we're in for a very long war that is looking increasingly brutal. I know you just said that it looks like we're looking at a very long and brutal war, but have there been any hopes or indications that a peace deal might be agreed on to prevent this from dragging on, taking more lives, forcing more people to flee their homes?

Well, there have been some talks ongoing between the Ukrainians and the Russians, which don't really seem to have got anywhere. President Zelensky is putting stock in negotiations. It's time to talk, he said this weekend. But the U.S. is cautioning President Putin gives no indication he's giving way and that any talks may not result in any agreed compromise soon. Peace tends to happen in a war when one side wins, right? And neither side appears ready to admit defeat. You know, the Ukrainians have still got, they're getting supplied by the West. You know, US just last week confirmed a new package of 1 billion in arms, things like anti-tank weapons, anti-air weapons, drones, tank drones, things like that, that are obviously going to help restock the weapons that they've used taking on the Russians. So you've got a constant flow of

these weapons going into Ukraine in order to allow them to develop themselves. Ames, thank you so much for this. Thank you very much. That's all right. Anytime. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.