Today, Explained - Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Ukraine vowed to mount a counteroffensive against Russia. Drone attacks on Moscow might signal it has begun. The Washington Post’s Mary Ilyushina and the Guardian’s Luke Harding explain. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Michael Raphael, 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

The war in Ukraine is entering a high-stakes phase, what everyone's been calling the spring counteroffensive. President Volodymyr Zelensky wants planes and weapons from the United States badly. But about a month ago, he told the U.S. this counteroffensive is going to happen regardless of whether Ukraine gets its American planes and weapons. Frankly speaking, it would help us a lot. But we also understand that we can't drag the counteroffensive out, which is why we'll start before we receive F-16s or other models. The U.S. came around late last month. Ukraine will get F-16s. And then this week, someone attacked Moscow, not with planes, but with drones. These are the first hits of this

scale to Russia's capital since the war started. And a day later, yesterday, someone droned a big oil refinery in southern Russia. Ukraine denies everything, but for analysts and reporters covering this war, it seems like this may be the moment when Ukraine strikes back. It's Today Explained. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style,

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today, today explained. Developing news this morning, Russia is reporting that it was struck by drones this morning. Moscow's mayor took to social media to say a drone attack in the Russian capital city caused, quote, insignificant damage to several buildings. So on Tuesday morning, a lot of Russians woke up to the sounds of explosions.

Most of them were near Moscow, which is obviously the capital of Russia. Look, brother. And this was a pretty unprecedented attack which is obviously the capital of Russia. Look, bro. Look. Look, bro. And this was a pretty unprecedented attack because residents of Russia capital experienced kind of direct consequences of the war in Ukraine for the very first time. Mary Alushina is a foreign correspondent covering this war for The Washington Post.

I asked Mary the million-ruble question, who did the drone strikes? So there are two theories. It's either Ukraine or Russian actors inside the country who are against Vladimir Putin, against the but they're kind of being very deliberate in never taking responsibility for anything that happens inside Russian territory because there is tension, for example, with the United States because the U.S. doesn't want Ukraine to hit deep inside Russia because they fear that might anger Vladimir Putin even more. And they also ask them not to use any weapons that were provided by the West to carry out these attacks. We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia. But the important thing is to understand what Ukrainians are living through every day with the ongoing Russian aggression against their country and our determination to make sure that they have in their hands, along with many other partners around the

world, the equipment that they need to defend themselves, to defend their territory, to defend their freedom. Who or what was being targeted? It's difficult to say what exactly they were targeting because there were obviously some military sites near Moscow that could be a very much a legitimate target. We don't know why they hit the residential buildings, because they could be intercepted by Russian anti-air defense systems, and that resulted them, you know, in dropping in residential areas before they reached their destination. But what we do know that a lot of the drones were spotted near areas where the Russian elite lives and resides, where the Russian officials, Russian celebrities, the high and mighty.

Most prestigious neighborhood where Vladimir Putin lives, where basically most of his cabinet lives. This is the place where Russia's richest men have their summer houses and all-year mansions. There's a Rublevka highway where there's a lot of gated communities, a lot of rich people live there, and it should be very well protected. But it's, you know, as we've seen now, it's quite difficult to protect a city from smaller targets. You know, I've talked to, you know, many analysts over the months because this is not the first attack, drone attack that happened inside Russia.

But essentially they say it is a very intricate thing to protect a city from targets such as drones because they're quite small. Some of these systems in Moscow, they have kind of their kind of Cold War style because they are catered to protecting against bombs and like jet bombers and larger things. And it's difficult for them to kind of readjust the whole system to protect against drones. And also, we don't know exactly how much systems are still available to be inside Russia, because they obviously have to protect the front line. But again, there's still a possibility that those were Ukraine-made drones. We again, don't exactly know. How are Russians responding? And let's start with the top Russian. What has Vladimir Putin

said about these attacks? He's essentially dismissed them and said that the defense systems have worked adequately. Look, he did say that there is work to be done and that the authorities are going to bolster Moscow defenses. The Moscow air defense system worked satisfactorily. However, there is still work to be done to make it better. And, you know, again, we know that they have been doing that so far, and it appears to be that hasn't been enough. But I think his whole tone was, you know, Ukraine is provoking Russia.

Kyiv chose the path of intimidation of Russian citizens and attacks on residential buildings. It is a clear sign of terrorist activity. He said they're provoking Russia to respond with mere action. And we do know Russia has been targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities so many times in the recent weeks. His whole idea is to tone it down and make sure the Russians aren't alarmed. I think it was interesting that he even came out and said that because a couple of hours before his kind of video address that was on national TV, his press secretary said that Putin has no specific plans to address the nation about this. And, you know, a couple hours later he did. And that was interesting because we haven't heard much from Putin recently, especially when it comes to any

specific setbacks the Russian military has experienced or specific attacks. He was mostly giving kind of more vague and kind of wide statements about why Russia is still fighting in Ukraine and tried to kind of band the nation together. So that was quite interesting. And we know that the Russian kind of state TV propaganda has been also echoing the same message, trying to calm people down and say, like, look, this was expected because there was an attack on the fact that there's a level of indifference amongst Russians because they're trying to kind of keep the war at a distance. And that was the promise that Putin gave at the beginning of the war saying, look, this will not disrupt your ordinary life. Just let me do this. And this is the right thing to do. And now this is kind of that kind of pledge is being broken. Yeah. How does what does that mean for ordinary Russians?

We know that they've been misinformed about the war. We know that many Russians support the war. Does a thing like this, all of a sudden we've got drones bombing our capital, does a thing like this change the minds of regular people? At least some people are asking questions about how did this happen? Because they were sold the idea that this is going to be a really quick, victorious war at the very beginning. And now we're 15 months in. And instead of, you know, whatever, taking Kiev, as a lot of Russian pundits have been saying at the very beginning, we have drones striking a different capital, the Russian capital. I don't even know. It's scary.

You sit at home and this thing flies at your window. It's dangerous. That's what I read in the news. Just the fact that the military action and the peace is being disrupted so close to home undermines this narrative that the Kremlin has been trying to sell for many, many months. And, you know, we know that Belgrade and other border regions have been living with this for a very long time. But for the majority of the country, that was something that happened so, so far away. And if you don't have relatives or friends there, you might not even really hear about it. But Moscow is a kind of different story. OK, Russia blames Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin says Ukraine is doing this. What does Ukraine say in response? We don't attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We are defending our villages and cities. Well, Ukraine is not claiming any direct involvement in this. They have been quite vague in general about claiming any responsibility for attacks that happened within Russian territory because of the tension with the United States as well. The advisor to President Zelenskyy, Mikhail Opadaylak, said, of course, Ukraine wants to feel Russians what the Ukrainians have been feeling for a very long time. But he said Ukraine is not

directly connected to these attacks. But he did note an interesting thing about the kind of underground resistance movements within Russia and guerrilla groups, because Ukraine is now saying that Ukraine has provided enormous opportunities for them to show themselves, for these groups to take action against Vladimir Putin. And he's kind of hinting that this is their doing. But of course, we don't exactly know. Mary, for months now, we've been hearing that Ukraine is preparing a counteroffensive, right? Ukraine has been on the defensive, on its back foot,

but we've been told that's not the end of things. Is this the counteroffensive? Is that what we're seeing now? I think the consensus is that this is kind of setting the stage for the counteroffensive. They will, you know, hit targets and try to push the Russian forces back to the pre-2014 borders and so on and so forth. But it could be a part of it because it's not only action on the front line, but it's also kind of psychological pressure and attack. Because what the Ukrainian officials have also said is that this kind of creates this alarmist situation within Russia. And the whole idea is that if Vladimir Putin continues with the war, he'll have to fight it kind of on both fronts, both in Ukraine and at home with whatever guerrilla groups, with people being alarmed by drone attacks. So this could be just a way to

project force and ensure that the Russian authorities understand that Ukraine has a lot of capabilities that could hurt Russian narratives at home about this war. It's Mary Alucina of The Washington Post. Coming up next, what does the counteroffensive look like on the front line? Support for Today Explained comes 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,

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to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. It's Today Explained. Luke Harding of The Guardian has been covering the Ukraine war since it started in February last year.

Luke's been on with us before. I reached him yesterday in London. He is just back from his latest trip to Kiev. I spent a long time on the front line, talked to various Ukrainian commanders, and they say actually counteroffensive isn't quite the right word. They talk instead about a sort of rolling spring-summer campaign. And I think that campaign absolutely is underway. We've seen lots of what you might call tactical operations on the front line, vast front line, about 900 miles long, stretching from the east of Ukraine all the way down through the south towards Crimea. And that has involved smashing up Russian tanks, armoured vehicles,

bombing, using drones, oil refineries, weapon stumps, and so on. And also, we've seen most dramatically, as you say, these drone attacks on Moscow, which I think really are an attempt to kind of spook and confuse the enemy. I'm thinking about the original Russian invasion and the tactics that Russia used, which was like send in all the tanks and then the tanks got bogged down and Ukraine actually ended up in a stronger position than expected. What will the tactics be of Ukraine's counter offensive? Will it look like Russia's? Should we expect long lines of tanks, etc?

I think it's going to be smarter than that. Basically, the Russians launched these massive, almost sort of Second World War style attacks from Belarus last spring, from sweeping up from Crimea, as if they were trying to kind of reenact the storming of Berlin. And that didn't work. The attempt to seize Kiev was abandoned. This morning, Ukraine's flag back over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant weeks after the facility was captured by Russian forces. And new satellite images show Russia's military abandoning a strategic airport outside of Kyiv, which they

captured on the first day of this invasion. Ukraine is currently getting more military aid, more in the way of tech from Russian forces who are just abandoning their tanks, abandoning their missile systems than they are from any Western countries. And what the Ukrainians have done, Ukrainians, by the way, being kind of vastly outnumbered by Russian soldiers and military equipment, is they've been fighting smart. And look, we don't know what precisely the shape the counteroffensive will take. It's a secret. Very few people know. I'm not even sure that President Biden knows the full details. But what I imagine is it'll be nimbler, and it will take place in several sort of battlefields. So it won't just be one push in one direction. It'll be multiple pushes in multiple directions trying to break the line that Russia has taken? Or is Ukraine trying to take parts

of Russia? I know that sounds like a deranged question, but we haven't really heard specifics. No, I mean, there's no attempt to take parts of Russia proper, the Russian Federation. I mean, there was an incursion recently by Russian sort of, I suppose you could call them separatists or partisans who are opposed to Vladimir Putin and trying to overthrow him, who mounted an incursion into the Russian Federation and took since 2014. So that means Crimea, taking back the Crimean Peninsula, and it means the key cities in the east of Donetsk and Luhansk. But I think to begin with, they will push in the south and try and take back areas of Zaporizhia oblast or region and Kherson region, which was seized by the Russian military in the first sort of confusing days of invasion in February and March of last year. That's the number one target.

Why is Ukraine mounting the counteroffensive now? It is late May, early June. What's significant about the timing? Well, it's partly the weather. I mean, the thing is, the battle has been going on furiously for well over a year. I mean, the Russians are pounding Kiev. I've just come from Kiev every night with hypersonic missiles, with drones. So this has never been a quiet war. But the fact is that the dry weather makes it easier for the Ukrainians to advance,

particularly in the south, which is this vast, rolling, flat territory of steppe, where if there's mud, if there's winter mud, it's much, much, much harder. And the commanders I'm in touch with, they're talking about a window of about three or four months from now, beginning of June, through to about the end of September. That is the opportunity that Ukraine has to do something. You mentioned earlier that President Biden himself might not know the details of the counteroffensive. One thing that is notable

here is that we have known that a counteroffensive is coming because Ukraine has been saying a counteroffensive is coming. One of my colleagues who served in the military mentioned D-Day the other day in a meeting, and she said, you know, it was the element of surprise, obviously, that made D-Day work so well. Why didn't Ukraine try for the element of surprise here? Why did it feel it needed to talk about a counteroffensive happening? I mean, partly because actually much harder for the Ukrainians to surprise the Russians now.

We had two successful Ukrainian counteroffensives last autumn. One in Kherson in the south, the occupied city of Kherson, which was recaptured in autumn, which actually Zelensky did talk about. But the other offensive in the northeast, in Kharkiv Oblast, which was a complete surprise to everybody, and saw the Russians retreating in disarray very quickly. Now, this time round, it's not possible to kind of repeat that exercise because everybody knows where the Ukrainians need to push, which is Zaporizhia, Oblast. They need to kind of break the land corridor, connecting the sort of Russian occupation zones in the east of the country, in the Donbass region, with Crimea and Kherson in the west of

the country. So if they can smash through to the Sea of Azov, that will be a kind of stunning Ukrainian victory. So we know the blow is going to fall there. I think what the Ukrainians are trying to do is to play psychological games with the Russians to make the Russians twitchy and nervous and fearful and to weaken them. Is Russia ready for this? Well, I mean, yes and no. From a military point of view, I think they are ready. I mean, they've been digging some of the biggest trenches we've seen on the planet for decades. There are vast fortifications all across the South and in Crimea proper. Furthest from the front line, you have artillery positions, then a trench network

for soldiers, then what are called dragon's teeth. These are concrete obstacles designed to stop tanks in their tracks. We're talking about anti-tank ditches, which are five meters across, three meters deep. We're talking about minefields that have been placed to try and stop the Ukrainians from rolling forward. But I think the problem is almost more mental than military, which is that it's still not clear to me, and I think to many Russians, what would Russian victory look like? We don't quite understand what the Russians are now trying to do other than to hang on to the territory that they've already stolen. And there are also issues of kind of morale and training

and the fact that Russian casualties in this brutal war in the east around Bakhmut have been so huge. So many young men have been lost and perished quite often in kind of disastrous sort of forward movements. So I think my sense is the Russian army is more brittle than it seems. And it'll be interesting to see what happens when it's given a kind of mighty push. We do know that President Zelensky has been spending a lot of time with leaders of Western governments working to convince them to send aid and weapons. How much will Western aid, Western weapons come into play during this counteroffensive?

I mean, they're already coming into play. 16 HIMARS launchers and thousands of rockets, which defence officials say the Ukrainians have used to attack more than 350 Russian command posts, ammo dumps, supply depots and other high-value targets far back from the front lines. I mean, when I was there recently, the Brits, you know, my country started supplying what are called storm shadow missiles. This is essentially long range artillery. And we suddenly saw Ukraine hitting targets well beyond the front line in cities like Luhansk, next to occupied cities next to the Russian border,

and just grinding away at kind of Russian supply networks. These guns are making all the difference, says Dmitry, the unit commander. We can now hit the Russians more accurately and further away, which means they can only attack us half or a third as often as before. Meanwhile, we have a whole load of new or newish European tanks, leopards and so on. And we've got 12 newly formed Ukrainian brigades armed with kind of modern Western equipment. Now, Kiev says, give us more, give us more. This is not enough. But I

think that this equipment at least gives Ukraine a reasonable chance of success this summer in its counteroffensive. I wonder if we could pull back for a minute and talk about the stakes here. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor. Russia is the bad guy. What happens if this counteroffensive is successful? Does that mean Ukraine has won the war? And what happens if it fails? Does that mean this goes on forever? Yes, these are really, really interesting questions. I mean, I think if the Ukrainians are successful, and I would define success as getting back some of the South, at least one major city, maybe Melitopol or the port of Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov, then Ukraine is showing to its own domestic population, but also to its international

partners that it has regained the strategic initiative, that it can win this war, that it can defeat mighty Russia, that all of those billions in military and security assistance is money well spent, and that actually this coalition led by the US of Western democracies, Western partners, should continue to support them. But conversely, if the counteroff offensive falls short, and actually there are very big Ukrainian casualties, the Russians hang on, the Ukrainians liberate a few villages, and that's it, then I think that's politically very problematic for Kiev, and maybe even dangerous, because there'll be those in perhaps not so much London, but in other countries, Berlin, I'm thinking of, and Paris.

And also, of course, factions, elements within the Republican Party who are saying, look, the Ukrainians can't win. We need some kind of deal with Vladimir Putin. And the Ukrainians are going to have to give up territory in exchange for peace. Now, first of all, that's not going to work because the Ukrainians think, and I agree with them, that Putin will just use any peace deal to have a break and then attack again. But secondly, Ukrainians don't want that. They've lost so many people, so many soldiers, so many civilians, 500 kids killed.

Their mood is vehement and uncompromising, and they want victory at any price. Luke Harding of The Guardian, he's also the author of Invasion, Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival. Luke, thank you so much for taking the time today. Noelle, thank you very much. Really good to talk to you. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard, who's been with us for two to five years. Michael Raphael engineered today's show. I'm Noelle King.

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