The Decibel - Ukraine enters the ‘most difficult’ phase of the war

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

The war in Ukraine has been intensifying after a series of escalations in the last week. And as a result of that, Ukrainian forces are entering the ‘most difficult’ phase of the war since it started, according to The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon.Mark explains how Russia’s recent nuclear sabre-rattling by Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire American long-range missiles into Russia and the looming inauguration of Donald Trump have accelerated all fronts of the war.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

November 5th, 2024 may end up being one of the most important days in the war in Ukraine. I'd say there was a really fatalist mood in Ukraine around the U.S. election. When it was clear that Trump won, there was a sense that something they had no control of had changed the direction of this war in their country. Mark McKinnon, the Globe's senior international correspondent, was in Ukraine during the U.S. election. And Donald Trump's victory has shifted the trajectory of a war a continent away. It's the most difficult moment of the war for Ukraine since the first terrifying weeks of the Russian invasion. Mark is on the show today to talk about recent escalations, how the dynamics of the conflict have changed, and what the strategies are for Ukraine, Russia, and the West ahead of Trump's second presidency. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Mark, thanks so much for being here again. Thank you, Manika. Let's start by going through a few events that have happened in the last week and a half in the war in Ukraine. I want to actually start with the decision by U.S. President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to fire American long range missiles into Russian territory, because this was previously a line that the U.S. did not want to cross. So what changed? I think what changed is the U.S. election and the reality that Donald Trump is coming to the White House in January and has promised to make peace. And the suggestions we've seen floated suggest that that will be peace very much on Russia's terms, which has both sides racing to take as much ground or to dig in in the case of the Ukrainians and hold as much ground as they can between now and the start of those negotiations in case whatever the front line is becomes something like a border afterwards. Mr. Biden's previous calculation was we don't want

to escalate this conflict. We don't want to bring the United States closer to being a direct combatant. At this moment, I think these last few weeks, in addition to freeing up the use of these missile technologies, he's rushing six billion in additional weapons to Ukraine. I think it's just giving the Ukrainians everything he can to let them fight as hard as they can for as long as they can before this sort of feared move by Mr. Trump, which regardless of making peace, he's also promised to cut off the flow of weapons to Ukraine. Yeah. And can you remind us like kind of practically, what does this change allow for? What can Ukraine now do? Ukraine's had an unknown number of these weapons stocks, what's known as ATAKAMS.

It's a U.S. long range missile system and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which are, you know, quickly have been used after Mr. Biden gave permission for the American weapons to be used. The British weapons started being used as well, suggesting that Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed suit. This allows Ukraine to use weapons that it's had previously, but has only used until now to strike the Russian army and occupied parts of Ukraine. Now they're striking into Russia, which allows them to hit things like ammunition depots, airfields, and to drive back the launching point for these nightly air raids we see on Ukraine to try and strike at Russian army and now North Korean army formations before they arrive at the front line. You mentioned North Korean troops because we now know that they're fighting as well in this conflict. What do we actually know about that, Mark? We don't know a lot other than what we've been told by Ukrainian, South Korean, American intelligence, which is that a detachment, a large detachment, 11,000 soldiers, according to one calculation, has arrived and it has been deployed near the front line in the Kursk region of Russia, which people might remember was partially occupied by Ukraine since a surprise summer offensive. Those troops, it doesn't sound like a huge number, but it allows Russia to keep the troops

that it has deployed inside Ukraine, fighting in Ukraine, gaining territory in Ukraine. One of the main goals that Ukraine had in this offensive into Kursk was to try and force Russia to circle troops back around to play defense. Now, the North Koreans have made that not necessary, and Russia's pushing forward and taking back a lot of that Kursk region at the same time as it's advancing inside Ukraine. And there's a big fear that there's going to be a lot more North Koreans to come. There's talk of, President Zelensky said, there could be up to 100,000 North Koreans en route to the front line of this war. And one of the things, I mean, the Ukrainians, we don't know, you know, if the North Korean

soldiers know where they're being sent, know anything about the conflict that they're being deployed to, how willing they are. One of the things the Ukrainians are doing to sort of prepare for their arrival or to try and undermine their battlefield performance is they've been broadcasting videos and audio messages, Internet messages on telegram channels. They've been doing this program since the start of the war, telling Russians how to surrender if you don't want to fight. It's called Hachuzhid, which means I want to live. And now the Hachu Zhit program, the I want to live program is being broadcast as well in Korean, just so in case, you know, if North Koreans don't feel like fighting, here's a way to get yourself off the battlefield. We promise to treat you well. And they've had these videos that I've seen, which are quite comical of, you know, sort of what a Ukrainian prison camp is supposed to look like. It looks like a lovely place to spend the summer.

It wasn't quite like that when I visited a Ukrainian POW camp earlier this year. But you can see what they're trying to tell the North Koreans, that it'll be much more comfortable for you if you just sort of step off the battlefield and come and wait off the war here. Wow. North Korea and Russia are, of course, allies, which is partly why North Korea has sent soldiers, it sounds like. I guess I wonder, did the sending of those soldiers, the involvement of North Korean troops, did that factor into the U.S.'s decision at all to allow Ukraine to use these attackams? I think it's the stated reason why that Russia escalated by involving another country in the conflict by bringing these North Korean troops into the conflict. I think there could have been a number of reasons given for freeing up these American weapons and British weapons to be used against

targets inside Russia. I think it's really about the political calendar. So we do know, though, that Ukrainian forces have used these weapons, these attack them just actually two days after Biden announced that they would change the policy. Let's talk about strategy here, Mark. What is the strategy here for Ukraine in using these missiles? So they have a limited number. They've now been given permission to strike at strategic targets. They can't do what Russia does and send hundreds of missiles and drones every night at targets all across Russia. They just don't have the weaponry to do that. So they are trying, again, to hit key targets that damage the

Russian war effort, driving back launch sites, as I mentioned previously, but also just by firing into Russia. They're giving Russian citizens a taste of what it's like on the other side of the conflict. For a lot of Russians, this war has been going on now for more than a thousand days, and they probably haven't heard an air raid siren unless you're living in very specific parts of Russia. They probably haven't heard an explosion, the kind of things that Ukrainians have been living through for almost three years now. So giving Russians a taste of the war, making them realize this war is real and it's not going quite as well as Kremlin propaganda would have them believe is another sort of secondary goal to these attacks.

Of course, one part of Russia that really has felt this conflict is the Kursk region. We were talking about this a few months ago. Ukraine actually invaded that part of Russia. Where does Ukraine's occupation of that region stand now? They've lost about half of what they originally took. So we're still talking about several hundred square kilometers of the Kursk region that are under Ukrainian control. They control effectively one medium-sized city called Suja. And this was, I think, part of the Ukrainian calculation here was if they could take this piece of Russian land and hold on to it ahead of any negotiations, it could be a bargaining chip. We'll withdraw from your land if you withdraw from ours. That is looking increasingly unlikely as the Russians gradually take back this very difficult to defend part of this little corner of Kursk, what was supposed to be a thrust that would force Russia to go on the defensive in a new part and

to draw troops away from the front line may end up rebounding and making the already overstretched Ukrainian army have to defend yet more land. Yeah. Of course, another big change that's happened in the last few days here is that Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced changes to the country's nuclear doctrine. And this seems to be in response maybe to the U.S. decision to allow Ukraine to use their weapons to strike inside Russia. But essentially, this doctrine is a set of rules around how Russia would use its nuclear weapons. And Russia, of course, has a lot. So, Mark, what exactly were the changes that came out last week? Well, the changes were published back in September, almost as a warning that Russia was contemplating changing its nuclear doctrine, but then signed into law within 48 hours of Mr. Biden allowing the use of the ATACAMs against Russian territory.

And Mr. Putin had flagged throughout this would be seen by him, by the Kremlin, as a fundamental change in the nature of the war. Because according to the Kremlin, the Ukrainian military doesn't have the ability to target these systems effectively. They need Western military help. They need Western satellites to pick, choose, and hit targets deep inside Russia. And so from the Russian point of view, this is effectively NATO, or at least the United States and Britain, joining an attack on Russian soil. And there are two key changes in this document, the new revised nuclear doctrine. The biggest one is that it has gone from envisioning the use of nuclear weapons and only in a purely defensive manner and only if the very existence of the state itself is threatened. Now that wording has been shifted to, in the event of an attack that threatens the sovereignty or the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, which you could argue the Kursk

offensive already does, and even if that is carried out by a non-nuclear power that has the support of nuclear powers. So Ukraine obviously is a non-nuclear power with the support of the United States and Britain and France as well, which is also a nuclear power. So effectively, Mr. Putin has changed the rules so he could justify, authorize the use of nuclear weapons now if he chose to. The other much less noticed codicil in this is that he's also broadened the Russian nuclear umbrella to include neighboring Belarus. And an attack on Belarus under the same conditions could also be met with a nuclear response.

So do we know, is it true that Ukraine needs NATO's help to target these weapons? That seems to be part of Russia's argument. Is there truth to that? There's some truth to that. I mean, the Kremlin construct is that there's a bunch of, you know, uniformed NATO soldiers running around sort of punching buttons on the side of the missiles. I don't think that's the case. But even with the missiles that Ukraine has now with their own homegrown drones, for instance, which I witnessed them being used, they're firing at targets that are hundreds, thousands of kilometers away inside Russia. And Ukraine can't see those targets without the help of satellites. And it

can't see the damage it's done without the help of satellites. And so it relies on, they rely on Western satellites, particularly the United States, sort of sending a satellite over a target and then telling the Ukrainians whether or not they hit it. I guess I wonder, though, Mark, like how seriously should these threats be taken? I mean, does Putin even need to abide by the doctrine? Does this change really matter? Does he need to abide by the doctrine? No, I mean, Mr. Putin could have done this previously. But this is yet another warning to the West.

And you can look at this from two ways. And everybody in Ukraine that I've talked to is very dismissive of these red lines. They point out that Russia threatened retaliation or an escalation if the West gave anti-tank missiles, which it did very early in the conflict, if the West gave long-range rocket systems, which it did early in the conflict, if it gave modern tanks. You'll remember Canada giving these Leopard tanks and the United States giving these Abrams tanks. It was such a big deal. It was supposed to change the course of the war and Russia making all sorts of threats. And the same with F-16 fighter jets jets and all of these so-called red lines have been crossed without

major response from the Kremlin. People in other capitals may note there's another pattern here which is alongside and equally true that Mr. Putin for instance has telegraphed for a long time in advance that he would not tolerate a growing NATO presence inside Ukraine. And then when he felt that NATO presence was becoming too real, he invaded Ukraine. In 2014, after the pro-Western revolution in Kiev, he sent troops into Crimea, and then next to that, he sent troops into Georgia, he sent troops into Syria. All things that didn't make logical sense,

all things that many experts predicted he would not do. So I'm among those who wouldn't be too dismissive. I mean, I don't want to be too alarmist either, but I think at times you have to pay attention to what the Kremlin is actually saying. So something else that happened last week, Mark, was that Russia hit a factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, with a new kind of ballistic missile. This one's called the Orashnik. This strike caught people's attention too. Why was this strike so worrying? It caught attention initially because the Ukrainians and President Zelensky initially said this was carried out by an ICBM, an

intercontinental ballistic missile. And for several hours, the headlines over here in Europe anyways were for the first time ever an intercontinental ballistic missile, the type of huge missiles you see on military parades on Red Square and on Pyongyang that are capable of wiping out cities in the event of a nuclear war had been used with a non-nuclear war habit. The message seemed very clear. Turns out to not quite have been that. The Ereshnik, we've sort of gradually learned the truth here is something just outside the category by cbm but still a nuclear capable missile hypersonic and you know right through ukrainian air defense anybody who's seen the video it's quite frightening there's sort of six flashes of light as this uh a multiple warhead missile uh slams into a city of a million people and the

message is very clear. This could have been a nuclear warhead coming just days after Mr. Putin had revised the nuclear doctrine and coming at the same time as he's saying that I consider countries that are helping Ukraine right now to be targets as well.

He's effectively giving yet another warning to the West. This factory in Dnipro was the target. Everybody's now supposed to understand that this could have been a nuclear warhead had he chosen to use one. We'll be back in a minute. So, Mark, it does seem like Russia has been essentially playing up fears of a nuclear escalation in this phase of the war. I want to talk about the fact that Ukraine actually has no nuclear weapons itself. How did it end up in this situation, Mark, where it's beside a dangerous nuclear superpower and it does not have weapons of that kind?

I think everybody in Ukraine would appreciate if we all learned what the Budapest memorandum was. It's very rare that I have a trip to Ukraine where someone doesn't mention it in some context. In 1994, Ukraine was one of the world's largest nuclear powers, having inherited a large arsenal of missiles from the Soviet Union. And it was convinced by three signatories, the United States, Britain, and Russia, to give up that arsenal to transfer it to Russia, to Boris Yeltsin's Russia at the time, in exchange for security guarantees that there would be no violation of its sovereignty. It would become effectively a neutral country. And so everybody in Ukraine points to that and says, you guys promised to defend us. When this whole discussion about when will Ukraine be allowed to join NATO,

it really rings hollow and key because to them, they were already promised by the two arguably most important players in the Western military alliance, the United States and Britain, that they would be protected in the event of aggression. They gave up this nuclear arsenal, which would have protected this. It's very hard to envision Vladimir Putin having invaded Ukraine two and a half years ago had Ukraine had this nuclear arsenal at its disposal. So there's a sense of betrayal. And as Russia amps up this nuclear rhetoric,

you know, the memories of the Budapest memorandum really have come back up to the forefront in Kiev. Yeah. So now that Ukraine is in this current situation, I guess I wonder, is the country maybe reconsidering trying to build up its own nuclear weapons supply? This is a very delicate topic, shall we say. There have been, I've spoken to military experts in Kyiv who will say things like, I wrote a report, gave it to President Zelensky's office,

suggesting we resume our nuclear weapons program. And they frame it as we have to have a guarantee of some sort. And so either we get a path to NATO or we have to do it ourselves. And the way to do it ourselves is to build a nuclear program. The president's office is really, really nervous about this conversation because they think, you know, like there's not as they said, nobody serious is talking about a nuclear program for Ukraine right now. We're focused on getting back our territory, joining NATO. We're not at all contemplating a nuclear program because if this does get

acknowledged, it would give Vladimir Putin perhaps justification to do God knows what. So this is not a topic that's very comfortable one in Kyiv, but it's definitely on the side burner. If the West is not going to protect us, how are we going to protect ourselves? One area that Ukraine has been building up its capacity, though, for is actually in drone warfare. And, Mark, I know that the last time you were in Ukraine, you witnessed Ukrainian forces launch a barrage of drones into Russia. Can you just tell us what was that like? Yeah, that was a very unique experience, shall we say. Photographer Olga Ivyshenko and I were taken on a mission near the Ukraine-Russia border. We can't

obviously talk about where, but it was a team of special forces fighters from the HUR military intelligence service, which I've written about a lot over the last few years. And so this team took Olga and I to a launch position so that we could see how they were fighting this aerial war. We watched them launch 35 of these, they were called Black Fury drones, and they had sort of seven launchers. I compared them to sort of medieval trebuchets that would sort of fling each drone one by one into the air.

And it was at once quite an impressive display, and it was successful in that they think they hit their target. But at the same time, this was right before Mr. Biden changed the rules around the use of Western weaponry. It was a very frustrating one for this team I was with because they're launching these drones, which can carry, I think, an explosive warhead of 15 kilograms per. And six of these 35 drones got through Russian air defenses and hit this factory in the Western Tver region that they were targeting, 90 kilograms worth of explosive. A single storm shadow missile or a single attack

missile would carry several times the explosive payload of one of these drones. And they also travel much faster, right? So just in terms of hitting the target, doing damage, protecting Ukraine's cities, working the best they could with the weapons they could, but they were, you know, and had a successful night, but also very frustrated to have to sort of pull their punches. One thing we haven't touched on yet, Mark, that I want to ask you about is actually the front line in the Donbass region, because that's where the majority of the fighting has been happening in the eastern part of Ukraine there. What is the state of the offensive there?

I was down in the city of Pokrovsk as well on this last trip in a couple of weeks ago, and I was meeting a Canadian woman who is the only Canadian woman fighting on the front lines there. She's a tank captain, and we met in the city of Pokrovsk. And I'd been in Pokrovsk as well in September, and it was audibly different from two months previous to be in Pokrovsk. You could hear the sounds of war, a missile of some kind or an artillery shell hit the center of the city while we were there and it was a very short visit. In September when I was in Pokrovsk, it was a battle for the suburbs, for this town called Sledovo and now it is really increasingly becoming a battle for the city of Pokrovsk after which you can already see Ukraine building defense lines west and north of the city,

as if they expect to lose Pokrovsk to move on to defending the cities behind it. This is the most successful Russian offensive since the very early weeks of the conflict. They are gaining ground rapidly in the Donbass region. There's talk that they're going to start another offensive from the southern Zaporizhia region. There's fighting as well in the Kharkiv region and in the Kursk region as well. And all four of those fronts, it's the Ukrainians who are on the defensive and moving backwards. So that's sort of the mood music as Donald Trump approaches the White House. It's not a very positive moment for the Ukrainian army.

And the worst point is Pokrovsk and the Donbass region. And there is a lot of talk that January 20th, the day that Donald Trump is inaugurated, takes the White House as US president, it's kind of like a looming deadline for the war potentially. And you mentioned off the top that there's a worry that Trump will try to end the war on Russia's terms.

So I guess what is the position that Ukraine is trying to be in ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration? I think Ukraine would like to be on the offensive and driving Russia back and forcing Russia to make the ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration. I think Ukraine would like to be on the offensive and driving Russia back and forcing Russia to make the kind of trade, you know, that would involve Ukraine withdrawing from what it holds as a cursed region in exchange for Russia withdrawing from some or all of the regions it holds. Nobody believes that Donald Trump can make peace in 24 hours. Nobody. And the Kremlin has been very clear that it won't accept a freezing of

the conflict on its current front lines, which is one of the things that people around Trump have been talking about is step one, freeze the conflict on its current front lines. Right now, that front line is moving and it's moving west and deeper into Ukraine. So there's no incentive right now for the Russians to stop. They may have an incentive to look like they're talking, but they're not going to stop an offensive right now while they're gaining ground. So I think both sides accept there will be some attempt at negotiations once Mr. Trump comes to office. And both sides want to look like they're cooperating. The fear in Ukraine is that Mr. Trump will cut off the flow of arms to Ukraine if peace

isn't quickly made. So on the Russian side there, Mark, what is that strategy before Trump takes office? What position do they want to be in by January 20th? The Russian-based negotiating position is to take all of the four regions that Mr. Putin claims to have annexed in the fall of 2022, which is the Donbass region, there's two provinces there, and then the neighboring Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, which it controls only parts of. And I think that would be the minimum goal for this Russian offensive is to reach at least the administrative border of the Donbass region. Perhaps, I mean, they're going to try and negotiate for more than they hold of Zaporizhia and Kherson. But I think if you think back to the start of this war, Mr. Putin had a laundry list of reasons that he claimed.

But for him to say he won, one of the things he needs to be able to say he did is, quote unquote, liberate the people of Donbass and this Russian speaking region of Donetsk and Luhansk. So if they can get to the end of effectively provincial borders of Donetsk and Luhansk, which they're quite close to, then you can start to see a scenario where Mr. Putin can walk away from this claiming to have won. That said, I think right now they're hoping for much more than that. They want to change the government in Kyiv. You know, Mr. Putin's foreign minister and national security advisors have been talking about, you know, all of the Russian speaking cities, including Kharkiv in the east and Odessa in the south. So they've returned a very maximalist position in recent days after Mr. Trump's victory. I wonder what position this puts NATO members in, countries excluding, I guess, the U.S., but other NATO countries. Like, how are they thinking about the strategy for handling the war in Ukraine with Trump coming into the White House? I mean, everybody's in wait-and-see mode. If Mr. Trump does what he says, if he cuts off the flow of arms to Ukraine, it puts the European allies in a very complicated position. There's talk of sort of more European strategic autonomy and Europe going its own way in terms of taking care of its security. It's not really in a position to do that. Even the biggest European countries have just relied on American protection

for so long that they're not ready for conflict with a country like Russia. At the same time, they can't even just continue to export weapons to Ukraine. It's not as simple as that because most sophisticated Western weapons have at least some American components in them. To re-export those, you usually need a signature from whatever country that you purchased the parts from. So even if France says we're going to continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, it needs to get a U.S. signature on a lot of what it would continue to ship. So Mr. Trump can do a lot more than just cut off the American supply of weapons. He can make it very difficult for American allies to re-export

any weapons with American technology in them. So this really could get quite dire for Ukraine if Mr. Trump decides to play this card. The Ukrainian hope is that they'll get to these negotiations with Mr. Trump, and Mr. Putin will annoy or bother Mr. Trump into Mr. Trump, who is a very unpredictable character, of course, flipping sides and giving more help to Ukraine than ever before. And the Ukrainians always say the first lethal weapons we ever received were from Donald Trump. President Obama wouldn't give them to us.

This example, they cling to it, the idea that Mr. Trump can be reversed. He's one of these people who, I think it's fair to say, believes the last person he spoke with. And so if you get your word in his ear at the right moment, perhaps this will go a very different direction than it currently feels. Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. 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 tomorrow.