The Decibel - On the ground in Kharkiv, two years into the Russian invasion

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Two years ago, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now, with Russia on the front foot, many towns that have been safe for months are being thrust back onto the frontlines, like Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.Today, The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon, who’s in Kharkiv, tells us about the frontlines of the war two years on, how the soldiers are doing, and what it means for Ukraine’s army that Western support is slowing down.If you’d like to learn more, The Globe is doing a live Q&A with Mark on Saturday, February 24 at 10 a.m. ET, here.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Two years ago, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, and millions have fled their homes. Now, as weapons dwindle and soldiers are exhausted, regions of Ukraine that were safe from Russian forces are back on the front lines. The Globe's senior international correspondent, Mark McKinnon, has been covering this conflict from the beginning. He's in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which is once again facing a barrage of shelling from Russian forces. Today, Mark tells us what the front lines of the war look like two years on, how Ukrainian soldiers are faring, and what diminishing Western support means for the war effort. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Mark, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Manika. So you're in Kharkiv right now in eastern Ukraine. Can you just start by telling us what's it like there? It's very different being here than in Kyiv or parts of western Ukraine, where you might hear an air raid siren once a day or every second day. And occasionally you'll be kept up at night with sort of the noise of these drones coming in, etc. But here in Kharkiv, where the Russian border is just 30 kilometers from here,

it's a different experience. And, you know, I think I've heard five sirens today already. And just because of the sheer proximity of the Russian border, the missiles get through here more often. So it's a city that is, you know, much more scarred than the center of Kiev. I was walking around the main square today and the big hotel on the square, you know, had three floors blown off of it.

The main government administration building is missing part of its roof. And, you know, all the facing shopping malls have their windows blown in. And the people who live here, you know, at the start of the war, a lot of them left Kharkiv. And so early in the war, there was this sort of exodus from the city. And then after the Russian sort of withdrawal from first from the Kiev region and the big

Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv, there was this sense, almost a prematurely victorious sense, people were sort of really celebrating moving back home, starting to repair their homes. Businesses were reopening lots of new cafes. And now it's just been the last couple of months where it really starts to feel like it's now Russia that seems to have the momentum on the front line. And for whatever reason, whether this presages another military assault on the Kharkiv region or whether it's just simply terrorizing people, Kharkiv seems to be getting targeted quite regularly, again, with missiles. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it's quite a tense situation there, really.

And so can I just ask, Mark, where are you staying in Harkiv then? Choosing a hotel here is more complicated than perhaps anywhere else I can think of right now. Since the war started, many of us journalists avoided these big glass tower hotels and started looking for more anonymous places to stay. Unfortunately, two of those that I have stayed in, one of them, the Park Hotel I used to have been using as a base every time I came to Harcube recently, and that one took a direct hit in January. And another place that I've stayed in frequently had a missile land right in front of us. You started to feel that these hotels were themselves and maybe even their guests,

the international guests who stayed there were targets targets and so this time i'm staying in we've underground rooms in a little mini it's called a mini hotel we're hoping it's uh as anonymous as as possible but um you know it's definitely a place where you're more aware of i was just chatting online with a friend uh who didn't have time to meet today but he was saying you know just always be aware of the closest subway station um or the closest shelter because that could save your life. Not a message you get too often in Kyiv these days. So, I mean, I'm wondering how this is all affecting the people who are there, right? And I know you've been speaking with people in Kharkiv, Mark, over the past few days. So, what have you heard from them? Well, I spent my morning in an underground school and it's a

system of schools that have moved into the subway network here because for safety, obviously, underground is the safest place to be during a missile attack or a drone attack. And also just to allow the kids to sort of have something like a normal school day because if you're having four or five alarms, it's very hard to get to the end of your lessons.

And so being in the place where you're supposed to go in the case of an alarm, if being already there, obviously has a very strange advantage, although a lot of the kids are a bit mesmerized by the coming and goings of the subway noises. And it's not an ideal place to study. There's obviously no outdoor time or anything like that either. And I spent the afternoon in the neighborhood of Saltivka, which is on sort of the northern, sorry, there's a... Can you still hear me? I can still hear you, yeah. Okay, so my phone's been interrupted there by an air raid siren,

which is just happening as we're on the phone right now. Again, I'm in the basement, so I don't have to move. Sounds okay. You're good to continue for now? Yeah, absolutely fine for me to continue the conversation. Anyways, so this is life here in Kharkiv. And the people I met in the afternoon in this neighborhood of Saltyvka, which was really on the front line early in the war, it's kind of where the Russian advance was stopped.

Very battered neighborhood, a lot of buildings bearing big scars. And, you know, I was visiting some, frankly, some old friends who left at the start of the war, who came back here, as I mentioned, when they felt it was safe, although they've, in this one case, sent their son to university in Poland, because that makes it a little bit easier to deal with living in this dangerous place. But the number of attacks in recent weeks has them thinking about leaving again. And my friend Natalie said, you know, it's not a sense of deja vu, it's just prolongation. Like it never really went away. We were getting used to it, but it never went away. Wow. All right, Mark, let's broaden this out a little bit and talk

about the conflict as a whole now. How would you describe the state of the war at present? Well, back in November, December, Ukraine's former Chief General Valery Zalushny described it as a stalemate. And that was because the Russian forces no longer had the ability to go forward. And Ukraine had launched this big counteroffensive using a lot of Western supplied tanks and other weaponry and had barely moved the front line just a few kilometers. Since then, the Russians have attacked with perhaps more strength than people thought they might have in these winter months. They appear to have reconstituted large numbers of troops and they're pushing forward

in all sections of the front line right now. They recently captured the city of Avdiivka, which is a very symbolic moment for a few reasons. This is a city that has been on the front line of the Donbass region literally for 10 years since the real start of this conflict with the revolution in Kiev and the sort of start of this Russian-backed uprising in the southeast of Ukraine. And the annexation of Crimea then in 2014 is also what you're talking about. Yeah, that entire succession of events. And so for 10 years, Ukraine had held on to this sort of city

right on the outskirts of the regional capital of Donetsk. It was called a fortress. People spoke of it as this place that you're showing Ukrainian defiance. So the fact that Russia has taken Avdiivka is a big step. It's a big moment. It tells you about the slow-moving, grinding pace of this conflict. But at the same time, it's definitely true that Russia is pushing forward along the entire front line, including here in the Kharkiv region.

And when you say along the entire front line, like how large a space are we talking about? So this is a very long front line, around a thousand kilometers long from the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia, which are among those areas that Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed back in the fall of 2022 through the Donbass region. And up here, this is kind of the northern section of the front line, the Kharkiv region. Mark, several months ago, we were talking about this big counteroffensive coming from the Ukrainian military. What happened to that? You know, that's a point of a lot of debate here inside Ukraine and among the Western countries that work with Ukraine. There was a lot of debate here inside Ukraine and among the Western countries that work with

Ukraine. There was a lot of optimism for it. And essentially, there was a simple plan, simple-ish plan that Ukraine was going to use all this newly acquired military might and all these newly trained troops that were specifically trained for this mission to push south and to cut off the Donetsk and Luhansk region, the Donbass from Crimea, these occupied areas of Ukraine, they're going to cut them into two and thereby cut the supply road between them. We don't know exactly what went on behind closed doors, but there's a real sense that there was political pressure on the Ukrainians to do exactly that. And that some in the general staff, you know, thought it was foolhardy without air superiority to send Ukrainian troops

against heavily fortified Russian positions through minefields and trenches and more minefields and more trenches. They thought the casualty rates would be too high. And so also, you know, it would have meant leaving potentially weak spots in other parts of this long front line if you throw everything at this southern thrust. So the upshot was that Ukraine didn't follow the instructions, shall we say, that was given by the West, like pushed by the United States, let's be clear, to make a drive south. They took a more moderate course that the general staff at the time, General Zaluzhny, thought would preserve more of his manpower and prevent the Russians from making gains elsewhere. Part of the reason for this, General Zelensky was

recently dismissed as the top general in Ukraine by the president, Volodymyr Zelensky. And Mr. Zelensky, I think, was seeing the bigger political picture about needing to deliver victories to regain territory in order to convince the West that it was worth giving more weapons and more financial support to Ukraine. So, I mean, this sounds like an important point here. How significant is it that General Zelushny is now gone from that position? It is very significant. I mean, it was a shock here. He is a very, very popular figure here in Ukraine. You can imagine that someone who resists pressure to sort of send troops into a more dangerous position they thought was justified would be popular with his men. And there were opinion polls that showed that he'd become the most

trusted political figure in the country. I think it'd be fair to say that a lot of people thought there was a political element to this, that he's becoming sort of a bigger, more important figure in Ukraine than the president and maybe even a post-war rival. Now, for better or for worse, whatever happens next is very clear that this is Mr. Zelensky is the real boss. He's in charge. Wow. And what do we know, I guess, about the man who's now replaced Solutiony? Like, what kind of reputation does he have? Oh, Colonel General Sielski is, you know, was effectively General Solutioni's deputy

through all of these big battles. He was the head of the land forces, which meant that he was the person, you know, sort of directly responsible for the defense of Kiev for this liberation of the Kharkiv Oblast. I mean, he was reporting to General Solutioni. One point that

came out more through anonymous soldiers speaking to journalists here in Ukraine was they felt that he was the opposite of General Zeluzhny on that one point, which was that he would order his troops forward into what were seen as words like suicide missions were being used. Although one of the first things he did was to order the retreat from Avdiivka, which sounds chaotic according to some reports. There are talks of Ukrainians having to leave behind their wounded. At the same time, it's a move that many people thought was overdue because the city's fall was inevitable. We'll be back after this message. Well, let's talk about the troops themselves, then the people who are actually fighting this war.

They have been for a long two years now. How are Ukrainian soldiers doing, Mark? Well, this is I mean, these guys who have been fighting the ones that I know personally have been fighting not just for two years, but really for 10 in most cases. This very battle-hardened group of men and some women. And, you know, I was talking to a guy on Tuesday who was telling me he had so many concussions that he can't count them. Memory loss is one of the symptoms he was suffering from. And I think that's representative. I mean, these guys who haven't yet to be injured are, even if they've been lucky and skilled enough to avoid that, are tired, have different types of injuries that are maybe not visible, frankly, need a break, a lot of them. That's led to this debate in Ukraine about a further mobilization, which is really the political issue of the moment, one that's currently before the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about that then.

Further mobilization sounds like they need more soldiers. How are they planning on doing that? Yeah, so General Zaluzhny, back when he was still in his post, said that he needed, I think, 450,000 more soldiers to hold the line. A lot of that's not so much 450,000 additional soldiers as much as it is being able to rotate out some of those guys who've been fighting there for two years or longer. Ukraine has largely had the same people fighting this entire time. And these people are exhausted. They are done. Their families are a big political force demanding that someone else's fathers and husbands take a

turn on the front line. And so when we're saying mobilization, essentially we mean conscription, right? Like basically expanding who can be conscripted into the army? Yes. Since the start of the war, any male between 18 and 60 has been prevented from leaving. But, you know, who serves has been a bit of a mystery. You know, how someone gets drafted and their neighbor doesn't, it's been very unclear. And so this political football, which, again, became a very political issue between General Zelensky

and Mr. Zelensky, General Zelensky asking for more men, Mr. Zelensky being not really keen on that for political reasons, he knows it'll be very, very unpopular. As you can imagine, there are lots and lots of Ukrainians who don't see themselves as fighters and don't want to be sort of drafted to the front line. Mr. Zelensky has now accepted that this is something that needs to be done. And so this debate before the Rada, before the Ukrainian parliament,

is very much about removing some or many of those exemptions and widening the pool from which people can be drafted. Mark, let's also talk about Western support. We've seen Zelensky meeting with prominent world leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and he's been asking for more support. So how invested in this war are international allies at this point? I think we'll see in the days ahead a show of support for Mr. Zelensky around the anniversary. I think we'll see more of these

sort of high profile visits we've seen in the past. And, you know, people are, Western leaders are very good about talking about their support for Ukraine and certainly diplomatically and rhetorically that support is there. And Canada's given a lot of financial support and a lot of military support as of the other Western allies. The willingness to keep doing that is what seems to be expiring or being tested right now. Of course, we know the rhetoric of Donald Trump in the United States. And we've seen here in Europe, financial aid being held up by basically the whim of a single man, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. But both of them represent a broader undercurrent of people who are questioning how long and how much support should the West give to Ukraine. And from the people you've spoken with who are actually on the ground fighting this war

mark, how does the decreasing support actually affect what happens on the ground? On the ground, though, I mean, on the frontline, the impact is dramatic. I was speaking with special forces fighters who had been on the frontline in this region recently, and they said that, you know, at the start of the day, each unit would have a reserve of X number of artillery shells they had to keep back for, you know, a moment where they're under threat, a surprise attack or whatever, what have you. But then beyond that, they'd be given a ration of how many shells they could fire over the coming two weeks. And then you had to sit down there and do the math. Well, we fired this many shells yesterday, which means we have to cut back a bit today.

Or maybe yesterday was quiet, so we can fire a few more. Well, the same token is that the Russians suddenly seem to be firing an insane, that was their word, insane amount of shells these days because of the new artillery shells received from North Korea. They've got new rockets that have just been promised by Iran or delivered by Iran. We don't really know. Even the Ukrainian sort of reports produced by Western intelligence and Ukrainian military suggest that there are large numbers of sort of reconstituted Russian units, both in the South and the East of this country. Now, how they did that. Yeah, I wonder, how is that possible?

Well, we've heard earlier in the war about sort of how, you know, Russian, you know, they did recruiting drives inside prisons. You get a pardon in exchange for spending time on the front line. But also there's big financial incentives as well now. And, you know, Vladimir Putin has doubled the payment that Russia makes to ordinary soldiers here on the front line. And by some maths just, you know, it was an older guy sort of looking at his old car going, you know, I'm gonna have to sell this. I can't afford to pay the bills on it anymore. And his grandson comes out of the house in a military uniform and

says, don't worry, granddad, I'm going to join the army. And so the family bills are going to be paid off by sending the grandson off to fight in an aggressive war, which, you know, makes no sense at all, unless you really are sort of struggling economically. It seems somehow the Russian government, which has oil reserves and has economic resources, it seems to throw into this war. Yeah. One more thing I think we should talk about with Russia is that it's currently in an election period, right? I mean, it's a highly criticized election because there's basically no opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

But how is that election influencing the war? Yeah, the word election makes me cringe a little bit. And I've covered a lot of Russian elections over the years, and they always end the same way. And this one will be no different. The only candidate who spoke out against the war in any way was denied registration. So the remaining candidates are either all Mr. Putin or people who support Mr. Putin in the war. So not much of a choice for Russian voters, of course.

But at the same time, I think Mr. Putin, he's going to want to look like things are going well. He's going to want his troops to deliver victories. The report that I read yesterday was that there was an order given out for Russian troops to seize the remaining part of the Luhansk Oblast that wasn't under Russian control. So they could claim to control one of these provinces that Mr. Putin dramatically claimed to have annexed back in 2022. There's a lot of fear. I think when I was in Saltivka today, people mentioned the Russian election, like they thought the next few weeks might be particularly bad because Russia would want to look like it's unbeatable so that Mr. Putin could stride onto a stage on the election day on March 17th and genuinely look like he's moving forward, like the country is doing well under his leadership. At the same time, I mean, other Russian analysts that I've spoken to say, you know, don't expect too much dramatic change.

Mr. Putin doesn't actually care about Russian domestic opinion or about elections. He'll do what he thinks is the right thing to do whenever it is, despite the electoral cycle in Russia. So just lastly here, Mark, so what might be in store for places like Kharkiv in the coming weeks and really for the people who are living there still? It's, of course, really difficult to predict the future. And people here talk about not being able to plan. And that's one of the messages I got was, you know, we plan day to day, hour by hour. And the sense of uncertainty around exactly the question you've asked, what might Russia do? What might happen in the weeks ahead? It's crippling. People say that in some way, one guy I spoke to, he's a bit too old probably to serve as a soldier.

He said, you know, if I was a soldier, at least I'd have a mission each day and someone would tell me what to do. But staying at home with my family, trying to decide, should we stay? Should we go? Should I invest in my business? Should I sell my house?

Housing prices, you can imagine, are quite low. So it's not a great time to be selling your house, but maybe this is as good as they're going to get. So people don't know what the future holds. And certainly if, you know, this city, whatever happens next, it's right on the firing line. Mark, thank you so much for your work here and for taking the time to be here today. Thank you so much. If you'd like to hear more, The Globe is doing a live Q&A with Mark this Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern.

You can find the link in our episode description. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.