The Daily - The Next Phase of the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

After a disastrous defeat in northern Ukraine, Russia has begun a high-stakes battle for the east, while Western allies arm Ukrainian fighters determined to stave off the attack.After Moscow’s pivot, what lies in store in the coming weeks?Guest: Eric Schmitt, a senior writer covering terrorism and national security for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia defined a more limited military goal: taking control of the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine — not the whole country.Russia reorganized the command of its flagging offensive, selecting for the mission a general accused of ordering strikes on civilian neighborhoods in Syria.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

My name is Thomas Gibbonsneff. A couple days ago, I traveled with local reporter Natalia Yermak, photographer Tyler Hicks to Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine that is slowly being surrounded by Russian troops. When we arrived, it felt very much like a ghost town. Most shops were closed. the people left were elderly, and it felt like it was preparing for some kind of storm. Here on Friday, what was presumed to be a Russian missile

hit the railway station, killing more than 50 people. hit the railway station, killing more than 50 people. And it was still very apparent that an attack had taken place. There were burnt cars in the parking lot. Shattered glass spattered about, blood that was still pooled out front and in the main atrium, along with the luggage of those who had been killed. Maintenance workers picking up pieces of the building. We met Tatiana, a 50-year-old blonde woman.

She was running a snack stand that sold coffee and snacks next to the station. She was huddled up in winter clothing. It was cold and windy that day. up in winter clothing. It was cold and windy that day. She said that she had been there when the missile had struck. She said that she remembers the explosions and ducked inside with a family into this wooden bazaar behind her. And then when she re-emerged, she recalled cars on fire,

people running, and the screams from the train station. She was certainly, certainly in shock, and it was kind of crazy that she had come back to work so soon. But she was still going to stay. She had an elderly mother who she said even if she moved really anywhere outside of town, that she would have a heart attack. So she was ready to settle in for the long haul. And what does she think of the crimes that are coming out around Kiev?

And one thing that really stuck out is when I asked her about how she felt about the Russian atrocities in Bucha and the Russians approaching Kramatorsk, she basically replied... She basically replied,. If someone puts a rifle to my head and says, Hail Ukraine, I'll hail Ukraine. If someone puts a rifle to my head and says, Hail Russia, I'll hail Russia.

And she ended it by saying, I just want to survive, don't you understand? And towards the end of our conversation, she said, we are counting on the fact that we'll be bombed, that we will be wiped off the face of the earth. And we're prepared for that. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily.

After a disastrous defeat in northern Ukraine, Russia has begun a high-stakes battle for the country's east. Today, my colleague, Eric Schmidt, on the failures that led to Russia's pivot and on why the next few weeks are so critical to the future of the war. It's Wednesday, April 13th. So Eric, we've been hearing for weeks about the Russian military regrouping in Ukraine, kind of resetting after all of its losses in northern Ukraine in that area around Kyiv.

But we also heard from a lot of Western officials that they didn't really believe that that was what Russia was doing. You know, they said it could be a ruse and they said, watch what Russia does, not what it says. So I guess my question for you, Eric, is what is Russia doing? What is happening in Ukraine right now? Well, you're right, Sabrina. There was a lot of concern that this was just a feint, that the Russians weren't really going to pull back at all. But what we are seeing now is just that. Some 40,000 Russian forces have been retreating back into Russia and Belarus. These are already units that are battered and bloodied from weeks of fighting, they're going back to rearm and resupply and then presumably to be repositioned in the eastern part of Ukraine for the new phase of this fight. And so what we've

been seeing recently are some indications that this is actually happening. You've seen some of these units starting to make their way to this new major focus of the campaign. There is a major column of several miles long that's moving south down toward this area in eastern Ukraine. It's basically truckloads of infantry support equipment and attack helicopters and command elements. And these are all the kind of reinforcements that you'd need for a major offensive that may be in the next several days or a couple of weeks. The second indication of this new approach was a missile attack against a railway station in Kramatorsk, a small city in eastern Ukraine last Friday. They killed 50 people and injured hundreds more. This missile attack may have been

conducted by the Russians to knock out an important capability for the Ukrainian military to send troops, send reinforcements to basically to the eastern frontier. Obviously, it also had this horrible effect of killing all these innocent civilians who had rushed to the train station that day to try and get out of the combat area. And because they were there, ended up dead or badly wounded. And so this attack essentially represents the opening salvo in this new phase of the war that's coming. So it sounds like a real change in strategy for the Russian military. It really is. It's like a big fat do-over here. Because if you look at what Russia started with, they really were starting this war fighting on four different fronts.

Usually, any major military campaign has one front and kind of one what the military calls a center of gravity. But the Russians sought something much more ambitious, a forefront war almost. The first was the attack from the north on Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. The second was to continue the war in the eastern portion of Ukraine called the Donbass. This is part of the conflict that's been going on for the last eight years between Ukraine and Russia, but on a more limited scale. Then you have a third front, which is in the southeast, where Russia is trying to create a land corridor between the Crimean Peninsula, which is seized in 2014, and the Donbass area. And then the fourth front was to take Odessa, which is really one of the crown jewels on the Black Sea,

one of the major port for Ukraine. But what happened was this was really, it ended up being too much for the Russian military. Russian forces quickly became overstretched and pushing simultaneously in these four directions. And what it also revealed was real serious problems in Russian logistics and basically their supply lines. They're not used to having to support troops hundreds of miles away from their railroads. And quickly what happened was when your supply lines are attacked and are disrupted, you start running out of important things you need to run a war with, like fuel, like ammunition, like water and food. Right. There were a lot of reports of Russian soldiers stealing food, stealing gas from locals. They were really kind of scrounging around these soldiers.

Exactly. And it showed just what kind of poor planning there had been. Again, underlining the flawed assumptions that Moscow had going into this war of how they believed it would be over in a very tidy fashion. And it's been anything but tidy, to be sure. So it sounds like the Russians really bit off more than they could chew, really kind of overestimated what they could actually achieve. What else have we learned about missteps by the Russians? They started this war basically running it out of Moscow. You had senior generals hundreds of miles away thinking this was going to be a fairly quick and scripted battle, giving the orders to their troops in the field. And what happens is when things start going badly, the Russians do not have a nimble type of military, particularly a nimble kind of command structure that deals with adversity.

And why is that? Basically because of how the Russian military is built. The American military, for instance, is mostly made up of enlisted troops overseen by essentially sergeants. There's a lot of trust that's instilled from higher commanders that junior officers and these senior sergeants in the battlefield will be able to make decisions on the fly, particularly when things start to go wrong. Well, the Russian system is much more rigid. It's kind of left over from the very rigid hierarchy that we saw in the Soviet era. They don't have that kind of middle layer, that middle tier of senior enlisted personnel that are guiding these conscripted forces. So when things start going badly, they don't really know what to do next.

And they just basically continue to kind of push forward with a plan that's not really working. Interesting, just not able to troubleshoot. as a result of this kind of disjointed operation, is that the general officers are forced to play a much more prominent role for the Russian war effort than you certainly would see in the United States, for instance, in American war. The Russian generals basically have to go to the front and kind of figure out what's going on and how do we untangle this mess that's going on out there. So these Russian generals are having to go to the front.

And suddenly we notice that they're getting killed. And as many as seven generals that we know of have been killed in the front line positions, which is a staggering number by American standards. Wow. The other thing that we learned, not only is the command structure kind of, you know, broken, really, but the way the Russians are communicating with each other is a real disaster. They're basically speaking on open communication on radios that are unsecured. They're not encrypted. So the Ukrainians can listen in, and they can hear the generals saying, I'm going to be moving to the front. And they basically started targeting these senior officers, the Ukrainians did, hitting them with sniper fire, hitting them with mortars.

So the Russians actually don't have their own secure communications? Apparently not. Amazing. They're using Ukrainian Wi-Fi to prosecute their war. Essentially. Essentially, they're speaking in the open, not thinking it's going to be an operational security breach, which it certainly is. And it leads to even more casualties and more dysfunction and more chaos in the Russian ranks. So, Eric, just to summarize here, we have the top commanders in Moscow giving direction from afar. And then we have the Russian generals on the ground who go to fix things. And then we have the Russian generals on the ground who go to fix things.

And when they go in, they are being killed, in part because they actually don't have secure communications to talk on. So they're being eavesdropped. They're being listened to. That's right. And where this leaves just regular soldiers is a complete state of disorganization. And they're suffering huge casualties. The numbers, we don't know exactly what they are, but estimates range from 7,000 to 15,000 Russian dead in just these first six or seven weeks, another 20,000 to 30,000 wounded. This would far outpace the casualties that the Russians suffered in Afghanistan for over a decade. Just staggering numbers so quickly into this fight.

And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing a pivot in the strategy. So, Eric, why did it take the Russians so long to make this pivot to the east? Well, I think first you had Russian commanders taking their orders from President Putin, just really not believing what they were seeing on the ground. And that this Ukrainian military and Ukrainian public really was standing up with such fierce resistance to the initial invasion. So I thought there was probably a part of the Russian military that's saying, well, we just got to push harder and we got to fight harder through this and we'll achieve our goals. and we'll achieve our goals. But the second thing is it's clear that nobody, but nobody wanted to be the bearer of bad news back to President Putin that all his ambitious goals were being stymied by these folks.

He doesn't even consider a country. And so the Russian military just kind of keeps plunging ahead with this flawed strategy based on flawed assumptions, hoping that they can break through, initially with their military might, and then later with the shelling of the cities that we see, hoping to terrorize the Ukrainian public into submission. But neither one of these strategies really works.

It goes on for weeks. And it's only as the casualties are mounting and the Russian forces are failing to achieve their objectives, that finally word starts to filter back to Putin that things just aren't going the way they were planned and that the Russians are going to have to come up with a plan B here. We'll be right back.

So, Eric, you said this next chapter is essentially Russians coming up with their plan B. What's different for the Russians in this next phase? So several things look like they'll be different, Sabrina, and many of them would seem to play to Russia's strengths. The first is they're going to have a single commander for Ukraine for this next phase of the war. Before they had three or four commanders on the ground, they're being directed from Moscow. But there's now a single commander has been appointed. And he is General Alexander Vornikov. He's 60 years old and a combat veteran who's been commander in the eastern part of Ukraine,

the area called the Donbass, since 2016. In the Donbass, this is important, obviously, because this is the area that's been contested with Ukrainian forces fighting Russian-backed separatists. So he's very familiar with this terrain. He's very familiar with the Ukrainian enemy on the opposite side. And as commander of the Southern Military District, he was a logical choice for Putin to tap for this important mission. to tap for this important mission. So effectively, the very guy who's actually been prosecuting the war out east, which of course started in 2014, is the one who's going to be at the helm of this next phase. That's right.

Now, this general has a history that's interesting as we look to what may unfold further. He was the first Russian general that was sent to Syria in 2015 when the Russians sent troops there to back the government of President Assad, who was failing quickly. And so he has experience in fighting in urban areas there and, in fact, has been accused of carrying out attacks on civilians in Syria, namely in Aleppo, one of the major cities of that fight, and going after civilian structures and hospitals and things like that. Many of the types of attacks that the Russians have been accused of doing in Ukraine now. So he's well familiar with both the strategy in Ukraine, but also in fighting in urban settings

as well. Eric, another big advantage I would think is that the Donbass, of course, is right next to Russia. I mean, there's a huge, long border that they share. So presumably Russians and the Russian military can just drive across. That's right. The proximity to Russian supply lines is much closer than it was in the north. And so as the Russians start building up their forces, they're able to send reinforcements from Russia much closer, and they'll be able to resupply them much closer.

A second possible advantage for the Russians is the topography of this land. Unlike northern Ukraine, with its urban settings and forests, which provided lots of places for concealment for Ukrainian fighters to pop out and attack invading Russian troops. These are the wide open plains. This is if the battles unfolding in the plains of Nebraska or Kansas. And that may give some advantage to the Russians, where they can mass their tanks, their attack helicopters and aircraft in an open space, where they go more toe-to-toe with the Ukrainian military. So, Eric, what are you hearing about what the Ukrainians are doing to prepare for this phase of the war? So, the Ukrainians see the next couple of weeks as pivotal for this campaign. They see the Russians basically back on their heels. 40,000 troops have left the

north to rearm and resupply. The Ukrainians have the momentum and they're trying to keep it up. They're trying to push the Russians back. They're basically trying to win. And you see this with President Zelensky of Ukraine pleading with the United States and other Western allies, not just for more of the same kind of weapons, which he still needs, but heavier weapons, things like tanks and howitzers and artillery, things that the Ukrainian army will need in this next major offensive. At the same time, however, the Russians also see this as an important time period. That's why they're rushing to kind of get these other forces into the fray and push while

they may be able to take advantage of some what could be strengths on their side. And what they're trying to do is basically with these troops that are coming down from the north that we talked about before, as well as troops, if they can muster it, coming up from the south, they want to basically, if they can, surround this large portion of the Ukrainian military that's fighting in the east and wipe them out. So just to make sure I understand, the Ukrainians are trying to push the Russians back, and the Russians are trying to cut the Ukrainian forces in the east off from the Ukrainian forces in the west. That's right. So the race is on here for both sides to try and rush their reinforcements to this pivotal battle in the open plains of eastern Ukraine to see who can prevail

over the next few weeks. The West is trying to pour more weapons in, more heavy weapons that are coming from other countries. The Russians are probably going to be rushing not only the forces that were in the north, but they're also pulling Russian forces from elsewhere. The Republic of Georgia, they're tapping Russian mercenaries. There's a new batch of recruits they may throw into the fight without the usual training. So both sides see this as very important. Western analysts have said that President Putin would very much want to have a major achievement by May 9th, which is called Victory Day.

That is the day that Russia celebrates victory over Germany in World War II. So that's less than a month away. So pressure's on both sides now to pour in as many troops as they can for a fight that's probably going to unfold in the next several days or a couple weeks. Eric, you said that Ukraine is really trying to win, which if we think back to the beginning of this war, is pretty surprising given where we thought Russia was, where we thought Ukraine was. Could Ukraine win? Is that a possibility? Well, if you'd asked me a month ago or even a couple of weeks ago, I would have said it's

very unlikely. And it's still a long shot, just again, what we've talked about, given Russia's numerical superiority, technological superiority. But the Ukrainians had pretty much defied all these expectations, both from the Russians and from the West. And with the momentum they have now, with the backing of the West that they continue to have, if they can pull this off over the next couple of weeks, there is a very good chance that at least militarily they could push the Russians back to where they were prior to the invasion on February 24th. That may not end the war, of course, because there's still much more that could happen. But these are the things that are now in play. These are the things that are now in play.

I mean, all of this is really shocking, right? Considering that we expected that the mighty Russian military would roll in and take Kiev in the first weekend of the war. So I guess I'm wondering, Eric, what has all of this ultimately taught us about Russia's military? Well, it's taught us that much of what the Russian military, the vaunted Russian military that the U.S. and others've been talking about in 2014, as well as Crimea, and of course in Syria, where the Russians were able to basically prop up the government there using commandos, land forces, air forces, in a way that they hadn't really done. And it impressed Western military analysts. But these were all things that were on a much smaller scale. They were much narrower objectives for the Russians, and perhaps the West projected a strength and a superiority and a complexity that the Russian military just didn't have.

What we've seen is basically rot and corruption and ineffectiveness and inability to communicate, both on the battlefield and from the battlefield back to the Kremlin itself. So this war has really exposed the weaknesses of the Russian military for all the world to see. And I imagine that probably puts a lot more pressure on Putin to come away with something, to have some kind of victory in this next phase of the war. That's right.

It's politically essential for Putin to achieve a victory of some kind after all this. He's staked his reputation on this. He's been fixated with Ukraine. And so if the Russians are backed into a corner or don't, you know, or fail again in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine, where will Putin go next? There are obviously fears that he could lash out and use, you know, some of his most extreme weapons. We've seen indications that Russia has used chemical munitions, for instance, or they've used some cluster bombs that kill civilians. So while we don't know exactly how this phase of the war will unfold, what we do know is that it's hard to overstate just how important these next few weeks will be.

Eric, thank you. Thank you very much. very much. On Tuesday, in his first extended remarks about the war in nearly a month, Vladimir Putin said that diplomatic talks had broken down, and that the war would continue until, quote, its full completion, and the objectives that were set at the beginning are achieved. But Mr. Putin also defined, for the first time, a more limited scope for the war, saying its goal was control of the Donbass and the East, not all of Ukraine. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Just before 8.24 this morning, as a Manhattan-bound N train waited to enter the 36th Street station, an individual on that train donned what appeared to be a gas mask. He then took a canister out of his bag and opened it. The train at that time began to fill with smoke. He then opened fire, striking multiple people on the subway and in the platform. He then opened fire, striking multiple people on the subway and in the platform. On Tuesday night, the police in New York were conducting a sweeping manhunt for the perpetrator of a mass shooting on a subway train in Brooklyn.

The suspect, wearing an orange construction vest, shot at least 10 people and injured 13 others. Some of the victims were in critical condition, but all were expected to survive. Some of the victims were in critical condition, but all were expected to survive. Cell phone video taken on the subway platform at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park showed panicked riders stumbling out of smoke-filled cars, some of them with gunshot wounds. Later Tuesday night, the police in New York identified a man they called a, quote, person of interest. The police said that the man, Frank R. James, had rented a U-Haul van in Philadelphia. A key to the van was found in a collection of items on the train that they believed belonged to the gunman.

gunmen, including a Glock 9mm handgun, three ammunition magazines, a hatchet, fireworks, and a liquid they believed to be gasoline. It was the worst shooting in the history of New York City's subway. Today was a difficult day for New York. And it poses a threat for New York's new mayor, Eric Adams, who has made confronting violent crime a priority. Days like these are playing out too often in cities across America. Today's episode was produced by Rikki Nowitzki,

Stella Tan, and Claire Tennis-Sketter. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.