The Decibel - Behind the scenes of the Ukrainian counteroffensive

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

After months of fighting the Russian invasion, Ukraine has gained significant ground in Kharkiv Oblast, a province in the northeast of the country. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that they have retaken more than 6,000 square kilometres in September.The Globe’s senior foreign correspondent Mark MacKinnon spoke with a commander of a special forces unit that was integral in this counteroffensive, and he visited some of the places newly liberated from Russian control.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and you're listening to The Decibel, from The Globe and Mail. So this guy, his name was Tumen, as his name is known to get. And so Tumen has a very interesting role because he's the head of a special operations unit that reports directly to the top general in Ukrainian military, which is General Soluzhny. The Globe's Mark McKinnon is in Kharkiv, Ukraine, near where Russian forces have been pushed out of areas that they've occupied for months. And so he was in the south as part of this great big, the greater diversion, which was that everyone was reporting and talking about how the Ukrainians were planning to try and take back land in the Kherson region, which is in the south of Ukraine.

And the Russians, reading about all this and hearing about all this, took a lot of troops off of the front lines here in Kharkiv and were ready to defend against what they thought was the coming offensive in the south. T and his men along with a lot of other ukraines they came back up around to harkiv just in august and for like first uh attack a town with almost no expectation of taking it but just to leave behind a few saboteurs who later on blew up a key bridge when the real offensive began and then on september the 7th sort of hours after the the main offensive starts going, he and his men come out of Balaklia from the south, hoping to be, you know, essentially to be the diversion. They were trying to make as much noise as possible, trying to convince the Russians that, you know,

they had to get their troops south of the city. That happened. And as they did that, the real Ukrainian offensive wrapped around to the north of Balaklaya and took the city. And by the time the Russians realized they were in the states, you know, some of them were taking off their uniforms and jumping in the river to swim for it. Others were leaving their equipment behind and just retreating. What started out as an offensive with a fairly limited goal, at least as far as we understand it, turned into a route with the Russian forces just realizing that they're surrounded and panic, it seems to have spread. And now Ukraine finds itself in control of the entire Kharkiv region for the first time since the start of the war and threatening to push into the Donbas region.

People in Ukraine are trying to talk about maybe we can liberate all of the country. That would include Crimea, which was taken in 2014 by the Russians. I talked to Mark on Wednesday about Ukraine's offensive against the Russian invasion, the places that have now been liberated, and how Russia might now respond. This is The Decibel. Mark, it's great to see you again. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Maneka.

So you're in Kharkiv right now, which is in the area recently retaken by Ukrainian forces. Can you just start by telling me what's it like there? Well, Kharkiv itself never fell to the Russian army. It's sort of the regional center. It's 1.4 million people before the war. The last few days here have been pretty intense because as the Ukrainian army has pushed the Russian forces out of Kharkiv province, which is sort of the area around Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast.

The Russians have retaliated by striking at the electrical stations here, the water stations. The power is on at the moment right now. That is a change. For the last couple of days, it's been a lot of time spent in the dark. There's a sense that Russia's going to change its strategy and sort of make Ukraine pay the price by making cities like Kharkiv harder to live in. There's been a lot of talk in the past few days, Mark,

about how Ukraine managed to pull this off. Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky said they've regained thousands of square kilometers back from Russia in the past few weeks. I guess, how significant is the land that they've gained back? And how does it compare to how much ground that they've actually lost since the war started? So President Zelensky himself was in the newly liberated areas today. He was in the city called Izyum. That was previously the hub of the Russian military presence in the region. And so the territory they've taken, I mean, it's thousands of kilometers.

They've liberated dozens of towns and villages. 150,000 Ukrainian citizens are now back under the Ukrainian flag. And it's just the general sense that the Russian troops who were on the front line in Balaklea, who were in Izum, not only have retreated, but have basically deserted their weapons, deserted their equipment, left behind tanks and armored personnel carriers. We saw lots of those driving to Balaklea yesterday. They've just left their tanks, left their equipment,

in some cases taken off their uniforms and tried to blend in as civilians, just not wanting to fight anymore. And I talked to one of the Ukrainian commanders, Tumen, who was involved in taking Balaklea, and his conviction his he had 30 guys under his command and they were attacking a fortified russian position that was trenches tanks artillery and a hundred soldiers and they knew this and they knew they were the diversion they knew they were probably going to take injuries and casualties and this guy was in a hospital

himself with three bullets in him and he said that's the difference between us and them. This is our land. We know we might die taking that next trench or taking that next town, but it's for our kids. It's for our grandkids that were doing this. The Russians don't have that feeling. This isn't their land. They're not invested in this. They don't understand why they're here. Yeah. Wow. I want to ask you about Balaklea, which is a smaller city in that area of Ukraine that you just returned from. What are things like for people in that city? Because it was under Russian control for a while and no longer. So what is it like there? Yeah, we were able to travel to Balaklea yesterday for the first time. It's a place that had been under Russian occupation since the first days of March.

They effectively lived under Russian control for six months. There were Russian soldiers in town, Russian propaganda posters around the city. Those had now been torn down. There were even reports that they were preparing Russian curriculum textbooks for the new school year. I'll admit that I went there fearing that we would hear stories similar to what we heard around Kiev after those areas were liberated back in April when we arrived in towns like, or my colleagues and I arrived in towns like Bucha and Borodyanka and Irpin. And, you know, there was lots of evidence of mass murder, of a systemic sort of punishing of the population for reasons that I'm not sure we quite grasp yet. It wasn't quite such a heavy fist. It doesn't seem in this part of

Ukraine and how they were ruled. But there was still these signs that people there were very afraid to speak. I spoke with one gentleman who said, you know, he swore about Putin in front of me. I said, well, he laughed and said, we couldn't do that before. I said, what would have happened? He said, well, they would threaten to shoot you in the legs and then you'd end up in the school. And we don't know much about what happened. Yeah, there was a school in this town that was apparently the headquarters of the Russian occupation. And we didn't get to see much of how that worked because as the Russians were withdrawing about a week ago,

they fired missiles at the school and destroyed it, perhaps learning the lessons of Bucha where the world got to see how they operated after they left. And then further into the town, we found at the police station these tiny little cells where people had been scratching there. The passing of the days into the wall. And there was also an interrogation room, which strongly looked like a place that, you know, where torture was used. There were electrical cables that seemed to be dangling from the ceiling.

And there was a small chair and about a meter above that chair, there was just a cluster of bullet holes as though you could, we're speculating here, but it looked a lot like someone was shooting bullets just over the heads of whoever they were interrogating. How were people, I guess, how were the residents treated when they were there? It's clear that if you were someone of a pro-Ukrainian mindset, if you were someone they suspected of disloyalty to Vladimir Putin or not being a fan of the occupation, you could end up in this, either in the school or in the police station, or they're starting to dig up graves outside the city as well. I met a woman who was standing in line for food aid yesterday, and she was talking about how there was food available in the stores during the Russian occupation, but it was all imported

from Russia, and nobody had a job. and so things were getting fairly desperate just before the city was was liberated but also her two sons were both ukrainian police officers and so she was desperately terrified that you know the russians would find out this fact and so she was always having to like hide the pictures of her son so they didn't understand sort of where her own personal loyalties might might lie and as it turned out on the day her city was liberated, it was her birthday and her two sons were among those who came into the city and came to celebrate her birthday with her. You know, families that were divided because their, you know,

the children and grandchildren had, you know, fled to Ukraine ahead of the Russian takeover. They're now back together. People are seeing their children and grandchildren again. We'll be right back. I mean, this is pretty incredible. From what you're saying before, like the Ukrainian armed forces were not doing so well. They were kind of outnumbered by the Russian side. But all of a sudden, they've actually managed to push ahead here. How has the Russian military responded to this counteroffensive, Mark? I think there's a couple of things that are really interesting here. And

the first thing I would say is there's a risk that Ukrainians could push this too far. I was just looking at a map today. And now this whole swathe of border that was previously controlled by the Russians is now controlled again by the Ukrainians. But that also is a border the Ukrainians have to defend. And so as they push southeast into the Donbass region, their own supply lines now, and it's the mistake that the Russians have made a couple of times, have become quite extended. They risk thinning out their own lines now because, of course, Russia has more soldiers inside Russia that it can bring forward. In terms of how the Russians have responded, I mean, the Russian propaganda channels, Russian

telegram channels that I pay attention to, there was a lot of panic last week, a lot of blame starting to be cast around. We started to see for the first time in my many years of covering Russia sort of something close to blame being cast towards Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin for this great big defeat. The question was if we should acknowledge Ukraine has made these gains and we should decide to respond either by sort of mobilizing our larger army and declaring war in Ukraine. Russia so far actually hasn't declared a formal war against Ukraine. They call it a special military operation.

You know, they could call up two million more men and go at this in a very, in a much larger scale. Others, and this seems to be the tactic for now, have said, let's show the Ukrainians who's boss here by attacking their cities, by using tactics that so far we have avoided using, like knocking out the power, knocking out the water, knocking out the telecoms, force the Ukrainians to understand they're going to lose this one way or the other. So the Russian army appears to be on retreat, trying to consolidate to new defensive lines in Donbass.

The Russian sort of chattering classes are quite worried and quite angry at what's taking place. And I'm wondering about, I guess, President Putin in particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin. How would he respond to this? Like from the people you're talking to, Mark, and all the reporting you've done, what might Putin do if he feels like his troops are losing? This is one of my big worries. I mean, so far, Mr. Putin and the Kremlin have basically kept on this business as usual approach. I mean, as, you know, Russian forces were losing ground here in Ukraine last week, they went ahead with

the 875th birthday party for the city of Moscow. There were three days of fireworks and street parties, which looked really strange. I mean, this is the country that's losing a war where it's fighting men are being, frankly, killed on the battlefields of Ukraine. And in Moscow, they're celebrating like nothing's wrong. I mean, that was very, very strange. But it speaks to the fact that Kremlin so far, they've called this a reorganization, refocusing rather than a retreat. What is the fear, I think, is that if Vladimir Putin comes to accept or comes to understand that this is going rather poorly and that he, you know, this invasion, which he ordered, no one else really wanted this war, you know, is in danger of complete failure. There are, of course, weapons, including the worst weapons that have not been used here

in Ukraine. There is definite concern that he will find ways to escalate. When you talk about the worst weapons, do you mean nuclear, chemical? Well, exactly. There is chatter. I mean, General Solushny, the head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, had an essay last week that was published by official Ukrainian sort of state media that said, mentioning tactical nuclear weapons, which is different from the ballistic nuclear missiles

that everybody feared during the Cold War would come raining down on cities. It's the use of a battlefield missile that has a nuclear warhead to sort of obliterate a local target. And hearing the head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces put this out through official media was almost like he thought people should know about this possibility. Of course, the other threat that has sort of loomed over the last 10 days that I've been in the country is the situation at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant,

which both sides accused the other of putting in danger. But I interviewed the energy minister last night, and he really thought that there was danger of this sliding towards what he called the Fukushima scenario. And that would obviously, you know, there's a lot of blame being cast back and forth. But it's definitely Russia that has put that nuclear plant in the line of fire. Just the last couple of points here, Mark. I just want to ask you about support from the West, because so far there's been a lot of support for Ukraine.

Western nations have provided weapons. But, of course, Europe is facing an energy crisis now because Russia's retaliating by potentially cutting off gas supplies. And the war has been dragging on for over 200 days at this point. What is support for the Ukrainian side looking like these days? Ukraine has been very effusive in crediting the supply of Western weapons it has received for the success of this offensive. And some of these weapons it's received from the United States and from other countries have really been game changers in terms of the Ukrainian ability to strike at targets deep inside Russian-controlled territory and Crimea, as well as we mentioned.

So the message they want is that the support is working. And one of the reasons for this offensive, I've been told, was to show to the West that not only are we capable of defending ourselves, Ukraine is capable of retaking land and winning this war. And if you keep up the supply of weapons, if you give us the tools to fight the Russian army with, we can actually win this thing, which would be a huge strategic change in Europe, where the Russian army with, we can actually win this thing, which would be a huge strategic change in Europe where the Russian army that so many of its neighbors fear is defeated on the battlefield by a smaller country. That said, the energy weapon is the one that everybody fears

and is starting to have an effect. And as energy costs skyrocket, as Russia's cut the flow of gas to Europe effectively by closing Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 never opened. These are the main gas pipelines connecting Russian gas to Europe. The prices are going to rise. Inflation is going to keep going up in Canada too, and this is going to play into that. And there are going to be populist politicians who are going to try and make a pocketbook appeal to voters and say, hey, why are we doing all this for Ukraine? It's better for us if there's no war

and if we have to make a deal with Putin, then prices come down. And that's the narrative that Ukrainians are very afraid of. That's a narrative that's, I wouldn't say predominant in Europe yet, but you do hear it more and more. But I don't think I've heard very many people saying they expect this war to end anytime soon. You know, another 200 days would probably be the minimum, I think. And this will be a long winter and a real test of Western support for Ukraine. Mark, appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. Please stay safe there. Thanks so much.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.