The Decibel - The fallout from Ukraine’s incursion into Russia

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

It’s been just over a month since the Ukrainian military launched an incursion into the Russian region of Kursk. It was a surprising move, and Ukrainian officials say it was a success. But it has meant a barrage of Russian attacks against Ukrainian cities, especially ones along the frontlines.The Globe’s Senior International Correspondent Mark MacKinnon has spent the last two weeks near the frontlines of the war – in Sumy, just across the border from Kursk, and in the battle-worn Donbas. He tells us what it’s like for residents of these regions and whether the incursion was worth the risk to the other frontlines of the war.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

When I was in Sumi, I mean, the city itself used to be a refuge for people around the Oblast, the region. So it was a reasonably safe place for most of the last couple of years. So it was quite sad to see it sort of as a battened down state right now. Mark McKinnon is the Globe's senior international correspondent. He spent the last couple of weeks in different places near the front lines of the war in Ukraine, like the Sumy region. Foreigners, journalists, NGO workers don't stay in the city anymore. Too dangerous to be there at night. The main receiving center, people would sleep there until they found better accommodations.

They've had to move people elsewhere because it's got all glass walls. There's just too many airstrikes and these big sort of glide bombs, this terrible Russian invention that hit the city on a regular basis. Last month, the Ukrainian military launched an offensive into the Russian region of Kursk, across the border from Sumy. And the retaliation from Russia has been fierce. The one image that really sticks in my mind is this cafe that had obviously, for whatever reason, just been the target of a direct hit. And the entire building was just a pile of cement blocks, rubble, and then a sign that just hung over this sort of disaster scene

saying, you know, welcome, very tragically. Today, Mark joins us from Kiev. He'll tell us what things are like for Ukrainians now facing a barrage of Russian attacks, how successful the incursion into Kursk really was, and what it's meant for the other front lines of the war. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Meneka.

So Mark, it's actually just been over a month since the Ukrainian military launched its offensive into Kursk. I wonder, what has the fallout been since that time, since the incursion? And I guess specifically for that Ukrainian region of Sumy, right next to the border? Yeah, you really do get the sense. This has been, from a Ukrainian sort of command perspective, a very successful operation. But yeah, the retribution has been severe on the Sumy Oblast, the Sumy region across the border in Ukraine. This crossing between Kursk and Sumy was the only open crossing for the last few years for Ukrainians living in Russia who wanted to get out. They'd come through this border and they'd end up in Sumy at a receiving center.

And now that receiving center has been converted into receiving Ukrainians from other parts of the Oblast who just can no longer stay in their homes because it's too dangerous. We've had a family that had had a drone land in their yard. And so this woman and her six children came fleeing to the city looking for an onward place to live. So, yeah, this is for a military bird's eye view. This has been a big gain for Ukraine. But if you're living in Sydney, this has been very difficult. Wow. And one of the things you really notice being in Sumy,

and cities around Ukraine are used to these air raid sirens. In Kyiv last night, there were two, I think three. We almost stopped counting after a while. But in Sumy, they're so constant that people switch their phones off. They look at you with irritation if you've got your phone, the app that alerts you if there's an incoming attack because it's just bothering people. I talked to the rector of the Sumi State University, which had been hit by a bomb a couple of days before he was in. And even he, with that experience, he's like, ah, there's an air raid on right now.

What am I going to do? He only kept talking in his office. It's just seen as so much a part of the background there. And the most recent news, just the last sort of 24, 36 hours, is that Russia appears to be launching a substantive counteroffensive aimed at taking back that part of the Kursk Oblast that's under Ukrainian control across a key river. And both Ukrainian and Russian sources confirm this appears to be a major effort to drive the Ukrainians back across the border.

So for a month, this has been a very successful operation for Ukraine, whether they can hold on to this part of Russia, whether they want to hold on to that part of Russia, we're going to find out the days ahead. Yeah, that's a significant move, as you say, in recent days here with Russia kind of pushing back a little bit there. Can we back up a bit, Mark, and look at, you know, why Ukraine kind of went into Kursk in the first place? Because I think this was a bit of a surprise for a lot of people, right? As you said, it's, you know, the first incursion by Ukraine into Russia. So just remind us, why did Ukraine decide to do this? Well, there have been cross-border incursions before, more like raids, where sort of Russian anti-Putin volunteers have crossed the border with the support of the

Ukrainian military intelligence. But this is different. This is, you know, the regular Ukrainian army going across. And it was kept as a secret from, I understand, even from Ukraine's closest allies in the West. Why did they do this? And you ask Ukrainian leadership, and they give you a trio of reasons. And the big one is to change the narrative, to show the West that this can be done. Russia is not as strong as Western leaders think. The second thing they say is that this boosted Ukrainian morale. It's been an extremely difficult year inside Ukraine.

You know, the electricity grid is under constant strain. Even here in Kiev, where I am right now, the capital, if you don't have a generator, you've only got about six hours a day of electricity from the power grid. It's much worse if you go closer to the front line. And so, yeah, this gave Ukraine something to cheer about. They enjoy the idea that, you know, Russians are feeling a little bit of what they've been through. And the third thing was to collect prisoners of war for what Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, calls the exchange fund.

Yeah, and we're going to talk about the prisoners of war, too. But I just want to stick on this point, though, because you mentioned how the Ukrainian military is talking about this incursion as a success. I guess I wonder, are they still describing this as a win, even though now we're seeing this potential counter movement with Russia? Did it accomplish, I guess, what they wanted to accomplish? I think they still do. I mean, I was yesterday speaking with a couple of senior Ukrainian military figures just talking on background, so I can't tell you who they were, but they were explaining, you know, I put this question to them, and they were saying, yeah, this has accomplished our goals.

There was no big massive Russian escalation. They didn't pull out some new weapon. The sky didn't fall. Putin didn't, you know, invade Latvia. That was what they called their main objective, was just sort of breaking this myth that until this point, the war could only be fought on Ukrainian territory, the Western weapons that were given to Ukraine could only be used to target Russian held Ukraine. So this is about changing the way the war is seen in the West. I think they've accomplished at least that.

You mentioned Western weapons. So let me ask you about that. Because yeah, one of the major stipulations of foreign support from countries like the U.S., U.K., Canada has been that the weapons and the equipment couldn't be used to attack inside Russia, right? But we're getting the sense that this might change. What can you tell us about this, Mark? Yeah, and I think at this point it's fair to say, based on what I've seen, that at least some Western-supplied vehicles have crossed the border. But I think the big sort of change that Ukraine is seeking is this Western restriction on using long-range missile systems to targets deeper inside Russia. Specifically, as you can imagine, this is, you know, day 900 and something of the war. And for the large, large majority of those days, there have been air raids, missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. And Ukraine is incredibly frustrated that it's not even allowed to hit back to destroy the airfields, destroy the launching sites, destroy the missile and fuel storage sites that are deep inside Russia.

And they've been trying to do this with their increasingly impressive drone arsenal. But what they want to be able to do is use these Western-supplied weapons, specifically weapons, specifically US ATACOMs, the tactical missile system with a range of a few hundred kilometers, and British supplied storm shadow cruise missiles to launch them at Russian military targets, the way that Russia launches missiles, very similar missiles at Ukrainian cities on a regular basis. I understand that that restriction is very likely to be lifted on Friday when US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer meet in Washington. I also understand the Ukrainians had to make some promises. They're not going to target civilian infrastructure. They're not going to target Russian cities. They're going to hit these military targets that I mentioned, or try

to hit them. A little bit earlier, Mark, you mentioned POWs, prisoners of war. And this is one of the results of the incursion into curse that we've been talking about, that Russian soldiers surrendered to the Ukrainian army that came in. I understand you actually got to meet some of these POWs, Mark. So tell me about that. Yeah, that was a very unique experience. We were allowed allowed access myself and a photographer from the globe mail-in to a uh prison of war detention center i can't say exactly where but it's you know uh i think relative to saying the sumi region and um it just cast your mind back to sort of times we thought were past you know sort of prisoners of war sleeping sort of there are eight in the cell

that i spent most time in other one other cells to have, I think, 10 or more in them, thin mattresses, reading old, old books and staring at the television blankly and, you know, trying to send letters home to their families in Russia to say we're still alive. You know, the most interesting part for me was talking to the Ukrainians who were sort of their jailers, their doctors, their guards, and saying, you know, what do you make of these guys? And I said, you know, we think of these people as demons. They destroyed our cities, they destroyed our homes. You know, people wearing their uniforms, rather, destroyed our cities, destroyed our homes. However, when you get to know these guys, they're kids, most of them, they're very young, and they don't have a great grasp of the world, what this war is about, why they are where they are.

Prisoners of war I spoke to happened to have been border guards who made a real point. We never crossed the border. We were just doing what we were told. That appears from the Ukrainians who are holding to believe that to largely be the truth. And they said they didn't really know about things like the Bucha massacre, because, of course, that wouldn't be shown to them on Russian television. So, you know, being in Ukrainian captivity, they've been shown or seen just by turning on their television sets, sort of what Russia has done in Ukraine, they're starting to get an understanding of why they and people wearing their uniforms are so hated here. And of course, the Bucha massacre was early on in the war and hundreds of civilians were killed there.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's more than 400 civilians, many of them with their hands bound, shot in the back of the head by a single bullet. There have been a lot of horrible atrocities in this war, but that one's become the most symbolic. I wonder, how does Ukraine see these prisoners of war? Is there a plan here? I mean, President Zelensky has been very clear about this. He said this mission into Kursk, among other things, has replenished the exchange fund. So they've got hundreds of extra prisoners. They can now swap. The last swap, I think, was 115 for 115. The hundreds of prisoners being held in the Sumy Oblast mean likely very soon that hundreds of Ukrainians are being held in Russia. And there are a lot more Ukrainians being held in Russia right now than

the other way around. But they can be traded for, they can be brought home to their families. And, you know, these Ukrainians who survived Russian prisoner of war camps, they tell stories that are much, much bleaker than what I saw, it must be said. I mean, we've seen recently videos of, you know, Russia straight out executing people who are trying to surrender. The fact that the Russians are not able to send letters home to their families in Russia pales in comparison to sort of what's been done to Ukrainians who have been captured on, you know, Russian-occupied Ukraine. We'll be right back.

So, Mark, as I understand, we talked about some of the goals of this offensive into kursk i also understand another reason stated here by the ukrainian military was to try to pull russian troops away from the donbass region so this is of course on the the eastern side of ukraine it's facing intense attacks from russia um let's about that. What has been going on in the Donbass? So after our visit to Sumy, we drove down to the main front of the war, the Donbass region. And like in Sumy, you can no longer stay in hotels anywhere in the Donetsk or Luhansk regions. You know, one of the two provinces that makes up Donbass. Luhansk is almost completely occupied at this point. Whereas the Donetsk province, the second sort of region in there, it's down to really just a few Ukrainian held cities. And so the Russians, since back in January, they broke through this Ukrainian front line at the city of Dvka, which was this place that Ukraine had held on to for 10 years

through not just this invasion, but the proxy war that proceeded for eight years. And finally, Avdiivka fell. And what appears to be true is that behind this, quote unquote, fortress Avdiivka, the Ukrainian defense lines were not nearly so strong. And so the Russian advance has accelerated since March. And they have gone, it doesn't sound like a lot, but, you know, it's 35 kilometers over the last six months. That's a very slow pace, obviously. But there are a lot of people who live along that way, a lot of villages that have fallen. And now they're approaching the city of Pokrovsk, which is one of sort of maybe three important cities left in the Donbass region. I think you actually visited that city, didn't you, when you were there?

Yeah, we spent two days in Pokrovsk. You really get a sense of the Russians closing in on the city that you can see. I stood on a rooftop for a while and just sort of, you can see off on the horizon, these pillars of black smoke from the fighting at the next, almost like from the suburb of Pokrovsk called Selyadovo, where there's just, you know, it's being reduced to rubble, which may portend people fear what will happen next to Pokrovsk itself. You know, it's a place where artillery strikes and airstrikes happen all the time now. We were standing with a group of elderly folks who were just trying to pump water into these

plastic jugs that they brought to one of the last sort of clean water centers that's functioning in the city. And we were, you know, just sitting there and chatting with them about, you know, how long they've been without water and, you know, why they's functioning in the city. And we were just sitting there and chatting with them about how long they've been without water and why they didn't leave the city. And this fighter jet flew so low overhead that it sent us all dashing for cover. So that gives you, I mean, these people are in their 60s or 70s or 80s, having to run for cover from a fighter jet while filling up their jugs of water. I mean, that's the situation in Pokhara these days.

So, Mark, what did you hear from people about how they're feeling, given what it's like there? I guess, how are they thinking about things? Yeah, we witnessed some evacuations. I mean, one day we were just sitting there on the main road. It's called Centralna Street, Central Street. And, you know, just this grim scene of sort of thundering artillery in the background and this police cruiser driving up and down.

It was just sort of barking over its loudspeakers. You know, it is time for a mandatory evacuation of the city. It's time to go. And you saw a lot of moving vans or people just piling whatever they could into the back of a small sort of hatchback and driving out of the city. The very evacuation trains actually have been stopped now because the train station is too dangerous for people to congregate at. But then there's also lots of people planning to stay.

I was told that 20,000 people out of 60,000 people, that was its previous size, Pocotaw's pre-war size, 20,000 haven't left yet, despite the fact that the city's under a nightly attack. And most of those, I would say, a large, large majority, are people 50, 60, 70, 80 years old who just decided they, for whatever reason, some honestly are pro-Russian. They feel like they'll be fine when the Russians come. They think fondly of the Soviet Union.

But a lot of others, they just can't imagine going anywhere else. I talked to one lady for a long time. She was 80 years old in her apartment. She'd been dazed with electricity. The fridge door was ajar and just stank of rotting food. She'd taken the tap from her bathroom sink and positioned it over the bathtub so that any drops of water would collect there. Her name was Nina. And I just remember her talking about how, you know, she has this, not even a bed, she sleeps on a couch in her living room most nights. And I said, what's it like to live there through the night?

Because, you know, we didn't stay overnight in the city. It was too dangerous. I just go by the window and I sort of watch the explosions at night. And sometimes the explosions are so close, it's all, I feel like I can see the Russians. I feel like they're already in my city. Wow. Do we have a sense of, I guess, the strategic importance of this city, Mark? If Russia is able to take Pokrovsk, which, you know, I don't think is imminent, but you look at the history of these battles, I mentioned Avdivka, Bakhmut, Siverodonetsk, Lysychansk, these places where the Ukrainians tried to hold the line at some point just the sheer volume of

russian artillery airstrikes i mentioned these glide bombs they just there's nothing you know i talked to a soldier this week i said after a while there's nothing left to defend you have to go back you have to retreat and that is you know the intention i think here or what will likely happen to pokrovsk unless something dramatic changes if If the Russians take Pokrovsk, it's important for two reasons. It is the last big railway station sort of close to the front line. So it has become a logistics hub for the Ukrainian military for the last two and a half years. And it's also the juncture of two roads.

One leads north to the other two truly important Donbass cities, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, which Russia really has designs on as well because Vladimir Putin started this war, if we go all the way back, saying he was trying to liberate the Russian-speaking people of Donbass, an absolute canard, obviously. But I think if you're looking at what Mr. Putin might call a victory, claiming all of the Donbass militarily might be, you know, a minimum point for him. Also, the highway heading west leads to the city of Dnipro, which is the fourth largest city in the country and the biggest city in that part of Ukraine. So if Pokrovsk falls, it puts, you know, Dnipro in danger. You know, Dnipro, I often think about a sort of, you know, the Winnipeg of Ukraine, the city in the middle that is, you know, an absolute hub of, you know, for a lot of things

that, you know, that gives you an idea of how important Dnipro would be. So, Mark, we talked about how the incursion in Kursk was maybe potentially to draw Russian troops away from Donbass. But of course, now, you know, Ukrainian troops are focused on Kursk as well now, too. So I guess what's going on in Kursk? How does that affect the ability of Ukraine to fight in the Donbass? If you ask the sort of senior leadership of this country, they say, oh, no, no, these are two completely separate things. We didn't take any troops off of the line in the Donbass region, they really do feel as though, what are we doing over there? Sort of grabbing an inconsequential piece of Russian territory when we need to defend Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian citizens.

Here, when we're outnumbered four or five to one in terms of infantry, a larger number comes in terms of artillery and other sorts of systems, you know, surely those guys, those units should be over here helping defend Pokrovsk right now. So it doesn't take very long to find Ukrainian soldiers who feel, you know, things are getting worse in the Donbas while we're celebrating in Kursk. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about how drained really the Ukrainian military is at this point. How sustainable is it for them to hold on to that land in Karsk? On that front, on every front, at the end of the day, Russia can outnumber Ukraine by a substantive margin. That river that was just crossed was seen as sort of a natural barrier that would allow Ukraine to hold some territory that doesn't appear to have happened. It seems, you know, improbable to think that Ukraine has a long term plan to sort of occupy Russian territory. They, you know, perhaps

wouldn't mind swapping territory if we were heading into some peace negotiation, but there's nothing like that in sight right now. Just very lastly here, Mark, you've covered this conflict since even before it started. Everything we've talked about today, what does all of this tell you about this moment in the war? It's a difficult moment here in Ukraine. Maybe one of the most difficult since the very early weeks of the war when it felt like, you know, the Russian army was on the advance everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before Ukraine would make collapse. Obviously, that proved not to be true. And this moment may pass as well, will very likely pass as well. But right now, not just because of the

sort of grinding Russian advance in Donbass, not just because of the nightly Russian airstrikes, which have claimed a lot of lives in the last couple of weeks that I've been here, but also this sort of overhanging international political scene where Vladimir Zelensky is on his way to Washington later this month to try and present what he calls a victory plan to Joe Biden. Then they need to get him to sign on and to deliver whatever aid. We don't know yet what Ukraine is seeking, but they need to get Joe Biden to sign on while he's still in the office, while he's still in the White House, while he's maybe thinking about his legacy, because Ukraine may be more than any other country in the world is watching and worrying

about the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House. We know Donald Trump has clashed with Mr. Zelensky in the past. We know that he was asked directly in the debate this week whether he wanted to see Ukraine win. He didn't answer that directly, which people here certainly clocked. And they worry that this Western and really U.S. support that has allowed them to fend off the Russian invasion this long may have a real time limit. Mark, always good to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you, Monica. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. This episode was edited and mixed by Allie Graham. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.