Today, Explained - Is Ukraine losing now?

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

The US is spending billions to arm Ukraine against Russian invaders. But without the proper training or supplies, Javelin missiles can only do so much. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Amina Al-Sadi, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Volodymyr Zelensky has impressed the world with his steely resolve during Russia's invasion. Ukraine's minister of defense is a different personality type. Thank you to my American flag submission, and it is advancing. And those American weapons? Well, there are some problems. It's coming up on Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. From the start, there has been something notable about the war in Ukraine.

This is not an army only fighting another country's army. Ukrainian volunteers, people who are not in the armed services, make up an enormous part of the fighting force. The bulk of those people, they are civilians. They are volunteers. They have a vast range of training in terms of whether they've only had a few days of training. Some have had several weeks of training. And they also have a wide range of equipment, whether that's heavy arms, anti-tech weapons supplied by the West, or just going into battle with rifles. You've got college students, you've got lawyers, you've got doctors, you've got musicians. People from every walk of life have volunteered to fight for their country in Ukraine. It's really fascinating to see a population that is so dedicated to the defense of their own country.

The likelihood that Ukrainians will accept anything other than a complete and total Russian withdrawal from their territory is very low. Mac William Bishop is a freelance reporter in Ukraine. He just got back from the east of the country where he was embedded with Ukrainian paratroopers. There are hundreds of people dying every day on both sides in this area. There is absolutely no question that Ukrainian soldiers have died in the thousands since the beginning of the conflict. There's been a change from what we saw during the start of the war, when Russia fought on many fronts and tried and failed to capture the capital, Kiev. Russia's now focusing on cities in the east, in the Donbass region, near the Ukraine-Russia border. The Russian advance is centered on a crescent that surrounds a city

called Severodonetsk. Severodonetsk was the scene of intense urban combat over the last month. Most of the city has now fallen to Russia. Ukrainian forces have pulled back across the last major natural barrier, which is the Severodonetsk River, to a town called Vysotsk, which is just on the other side of the river from Severodonetsk. The Russian strategy is to essentially encircle Ukrainian forces and try to cut them off and destroy them. What the Russians have that the Ukrainians do not have is overwhelming superiority of numbers and overwhelming superiority of fire power. That superiority of firepower is primarily expressed with artillery rockets, tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and air power. At one point, I witnessed about 12

salvos of Grodd rockets. Now that's artillery rockets that has a range about 20 kilometers. I witnessed a barrage of Grodd rockets that was perhaps as many as 480 rockets landing on a Ukrainian position in less than a minute. That was followed by regular artillery and as well as cluster munitions, which are generally regarded as an extremely nefarious weapon. In Sverodonetsk, in the areas where you've been, are there still Ukrainian civilians there? Yes, there are still civilians who have stayed in all of the major cities in this area, including Severodonetsk. We are living okay, but there is no water, no gas, no electricity. What can you say? We are just surviving.

I believe that the estimate by independent aid organizations, as well as local government, was something in the neighborhood of 12,000 civilians remaining in Severodonetsk. Lysychansk, which is the next major city that is being contested, originally had a population of about 100,000 people. I think that's probably down as well to about 10% of the original population, so perhaps 10,000 people. A lot of the people that remain are not leaving because they're elderly, they have mobility trouble, maybe they have health problems, or they simply don't have anywhere else to go. And then obviously there are some who just don't want to leave their homes. They would rather die

in their homes than become refugees and depend on the kindness of strangers. Ukraine, as you've described it, seems outgunned. Is it also outmanned? In terms of people doing actual fighting, whose numbers are bigger? What matters is what we would call local superiority of numbers. So if you're in a particular area, it doesn't matter if the overall big picture is that you're outnumbered. What matters is if you're outnumbered on this immediate vicinity. And so there are some areas, I have been told by Ukrainian officials, where the Russians outnumber Ukrainian defenders by as much as 20 to 1. Mack, from your point of view, and I understand you are only one person, and you have limited time in eastern Ukraine, but is Ukraine losing this war now?

I wouldn't want to characterize either side as winning or losing at this point in the war. I think one important thing to think about is that this conflict is far from over. There's going to be months and months, if not years, of fighting in Ukraine. I do think that there was an urge on the part of a lot of Western observers, particularly people who didn't specialize in Ukraine or in the Russian military, to buy into the idea that this was going to be a quick and easy fight, that Ukraine had beaten back the Russians outside of Kyiv and then that would be the end of the conflict. It's simply not true. Russia's strategy is one of attrition. It is an effort to aggressively grab territory through the use of arms, and it is executing that strategy. So Russia is still

moving forward in many areas, particularly in the east. And again, this is one of the stated goals of the russian government is to secure the provinces of luhansk and donetsk and support the uh the proxy governments that they have set up there russia currently controls about 95 percent of the province of luhansk and perhaps i think 75 percent of the province of donetsk. Overall, Russia controls, since the invasion began on February 24th, Russia now controls 20% of the territory of Ukraine, of the entire country. And so I think one thing that was getting lost in these images of Russian incompetence or Russian strategic and tactical failures outside of Kiev is the fact that Russia had already seized massive swathes of territory within weeks of the invasion on February 24th.

So the real question for the Ukrainians is not simply, can they stop the Russians from continuing to move forward and seize territory? It's how do they get the Russians out of the territory that they've already seized. And to do that, they're going to require a lot more resources than they're currently able to muster to defend their territory. Based on what you saw during your embed, what does Ukraine need most immediately? I think every Ukrainian soldier that you meet and talk to will tell you the same thing, as well as almost every Ukrainian official involved in security issues and military affairs. And the number one thing that they're all going to tell you is that they need air defense systems. Like Patriot,

it's a long range, high altitude, all weather surface to air missile system, the top choice of the US. It can detect, identify, target and track ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, aircraft and other threats. The next thing, of course, that Ukrainians desperately want is aircraft. And the Pentagon confirmed late Tuesday that the fighter planes and spare parts long requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been delivered. They absolutely want more aircraft. Most Ukrainians would prefer to have Western advanced aircraft if that were feasible. The last thing I think that most Ukrainians would tell you that they want and need is heavy long-range artillery.

Ukraine's President Zelensky called on the United States to supply long-range weapons that can destroy Russian artillery from a safe distance. The United States has supplied some of that. President Biden announced yesterday the U.S. is sending an additional $1 billion in weapons and aid to Ukraine. This latest package includes harpoon anti-ship launchers for the first time. The U.S. is also sending more ammunition for the HIMARS sent last month, plus other missile systems and ammunition. The United States has offered about $5.6 billion in security assistance since the beginning of the

invasion. Included in that is, I think, 126 heavy artillery systems. And then a number of other NATO countries are also supplying heavy artillery. But Ukrainian officials say that they need about 10 times what's currently being offered. 10 times? Yes, yes. How much of a deal breaker or a deal maker are these Western weapons? Could Ukraine survive or be surviving if those weapons had never come based on what you saw and experienced? I was in an anti-armor squad in the U.S. Marine Corps myself,

and I can tell you that the ability to have, you know, a team of two people effectively stop an armored column from advancing is absolutely essential to carrying out an effective defense against the kind of forces that Russia is using against Ukraine. I think there's absolutely no question that Ukraine would not have been able to as effectively resist the Russian offensive towards Kiev were it not for Western anti-tank missiles and Western anti-air missiles, particularly man-portable anti-air missiles such as the Stinger. There have been thousands of advanced Javelin anti-tank missiles supplied by the United States.

Britain and Sweden have supplied the NLAW, which is another type of anti-tank missile. And then there's thousands of smaller versions of anti-armor weapons that have been supplied to Ukrainian forces. Those have been a game changer in terms of allowing Ukrainians with relatively small numbers and with a relatively small amount of training to effectively turn back Russian armored columns. Coming up, the U.S. is sending weapons to Ukraine. Those weapons have the potential to be a game changer. But what happens when they get to Ukraine and soldiers there don't have the training or the proper equipment to use them?

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Mark, mark mark hayward what did you do in the military before you retired to alaska for several years i was a special forces soldier i was a green beret in massive air quotes what does that mean if you want to be very technical, a Green Beret is a hat. There's the technically correct terms, such as a special forces soldier, and then the term that everybody recognizes, a Green Beret. Mark did other jobs in the military, not all of them with hats on. He was a parachutist, an officer, a physician's assistant who served in the Gulf,

and he worked with rocket launchers. In 2007, he retired to Alaska, and that's where he was when Russia invaded Ukraine. He was not watching the news on February 24th, the day of the invasion. But when he finally saw what was going on, he thought, Oh, dear God, it's 1939 all over again. So Mark volunteered to fight for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. This is a completely legal move, by the way. And he made it because he thought he could be useful there. I looked at what was happening, and I had trouble continuing to look at myself in the mirror saying, I am sitting here while people whose only crime was to be living on

real estate that Vladimir Putin wanted to colonize. And my response is to watch this on the news. My motivation was, I don't like bullies and I was able to go, so I did. Mark had applied to be part of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion from the United States. He interviewed on Zoom with Ukrainian officials who agreed with him. This guy seems useful. So his first stop was Poland. He volunteered as a combat medic there. It's another skill that Mark has.

He also did some work in Ukraine, driving an ambulance over the border. But when you know a lot, you get asked to do a lot. That's war. So ultimately, he and another volunteer taught the Ukrainians how to use a type of anti-armor weapon that Britain had sent to Ukraine. Incredibly useful in the kind of chaotic light infantry versus armor fighting that was going on in Ukraine at that time. But what the Ukrainians really needed help with were the anti-tank weapons that the United States sent. The Ukrainians themselves were asking for trainers to help them more effectively use the javelins. What is a javelin and how does it work? A javelin is an anti-tank or anti-armor weapon system that has two main parts. It has the launcher, which you use over and over again, and it has the missile itself, which is a fire and forget, you know, fire it once, it's like a round of ammunition. The launcher is powered normally by a non-rechargeable battery that'll last for about four hours if you're using the launcher

as a thermal site. When the Javelins were sent over to Ukraine, they were sent with the assumption that they would be powered exclusively by these non-rechargeable batteries. These batteries, being non-rechargeable, have a finite lifespan. Once the battery runs dead, the weapon doesn't work anymore? That is exactly the problem that the Ukrainians had when we showed up. And you have put your finger on the problem. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a battery, this $100,000 launcher and these $80,000 missiles become very expensive paperweights.

No one in the military realized if we're going to send javelins that are battery-powered, we also got to send batteries to power them? It's remotely possible that someone thought this through and decided that it was a good idea. I have difficulty fathoming that anyone who understood the capabilities of the Javelin would have reached that conclusion. It is remotely possible. I myself think that there was a failure of imagination somewhere along the way. So it sounds like what you're saying is that we sent billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine and just sort of hoped for the best. Unfortunately, what we did, at least as far as the javelins went,

was we sent hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars of weapons systems and then turned our back on this. Probably my biggest contribution to the entire Ukrainian war effort was when we were in this situation, because I was raised by an electrical engineer, I looked at the batteries and said, okay, these things are weird and complicated. But what we basically have here is two 12-volt batteries that deliver their power to a unique and proprietary connector that goes inside the launcher. What if we took a couple of 12-volt motorcycle batteries and wired them up to one of these connectors? Would that work? And a couple of Ukrainian engineers said, hmm, and, you know, got out napkins and drew on the back of it and said, yeah, that should work. We built a prototype with alligator clips and some broken

computer parts. So they said, okay, we got a 3D printer. We're going to make some of these things and see if these will work. Based on a design from a medic from Alaska and some really impressive work by Ukrainian engineers and builders and, you know, guys with a 3D printer, the Ukrainians got around their shortage of batteries by building external rechargeable battery packs for these $100,000 launchers and $80,000 missiles. How much more effective do you think the Ukrainian military would have been if they had had weapons that didn't turn into paperweights when the batteries died? The need for effective training with the javelins and the need for available power sources for the javelins was an opportunity to shift the battlefield against the Russians and in favor of the Ukrainians, there was a window of opportunity where the small things that we did then made a

big difference. And if we could have gotten the U.S. to provide proper training equipment for the javelins, it would have made an even bigger difference. Did you contact a lawmaker and say, the United States is sending weapons to Ukraine that are working for a limited period of time, and then they are not working at all, and that is a waste of money, and it is putting the Ukrainians in a very, very difficult position. It's not helping. I started trying to have that conversation back in March as soon as we identified that there was a problem. Senator Murkowski's office in April was the first office that took my calls and called me back. And mad props to them because they got no way of knowing who I am.

I'm cold calling a desk phone in Juneau or Fairbanks talking to somebody whose job is to answer the phone saying, hey, please don't hang up on me. I'm calling you from Ukraine. I have vitally important information for the senator. whose job is to answer the phone saying, hey, please don't hang up on me. I'm calling you from Ukraine. I have vitally important information for the senator. And what was the response? When I came back from Ukraine, Senator Murkowski met with me and took almost an hour out of her day on a busy day in Washington, D.C.,

and sat down and asked me very intelligent questions, very much like the ones you're asking about what exactly was going on with the weapon systems we were sending to Ukraine and how we could do a better, faster, smarter job of it. And we've been working with a constituent of mine. He's an Army Special Forces vet. He has facilitated several requirements letters from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense verifying the need for javelin training kits, including the head of Ukrainian Defense Intelligence. So are more batteries being sent over with javelins to Ukraine as we speak? I've been given to understand that the U.S. executive branch has now sent over batteries

and has even sent over some vitally important pieces of training equipment. Ukrainians are now on the offensive against Russian forces in Kherson, and the Pentagon has promised to send them 4,000 more Javelin batteries. But the troops on the ground

that need them still haven't seen them. And it's heartbreaking that this stuff happened in May trending into June when the need was known and clear back in the middle of March. And when it took a sitting U.S. senator on the Appropriations Committee to get anybody in DOD to even have a conversation about the topic. The specific issue of training on javelins has never come up. But if they raise that issue, certainly we stand ready to train them. And we're pushing training kits into the country as well. It is possible to send the right equipment at the wrong time. It is possible to identify a problem and spend so much time circling the wagons about why didn't we do it earlier

or whose fault was it that we didn't send them that you miss opportunities and missed opportunities in normal life mean dang i didn't get that really great quote for the interview missed opportunities in uk Ukraine mean that kids the age of my sons and daughters, they don't get to have a future. Today's show was produced by Hadi Mouagdi and Victoria Chamberlain. It was edited by Matthew Collette, and it was engineered by Paul Mouncey. It was fact-checked by Amina El-Sadi. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.