Front Burner - Will Ukraine's attack inside Russia pay off?

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Two and half years after Russia first invaded, Ukraine has launched what might be its boldest counterattack yet: a push into the Kursk region. It's the first military incursion across Russian borders since the Second World War, drawing Russian troops away from key battle zones in eastern Ukraine.Tim Mak, a Kyiv-based journalist who publishes the newsletter The Counteroffensive, explains why Ukraine is betting big on such a risky strategy, and whether it could change the course of this protracted war.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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 Stephanie Skanderis in for Jamie Poisson. Earlier this month, thousands of Ukrainian troops moved into the Russian region of Kursk along the northeast border. This was the first time in the two and a half years since Russia's invasion that Ukraine has launched its own incursion into Russian territory. In the last few days, according to Ukrainian military officials, they've destroyed a key bridge and struck a second one close by, disrupting the flow of supplies.

Russian media outlets are reporting that nearly 200,000 people have been evacuated. So far, Ukraine has largely been playing defense in the war. So why launch this incursion now? What is Ukraine trying to accomplish with such a high-stakes move? And how might Russia continue to respond? My guest today is Tim Mack. He's based in Kiev, where he covers the war in his newsletter, The Counteroffensive. Hi, Tim. Thanks so much for coming on FrontBurner. I love coming on FrontBurner. Thanks for having me. So there are reports that as many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops could be involved in this latest push from Ukraine into the Russian territory in Kursk.

How big of a deal is this? Well, you'll remember that one of Putin's red lines from the beginning of the war has been that the sovereignty of Russia could not be challenged. that the sovereignty of Russia could not be challenged. And so the Ukrainians essentially have taken a gamble, have said, hey, we're going to test and see if that's actually true. And so the invasion of, or the offensive, or incursion, or whatever you want to call it, into the Kursk region of Russia, it's the first time since World War II that foreign troops have been on Russian soil.

President Zelensky says they've taken control of a Russian town about six miles across the border. The Lenin statue in the town square defaced. Local Russians hiding in a basement. Zelensky also discussed the possibility of establishing military checkpoints in the areas it claims to control. Dozens of towns and villages. Potentially useful bargaining chips. It's a huge deal, but it's also a huge gamble for

the Ukrainian military. Okay, definitely want to come back to the gamble and the strategy part of it. But just to talk a little bit more about the magnitude of this, how does this compare? I mean, you gave us some historical reference there, but how does the scale of this operation compare to what we've seen in this war so far? Well, we're talking an area that is a small slice of the Kursk region, which is in the northeast part, just over the border from the northeast part of Ukraine and in the southwest part of Russia. We're not talking huge, huge swaths of area here. The amount of actual kilometers taken have kind of vacillated a little

bit. It looks like right now, according to the Institute for the Study of War, that the incursion is about 56 kilometers wide and up to 28 kilometers deep. So it's not a small area, but it's not gigantic, region-sized, or it's not enough to pose, let's say, a threat to the stability of the Russian government. But it is a real threat to Putin's promise that Russian sovereignty will not be breached during the course of this war by either Ukraine or Western powers. And it could be a very destabilizing thing for him. That's that if you were to look on an actual map, it looks like a relatively small part as compared to the size of Ukraine. So this is not a major operation to the scale of the counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, for example. Ukrainian forces claiming they have

retaken land from Russia, the first Ukrainian advance since their major new counter-offensive began. Ukraine mounting offensive operations across the strategically important southern front and also claiming its troops are advancing around the eastern city of Bakhmut. This is something that it seems like the success of the operation seems to have caught both the Ukrainians and the Russians by surprise. Initially, it was really only, it was only reported that a few hundred to maybe a thousand Ukrainian soldiers were involved in the initial operation pushing across the border into Russia. And now it looks like this has become a kind of major zone of operations for the Ukrainian military. And how were they able to do that? How was Ukraine able to catch Russia so off guard?

Well, firstly, it was just not anticipated by Western planners, by Russian planners, and no one in Ukraine was talking about this as a consideration. The Russian troops that would have been guarding these border areas would have been the kinds of conscripts which Putin has promised would never see combat. You know, in order to retain his domestic popularity, he has made a lot of pledges, like that those who have been forcibly mobilized and conscripted will not see frontline combat in Ukraine. Well, one of the roles that they end up doing if they are conscripted is manning border posts like the ones in, you know, between Sumy Oblast in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast in Russia. So these are not top line, well-trained elite troops with combat experience. That's one

of the ways. And also it was a failure of imagination on behalf of the Russians in that they just did not anticipate that this was a possibility. They have a very, very long border with Ukraine. They hadn't devoted the resources to secure that border. It's startling to see the steady flow of military vehicles and armor just passing through the Russian border point completely undefended. It's also remarkable the freedom with which the Ukrainian military are moving around here. They simply aren't afraid of the drones that have hampered their every move for the past months. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the geography specifically, because I understand that most of the fighting so far has been in eastern Ukraine. That's where Russia first invaded. Kursk is more to the northeast, right? Like a few hours drive

north of the fighting that we've seen so far. It seems quite far away from the action that's been happening so far. So why Kursk specifically? Well, the Ukrainians will say that one of the reasons for this operation is to create a buffer zone. Over the past year or so, the Sumy region, which is just on the Ukrainian side of the border, has been bombarded quite frequently by Russian forces. There was some anticipation, actually, that the Russians would try to open a new front in that direction. And so the Ukrainians pushed through here probably because they understood that it was not very well defended, that it was far from other zones of fighting, and could fulfill their strategic goal of forcing Russia into making these strategic decisions that aren't advantageous to them, forcing them into dilemmas,

no-win situations, where they have to pull troops away from far away on the eastern front in eastern Ukraine over to the north in order to address the ongoing incursion. So now we're about two and a half years into this war since the fighting began when Russia first invaded Ukraine. Why has Ukraine launched this offensive now? What's the significance of the timing around it? Well, you know, I would say a few months ago, we started to have the first conversations about conversations with the Russians. So the first kinds of suggestions that there may be negotiations. Now we have a military operation in which one of the stated

goals is to advance the Ukrainian position when it comes to future possible negotiations with Russia, whether it's in terms of capturing Russian territory that can be traded back for Ukrainian territory, or capturing prisoners of war, which in a future negotiation could be traded back for Ukrainians who are now being held by the Russian military. So we're now advancing slowly towards this possibility in the future, the war will end through some sort of negotiated settlement. I think as time goes on, more and more Ukrainians are favoring this approach to try to find some way to a diplomatic solution that will at least pause the fighting, create a ceasefire, or hopefully a more sustainable end to conflict. Well, to that end, the Washington Post has been reporting that Russia and Ukraine were actually set to hold indirect talks in Qatar to agree to both sides stopping

attacks on power grid infrastructure. And that would have essentially acted as a partial ceasefire. And then, of course, those talks were derailed by this attack. So what do you think this attack could mean for the possibility of any kind of ceasefire deal? Look, in the long term, both sides will have some interest, particularly if there's a deadlock, in finding a way to negotiations. You know, in the long term, the war isn't really great for either of these countries. Russia has suffered tremendously due to sanctions. They're losing a tremendous number of people on the front lines. This is creating instability for Putin on the domestic scene.

He's already dealt with one minor insurrection when Prokhorin and the Wagner forces threatened to march on the Russian capital. Video showed columns of Wagner troops heading north towards the capital, along the way claiming control of military installations in the Voronezh region. But by evening, a deal had been done to end the insurrection. Authorities in Russia have confirmed the head of the Wagner group, paramilitary group Yevgeny Prigozhin, has died in a plane crash. He doesn't need the war to go on indefinitely, particularly if he's not seeing substantial progress. So the big question is, when will these negotiations take place. On the Ukrainian side, most Ukrainians have said that they're not interested in negotiations with Russia because they don't believe that such negotiations would lead to a

sustainable ceasefire or a sustainable peace, that Russia will simply use the time to rearm and invade again. So there's a lot of suspicion on both sides. But that said, I think they'll eventually find it in their interest to come to the table and have a conversation about this. But it still seems like a pretty high-risk, high-reward gamble that Ukraine is making. Do you think that this attack could potentially backfire on them? Yeah, there are a couple of ways in which this is a big risk. In order to pull off this operation, the Ukrainian military needed to pull their own troops off critical frontline positions in order to thrust into Russia.

That could leave other positions vulnerable for a Russian advance. And Russia has made a little bit of progress in eastern Ukraine in the time since this initial incursion into Kursk began. There's also the possibility that this occupation of part of Russian territory may rejuvenate the broader Russian public, which, you know, famously Putin and Russia have claimed this to be a special military operation and not a war for a very, very long time, and has tried to downplay the significance of it. It's very hard to downplay the significance of this so-called special military operation when there are Ukrainian troops on Russian territory.

The war's script flipped. Russian civilians fleeing the Ukrainians. We were being shelled, so we were not able to take anything with us, this Russian woman says. But one of the ways in which this could backfire is that it could really help mobilize the Russian public to Putin's cause and allow it to make it easier for him to order, for example, a full mobilization or conscript thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more people. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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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. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about some of those perceptions in the public and the state of the war, how it's seen right now. So when you were on FrontBurner back in March, you talked about how Ukrainian support for President Volodymyr Zelensky still was really high, had come down a little bit, but still remained really high. But support for the war itself was really losing steam. So how has this most recent offensive changed perceptions at all?

Yeah, I mean, I will say a couple things. I've noticed in the last month, morale really dramatically improving. I think that this incursion, it's not strategically going to be a huge game changer. It's not going to end the war. But in terms of morale, I think Ukrainians are for the first time seeing their troops fighting on territory that's not their own. And that has been a huge boost for them, understanding that they took advantage of a weakness in Russia's defense posture. And remember that Russia is many, many times larger than Ukraine, both in population and territory in terms of manufacturing and resources. And they're the underdog here. So to be able to take this risky gamble and for it to at least be relatively successful has been a huge boost. I'll say another thing that I've noticed is that with the changing American political situation, that's also been a big morale boost

for Ukraine. I think that there was, when I spoke to FrontBurner last, a few months ago, a sense of doom around the idea of another Trump presidency. And while that still might occur, the changes in the political campaign situation in the United States have also shifted thinking here among Ukrainians about what sort of support they might get after November from their most important strategic partner in the United States. Well, we have just seen the Americans pass a Ukrainian aid bill to send them more money, munitions. So how are things looking for the Ukrainian army in terms of resources and their ability to fight this war, not just from the public perception, but from the military?

Yeah, I mean, the counteroffensive, the publication I run and Politico did a poll trying to understand the effects of American military aid on interest and willingness and support for conscription in Ukraine. The big issue here is that while Ukraine is currently well resourced in terms of equipment, one of its big drawbacks is a lack of manpower. As I mentioned earlier, Ukraine is just much smaller than Russia. And so in a war of attrition, the longer that goes, the more difficult it is to raise and train new soldiers and bring new people into the fold. What we found from that poll was that the $61 billion package passed by the U.S. Congress was a huge morale booster for Ukraine, that Ukrainians are much more willing to be conscripted into the military when they know that that military is well equipped. That said, equipment doesn't win wars. People do. And ultimately, this manpower shortage, which has been really a big struggle for Ukraine, that's going to be a critical problem

as the war drags on. And there's no way around it that some of Ukraine's best, most well-trained, most experienced soldiers have died over the, or been severely injured over the course of the last two and a half years. And there's no coming back from that. And going forward, it's going to be a real struggle to man positions and units. So let's talk about now from the Russian side of things. What has Russia's response been to this attack so far? Well, from the very beginning, it was a traditional Russian information response, which was to flood the zone with so many different kinds of lies,

that it's very difficult to discern the truth. And that's been a kind of traditional Russian governmental approach to information warfare. From the very first day, there were briefings in which the Russian military said that they had the situation under control, that they had stopped the Ukrainians in their tracks, and that they had killed X number of Ukrainian troops and destroyed Y number of Ukrainian armored vehicles. The news and the truth, which cannot be denied, is that now there are more than 100,000 Russians that have been evacuated from their homes and the territory in this area. And you can't look at that and also claim that the situation is stable and that the Ukrainians are being beaten back to the border. Right now,

from what we can tell in open source and through videos, through claims on both the Russian and the Ukrainian side, the Ukrainians are making progress, not a ton of progress like they did in the first few days of this operation, but they're still continuing to make progress. And every kilometer that they're making is offsetting, potentially in future negotiations, offsetting a kilometer that the Russians have previously made in eastern Ukraine. And what about Putin himself? Can you tell us more about what he's been saying? Well, he's had some of these live briefings in which he looks very stern and angry and, frankly, a little bit powerless. He's been taking a lot of briefings in public, in televised fashion from local officials, senior military officials. But they don't seem to be either able to give him the truth or some sort of response

that solves his problem, which is that there are foreign troops on Russian soil. Russia hasn't been able to push back Ukrainian forces. And in fact, Ukraine seems to be digging in for the long run. They're both building fortifications, and there have been reports of them bombing major bridges to prevent Russian supply lines from supporting Russian troops and pushing them back. It's going to be a real, it seems like it's going to be a real long-term approach for them to stay on this territory in the Kursk region. I mean, this whole war was never positioned as something that was going to go on for this long, for two and a half years. It was expected to be this special military operation that was going to be over very quickly. So now that it's actually crossed the border back into Russia

itself, how popular is this war in Russia now? It's so, so hard to tell because polling in Russia is not reliable. And this war has also not only brought violence to Ukraine, but it's also brought violence to a lot of pro-democracy or liberal-minded people in Russia. Over the course of this full-scale invasion, Russia has further criminalized any sort of dissent against its military actions or against the government. And many liberal-minded people have left the country entirely. People have left the country entirely. So we don't have a great window into how this is affecting things on the domestic side. I will say that hundreds of thousands of families in Russia losing members of their families, sons, fathers, uncles, loved ones. uncles, loved ones. And what that in the long term will mean is it's going to be incredibly destabilizing whenever this war ends. How do you think all of that is affecting Russia's ability to keep fighting this war? Well, you know, right now, one of the things that has been released

quite frequently is interviews with conscripts that have been captured by the Ukrainians, right? So folks who are now prisoners of war or had been fighting on the front, and if they're to be believed, and I, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but if they're to be believed, morale is pretty much through the ground. It's underground. I mean, a lot of Russians didn't think that they would be sent to combat at all, let alone find themselves on Ukrainian territory or fighting in trenches or being captured as prisoners of war.

And yet I cannot imagine that Putin would just, you know, wipe his hands, that's it, take the loss on this. What kind of retaliation do you think we can expect to see from the Russians? a loss on this. What kind of retaliation do you think we can expect to see from the Russians? Well, they'll definitely make it a priority to try to push the Ukrainians out of the Kursk region. It's really hard to say exactly what will happen next, but Russia certainly won't enter any negotiations without or conclude any negotiations without being able to claim something as a win, even if it isn't, you know, objectively so. You know, in order for any negotiation to come to a fruitful ending, both sides are going to have to be able to say that they got something out of it. I'm not even sure how that will go. I don't think there are likely

to be negotiations in the next, say, month or few months. But it does seem like we're slowly treading down that road. Tim, for those of us who have been watching, talking about covering this war from afar, it has felt for a while now like there wasn't much progress being made on either side. Attacks were happening, for sure. Some of them really devastating, but little change overall in the shape of things. Until this attack, which seemed like a much more significant momentum shift. From what you're seeing, is that perception correct? Like, do you think Ukraine's push into Russian territory here could actually change the trajectory of the war more broadly? I think it really, it won't be the strategic genius move that ends the war. But psychologically, you know, you're seeing, for example,

Russian planes, jets flying over Russian territory, dropping Russian bombs on Russian land. And I think for Ukrainians who have seen, who have borne the brunt of this war and seen their cities bombed and seen their troops killed or hospitals bombed and their civilians killed. It is this kind of, we're finally taking it to them, development. That, you know, now they're fighting on Russian territory and Russians are directly feeling what it is like to be in a war or what is it like to be the subject of a war. That, I think, is the biggest

change. And also this challenge to Putin, who has always said that, you know, a challenge to Russia's sovereignty would not be acceptable and that as a strong man, he himself is the only one who can guarantee the security of the Russian state. Right now, every day that Ukrainian troops are on Russian territory shows that to be a lie, shows that he does not have the ability to keep at least that promise. Tim, really appreciate your perspective from right there in Ukraine. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'm Stephanie Skanderis. Jamie's back tomorrow.