The Decibel - Inside Kyiv under fire ahead of the Ukrainian counteroffensive

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

After months of relative quiet in Kyiv, the city has been under attack this week by Russian drones and missiles. There have also been attacks within Russia. Looming over these events is the anticipated, and secretive, Ukrainian counteroffensive to regain territory it has lost to Russia in the war.Today, The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon joins from Kyiv, Ukraine, to discuss these latest attacks and what a Ukrainian counteroffensive might look like.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

It's 3.14 a.m. Tuesday morning here in Kiev. We had another loud night. About an hour ago we had an air raid siren, which many of us slept through because we haven't had a decent night's sleep for a few days. The Globe's senior international correspondent, Mark McKinnon, is back in Kyiv, Ukraine. The city has been under attack this week by Russian drones and missiles. First you hear buzz, like maybe you can hear in the background right now. It sounds like the locals call them mopeds because they sound a bit like food delivery bikes flying through the air.

There's one there. That's one of the drones sent by Russia. And then, hopefully, inevitably, you hear the work of air defense shortly after that, which can sometimes be a large blast. So right now, just moving away from the windows in our apartment here in the center of Kyiv. At the early days of the war, people would go to shelters,

but these days many of the shelters aren't working, except for the subway stations, which are used as shelters during the day. But to get to one right now would mean running in open air for several minutes in the street, which would be more dangerous than staying put. So most of the city just sits in their apartments and waits it out. Can still hear the faint buzz right now of one of the Iranian Shahed drones getting fainter now. It's been past wherever we are.

Anyways, this is the third consecutive night like this. There have been 140 drones and Russian cruise missiles fired at us over the last three days. It provokes us. We're just exhausted.

And there's one of the bigger blasts and hopefully the end of that moped. After months of relative quiet in Kiev and front lines of the war that barely moved, things are now changing. Today, Mark tells us what these attacks signal and what a new Ukrainian counteroffensive might look like. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thank you so much for joining me again. Thanks for having me on. So you sent us that audio diary of what that one night was like in Kiev, the capital city.

It's pretty dramatic. Can I ask you, what have things actually been like in the city over the past few days? Well, last night, Tuesday night, was the first peaceful sleep the city has had since the weekend. Saturday night, going into Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday night, have all been pretty terrifying for residents. Reminding those of us who were here back at the start of the war of those days. I mean, this is the first time since then where it really felt like Kyiv was under direct attack. There have been, of course, rocket attacks throughout the war, but not quite like this where you saw three consecutive nights, every night, you know, 30, 40, 50 rockets and drones sent towards the city.

And then also a daytime attack in the middle of that on Monday. So it was quite, quite intense, almost impossible to sleep through, as you might have heard in the audio set that I sent along. You know, everywhere you are in the city, you would have heard these drones, you would have heard the anti-aircraft defenses. And most of them are actually where these Iranian-made Shaheed drones. They add a little bit of a sense of dread because you can hear them overhead for a long time. It's not like a rocket where you sort of hear or don't hear a whiz and then an explosion. You sort of hear this operating overhead and you don't know, you know, where the city is headed for.

That's actually, that's pretty nerve wracking. So you can actually hear the sound of the drone and you're not really sure what the target is. Yeah, and you can hear it getting louder and louder and it feels like it's coming towards you. And then hopefully, or at least in every incident so far, you eventually hear it start to fade and you realize it's gone somewhere else or was aiming somewhere else or even the best ending, of course, is the explosion, which means it's been hit out of the air by ukrainian air defenses unfortunately um when you hit something like that out of the air um pieces of metal burning metal fall to the ground and that has resulted in some injuries some fires and a couple of deaths in the last few days oh yeah of course one of the things that seems clear with these

attacks on kiev is there is a the united states donated a patriot missile battery which is is used to shoot incoming projectiles out of the air, and it has been extremely effective. The Ukrainians say that on Monday during the daytime attack when Russia sent Iskander ballistic missiles at the city, which are very dangerous weapons, it was the Patriot system that sort of was crucial to making sure none of them hit their targets. I think many people think the Patriot system is the target.

And the Russians' using of drones is to try and figure out where the Ukrainian air defenses are. The drones, as I said, are cheap. The missiles are expensive. By forcing the Ukrainians to fire things into the air to shoot down these drones, the Russians are maybe perhaps trying to ascertain where these more sophisticated air defense weapons are so they can make those the target. So I guess what does all of this mean for day-to-day life in Kyiv right now? Well, I mean, it's amazing, actually, because it has just been taken on board. It's incredible what humans can get used to. And, you know, at the start of the war, air raid sirens would send all of us heading into shelters, eventually sent many of us fleeing from the city.

Now, for the last few months, and I think someone calculated that over the first year of the war, so up until February, there'd been more than a thousand air raid sirens in Kiev, which tells you, you know, three a day. So they just become part of life. But during the day, people in Kiev, I mean, the cafes outside are packed. They recently extended the curfew, which had been 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Now it's midnight. So bars and restaurants stay open until 11 p.m. to give their staff enough time to get home. So people are living their normal lives, it sounds like, during the day then. People are going about their daily business.

Absolutely. And on Monday, when we had this daytime attack, people were still sort of sitting outdoors in cafes waiting for their coffee when the alarm started. It was only when they started to hear the explosions, people thought, OK, this is time to react and, you know, put down my coffee and get into a shelter. Yeah. So, Mark, as you said, you know, the first few weeks of the war were quite tense in Kiev, but things have been relatively quiet since then. So why are we seeing attacks on the capital now then? It's been receiving more and more advanced weapons from its allies. It's got these tanks, including these Leopard tanks, that were donated by Canada and other countries. It's got advanced rocket systems that can hit deeper and deeper behind Russian lines. And they have troops who have been training, including with Canadian troops in Britain,

who have been training and getting advanced sort of preparations for what they hope will be a push to take back some of the land that Russia has captured in this country. That counter offensive is expected, you know, any day now, any week now. And perhaps the Russians realize that they're not in a very good strategic position at the moment. And there is an attempt here to sort of up the ante to put pressure on Kiev to show like, you know, if you escalate, we can escalate. In parallel with everything that's happened here this week, Russia's deployed nuclear weapons or said it's deployed nuclear

weapons to Belarus, which is a huge escalation. There haven't been nuclear weapons in that, you know, European state since the end of the Cold War. So I think the messaging here is less to Kyiv than it is to NATO, to Ukraine's allies in the West, that, you know, we can continue to escalate. I don't know if they're trying to dissuade the counteroffensive or message that the war doesn't end even if you gain some more towns, but they seem to be related. And at the same time that these attacks are happening in Kyiv, there's also been other recent attacks actually in Russia, particularly even in the capital, Moscow. So, Mark, can you just tell me a little bit about what's been going on there? Yeah, there are two separate things that have happened over the last sort of week or so.

And the first was an attack into the Belgorod region, which is neighboring Ukraine's province of Kharkiv, which saw two units of Russian citizens who are fighting on the Ukrainian side of this conflict. They're called the Free Russia Legion and the Russia Volunteer Corps. They pushed into Belgorod for mostly a demonstration that it was possible. They seized control of a couple of towns, had a border post on fire. There were some videos showing them raising their flag in various these little towns along the border. Then, you know, they were eventually either withdrew or beaten back, depending on which version you believe. And is it important that they are

Russian citizens doing this? Yeah, it's absolutely. I mean, so Ukraine, one of the promises that Ukraine's had to make in exchange for receiving all this military support from the West is that they won't use this to attack Russian territory. This support from the West is that they won't use this to attack Russian territory. This support from the West is meant to help Ukraine liberate its own land, not to expand the war or to attack Russia directly. I interviewed with the political leader of one of these two formations this week in Kiev, and he said, you know, Ukraine's keeping its promises. We didn't make any promises. We're Russian citizens.

And then separately we've seen on, I guess that was Tuesday, I'm losing track here with the lack of sleep, there was a drone attack on Moscow. Very similar, smaller in scale to what we've seen here. Depending on, again, on reports, the Russian Defense Ministry said they encountered eight drones. There are other reports saying it was closer to 25 that attacked various, sort of flew towards moscow this was obviously it seems a

reply to the three days of attacks here on kiev and a demonstration that the war is shifting in a different direction than vladimir putin ever could have expected again though the ukrainians aren't claiming credit for that one or saying it was that you know they're just saying oh boy whoever did that great job because they want to stay away from the accusation that they are breaking their promises to the West. Yeah. And there was also another attack on Wednesday morning, attacks on oil refineries within Russia as well. And I mean, this all seems significant, Mark, that Moscow is being attacked, that there's these other attacks happening as well. What kind of impact does it have to see these attacks within Russia, though? I mean, that's difficult to measure, but, and particularly since I've been banned from going to Russia since almost the start of the conflict,

but my friends who live in Moscow, the people I knew when I used to live there long ago, they have, I think it'd be fair to say, largely lived through this conflict without it changing their lives very much. I mean, prices went up because of Western sanctions. There was briefly a fear they'd be drafted, but that appears to happen in cities other than Moscow. It seems to happen out in the Russian regions more than, you know, to middle class folks working jobs in the russian capital so you know when you wake up the day after um you know whether it's 8 or 25 explosive drones have come to this city that felt very remote 800 kilometers from the war it has to make you think you know could that have

been your apartment block that got hit or uh your neighborhood that had this drone attack. But also, you know, surely it has people questioning what this war is about and why 15 months after they were told there'd be this, you know, brief and glorious victory over the Ukrainians, why they're now seeing the conflict go the other way. The scale of how wrong this has gone for Vladimir Putin must be apparent even through the haze of Kremlin propaganda. We'll be back after this message. Okay, Mark, let's talk about this looming counteroffensive that you mentioned. Why are we hearing so much about it before it's actually even started?

The reason why we're hearing about it is the deliveries of weapons have largely been completed. Ukraine has most of what it asked for at this point. The next ask is for F-16 fighter jets. That's a future discussion. But, you know, Ukraine has its troops that are, you know, for the counteroffensive have been trained. They've now returned to the country. The weapons for the-offensive are here um russia which launched his own big winter offensive which has led to the retaking of uh the city of bakhmut after a nine-month battle but it does seem like the russian offensive potential has been exhausted they don't appear able to carry on at the moment so now is the moment for for a counterattack if it's going to

come. Where that counterattack will happen, obviously, is not known. And keeping these things secret is a strategic advantage for the Ukraine. So it's a closely guarded secret. One assumes that when it begins, we'll know. Yeah. And I guess so the idea is, OK, Ukraine's got these trained troops now. They've got these weapons. They're probably going to do something with this. And I know you said the information is being kept quite secret, but do we have any sense, I guess, of what this counteroffensive could look like? There are a few options. I mean, just staring at the maps of the frontline, you can see that one option that must look appealing to the Ukrainian general staff

is a thrust south from the city of Zaporizhia to the coast of the Azov Sea because that would cut the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine in two. You would have Crimea, which Russia has held since 2014, basically isolated from the rest of the Russian-controlled areas. There's the single bridge which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland, and that bridge has already been damaged. It's been repaired, but it shows the Ukrainians can cut that cord. If they don't want to, they can do it again.

So if there is a strategic gain that Vladimir Putin has gotten from this war, it is the creation of this land bridge, for want of a better word, connecting Russia to the Donetsk and Luhansk areas through the port of Mariupol and Berdyansk into the Kherson region down to Crimea. So that allows them to sort of run trains and trucks back and forth to deliver weapons, food, everything to this part of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin annexed nine years ago.

That must look appealing because you can see an obvious strategic advantage. But of course, the fact that we're looking at it means the Ukrainians may be also looking at it, but also the Russians are looking at it. They're preparing. You can see digging trenches there. They've built firing positions. I believe, you know, it's easy to assume they've put a lot of landmines in that area. So it may yet be as last fall, when everybody was staring at the city of Kherson in the south of Ukraine, going, that is an obvious target for a Ukrainian counterattack. And we were all sort of waiting for the attack on Kherson to begin.

And suddenly there was an attack in the Kharkiv region, which caught everybody, including obviously the Russian forces off guard. And just going back to that, those attacks into Russia, maybe one of the more important things that came out of that was revealing that that part of the Russia-Ukraine border is poorly guarded. And so the Russians have to respond to that. You would assume they're by moving troops who are currently defending positions in the occupied areas of Ukraine around places like

Belgorod and Bryansk to make sure that these cities of Russia itself are safe. And so that makes the rest of the defense line in eastern and southern Ukraine thinner and creates possibly new options for the Ukrainian general staff. And so with the example you talked about, Mark, you talked about disrupting supply lines, of course, which is a big deal. But I guess what would Ukraine be ultimately looking to accomplish with this counteroffensive? I think there's a couple of goals. Some of them are psychological. I mean, the actual goal would be to retake some of the 15% of this country that is occupied by the Russian military. And I asked a military analyst last week, you know, what would you consider a gain? He said even retaking one or two cities is great news, right?

So if we, Ukraine is pushing into the flanks right now of Baku, the city that the Russians have just captured, and giving them strategic sort of highlands around the city, which maybe that's another feint, maybe that's another distraction. But, you know, retaking Baku and would be an enormous psychological victory for the Ukrainians. But also, you know, pushing the Russians back has its own benefits. But then you've got, you know, their allies, their friends, their patrons in the West who are looking for sort of a return on investment almost. You know, we've given you all this stuff. Show us that it's not, that it's useful. Like, you know, if you want us to keep donating weapons, you know,

if you want aircraft next, show us that you are capable of liberating these parts of Ukraine. Show us this is an effective strategy for us rather than, you know, maybe talking about making a peace deal with Russia. Okay. So if you and I are talking about the counteroffensive, I mean, Russia must be thinking about this as well. How is Russia preparing for this expected counteroffensive? So Russia has, you know, open source imagery, satellite maps effectively have shown that Russia has spent much of the past few months, and again, remember, this is a war that Russia launched, and it was on the offensive for most of the first 12 months, spent much of the last few months digging in, trying to defend these territories that not only do they have been captured since February 2022, which Vladimir

Putin claims to have annexed. These are now, at least under Russian law, these are Russian territories that they are legally bound to defend. So they have been building networks of trenches and tank traps, and we can see firing positions. It's clear the Russians are bracing. They know that NATO, the West have given Ukraine substantive weapons. They know that their own troops are tired and are sort of struggling to go forward. So they're digging in, hoping to withstand this. And then, as we've seen previously in the war, if one side launches an attack, the other side tries its best to hold its ground, then they swap roles. Yeah. I mean, you just mentioned, of course, that Russian troops are tired, you know, especially after the battle for Bakhmut, which took a lot of energy and time and a lot of casualties on the Russian side, too.

How equipped is the Russian military for a potential counteroffensive? I mean, I should point out the Ukrainian military. There is this sort of force that has been off training in Britain and other places that one assumes is reasonably refreshed but i have met ukrainian troops on the front line in donbass who have been fighting for the entire conflict they fought in the battle of kiev they fought in the battle of harkey they fought in the battle of hadassan now they're fighting in donbass and they've had maybe a couple of weeks off over 15 months of war they've got concussions even if they haven't been more seriously injured. So exhaustion is a thing on both sides, and Russia has a bigger military,

their ability to call up more men. I don't want to underestimate the fact the Russian army is very large and has a lot of artillery, has a lot of tanks, they're dug in. This is not going to be easy for the Ukrainians, and I think there's a danger in expecting them to do too much and necessarily replicate

what happened last year. But it's definitely a moment here where you can feel the momentum shifting. And it is the Ukrainians turn to see what they can do. And the Russians know they are not in a position to dictate the terms right now. It's Ukraine that for the moment is dictating what happens next. Yeah. Just lastly here, Mark, you know, coming back to the attacks on Kyiv where we started, I mean, do we have any sense of kind of what this is going to look like going forward? Like are we going to continue seeing quiet nights there or are we going to see more attacks on Kyiv going forward?

It's a very good question, especially as this counteroffensive looms. Will Russia retaliate or make this sort of part of the equation if you guys push forward and don bass will keep pummeling kiev um at the other hand um the ukrainian air defenses have knocked down 90 something percent of what's been flung at the capital over the last three or four days that must be really expensive for the russian military we think about the cost of a cruise missile these iranian shaheed drones are cheaper but there's a lot of military hardware flung at Kyiv that basically blew up without having any impact at all. Does Russia want to keep wasting ammunition on a tactic that isn't working? I mean, that's difficult to say. The truth is that Kyiv is incredibly well defended right now, but other Ukrainian cities don't have this level of defense. And so Russia may abandon this attempt to sort of hit Kiev with all of its international missions

and government headquarters here and instead target another city if it's just looking to sort of exact revenge for whatever's happening in the counteroffensive. It's impossible, has been impossible since the start to predict Russian tactics, because as I said, they don't make sense militarily and they make even less sense if you were trying to convince Ukrainians they belong to some Russian world. Mark, it's always good to talk to you. Thank you so much and please stay safe. Thank you very 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. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.