The Decibel - The elite soldiers behind the major battles for Ukraine: Part One

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

For the past few years, The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon has been building relationships with some of the top commanders and soldiers in the Ukrainian army, following them in the war against Russia. These soldiers have been in the midst of major battles – Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Bakhmut – and many have been fighting Russia since long before the full-scale invasion in 2022.Today and tomorrow, Mark tells us about this group of elite soldiers, what roles they’ve played in the major battles for Ukraine, and how they think about everything they’ve been through so far.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

So I know these guys by their code names. There's Marcus, who I eventually learned is a senior commander in Ukrainian military intelligence. There's Caesar, who just calls himself a spy when we meet. And then there's Shaman, who is frankly terrifying in person, and not surprisingly the commander of one of the most feared units fighting on the Ukrainian side of the war. And there's Dean, who's a shyer and person but equally accomplished warrior who helped found the Kraken battalion that led the defensive Kharkiv. And I also met their commander, General Budanov, who has so far survived 11 assassination attempts. The Globe's senior international correspondent, Mark McKinnon, has spent years following and speaking with soldiers from Ukraine's military intelligence.

So over the past two, I mean almost three years now, I've met with these guys repeatedly, most often for sort of pub tables of beer and sausages, occasionally for hookah pipes and debates about God and human rights and the laws of war. One wild night of shout singing nirvana at a karaoke place, and a couple of trips to the front line. And it turns out that these guys have been involved in every one of the big battles to defend their country. The defense of Kiev, the siege of Mariupol,

the liberation of much of Kharkiv, and the siege of Bakhmut. Today and tomorrow, we're taking you behind the scenes of these battles with the elite Ukrainian soldiers at the center of them to tell you their stories of the war. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thanks so much for joining me again. Thank you, Manika. This story actually starts in the summer of 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

So this is before Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine. Mark, tell me about what happened in Kabul. So these are days that are seared into my memory. I was supposed to go to Kabul in the summer of 2021 to cover sort of the NATO withdrawal from the country after its 20-year stay and what happens next. And so I reached out to people I'd worked with over the previous 20 years, Afghans that I'd gotten to know quite well. And they were, of course, willing to work with me, quite excited that I was coming back. And they would be people that, of course, I'd be relying on to keep me safe if anything happened. They'd be drivers, they'd be translators. And then what happened all of a sudden, as we know now, the Taliban started taking control of the country and it became evident

they were going to seize Kabul. And so my longtime friend, Sharif Sharaf, reached out to me and said, you know, Mark, I don't think it's safe for me to stay here. The Taliban is going to punish those who worked with Westerners. So I told him I'd do what I could. And another Globe translator, Mukhtar Amiri, made the same request. So we ended up in this situation where suddenly I wanted to get them out of Kabul as quickly as possible. And I reached out to the Canadian military and explained these are journalists who had worked with the Globe and Mail and other Canadian news organizations over the years. And the Canadian military, the American military, there were other countries that made different offers. Qatar, France reached out. But not all

of these plans involved the Afghans taking incredible risks to get into Kabul airport and to get out of the country. And that proved impossible. If you remember, there were tens of thousands of people swarming the airport. There was an Islamic State suicide bombing in the middle of all this. Yeah, people probably remember the scenes, right? It was really chaotic, really scary for a lot of the people there who were trying to get out of the country. And the NATO troops that were there were also very concerned they wouldn't go outside of this facility, which was walled and where they'd set up a security perimeter. And then a contact of mine told me, did you know there's a Ukrainian plane on the ground there as well?

And of course I had not. But I'd worked in Ukraine also for 20 years off and on. And so I had a lot of contacts there and reached out. I eventually reached President Zelensky's office with a request that if there was any space on this Ukrainian plane, could they consider taking out some translators for the Globe and Mail on those empty spaces? And they came back almost immediately with a yes. And not only that, they said, just tell us where they are. We'll come get them, which was a very different

response from, I'd gotten from the other countries. And so, you know, this is how I came into contact first with this group of Ukrainian soldiers who were on the ground in Afghanistan. So they were there, the Ukrainian soldiers were there getting their own people out of Afghanistan. But Mark, why would, I guess, why would they help you? Why would they help a Canadian journalist? You didn't know any of these guys at this point. So what was happening? You know, at the time, I was frankly surprised that they would order their troops to take risks that were going beyond what, you know, Canadian troops were doing to get their own translators and American troops were doing to get their own translators. And here they were rescuing not just the translators for the Globe and Mail,

but for USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. And I think what I've learned since then, and it's never been put quite this way, but my understanding of what happened is they saw this as a goodwill mission. And one of the guys who was involved in the rescue said to me, Canada's been training us, training Ukrainian troops on the ground since the outbreak of the proxy war in the Donbass region since 2014. We thought this was a way to say thank you to Canada. And they knew they could do this mission compared to the war they were fighting in eastern Ukraine against the Russian army. This was

not seen by them as risky. Also, you know, I think they're making a demonstration of their prowess. You know, this is very much about signaling about public diplomacy, I think. And what do we know then about that mission? Like, do we know how it went? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it was much more dangerous, I've come to learn later on than I originally understood. They sent out this request to our Afghan friends to get themselves onto a pair of minibuses, and the minibuses would drive as close as possible to the airport. Then the Ukrainian troops went outside the airport and escorted the buses in. And we've actually got video footage of that from a body cam that one of the soldiers, Caesar, was wearing.

We need these two buses, the right side. Yeah, yeah, we saw them. Just a second. We need to go through the wire and to enter the airport. We have a connection there. Get them back. Get them back.

It's clear that there was gunmen in the crowd. There was shooting going on. At one point somebody yells out, you know, there's a bomber. And the Ukrainians sort of take cover behind a big garbage facility. And then once the all-clear is given, go out and resume their escort of these buses, you know, firing in the air just above the crowd because it's obviously a very tense situation. Wow. So your driver, your interpreter, they got them out of Kabul?

Yeah, I mean, there was a last minute hitch where one of the translators and families I was trying to get out, decided to stay a little longer enough in Kabul because his grandmother was ill. And so that he escaped a different way and is now in Canada. But Sharif, my friend that I was trying very hard to get out and a Canadian military translator that Sharif knew and their family. So in the end, I think it was 17 people ended up flying out with the Ukrainians to Kiev, where I met them and helped get Sharif anyways onwards to Canada. Jawed is unfortunately still in limbo in Germany, but that's a whole different epic story. Wow. But so this is this Ukrainian team then that managed to get

people out of Kabul at that time. Let's actually talk about who's on this team, Mark. Who are these individuals? Yes, it took me a long time to really grasp, you know, what had happened. So from the start, I sort of was given the WhatsApp number of this guy. All I had on this phone was Marcus. And so I've been calling Marcus for three years, even though I've later learned that's not his real name. And so Marcus, who is, I discovered gradually was a senior officer in HUR, which is the Ukrainian military intelligence. And this team that was on the ground that day, I came to understand again, was pretty much as close to sort of the CIA SWAT team,

you know, sort of the best of the best, the band of brothers that you can come across. It's almost like brought together like in a movie, you know, like, you know, here's the medic, the interpreter, the communications guy. And some of them were just, you know, when you ask them what they do, they'll say, you know, spy work. So there was sort of this hardcore group of 10 guys from a unit known as Unit 2245, which was a CIA-trained unit that had been fighting in eastern Ukraine this whole time since the start of the proxy war. So you're talking about 2014 then when Russia annexed Crimea and the proxy war since then? Exactly. Actually, Unit 2245 was formed in 2016 with this sort of, you know, the CIA is training these guys up, giving them top end skills in

exchange. The Ukrainians are sharing whatever they find on the ground in eastern Ukraine, including any technology they capture with their friends, the CIA, because they've come to see Russia jointly as an enemy. So they are there with, you know, very varied skill sets. So these are seasoned military officers, Mark. So how, practically, how did you build connections with them? It was a step-by-step process. I mean, it started off with going to Kiev, as I said, to meet Sharif and help he and Jawed and their families get onwards and deal with the paperwork. But then I decided, you know, I really wanted to thank not just President Zelensky's office.

We delivered a letter to them from our editor-in-chief. But I wanted to thank the guys who'd carried out the mission. We got 30 men and two women who'd carried out the mission. My first point of contact, as I said, was this guy codenamed Marcus. And at the first meeting, I picked out this beer bar in the center of Kiev, and we were joined by one of the officers who'd been on the ground that day. His name is Dima. So Marcus and Dima and I just sort of had, you know, sort of a really fun evening, sort of regaling me with tales of how it all went down. And then afterwards, as the Russian invasion of

Ukraine became more and more inevitable, as Russia was massing its troops around Ukraine, I'd always been messaging with Marcus Roach, getting his thoughts on what was happening. And so the next time, or one of the subsequent times that I met with Marcus, I said, would it be possible to meet the rest of the team? He said, well, that's up to the commander of Ukrainian military intelligence, General Kirill Budanov. And General Budanov, I interviewed him in April of 2022,

which would be just after the Battle of Kiev. And he sort of gave me permission to meet the rest of the team. And so it was a slow building up trust with the first characters I met. And then that helped me sort of establish trust with the others that I met. Although there were almost like some tests along the way that I had to pass, shall we say. What kind of tests? I'm curious about this now. Well, nothing formal, but just like I remember there was one night where I'd been hoping to meet a character whose codename is Dean and he was unable to meet with me. So a couple of his

colleagues from the Kraken unit, which is this famed... The Kraken unit. Yeah, they're one of these, this unit that had been sort of led the defensive harkeep at the start of the war. So instead of meeting Dean, suddenly I'm being taken to meet three other guys with three other code names.

And at some point, I realized none of these guys were in Kabul. It was almost, you know, nothing from this was going to be in my notebook or useful for the story. But we just sat up all night and had, you know, at some point they turned on a karaoke machine. And we were just sort of, you know, singing. You know, it's like Kiev in wartime. We've all had very little sleep because of these drone attacks and sirens that keep you up all night.

And these guys have been fighting missions right on the front line. And, you know, we spent the evening, a long evening, sort of eating, drinking and singing Nirvana songs at the top of our lungs. And, you know, at the end of the night, one of them was thanking me for just having a normal evening. But I also came to understand they were trying to get a sense of who I was and, you know, what I was really up to before they let me meet with the people that I was really trying to meet with. Wow. Fascinating. That's such an image, Mark. Wow. I have a question. You've mentioned code names a few times now. So I want to ask you about this because as a journalist, of course, right, you're always trying to verify the information that you've got. So if you know these guys aren't even giving you their real names, like how do you even verify what

they're telling you? Yeah, that was the trick right from the start. And we discussed this, you know, with senior editors at Globe very early on in this project. So, you know, they live in a world of secrecy. They don't start off telling a journalist the truth, I'll say that much. The first time I met one key character in the article is referred to as Caesar. And the first time I met Caesar, I said, you know, he gave me some, he was telling me about his role in the Kabul mission. I said, what's your name? And he says, Oleg Frankumov.

And I said, oh, do you spell that with a K or a C? He goes, it doesn't matter. I just made it up. And I'm like, well, how do I believe anything you just told me? Then he started messaging me on various platforms. And his name would come up as McFly. It turns out he's a massive Back to the Future fan. And finally, I met Caesar for a prolonged interview in his office, at his desk where he's wearing his uniform.

It says Caesar on it, and I can see his rank, and I can see behind him photographs of the missions he's taken part in. Now I can believe him. I'm the third try. I can correspond what he's saying with photographs, and I can correlate that to videos I've seen. I can talk to other people and say, did this mission go this way? So, you know, this was all about, you know, almost like word of mouth references. Maybe then I'll call it the Nirvana test.

You know, it's one of these guys that I've never talked to a journalist before, but I can see that you're interested in something that I want. Like he had an interest in telling me know, something that I want. He had an interest in telling me about the things that I was asking about. We'll be right back. So Mark, the full scale invasion of Ukraine happens on February 24th, 2022. Where are these soldiers at that point? Like, what are they doing at that moment? This Kabul team is not all standing together very often. There was this Unit 2245 that I mentioned that is sort of this elite CIA trained unit that at the start of the war is positioned in eastern Ukraine in what they believe is going to be sort of the hardest direction. The other is sort of the, you know, they're sort of spread around Kiev at their own bases.

And then the morning of February 24th, they get the call, it's about four in the morning, you know, get to the headquarters and then General Budatov sort of briefs them and says, worst case scenario is unfolding. You head to Brovary, a town east of Kiev, and take Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. And then to the, you know, many of those in the room, he says, and we need you to get to Hostomal, which is this military airport northwest of Kyiv that ended up being sort of one of the absolutely key points of the war. And you see on the way to this battle, you know, like a fighter named Shaman that I got to know, he ends up forming, you know, literally in those hours before the Battle of Hostomal,

what becomes known as the Shaman Battalion, this group of fighters that are under his command. And they and others joined the battle for Hostomel, which ends up being a real turning point. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about that, Mark? Because I think we kind of heard about this battle for the military airport just outside of Kiev in that first kind of day or two. What actually unfolded? What do we know? Yeah. What we now know is that the Russians were planning to land at Hostomel Airport. Like I said, it was, you know, something for landing military sort of giant cargo planes at and they were planning to unload tanks and

other equipment and troops there. And then from it would literally have been an hour's drive to Kiev from there had they successfully taken over the airport. And they did briefly land. They came in this row of, you know, a few dozen helicopters. The Russian mindset was very much, this war will be over in three days. There'll be parades, we'll be thanked by the Ukrainians for liberating them from this supposedly neo-Nazi government in Kiev and for welcoming them back into Russia. They had this mindset that this wasn't really going to be a war. And so the Battle of Hostomel Airport is important from that perspective. First of all, you know, here's a moment where the Ukrainians say, you're not landing here. And secondly, from Russia, a lot lost a lot of its best units in this moment because they thought they'd be landing easily at Hostomel and heading into Kiev. And they got, they landed on

the ground and they were surrounded by Ukraine's best units. And eventually, you know, the airfield was destroyed, made unusable. And, you know, the equivalent of the guys that I'm talking about here, the Ukrainian who are the Russian equivalent, a lot of their best guys were lost in the first hours of the war. I believe you were actually speaking with Marcus or texting with Marcus in the thick of that invasion, Mark. What was that kind of what was that conversation like with him? This was a security conversation I was trying to have because myself and our photographer, Anton Skiba, and others were sort of we were all in Kiev as the war began. And there were all these reports that the capital would be surrounded for three days. And we didn't know whether it was safe to stay in the Capitol, you know, what was going to happen next.

And so we were on the fence. Did we stay in this hotel in the middle of Kiev or do we get the heck out? And so I messaged Marcus, you know, first of all, making sure he's alive. And second of all, saying, you know, what's your advice? You know, just off the record, you know, would you stay in a hotel tonight? He said, get yourself to a bunker or get out of the city sort of thing. So, you know, obviously he was not sure how this was going either at that point. So we've talked about a bunch of people here, Mark, but I'd like to ask about one soldier in particular who was part of the Kabul team.

This is a man named Nazar. Tell me about him. Yeah, so Nazar Borovitsky, he was a young guy who grew up in the Poltava region of sort of central eastern Ukraine. And, you know, I got to know his family through all this. And they tell stories of, you know, when he was a kid, he would be, you know, he always wanted to join the military. And as a kid, he'd be doing pull ups on a bar, you'd get his sister Oksana, to throw a basketball against his stomach so he could build up his pain tolerance. And just this sort of guy who wanted to join the army. And very soon after he does get into the Ukrainian military,

after the outbreak of this proxy war in Ukraine in 2014, he gets recruited into this aforementioned Unit 2245 that goes to the United States for training with the CIA. So he's effectively been identified as one of the best of the best right there. He and his unit get assigned to Kabul in 2021. And, you know, even among this best of the best, you know, just the way his name kept coming up, there was an early rescue mission to go and get a journalist from USA Today named Fatima Hosseini. And she was supposed to get to the airport and she stuck out in the crowd and she can't quite reach. And so Nazar wades out into

this crowd of Afghans, despite the threat from the Taliban Islamic State. He's the guy that they send out on his own to grab Fatima, throw her, like according to her, throws her over his shoulder and brings her back into the airport. His colleagues called him the universal soldier because he was just that guy they would always turn to. And then so the early days of the war, when there was actually this full scale invasion of Ukraine, where was he? What were those times like for him? So at the start of the war, he is stationed outside Kiev training what's known as the Territorial Defense Force, which are basically these civilians that end up playing a very important role. They take up arms and defend their streets and villages from the invading Russians.

And then after the sort of successful defense of Kiev, Nazar and his unit are among the first, if not the first, to go into Bucha, which is now a town that everybody associates with the most horrific bits of the war in Ukraine. I've got this video on my phone that someone sent me, one of the teams sent me that is just, you know, Ukrainians walking through the streets and you could just see charred vehicles everywhere and hear the crunches as they're walking over sort of broken buildings and spent bullets and their corpses visible. I mean, people have called it a massacre, really, of a lot of Ukrainians dying there, right? Absolutely. We know that, you know,

at least 430 something civilians were killed there. That's many of them sort of Ukrainians dying there, right? Absolutely. We know that at least 430-something civilians were killed there. Many of them sort of with their hands bound behind their backs, single bullet to the head. Yeah, absolutely a massacre. And General Budano says that a lot of members of his team were deeply affected by what they saw. And Nazar in particular, his friends and family say that almost something snapped inside him in Bucha.

And he started, you know, wanting to get revenge and asking for, to be the most difficult missions. And then a few months later, there's this situation in Mariupol where the Russians have taken over most of this city on the Azov Sea. And the Russians have taken the entire city, except for a single steel factory called the azov style factory and uh general budanov orders these these missions to support those defending azov styles these helicopters are flying in in twos they've only had to land for 10 minutes they drop off supplies to those who are still fighting there they take

out the most seriously wounded and they fly back and you know it's terrifying people took part in that mission described it as absolutely terrifying because you can't control what's happening while you're in the helicopter. You don't know who's looking at you, who's shooting at you. You're going over areas that are controlled by Russians then, both ways, there and back. Yeah, both there and back. You're spending most of your time over hostile territory. And then this Unit 2245, we're sort of referring to it as a suicide mission.

They were saying this is a one-way ticket they were volunteering for. And everybody does one mission successfully. And then the commander, again, Max, the same guy who had commanded the team in Kabul, says, I need people to go again. And he says, and Nazar put his hand up first. And Nazar gets in and out again, second time, but has this really sort of confrontation with Max where he says, I want to stay behind in Azovstal, I want to fight. And Max says, no, actually, I need you back here. So just,

you know, stick to the mission, drop them off, get back out. And then on a subsequent mission, another Ukrainian military helicopter gets shot down behind Russian lines. And Nazar insists to go, despite the fact he's now done two turns and certainly no one's done three yet, to go rescue his downed comrades who are now seven kilometers behind Russian lines. And this one proves to be a trap. And the Russians shoot Nazar's helicopter out of the sky. And we just believe that Nazar's story, certainly the evidence suggests that Nazar's story ends even if his family, unfortunately, doesn't quite accept that yet. I mean, I understand you have talked to his family, Mark. So what do they say?

I mean, they're just absolutely lovely people. And we had a nice, long, teary lunch at their home in the Pultava region. And like I said, my first reason for going there is just to say thank you for what their son did in Afghanistan, for me, for the Globe and Mail, and then to understand him better and to understand his story and and his family they kept telling me you got to remember this is that nazar you know built up this pain tolerance he knew how to scuba dive he knew how to paraglide you know they basically they they see him as his comrades as this you know indestructible force even though a year later there were remains were exchanged.

There are these occasional exchanges of dead bodies and remains between the Russian and Ukrainian sides. And a skull and a jawbone were returned that are believed to be Nazar's. And the local dentist actually verified this is Nazar's jawbone. So the family accepts that he's missing his jawbone, but they don't accept he's dead yet still.

Nazar's sister, Oksana, shared messages with me that his mom has been sending since they've received this evidence that Nazar was dead and long afterwards. Messages, some of them are just like asking, you know, my son, you know, is there anyone who can replace you? You've been, you know, just for a weekend.

Sometimes it's just, are you fed? And then there's a tradition in Eastern Europe of if you're too busy to reply, you just reply with a plus, the plus sign on your phone. And she just says, you know, I know you're very busy, but if you could just send the plus, and she does it a couple of times, would just sort of say, you know, please, you know, just send the plus. And of course, there's none coming and there's no plus.

You can hear the second part of my conversation with Mark tomorrow, starting with the role of the Kraken team in the Battle of Kharkiv and how these soldiers make sense of everything they've been through. Shaman, I think, went furthest in that direction saying, you know, like, we are the people who understand that rose-colored glasses, rose-colored glasses, people like you, you're talking to me, look at the world through, they always shatter in your eyes. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Aja Sauter and Kelsey Arnett are our interns Our producers are Madeline White

Cheryl Sutherland and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin David Crosby edits the show Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Frainer is our managing editor Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.