Today, Explained - Pushing the Russians back

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

In its biggest victory yet, Ukraine retook its vital port city, Kherson. The Guardian’s Luke Harding calls Russia’s retreat a turning point in the war — but a long, cold winter awaits. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin and Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, 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

In late September, Vladimir Putin held a big ceremony in the Kremlin. Pompous, or you could say grand if you're being kind, ceremony in a kind of gold-painted reception room watched by the most important people in this government. The foreign minister was there, the head of the spy agencies. And Putin basically says that Kherson is now, it's a Russian city, it's Russia's forever. But anyway, if you go forward, forever turns out to be six weeks. Tonight, euphoria in Kherson,

a major Ukrainian city now free from Russian rule. Ukrainians hugging and kissing their soldiers, treating them as heroes, autographing flags. On Today Explained, how Ukrainian troops pulled off a decisive win in Kherson and humiliated Vladimir Putin. A rare moment of good news in a war which has caused so much pain. Love Ukraine! Love Ukraine!

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King, and you are? My name is Luke Harding. I'm a journalist and foreign correspondent with The Guardian newspaper and a writer of books. Describe, Luke, if you would, where Kherson is and what makes it significant in this war. Kherson is a port and a city in the south of Ukraine on the Dnipro River, which is a massive river with many tributaries that runs across the country, basically dividing Ukraine into two halves, east and west. It's a Russian speaking city, so people there are native Russian speakers. It has a population or had a population of about 300,000 people, perhaps a little shy of that, maybe 280,000, before Vladimir Putin's invasion in February of this year.

Its significance is it was the first and the only major regional administrative capital which the Russians occupied. It was a jewel. It was a kind of prize. And it was a place that they captured very early on in the first days of invasion. What happened on November 11th? The Russians executed a massive and humiliating retreat. They basically abandoned territory that they seized early on in the invasion in February. We're talking about a huge swathe of territory

on what Ukrainians call the right bank, the western side of the Dnipro River. It's a sort of bulge, including about 80 settlements. It's steppe land, it's rustic. We're talking about fields of sunflowers, of villages with gravel roads, schools, cottages, lots of animals, geese, ducks, dogs yapping, pine trees, poplars.

And then the city, the sort of administrative heart of Herson province, which is also called Herson, on this wide, rather beautiful Dnieper River. And Herson sits on one side of this. And it's a big, functional, modern, busy city, or at least it was with an art gallery, with a neoclassical administration building, with a train station. All this time we were like in prison.

We could walk around the city, but everywhere we saw these Russian troops with weapons. They could just catch you. And this whole area had been occupied by the Russians for eight months, and they packed up and having talked to people there, it seems that the Russian troops got an order about 5 a.m. local time on Wednesday the 9th of November. And they got into their armored vehicles. They stuffed them full of things that they'd stolen, everything from microwaves to washing machines to ladies' clothes to whatever they could find. And they rolled off back across the Dnieper

with some soldiers jogging across a pontoon bridge, others trying to swim over, and some leaving in good order on military vehicles. So it was a huge Russian exodus and I think a turning point in this war. How did Russia take this city and this province in the first place? If you sort of cast your mind back to February the 24th, to the fear and dread and the horror in America and elsewhere at Putin's invasion, it was a sort of multi-pronged, a multi-vector assault with Russian troops advancing from the north, from Belarus, through the forests surrounding Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant from the east, where there'd been a war going on already for eight years over a territory called the Donbass.

And then in the south, where I had been standing in January, three weeks later, Russian tanks, armoured vehicles came rolling over this scenic isthmus, a place of ducks, of high yellow feather reeds across this landscape, and they kept going. And what's interesting is they went all the way through the sort of southern chunk of Haerzahn province, and they got to a sort of key strategic installation, which is called the Antonovsky or the Antonivsky Bridge, which is about two kilometers long, spans the Dnieper River, and leads directly into Haerzahn city. And by pretty much, I would say March the 2nd, 2022, they had seized

the city and a key part of southern Ukraine had fallen. Ukrainian officials say the battles continue there and claim Russian forces are looting the city. The Russians, Vladimir Putin, had thought that his troops would be greeted as liberators, that people would rush up to them with flowers and hug them and so on. And in fact, there was a military fight back by the Ukrainian army, which we saw most spectacularly around Kiev, pushing the Russians back after about a month of fighting. But also in Kherson, we just saw civilians, hundreds of them, perhaps as many as a thousand, gathering in the main square outside the administration building, facing off against the perimeter of Russian machine gunners,

of what the Ukrainians call technical vehicles, basically armored vehicles, waving Ukrainian flags, singing patriotic songs, holding banners which said in Ukrainian, and shouting at these Russians saying, fascists, go home, occupiers, we don't want you here. The first time this happened, the Russian soldiers were relatively restrained. They didn't do a huge amount.

I think they were completely taken aback by this. But gradually and predictably, they became more and more brutal, and we saw Russian soldiers firing angrily into the air and eventually by week two, a massive sweep by Russian military police to round up anyone who had a sort of, what they regarded as a sort of pro-Ukrainian attitude. So we're talking about people who are in the police force, council workers, people on the state payroll, journalists, intellectuals, museum curators. By kind of mid-spring, people in Kherson were disappearing. They were being tortured. In some places, they were being killed and murdered. And now the city

has been liberated. We're piecing together some of those stories, and they're horrific. How on earth did Russia lose control after having such firm control? Really what happened, happened actually was Joe Biden happened and the US administration and plus other Western partners of Ukraine, including the UK. By the summer, by I would say probably late June, early July, they started supplying Kiev, the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky were the kind of sophisticated, modern, heavy weaponry that Ukraine would be begging for. And so I think the game changer, actually, or the critical enabler is how it's been described to me, was the HIMARS system supplied by America. It's a

highly accurate, precision-guided, long-range artillery system where you scoot and shoot. I mean, I've seen them in southern Ukraine. It looks like a kind of rather large green-painted truck, but it's got a pod of six missiles, and they are devastatingly accurate. Basically, if you hit a grid in military parlance and military speech with these weapons, it will destroy everything on the grid. And so what the Ukrainians were able to do sort of systematically and clinically from, I would say, about July onwards was to degrade Russian logistics routes and supply lines. And what the Russians realized through their horror was that it was becoming increasingly hard to supply their forward forces in this large,

sprawling, rustic, flat oblast. And I think probably by about October, they had decided that it was just not viable to hold this territory on the right bank of the Dnieper River, Kherson and its environs. And again, we know that not because they said so. Obviously, these conversations are secret. We know that because they began stealing everything. And when I say everything, they stole the city archives in Kherson. They stole hundreds, possibly thousands of private cars, TV sets, microwaves. They went to Kherson Zoo. And I kid you not, they stole the llamas, the donkeys, the wolves, and, and, and, and, and, not to forget,

they stole the raccoon. They stole the zoo's raccoon, bundled it in a sack, and shipped it all off to Crimea. And so it was kind of clear that they were preparing an evacuation. So when they did leave, it wasn't a surprise. But at the same time, this was a deeply, deeply humiliating moment for Vladimir Putin. What does Vladimir Putin do? Of course, this was a deeply, deeply humiliating moment for Vladimir Putin. What does Vladimir Putin do? Of course, this was embarrassing. And Putin is a strong man, someone who, you've seen him, you've seen the images, who scuba dives, who fishes bare-chested in Siberian rivers, who is an action man, does judo, etc. And his troops were running away. Or as one Kherson villager put it to me, they left our village like goats. He said like goats, described them as goats running away.

And so, of course, how does Putin respond? Putin responds by doing what he's done several times this autumn, which is to blitz Ukraine with deadly long-range missiles fired from Russia itself. Tonight, Ukrainians reeling from a relentless Russian missile barrage. The strikes targeting critical civilian infrastructure across the country, from Kiev to Kharkiv to Zaporizhia. In the capital city, 350,000 homes left without electricity, while 80% of residents lost drinking water. Putin is really in the most cynical way.

He can't win on the battlefield. He's now trying to break morale among civilians and to hope that he can win that way instead. All right, so Vladimir Putin is one side of the equation and the other side of the equation is Volodymyr Zelensky. How does he respond to Ukraine retaking Kherson? One of my colleagues describes Zelensky as Churchill with an iPhone. And what Churchill with an iPhone has been doing

has been recording these messages, both for a domestic audience and for the wider world, for Americans, for Brits, for whoever. We're ready for peace, but our peace for our country is all our country, all our territory. That's why we are fighting against Russian aggression. He was quite careful when Kherson was retaken. I mean, there was nothing triumphalist about it. He said it was, you know, it was a great victory, but also urged people living there to be very

careful of mines, to watch out for Russian soldiers or saboteurs who may have stayed behind to cause trouble. Three days after the city was liberated, he came for himself. I mean, that didn't surprise me. He turned up to Kherson. I mean, he's a kind of genuine action man in the way that Vladimir Putin is a kind of fake action man. And there was a very moving ceremony outside the administration building where people had been dancing, celebrating, embracing soldiers,

smoking, singing sort of slogans. And a pretty serious-looking Zelensky stood there wearing a kind of olive green jacket, fleece jacket, and he watched the Ukrainian flag being raised, and he saluted. I mean, he described it as not the end of the war, again, channelling Churchill here. This described it as not the end of the war. Again, channeling Churchill here. This is the beginning of the end of the war. It's a pity, but it's a long way,

this war to the best heroes of our country. Ah, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. Ukraine has now recaptured more than 50% of the territory it's lost since February 24th. I mean, the Russian military is still there. It's still formidable. Putin still thinks, against all evidence, he can win this war. And is not letting up.

But I think the shape of a Ukrainian victory, while we're not there yet, is sort of shimmering into view. It's becoming a possibility, tantalizing possibility. We'll break free And show that we're brothers of the Cossack family from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple.

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Luke Harding of The Guardian, President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Ukrainians to fight through the winter. And many military analysts were very surprised by Zelensky making that call. Why is it so surprising? I'm not sure I actually agree with the military analysts. I don't think it's surprising. I think it's inevitable. I mean, the logic from Zelensky's point of view and from that of his sort of chief general, Valeriy Zelushny, is that when your enemy is on the run, you don't give up and give them time to

regroup and consolidate. You keep going. And so we don't know where the Ukrainians will push next. Ukrainian soldiers were given a hero's welcome as the crowd chanted for the military. Certainly when I was there, it felt like war. It didn't feel like peace. I mean, it's easy to see these pictures of Jubilant, Kraus and Kherson and think, oh, it's all over. No, I mean, I was hearing the boom, boom, boom from Ukrainian artillery and also the whoosh, whoosh

of outgoing Grad missiles, which were sort of blitzing over the Dnipro to Russian military positions on the other side and some incoming missiles as well. The winter will not deter Ukrainian forces. And just one other thing you have to understand is that people support them. There was no support for Putin's project in Kherson. Everybody hated the Russians. And so I think with the support of the local

population, which is overwhelming, you can kind of mitigate some of the issues thrown out by the fact that it's cold, dark, and a bit miserable. Do Ukrainians have what they need to fight through the winter? I've seen lots of Ukrainian soldiers. Actually, I mean, I was in their frontline trenches around about the 7th and the 8th of November. I was having a little chat with a soldier from Lviv called Sergei. He showed me his lunch. He had pasties.

He was drinking grape juice. They were cooking for themselves in this kind of underground kitchen. They had a gas canister. Soup. Here you are. They were cooking for themselves in this kind of underground kitchen. They had a gas canister. It's almost like a city in the forest for these guys. They've got the places to eat and kilometers of trenches. And I looked at their sleeping quarters. I mean, even in the trenches, they're relatively snug.

They have a generator to charge their mobile phones. It's not ideal. Of course not. It's tough, but it's doable. I think the big concern, the strategic concern from the Ukrainian side is that this extraordinary anti-Kremlin coalition led by America, led by the Biden administration, might get fatigued. There may be political pressures. Everyone knows inflation is up, that economies are in poor shape, that governments generally all over the place are pretty unpopular at the moment. They're worried about whether the West will stay the course.

Now, for now, especially in the light of the midterms and the unexpectedly good showing by the Democrats, I think those fears are assuaged. But what the Ukrainians want, what they say they want, is weapons, weapons, weapons still. They're burning through artillery at a tremendous rate. And what about the Russians? Do they have what they need? They were in total disarray last winter.

I mean, we can expect more disarray from the Russian troops. I mean, there have been lots of videos of newly mobilized guys, sometimes literally kind of scooped up in provincial Russian towns and villages, being sent to the front after two weeks training, if you can call it that. We were officially told that there would be no training before being sent to the combat zone, this recruit says. We had no shooting, no tactical training, no theoretical training, nothing. Given inadequate clothing, nothing to eat, weapons that are old or don't work, and being flung into battle against pretty experienced, pretty ruthless, now very effective Ukrainian army. And of course, what we're seeing is we're

seeing huge casualties. A lot of Russians are being killed, a lot of newly mobilized troops are being killed as well. But I don't think this makes any difference because the point is that Ukraine is a democracy, right? It has sort of civil society. It has a journalist like me, you know, or from the New York Times, the Washington Post. We can wander around and do pretty much what we want. Whereas Russia really is, it's not only an autocracy. I mean, it's increasingly totalitarian. I mean, it's close to being a full-blown totalitarian state where, you know, Putin doesn't care if 50,000 people are killed, 100,000 people are killed, 200,000 people are killed. And what's happened is we've had this

mass mobilization with so far, I think as many as 80,000, but probably over the next few months, it's going to be about 200,000 new troops sent to the front line of the war in Ukraine. And Putin's calculation appears to be that these troops will turn things around, help stabilize the line, prevent Ukrainians from taking further territory, and also prepare for the spring when Russia will try and go forward again. That's the plan. But I think actually the reality is that these mobilized troops, a lot of them don't want to fight. They certainly don't want to die. And I'm not actually sure if they will make the difference the Kremlin thinks they will make.

And so if Kherson really is a sea change and Russia appears to be on its back foot, what's Ukraine's strategy at this point? Well, I mean, Zelensky has been very clear that he wants to liberate all Ukrainian territory. All of it means not just the land that's been lost since February the 24th, since Putin's invasion, but Crimea, which Russia stole in 2014, and Luhansk and Donetsk, which have been run by pro-Russian separatist proxies for eight

years as well. So he wants to completely evict the Russians and to restore his nation's borders as they were when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. And by the way, when an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted for independence from Russia. So that's what he wants. Now, there may come a kind of inflection point or a sort of decision point or a dilemma, you could call it, if and when the Ukrainians seize more territory in the South, whether they at that point, they keep going to try and take back crimea because that will be harder i mean it goes on 99 of the population were against uh russia in crimea it's tricky because there's definitely a genuine sort of pro-russian uh population there if only because the pro-ukrainian sort of crimeans left were

forced out or have been arrested dep, intimidated and tortured and so on. But essentially, Zelensky has said that he will not negotiate with this Russian president, in other words, Putin. Putin lies all the time, he cheats all the time, and they think that if there's a bad deal, that Putin will just use a window, let's say, to rebuild his army and to attack Kiev again. Okay, do the flip side. What's Russia's military strategy now?

If I can be crude, it's fuck you-ism. Essentially, Russia's not been able to prevail. It wanted to take Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet administration. That plan failed, fell apart in the spring, and the Russians retreated. It wanted to take Kharkiv, which is a big Russian-speaking city very close to the border and to the Russian city of Belgrade. That didn't

happen either. That whole area has just been liberated by Ukrainians. And it wanted to build a kind of new imperium around the south and the Black Sea with Kherson, this port city, historical city, as a kind of key fulcrum. That didn't work either. And so what Putin is doing fuckuistically is just destroying as much as he can. The truth is Moscow's forces built nothing and destroyed much. This is the TV tower which they blew up as they left, cutting telephone services and the internet. There are missile strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure to make everything dark and to switch off electricity. But also what I've seen, what I've seen with my own eyes, is Russians, for example, leaving villages in the South and Kherson province.

And before they go, I was in a village called Myalova on the 11th of November, they blew up the school. It's a village of 1,000 people. 300 stayed during the occupation. They blew up the school and they blew up the nursery where they'd been living, and they blew up the TV tower. So these villagers, they didn't have everything, but they had pretty reasonable lives. Have no school, they've got no heating, they've got no electricity, they've got no water,

they've got no gas. They've gone back 30 years, as one of them put it to me. It's not just sort of killing people, rubbing them out physically. It's rubbleizing Ukraine, turning it into a wasteland. And it's vindictiveness. There's something sociopathic about it. But at the moment, this appears to be current Russian military strategy. Luke Harding of The Guardian. His book out November 29th is called Invasion. It's about the war. Today's show was produced by Victoria Chamberlain and Halima Shah.

It was edited by Matthew Collette. Fact-checking was a team effort led by Laura Bullard. And engineering by Afim Shapiro. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.