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

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Yesterday on The Decibel, The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon told us about the top commanders and soldiers he’s been following and speaking with in the Ukrainian army. These soldiers have been in incredibly dangerous situations, many at the centre of the major battles in the war against Russia.Today, Mark joins us for the second part of that conversation. He’ll tell us about the critical role these soldiers played in the defence of Kharkiv, the toll the fighting and military setbacks have had on them, and how they make sense of everything they’ve been through.You can listen to Part One here: https://pod.link/thedecibel/episode/eeee888019060f26d57415ec0d160ff8Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

So the team that rescued my translators in Kabul in 2021, during the war in Ukraine, it was really broken up into three or four separate units. There was the main unit 2245, which is the CIA train unit we've been talking about. There is the Shaman Battalion, one of the most feared units on the Ukrainian side, which is named after its commander. There's the Kraken, which led the defense of Kharkiv. And there's the Kabul 9, which is actually led by the commander of the mission in Kabul, but named after the rescue in 2021.

Yesterday, The Globe's senior international correspondent, Mark McKinnon, brought us the stories of some elite fighters with Ukraine's military intelligence. 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 Budetov sort of briefs them and says, worst case scenario's unfolding, you head to Brovary, a town east of Kyiv, 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, to this military airport northwest of Kiev that ended up being sort of one of the absolutely key points of the war. If you haven't heard that episode yet, you probably want to go

back and listen to the first part of our conversation. We talk about who these soldiers are, how Mark got to know them, and the battles they fought in. Today, in part two, we pick up these soldiers' stories in Kharkiv. We'll talk about the crucial role they've played in defending Ukraine, the toll the fighting and military setbacks have taken on them, and how they make sense of everything they've been through. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, one of the big battles that I think people remember is the liberation of the Kharkiv region

in Ukraine. This was a huge success for the Ukrainian military, right? This was back in early fall of 2022. We've been talking about these elite soldiers. What role did these soldiers play there? So after the sort of victory of the Battle of Kiev, right, the battle turns very much to Kharkiv, the Ukraine's second largest city becomes the focus. And there are a couple of key interventions by the Kabul team. First of all, from General Budanov himself, there was a, even though the Russians had been stopped on the outskirts of Kharkiv, it was very, very difficult to live in the city, to visit the city, because Russian artillery fire was constantly a threat. And so they identified this town called Lutskolozova, which is just northeast of the city.

And they sent a mission to go and try and take over, to retake this town. It was a hilltop position that would have allowed, you know, that gives you sort of fire control, as military people call it, over much of Kharkiv. And not only did General Budanov order this mission, he himself goes on it and sort of leads this team, and they end up, they get to the center of town, but they don't have enough firepower to sort of retake it entirely,

and they have to take over a church in the middle of town, and they're surrounded until the Ukrainian military comes to get them. So, you know, an incredibly risky mission, you know, led by the commander himself that helps sort of allow normal life and people to think about coming back to Kharkiv, which has happened. And then in the fall of 2022, there's this great Ukrainian counteroffensive that surprises everyone. The advance appears to be the fastest that Ukraine has mounted

since it drove Russian troops away from Kyiv and out of the country's north at the beginning of April. If sustained, Ukrainian forces could be posed to threaten Russian supply lines. It turns out it was planned at the base of the Kraken, this unit that was formed by HUR, which is the Ukrainian military intelligence. And the Kraken publicly are, you know, sort of a group of ordinary citizens of Kharkiv, many of them are football fanatics, and they were led by this far right politician, as far as, you know, most people knew. And it was only after sort of, again, this

long process of getting to know people and getting them to trust me a little bit that, you know, they admitted that, well, actually, the whole time was kind of, that was kind of a lot of our operations. Anyway, so that was formed by one of the key players is dean had one of these men who'd been on the ground as part of unit 2245 before the war and then uh also been on the ground in kabul and so dean told me about how he and another sort of hooler agent had conceived of the plan to retake harkiv using a hakimâché map they'd built of the entire region. And because of their concern that the Russians would get hold of their plans or understand their plans and counter them, they sort of invited, I think it was 62 regional commanders, everyone from the head of a division

to someone leading a very small unit. They had to come to the Kraken base and look at this papier-mâché map. So you can almost envision them sort of gathered around a giant table with a relief map of the mountains and valleys and rivers of the Kharkiv region and sort of having some point, okay, you go around this pile of papier-mâché and you go around this side of the pile of papier-mâché. So a really interesting and dramatic moment. And then once the battle unfolds, the Kraken, of course, as

local fighters, they end up leading the push. And sort of the first thing they did was blow up a local power station because they came to understand the Russians on that part of the front line had no power generators and were also using paper maps. And so they said, if we knock out their communications, we turn off their electricity, these guys are really going to be sort of panicked. They don't really know where they are and we will have the advantage. And that's the first thing they do. And then they race ahead behind the front lines.

And again, we talked about how do you know this part of the story is true? Well, in the middle of September in 2022, I got to Izum, the city of Izum, which one of the bigger cities that was liberated two days after it came back under Ukrainian control. And there were tanks painted with the word Kraken. I didn't at the time understand the connection to Kabul, but I saw them with my own eyes. The Kraken tanks were the ones that were on the forefront of this operation. So, yeah, so this team, this Kraken team, is playing a pretty valuable role in that part of the conflict. I want to ask you about another person that you've mentioned a few times, Mark. This is the general that you spoke with.

He seems to be at the center of many of the decisions that are being made here. This is General Budanov. What do we know about him? Well, he's sort of, you know, from a Ukrainian perspective, he's sort of emerged as one of the heroes of this war. I mean, he was one of these young guys who was first picked to work with Unit 2245, you know, to get trained by the Americans. And he rises up, even though he's younger than many of his colleagues, right to the top of Ukrainian military intelligence. And it's him who, in the last hours before the Russian invasion begins, gets enough evidence together through, we believe, a double agent in the Russian side. And so he presents it to Vladimir Zelensky before the Russian invasion says,

this is what's going to happen. They're coming from the north. They're coming towards Kiev. They're going to come to the Chernobyl zone. We need to defend the Hostomel Airport. So that battle at Hostomel Airport that we talked about, that happened because of intelligence from General Budanov. Yeah, so that turning point, a lot of it comes from the fact that General Budanov was obviously very good at his job.

And so he also has incredible loyalty from his fighters. As I mentioned, he took part in that battle at Ruzgalazova. He's taken part in other missions, we believe, although he never really confirms it. He's not a guy who gives long answers to anything. He's very curt with his replies and leaves, shall we say, the job of spreading his legend to other people. But isn't that a big risk? If he's such an important general, Mark, like for him to be on the front lines, isn't that taking a huge risk that he could be captured or killed?

Yeah, and I asked him about that. I said, so why would you, who the Russians probably value as a target under maybe the top general of the Ukrainian military and President Zelensky, why would you get yourself surrounded in a church in Kharkiv region? Why are you taking part allegedly in, you know, brief landing missions in Crimea? And he said, it's a question of morality was his reply. He said, you know, if I can't ask others to take these missions, if I'm afraid to go on them myself. And that's, you know, again, part of the reason why he's so respected and why the Russians have tried to kill him at least 10 or 11 times by latest count. Wow. We've talked about a bunch of successes here that the Ukrainian military has had Mark. Things were going really well for a while but

but things did take a bit of a turn. When did we see things start to change? One mission that got talked about a lot by the people I was talking to was the first attempt to liberate Snake Island. And maybe your listeners will remember in the first hours, days of the war, this famous incident where the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet approaches this tiny little outcrop called Snake Island and basically tells the defenders, 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island says, you know, please put down your weapons and surrender. This is the Russian warship Moskva. And so the Ukrainians reply in not polite terms, telling the Russians where they can go stick it. And an audio recording of this went around the world and sort of really signified the early Ukrainian desire and intent to resist. Yeah, we were hearing this in the news at that time, right?

This was kind of this moment of resistance from Ukraine. Absolutely. But people, you know, sometimes lost in the fact that Russia did take over Snake Island, did take those 13 guys prisoner. But retaking Snake Island became a priority from, I think, from the political levels in Ukraine before the military levels. Although there is, General Budeta pointed out to me, obviously it had military value because whoever controls Snake Island controls the approaches to Odessa, the key Ukrainian port, both historically, but also in terms of the grain trade, which is so important to Ukraine's economy. So there's an order that goes out for the Ukrainians to retake Snake Island. This is really one of the few times in the conflict where the much, if not all, the Kabul team sort of is back together. They're training together near Odessa to retake this island.

And they go on, you know, a bunch of Ukrainian helicopters skimming low over the waves towards this Russian-held island. And, of course, the Russians at some point see them coming and start firing missiles back at them. And the Ukrainians did make a landing on Snake Island then and briefly raised the flag. And there's a video they put out saying, you know, we raised the flag on Snake Island briefly today. You know, so a bit of a propaganda victory. But Shaman, one of these guys that's sort of one of the legendary warriors in Ukraine, gets shot. A bullet hits his right ear and grazes his head, gets stuck in his helmet. Obviously millimeters from being killed. Two men from his battalion that he formed.

So people he was very close to were killed on Snake Island. Others said they wouldn't discuss casualties, but one member of Unit 2245 told me that he asked to be reassigned after that because he thought they were being treated like a suicide unit. And others said people didn't want to talk about Snake Island, but you got the sense that things had gone badly wrong there. And it was the first time the Ukrainians had really gone, tried to go on the offensive in this war.

And it showed you sort of the, you know, it's one thing to defend your hometowns against an invader that doesn't know the back streets. It's another thing to attack a fortified position. And that sort of that failure, you know, you almost see it again about a year later as Ukraine tries to go back on the offensive after they've retaken Kharkiv

and this sort of magical operation that goes off exactly as planned. And then the Russians withdraw from Kherson, another key city in the south. Last summer, maybe your listeners, our listeners will remember, there was a lot of excitement because the Western governments were giving the Ukrainians all sorts of military equipment. Canada was sending Leopard tanks and the Americans were giving these HIMARS long-range missile systems. And there was just this hope, expectation that the Ukrainians would break through the Russian front lines, just like they had in Kharkiv, and sort of split the Russian defense lines in two, separating Crimea from Donbass, the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. And that it would be the next step towards driving the Russians right out of Ukraine and ending this war.

And the Ukrainians did attack. The Americans don't agree with the way the Ukrainians carried it out. But you know, it did, it foundered, there's a lot of recriminations about why that last year's counteroffensive failed. But this was Yeah, this was something Mark, we were talking for kind of, you know, the lead up to it, there was this expectation of this massive counteroffensive. And it did seem to kind of fizzle out, like there wasn't much that really seemed to come of it then. Yeah, the Ukrainians did retake some villages and anyone in the political and military command structure will say, you know, like, you know, any inch of Ukrainian land is worth recapturing.

And obviously, you have to say these things. But Western military analysts, and it seems some people high up in the in NATO and the US military sort military, they're disappointed in the Ukrainian effort because they, instead of following the plan, the Americans had sort of played a hand in devising which would have seen Ukraine take all this new military equipment and attack in a single thrust south towards the Azov Sea and sort of break through the Russian lines. The American plan would have involved basically all the resources being thrown in a single direction. Maybe you'll lose some ground near Bakhmut,

or maybe you'd lose some ground near Kharkiv while you're achieving this big strategic goal. And the Ukrainians didn't want to do that. So they're attacking, they're taking the resources they've been given and attacking in several directions at once, gaining some villages near Bakhmut at the same time as they're pushing towards the Azov Sea. And the entire offensive sort of really didn't achieve

what people expected of it. We'll be right back. So, Mark, this war has been going on for over two years now. It's been a bit of a slow grind at this point. I'm wondering, how are these soldiers doing? What have they said? I mean, the first thing they would say is it's been going on for 10 years, because most of these guys have been fighting the Donbass conflict before the outbreak of the larger invasion. So, you know, these are people who, you know, many of them have families that they've been separated from for all this time. They are frankly tired. You know, no one would say, you know, that they want a break or a holiday. But, you know, part of the reason

why I think the Afghan mission is so fondly remembered because it's the closest thing they've had to one. They are stretched out. They are tired. They are increasingly frustrated in interviews that I had with members of the team a year ago. There was a lot of optimism like there was in Ukraine. When I met them this spring, there's a lot of bitterness and exhaustion. It was something you couldn't help but feel. General Badanov recently told the New York Times, and he was referring, the New York Times headline may have made it suggest

Ukraine had no more troops, but he was saying he himself, in terms of the units he commands, units like Unit 2245, which has now been renamed and rebranded, the Kabul 9, the Shaman Battalion, the Kraken. I've got nothing more. They're all deployed. They're all fighting all the time. We're stretched thin.

Everything he's got, he's fighting with right now. And she just tells you the state of things right now in Ukraine. Yeah. I mean, so those soldiers who are in that situation, like, I guess, did you get a sense of how they've been processing things, like everything that they've done and been through in this conflict? How are they dealing with that? Yeah, there were two questions that I sort of asked, kept coming back to with all of these people that I got to meet. And one of them that I was really sort of never been able to understand, because I've never been a soldier is, you know, what goes through your mind? What do you feel when you see someone, enemy soldier, obviously, but you pull the trigger and you kill them. And that one got a range of responses from, you know, there were some who said, you know, like it's him or me, you know, it's an automatic

thing. I don't think about it. Shaman, I think, went furthest in that direction saying, you know, like, it's him or me, you know, it's an automatic thing, I don't think about it. Shaman, I think, went furthest in that direction, saying, you know, like, that he's been born in war, war has no rules, he'll do whatever it, you know, because I asked him about, you know, there's allegations of war crimes, and war crimes are an invention of the liberal world, and 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. And it was like this slightly terrifying moment in our conversation. And then there's these others who, you know, they just, Cesar, I think, says, you know, war is a permanent state of affairs at this point for them. And you just have to accept that you were at war yesterday, you'll be at war tomorrow and don't expect anything

to change because there's nothing like peace on the horizon. The other question I asked a lot of them was, I remember Dean, I was asking him, before the war he was an engineer who had helped work for a company that had built the airport in Donetsk, now occupied Donetsk. And then later on he's in a unit that's fighting for Donetsk and destroys this airport that he helped build. The battle destroys the airport.

And I said, how did that feel? He said, well, nothing really. And I thought that was strange. You'd think you'd have some emotional investment. I talked to him, same question. How did it feel to the successful Kibble mission? And he said, well, nothing really. And then the same answers,

normalna they say in Russian, which just means normal or okay. I said, how can it all be normalna? none of this you know get you excited or sad he said you know people like me who've been at war for 10 years if you talk to any of us we've seen our friends die we've dragged friends off the battlefield we've killed we've you know it's just a flat line he said he talked about you know in that movie in scenes in the movies where there's an explosion and everybody's running and screaming and there's the character who just stays still. So that's that's where that character stays still because it's absolutely normal for them that a bomb went off beside them.

Wow. So, Mark, I mean, given all that, did you get a sense of, I guess, how they think about their own mortality? I mean, given that they're in these dangerous situations all the time, how do they feel about that? And to get to the question of why would these guys tell their stories to me, I think they're all aware they could die tomorrow. You know, it is absolutely just a fact of life for them. There's one character named Ivan who is, that's his code name again, he's told me about how every time he goes on a dangerous mission, he writes a letter to his wife and infant child and tucks it inside his uniform. So that if he's killed, some days he hopes they'll find this letter and give it to his wife and his child. They'll read and they'll understand why he did what he did, what he was doing, what was going through his mind as he did these things. And so the ability to offload some of that to us, to talk to the

Globe and Mail and with permission of their commander and sort of tell their story, even with these code names, I think they found to be cathartic in a way. It allowed them to sort of get their tail out there in case they are killed tomorrow. So Mark, just before I let you go, what are you hearing from these soldiers now? Like, are you still in contact with them? Yeah, no, in this case, I mean, in the days before the publication of the article, I was reaching out and just making sure everybody was okay, the ones that, you know, are contactable right now. So as of last contact before the publication,

the word was everybody is on the front line, everybody's fighting. But so far, the Kabul team, other than Nazar, is all still alive. I should remind you that some others have been injured. And one member of the team was processed. Who wouldn't talk about his process? He spent four months in Russian prisons. I can only imagine what that would have been like for someone like him, an elite soldier who'd been captured by the Russians.

And he wouldn't talk. And his commander asked that I not push the subject. And so I'm messaging all those that I'm in contact with, and there are people like, for instance, Shaman, who is often out of contact for weeks at a time because he operates in places where it wouldn't be smart for him to turn his phone on. So that doesn't worry me that I didn't hear back from him yet. Others who are in command and control places told me that so far

the Kabul team is spread along the front line and, uh, you know, they're, they're fighting, but so far all the people that I've interviewed were, were still alive. Um, and in a few cases, some, some characters there, you know, they're, they're busy guys, as you can imagine. Um, and would just reply, uh, in that Eastern European tradition of just sending a plus. Wow. Mark, thank you so much for your work here and for taking the time to be here. Thanks for your interest. 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.