The Daily - Why Russia Hasn’t Defeated Ukraine

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

After invading, Russia’s military was expected to sweep through Ukraine within a few days, quickly seizing the capital, Kyiv, and installing a pro-Moscow government.It hasn’t worked out that way.Now, with Russia’s advance stalling, there are signs that President Vladimir V. Putin is ready to wage a much darker, grimmer campaign.Guest: Eric Schmitt, a senior writer covering terrorism and national security for The New York Times. Background reading: After days of miscalculation about Ukraine’s resolve to fight, Russian forces are turning toward an old pattern of opening fire on cities and mounting sieges.Plagued by poor morale as well as fuel and food shortages, some Russian troops in Ukraine have surrendered en masse or sabotaged their own vehicles to avoid fighting, a Pentagon official said.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Hello, Mr. Arestovich. This is Sabrina Tavkivici from The New York Times. Hi. Yeah, hi. So introduce yourself and tell our listeners what your job is right now. I'm a major of the reserve of the Ukrainian army. I am advisor of the head of the office of the president of Ukraine for strategic communication in the defense sphere.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Tell us what happened last night and are we seeing a new phase in the war? After failing to quickly defeat the Ukrainian army with conventional tactics, Vladimir Putin is changing his strategy. tactics. Vladimir Putin is changing his strategy. They conduct strikes on the non-military structure, only civilians. By deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians. And this is a problem because a lot of people were injured or died. As a top Ukrainian military official told my colleague Sabrina Tavernisi on Wednesday, Putin is now conducting a campaign of terror. us psychologically. Putin understands that the war has begun. They think the Ukrainians fall for 48 hours. But now it's the seventh day of the war, and a lot of Russian prisoners, a lot of Russians killed. And now they need to say we are winners.

Right. Because they need to save their face. Today, I spoke to my colleague, Eric Schmidt, about why the Russian military has fared so poorly up until now and just how far Putin's new strategy may go. It's Thursday, March 3rd. Eric, you cover the Department of Defense in Washington, where officials have been closely monitoring the war in Ukraine for the past week or so. And we want to talk to you about why this war has not gone the way Putin and, frankly, the rest of us thought that it would.

And has brought Russia to this point where it's now clearly changing its strategy pretty dramatically. So why did this war go so differently than we thought it would? Well, you're right, Michael. I mean, most of the analysts I spoke to believe that in the first couple of days, the Russian military would sweep into the country, seize the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, install a pro-Moscow government, put their own people atop the military and the security services, and then make inroads both from the east and from the south in the first several days and establish air superiority and superiority on the ground, that they'd be well on their way to controlling the country. That's at least what we were thinking of. And it hasn't worked out that way. And at the highest possible level, Eric, why is that?

Well, I think, Michael, there have been two basic miscalculations on the part of Russians. One, they thought they could just basically come in, their forces would be so overpowering that they could come in and take over very quickly. In fact, they probably used lighter force than they expected, not thinking they would need to use the heaviest forces. The second basic miscalculation is the response by Ukraine. They've completely misjudged how not only the Ukrainian military would respond, which has been with fierce fighting, but that Ukrainian civilians, tens if not hundreds of thousands, they are taking up arms and basically vowing not to let their country be occupied. So basically Russia overestimated its own power and

underestimated the power of the Ukrainian military. Exactly, exactly. That's kind of what we've seen and that has spooled out on both sides in ways that weren't really predictable when this all first kicked off about a week ago. Well, let's talk about those miscalculations and how, Eric, they played out on the ground, starting from the very first moments of this war. Well, at the very start, one of the first things you do in any kind of military campaign like this is to basically achieve air superiority. That means get control of the skies, because if your pilots can get control of the airspace over a contested territory or the ground,

your ground forces can advance without fear of being attacked. And for whatever reason, this has not happened. The Russian Air Force has not been able to establish that dominance right away that I think most of us expected they would. We now think that maybe the Russian pilots aren't quite as accomplished as we thought they were, and that they don't necessarily trust their own air defenses that are traveling with them. They're basically afraid they may be shot down by their own troops on the ground who are watching these fights in the air. But the other thing that's happened is that the Ukrainians have proved to have very effective air defenses. And it's everything from shoulder fire and stinger missiles that are great against helicopters and combat

helicopters to more advanced surface-to-air missiles that can be moved around rather quickly. There was reports of a major Russian air transport plane, for instance, that was shot down in the early days of the fighting that kind of surprised people. And the Ukrainian Air Force has actually been very much engaged, continuing to fight for territory. So how does this failure on the part of Russia to own the skies over Ukraine impact what's happening on the ground? Well, with the lack of air superiority, what this means is that the advancing Russian ground troops, they're more vulnerable to Ukrainian attack. And what the Ukrainians have done is engage them not only with their own armored forces, but they've actually been able to use very effectively these mobile anti-tank missiles called javelins.

These are shoulder-fired missiles that a two- and three-man squad can use very effectively. You can basically pop out from behind a tree or behind a rock and fire on these missiles from far away. And you've seen some of these images, these burned-out carcasses of tanks and other armored vehicles. Many of these are coming from these Javelin missiles that have been supplied by the United States and other Western countries. So this has been a very effective and relatively low-cost way of inflicting some real punishment on these Russian ground forces that are advancing,

all the while allowing the Ukrainians to keep the Russians off balance. So just to recap, Eric, Russia's failure to establish air supremacy in the skies over Ukraine means it cannot take out these Ukrainian soldiers who have these very mobile systems that allow them to take out Russian planes and take out Russian tanks. And all of that together is a big reason why Russia has not done what we thought they would very quickly do, which is overrun Ukraine. That's right. And the Russians have basically stalled. And that has revealed a whole other set of problems that the Russians weren't anticipating. And this is, in part, logistical problems. The Russians were out

running their supply lines. They're running out of gas. They're running out of spare parts. They're even running out of food. And this has become a real problem for the Russian military, because if you can't resupply these forces that are stuck, it just compounds the delays that they are now backing up. And, Derek, just to be clear, running out compounds the delays that they're now backing up. And just to be clear, running out of food, that's just bad planning, right? That's right. What we don't really know is, was this basically bad planning from the get-go, or was there a plan that's just been poorly executed? Either way, it's left the Russians in a real difficult spot. How do you fix this on the fly, which is

what they're having to do now. And this has led to a real morale problem among Russian troops in Ukraine. These are forces that are watching, you know, aircraft getting shot out of the skies, helicopters shot down, tanks attacked by missiles, you know, seeing these smoking, shot down, tanks attacked by missiles, seeing these smoking, charred-out husks of armor on the road. These Russian troops, they're scared, and we're seeing their fears play out in a variety of ways. In some cases, they're sabotaging their own vehicles.

Really? Yeah, they're puncturing the gas tanks so that the fuel runs out, so that these tanks and armored columns, they run out of gas and they stall, and they're not going to be in combat. And there are other reports of these kind of morale problems. There are instances of small groups of Russian soldiers surrendering themselves, laying down their arms rather than confront the Ukrainian troops that come upon them. And I think what you have to remember about this force that's fighting for the Russians right now, it's a very young force. This is not the all-volunteer military of the United States Army. These are conscripts.

These are draftees. They're young. They're inexperienced. By most accounts, they're really ill-prepared for this combat that they're now seeing inside Ukraine. Ukraine. Before I continue with my formal statement, I would like to switch to Russian. And there was a very vivid example of this that surfaced just the other day. Because I would like to read from the screenshot of the smartphone of a killed Russian soldier. Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations was reading what he claimed was a Russian soldier's last text message to his mother before he was killed. Remember, this is a young conscript who's gone in. He's probably thinking, you know, Ukraine, these are people who are going to welcome us.

This is what we've been told, at least. And so the soldier says to his mother in this text, Mom, I'm in Ukraine. There's a real war raging here. I'm afraid. We are bombing all of the cities together, even targeting civilians. We were told that they would welcome us. And they are falling under our armored vehicles.

They're throwing themselves under the wheels and not allowing us to pass. They call us fascists. Mama, this is so hard. In several moments, he was killed. So everything they've been told is basically a lie. And they're finding these Ukrainians are basically doing everything they can to stop their advance. And it's just rocking these young soldiers back in terms of what they expected. Now, to be sure, we can't verify the authenticity of that text, and we don't know how widespread these kind of reports are. But even the anecdotal examples that we have heard about and been documented in video clips and other places are not a good sign for the Russian forces this early in a campaign, this ambitious, to have these kind of morale problems already cropping up among their conscripted forces.

to have these kind of morale problems already cropping up among their conscripted forces. And Eric, as you've just acknowledged, this low morale from the Russian military is in very clear contrast to the resoluteness of Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians. That's right. The Ukrainian military has really stepped up in these initial days against the Russian force. But perhaps even more surprising is the way civilians have rallied. And remember, this is a country that's been at war with Russia since 2014. They've been fighting in this area called the Donbass in the far eastern part of the country. And many Ukrainians have served in the armed forces. And this Russian invasion has just rallied the country. And so people are taking up arms.

Some people know how to use them. Some don't. They learn quickly. It's the spirit that they are all together, not only supporting their military here, but they themselves are putting their own lives on the line to defend their country against this Russian army that's rolling in now. Right. And of course, the Ukrainian military also has a lot of help from the West in the form of surface-to-air missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and so on. That's right. The support has been so great that since 2014, when the Russians first invaded Ukraine, the United States has supplied nearly $3 billion of weapons, equipment, and training into Ukraine

and have really been able to improve their effectiveness. Just in the last several days, you had American trainers, Army Green Berets and National Guard, who were training some of these Ukrainian soldiers. And so this is a much more effective military, much better trained, much better equipped. Still the underdog in this fight, but they've got a fighting spirit, and it's a fighting spirit that you don't see

on the opposite side among the Russian troops. That's been a very distinct advantage they've had so far going for them. And this is why, so far, the Russian army is failing and why we're seeing Vladimir Putin start to change his strategy. That's right. We're not seeing the Russians

packing up and getting ready to go home after these first few setbacks. In fact, what we're seeing are the first signs of a much darker, a grimmer campaign that the Russians intend to use, one that will have much deadlier consequences for Ukraine as a country and for the Ukrainian people overall. We'll be right back. So, Eric, based on your reporting, what do we think that this darker, grimmer, harder-edged Putin strategy is likely to look like over the next few days and weeks? So Putin has a menu of options that he still can tap into that he hasn't fully used. The first is he could literally make the country go dark and turn out the lights, if you will, inside of Ukraine. And by that, I mean he literally could take down cell towers.

He could jam communications. And the effect of this would be to isolate Ukrainian troops in the field from their civilian leadership, President Zelensky and his top aides back in the capital of Kiev. But so far, Putin has not done that. So why hasn't he? So our best guess is because doing so would have adverse consequences for the Russian soldiers who are now, we believe, using communications, smartphones, and other things inside the country as well. So it could actually hurt the Russians in some extent if he were to do that. The other thing we haven't seen is the full-on cyber attack that we fully expected.

Certainly there have been some attacks, but not nearly as many as the Ukrainians in the West thought. And this may be partly because the West has tried to come in and help harden the Ukrainian cyber networks. But the thing we're all watching now starting to unfold, and it's the most insidious of all really, is Putin just ratcheting up the pressure on the civilian population by ordering increased shelling of cities. Russian rockets struck residential areas today in Ukraine, hitting a maternity clinic and a Holocaust memorial site. A massive explosion today. Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, has been coming under fierce bombardment. Russia has continued to bomb both residential areas and administrative buildings in the city.

We've seen this of projectiles, missiles and bombs striking buildings in some of the major cities of Ukraine, and obviously people being killed in that. We've been shelled by Russians. We're all scared. Why us? Why us regular people? This is essentially a terror campaign that started, something that Russia has used very effectively in places like Syria, in Chechnya, and the wars there. Satellite images show a massive Russian military convoy 40 miles long on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital.

Tanks, armored vehicles... And the clearest signal that Russia is turning to this strategy of intensifying their destructive power in the cities is this miles-long convoy of tanks and other armored vehicles Russia is turning to this strategy of intensifying the destructive power in the cities. Is this miles-long convoy of tanks and other armored vehicles you've probably heard about that's bearing down on Kyiv from the northwest? Is that Russian convoy slowly, so very slowly, moves towards Kyiv to potentially cut off the capital from supplies? The strategy would be that this firepower would eventually encircle this capital of three million people and then just shell and bomb this city into submission. No concern for civilian life, no hesitation, and that's the concern that we haven't seen the worst

of it yet and more importantly that the people of Ukraine haven't seen the worst of it yet. And more importantly, that the people of Ukraine haven't seen the worst of it yet. Eric, can you just explain what it means to shell people into submission? I mean, maybe it's obvious to a military reporter, but what's the expectation of how bombing residential neighborhoods suddenly leads to victory? Well, you would literally demolish city blocks, and this would either kill enough people that forces mass floods of refugees, even larger than the ones we've seen already, or that it basically prompts the remaining civilian population to beg their leadership to surrender, basically saying, stop this. We'll do whatever it takes to stop this horrific bombing. We'll submit to your demands. We'll submit to your new government. So far, Ukrainians have said they will

not do that. But we haven't seen the most punishing attacks yet. That's what's really just starting now. And what are those more punishing attacks potentially still yet to come? It's kind of hard to fathom anything more punishing than a Russian missile hitting an apartment complex in a Ukrainian city. But Putin has an array of exotic weapons that are really diabolical that he could use. Some of these include cluster munitions. These are literally a cluster of bombs that goes off that are used usually against troops in an open area. So if you have people in a city, this can be very devastating. Cluster munitions are banned around most countries in the world, but not with Russia. Another weapon that they've got is called a thermobaric weapon. And this is kind of a complicated thing, but basically what it does

is it uses a high temperature pressure wave that can kill people. It's almost like a vacuum that forces the oxygen right out of your lungs. We don't know if Russia will actually use these weapons, but when I talk to Pentagon officials and other military experts, this is what they fear. That a Vladimir Putin who's cornered and frustrated is now going to reach for these kinds of really devious type weapons, even if he only uses them in a few places or occasionally just to terrorize the population and basically use it as a threat to hang over the rest of Ukraine, that if they don't submit to him, they too might be subjected to this. Right. And finally, of course, Vladimir Putin has evoked the scariest possibility of all,

which is the use of nuclear weapons in this conflict. And I'm curious, based on your conversations with people inside the American military, how they think that a nuclear weapon could ever be used in this confrontation. So I think when people talk about this, we're not talking about a kind of a doomsday bomb dropped on a city like the bombs that were dropped in Japan in the mushroom cloud and all that. We're talking about smaller battlefield nuclear weapons. They call them tactical nuclear weapons. And that's probably what Putin is talking about smaller battlefield nuclear weapons. They call them tactical nuclear weapons. And that's probably what Putin is talking about here. It's the ultimate weapon of terror, and it's never been used in war before any time else. Now, in the last several years, the Russians have actually adopted something in their military doctrine where they call it escalate to de-escalate.

That is, they use the threat of using nuclear weapons as a part of their strategy to achieve their other goals and other means. And that's what the American officials that I've talked to think probably is what's going on here more than the Russians are actually thinking about actually using them. Because right now, the Pentagon hasn't really seen any change on here more than the Russians are actually thinking about actually using them. Because right now, the Pentagon hasn't really seen any change in the Russian nuclear posture. But they're concerned enough because this is now part of the doctrine that you could do this.

And that's the ultimate threat that, of course, Putin could hold over this conflict and over the world. Right. So not likely, but absolutely terrifying. Absolutely. Anytime you're talking about nuclear weapons, it's terrifying. Eric, every day you talk to U.S. military officials about the state of this battle, and my sense is that they must be happy that Russia has been struggling as much as it has been in Ukraine. And let's say that over the next few days, as we've been discussing, Russia's strategy does become darker and more brutal and more deadly, and civilian deaths start to mount as a result, do you anticipate that the American military may be tempted to change its approach and potentially become less restrained than it has been and more involved?

Well, that's certainly one of the possibilities that could happen, that the carnage becomes so great that the pressure grows outside of Ukraine for the United States and its allies to intervene in ways beyond what they've been doing now. Up to now, of course, they've been sending in arms, they've been sharing some intelligence, in addition to all the other economic sanctions and things like that. But so far, President Biden and other Western leaders have taken off the table the idea that American boots on the ground would confront Russian troops in Ukraine. Because of this very fear we were just talking about, that while you may just want to put down a skirmish here or a skirmish there or help free a city that's under siege, one thing could lead to another. And before you know it, that fight could escalate up into the nuclear realm. And now we're talking about another world war,

essentially. And so President Biden has been very clear so far that he says no American troops will be involved in this. But it's just one of the unknowns now that we watch. And as Putin ratchets up this punishing campaign, how much human suffering, how much carnage can the West really stomach before they say enough is enough and we have to do something more than what we're doing now? We're not at that point, but it's not far off on the horizon where we could be, and those would be some really difficult choices for the United States and its allies to make. Right. Let's presume for a moment that the U.S. sticks with its decision not to get involved, which feels very likely. So there will be no rescue for Ukrainians. Is there any chance that Ukraine can defy all the expectations as they have thus far and ultimately prevail against Russia on their own? I think most American analysts I talk to say no, that ultimately the Ukrainians will lose this brutal fight to the Russians. But then the

Russians aren't going to have a clear-cut victory either, because they're going to be facing a grinding insurgency from the remains of this Ukrainian military and these Ukrainian civilians we've been talking about who've been armed. And this will be an insurgency that the United States and the West will fuel for years if necessary, through covert means, that is usually through the CIA or other secretive means. And Russia knows all about this kind of scenario. This is exactly what the Soviet Union faced in the 1970s when the Soviets went into Afghanistan and the United States ended up supporting the Mujahideen, the Afghan people, over years of war there,

and ultimately forced the Soviets to leave. So that's a very possible scenario here. It'd be a long-term fight. And that would again be, you know, whose will is stronger. But, Michael, even in the end, if that's the way it works out, the Ukrainian people, they get their country back, what's really going to be left? This is going to be a shattered country, nothing like what it is today, having gone through the initial war and then possibly years of very deadly insurgency.

And the big losers here, of course, will be the Ukrainian people. So it's disheartening no matter how you look at it. Well, Eric, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. On Wednesday, for the first time since the war began, Russian forces seized control of a major Ukrainian city, the southern port of Kherson. At the same time, Russia intensified its bombardment of civilian targets in the

cities it has yet to take over. In the process, the Times reports, it has cut off essentials like electricity, medicine, water, and heat to many Ukrainians and turned a growing number of offices, homes, businesses, and cars into crumpled, burning hulks. The civilian death toll is surging, and around the country, Ukrainians are sheltering in basements and tunnels as explosions shake the ground above them. In Kiev alone, about 15,000 people are now sleeping in the subways. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday night, the Congressional Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol

said there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and by attempting to overturn the result. The committee itself cannot file criminal charges, but may recommend charges to the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, for the first time, a participant in the January 6th attack

pleaded guilty to the charge of seditious conspiracy, a major milestone for federal prosecutors. Joshua James, a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, who helped organize a group of January 6th rioters, entered the plea during a court hearing in Washington. Many of those who took part in the attack have been charged with low-level crimes. But with his plea, James has admitted to the politically significant crime

of conspiring against the U.S. government to keep President Biden from taking office. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Muj Zaydi, and Stella Tan, with help from Caitlin Roberts. It was edited by Anita Bottigio and Michael Benoit, includes original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landfog of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.