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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram here with Mary Ilyushina, who covers Russia for The Washington Post.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Since Russia escalated its incursion into Ukraine just over six months ago, we've grown accustomed to seeing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky propagandize from a bunker or some undisclosed location on his phone, on a computer. That's how he addressed Congress back in March. That's how he appeared at the Grammys back in April, remember that? His wartime leadership and propaganda machine has felt a lot like hearing from your boss on Zoom during the pandemic, but not today.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Today, Zelensky made an unannounced visit to Izum, a small town in eastern Ukraine that the country just reclaimed in a hugely successful counteroffensive against Russia. And he said the Ukrainian flag would return to every city and village in this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This counteroffensive has a lot of people asking whether Ukraine's winning now. And it's got a lot of people feeling like Putin's blowing it, including a whole lot of people in Russia. More on all that ahead on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine, Ukraine Explained. It's Ukraine Explained. Today Explained, Ramas Verum here with Mary Olušna, who covers Russia for The Washington Post. She's going to help us understand what just happened in Ukraine and why it's making Putin look real bad.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: In the past few weeks, Ukraine has been undertaking this counteroffensive and they have achieved some really remarkable results, which it appears that even Ukraine didn't really expect to achieve.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Major news from Ukraine tonight. Troops driving Russian forces further back. Ukraine's stunning offensive in the east freeing 150,000 people from Russian rule in just days, according to officials. And they managed to regain more land than Russia was able to take since April.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So all these months, Russia has been moving pretty incrementally. They've been taking smaller villages, smaller settlements, But they have not been able to take any big cities or the key hubs that they were hoping to take much, much earlier in the campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Ukraine retook really important parts in the Kharkiv region. When Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine nearly seven months ago, his troops seized massive chunks of Kharkiv. But in just a matter of days, Ukrainian forces have blitzed through Russia's gains, snatching back huge swaths of land.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: What that means is that they were able to cut off a lot of the supply lines of the Russian military and also deplete Russian forces there that were responsible for this direction, which makes it really hard for Russia to not even, you know, do offensive operations there in the near future, but also to hold their ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Where did this counteroffensive come from? You said it's been in the works for a while now?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Yes, so obviously one of the goals for Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, was to not only kick Russia out, but also retake the lands it already took at the beginning of the campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've already lost too many people to simply cede our territory. But obviously, you know, it needs a lot of preparation because Russia has a very significant force and Ukraine is outnumbered in many ways.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So it took a lot of preparation. And also there was a report by The Guardian that Ukraine also employed this tactic of saying the counteroffensive is going to be happening any minute and sort of keeping Russia on its toes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But also saying that the counteroffensive is going to take place in different locations that actually happen. The counteroffensive that we're witnessing in Kherson right now is not the only counteroffensive underway in this country.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: I can't discuss details of any military actions. I think that information silence is important. So I want that the enemy gets some surprises from us. Sort of tricking Russia into regrouping its forces and sort of spreading them out in a way that allowed Ukraine to concentrate in the Kharkiv region and, you know, achieve all these remarkable gains that they have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And tonight, that surprise paying off. Ukrainian flags flying again over key strategic cities.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: How did they do it? How did Ukraine take more land than Russia has taken in months over the course of a weekend?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, that's what's been surprising, obviously, because they moved really, really quickly. And there were reports that sort of Russian forces were really fleeing the area, abandoning a lot of the equipment.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So they were definitely ambushed. It's a humiliating defeat for Vladimir Putin's men, forced to flee, abandoning key supply hubs like Kupyansk and Izium.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Also, I think what played a really important part here is that a lot of the problems that have been accumulating in the Russian army really, you know, came to light here, which is that they've been using a lot of the same units for a really long time without letting them rest, which made the force really exhausted.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So it's very difficult for them to, you know, launch offensive and, you know, and do counter-offensives as well. But also there were a lot of reports that Russia is losing a lot of equipment. Some of the equipment is really out of commission from the get and it not able to perform really well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They left all their explosives and ammunition here said this Ukrainian soldier as the Russian front line collapsed. These two things sort of happened all at once, which allowed Ukraine to, you know, execute this really remarkable operation.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: The United States provides battlefield intelligence to help Ukrainians defend their country. There's been reporting that the West has helped Ukraine plan this counteroffensive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How much do you know about that?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Yeah, it's been reported that U.S. officials and generally the Western intelligence community is helping Ukraine with targets. Ukraine combines information that we and other partners provide with the intelligence that they themselves are gathering on the battlefield.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's obviously a really important balance here to note is that U.S. especially has been very careful in making sure Ukraine doesn't strike far into Russian territory because that would mean really a direct attack on Russia and that could have really bad consequences.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: But they have been helping with intelligence assessments and providing information. The U.S. explicitly has helped Ukraine kill Russians. They provided intelligence that helped the Ukrainians, we are told, shoot down a Russian transport full of hundreds of Russian soldiers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's just one of many examples. It's an important relationship that our sources say has really affected the course of this war.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Russia always read it as, look, this is the Washington directly fighting against Russia, and Russia is now up against the entire NATO alliance bloc because, obviously, of the weapons supplies, but also this help from the intelligence community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're trying to, you know, walk across a really tight rope here in terms of balancing how much they help Ukraine and how much they anger Russia.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So whether that balance is going to change after this counteroffensive is a very interesting question, a very important question, whether the U.S. will be more comforting in doing that or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine's counteroffensive has most recently been focused on Kharkiv and the area surrounding it. How important is Kharkiv strategically for Ukraine?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: It is very important because obviously the Russian border is very nearby. It's next to Belgrade region, which has been seeing some drone strikes and, you know, weird explosions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That they've explained is accidental fires, but the understanding is that Ukraine has shown that it can reach into that area.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: What it also means is that for Russia, it will be quite difficult to take all of the Donetsk region that they've been hoping to add to the separatist republic there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And more importantly, it really disrupted the logistics because a lot of the supply lines, there were a lot of key junctures in that area.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And for the Russian side, it obviously has has been probably the biggest blow of this entire campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How are people in this region, Kharkiv, responding to Ukraine reasserting its control?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: There were a lot of videos emerging of people, residents coming out of their houses and welcoming Ukrainian forces and, you know, saying that they've been waiting for them for a really long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, that is a really triumphant moment. Relieved residents embraced their liberators and offered the Ukrainian soldiers pancakes for unshackling them from Russian oppression.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Well, we also know that there is a certain group of people who collaborate with the Russians there. A lot of those people have fled to the Belgrade region in Russia, which borders, obviously, Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They did that, you know, out of concern that they might be targeted for helping Russians there.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So the population that sort of remained there is welcoming the Ukrainian forces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kharkiv region has a pretty big Russian-speaking population, but that necessarily doesn't mean that they are welcoming Russian forces to take their land and, you know, attach it to a different country.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Well, what's Russia doing in the short term? How has it so far responded to this counteroffensive?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Publicly, Russia hasn't even really acknowledged much of the Ukrainian successes.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Russia's official line is that they didn't retreat, they regrouped. And they regrouped to focus in the Donetsk area, the one that I mentioned that they want to sort of regain and fall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I asked Russia's deputy foreign minister, with his country losing ground in Ukraine, was it time to admit that the invasion had been a miscalculation?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Clearly not. We're moving forward steadily and consistently to fulfill all the tasks of the special military operation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As we've said several times, they will be achieved. They're responding with more strikes, more aggression, but whether that's actually going to strategically change the situation in that particular area, again, remains to be seen.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: How important is the timing of this breakthrough from Ukraine, this counteroffensive?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know in Europe, there's a lot of fears about what this war might mean for the winter, for energy costs, for energy availability.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: How important is it that Ukraine succeed right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, it's important for both sides. For Ukraine, you know, they need to prove that all the weapons and aid they're getting from the West not only helps deter Russia further, but also shows that their assertment that they can win this war is true and has sort of real basis behind it.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Because that's something they've been, you know, saying this is crucial for them. They want their whole territory back the way it was before February 24th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Russia has been betting on this war of attrition. They're hoping that, you know, because they obviously have gas and oil supplies and Europe is quite reliant on those supplies, that them cutting and sort of using it as a bargaining chip will force Europeans to put pressure on their governments to stop helping Ukraine and sort of forget about Ukraine because of their energy bills skyrocketing.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: That's the bet that Russia is making. And that's their gamble here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've already heard a lot from Russian sort of state TV anchors and correspondents saying that they've had a really tough weekend trying to cope with the strategic loss that they've had.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: But by Monday, sort of the beginning of the week, they've recuperated and said that really, you know, the dominance in the overall war is Russia's and that the time is playing in their favor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what they mean is that they hope to wear out Ukraine, wear out Europe, and they hope that the support for Ukraine will vain.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So that why again for Ukraine it really important to show that actually they capable of really really good strategic counter
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How humiliating all this is for Vladimir Putin in a minute on Today Explained.
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--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall. And that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
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--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Today explained here with Mary Ilyushina you cover Russia for the Washington Post let's talk about Russia how embarrassing is all this for Vladimir Putin
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is pretty embarrassing because his main brand and the one that he's been building for the past 20 years is that he knows what he's doing he always gets the job done.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: In this case, we see even people who are extremely pro-Kremlin, extremely pro this invasion, saying that they don't like the way Russia goes about this, and they don't like the planning.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've heard from, you know, people like the leader of the Communist Party saying that Russia is not really fighting anymore in the special operation, it is an actual war.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And the very use of the word war to describe this mission has been essentially banned by Russia. You know, people get fined or even jailed for talking about the war out in the open. They have to call it special military operations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we've definitely seen a lot of criticism coming from the very pro-Putin, very hawkish camp.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: That is a very new development that we'll have to see whether that will push the Kremlin to change anything in the way they go about this invasion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me more of what we've been hearing in terms of criticism of this war in Russia.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Last weekend, just when the news broke that Russia lost a lot of this land and retreated, the usually quite unanimous choir of pro-Kremlin and state propagandist voices was really in disarray.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The politician says those people who convinced Putin the special operation would be over quickly, they took us for a ride.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Some people chose to completely ignore the news because they didn't know how to handle it. You know, some outlets like the Kremlin's official newspaper just did not report on this at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some very prominent TV shows started to say that, look, Russia is not just fighting against Ukraine. It's fighting against the entire NATO alliance.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: That's why they're having such a hard time doing that. We want to defeat Ukrainian army. It seems like it's practically impossible because it's strong army, really strong army.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Ukrainians are supported by practically all the European countries.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Some people use it as a way to call for more aggression. So they want Putin and Kremlin to be even more aggressive, retaliate against Ukraine, hit civilian targets and just do more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They believe that the way Russia is waging this war now is not enough. They want general mobilization. They want all country to be set on this war path.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And they want to go all out. So there's a lot of really conflicting messaging going on in the camp that is usually really pro-Putin and follows the party line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some of the liberal and opposition forces have been also trying to seize in that moment.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: There's been a pretty remarkable effort from local lawmakers to collect signs among officials on this regional level to call for Putin's resignation and accuse him of treason.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they are already facing administrative offenses and fines, and the police has launched an investigation.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: They say that basically they go, they believe they achieved the goal, which is to tell a lot of anti-war Russians who are still in the country that they're not alone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They know that Putin is not going to read this request and say, look, yes, exactly. You're right. I should stop doing this.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: But they want to get the word out that there is still some resistance. And even though there are big risks in presenting this resistance in the public, they're still willing to do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tell me more about Vladimir Putin's decision to not hold a draft, to not conscript more Russians into this war.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: In terms of general mobilization the problem with that is going to be really unpopular because what has been working so far is that a lot of Russians you know we can debate the numbers of how many support or how many are against the war But the main consensus is that they're trying to tune this out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They try to live their life as normal, putting the whole country, because that means not only drafting all the eligible men, that means resetting the whole economy and making, turning the whole country into this war machine that has to only work for the advancement of the frontline.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And that would have a lot of repercussions because what Putin, again, has been promising Russians for a long time is this concept of stability.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As long as you stay out of politics, you can have your house, your job, you can, you know, live a normal life.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: He came into the presidency at the end of 1999 promising to make Russia a great power again. He was very much in contrast to Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor as president, who was kind of known as a bit of a drunk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Vladimir Putin represented a fresh face. He didn't drink. Russia was virtually a failed state. Putin was able to restore an element of order out of this chaos, an element of prosperity out of misery, and an element of international respect out of humiliation.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And that's something that a lot of Russians would cling on to. And it would be pretty huge political decisions to change all that and take that away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he has been resisting that. And instead, they have been seeking really alternative and creative ways to draft people.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: The Kremlin has responded with the launch of an extensive campaign to recruit volunteers to fight on TV, social media and billboards.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've promised huge sums of money and other perks, but many are given little or no training and are sent straight to the front line.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And there is a concept of sort of shadow mobilization that's happening in Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What is shadow mobilization?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So that means there are several private military companies, they're basically mercenaries that are fighting on behalf of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, but not officially with the defense ministry, even though it is sort of giving them the orders and places them in places where they need them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they have been responsible for a lot of the very crucial gains that Russia had in this campaign.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: That also gives Russia some plausible deniability because there's conscripts fighting and they don't have to really acknowledge them among the losses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And another thing they have been doing is conscripting people from prisons.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So there are multiple reports in there. These private military companies go to prisons and they offer people deals. Basically, if they go to the front in six months, if they survive, they'll get a pardon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they're specifically looking for people who have been accused of murder, of violent crimes.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So that's how they've avoided a general draft. Whether that's going to be enough now, again, a big question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do Russians have any idea that their prisoners, their murderers and thieves are fighting this war for them in Ukraine?
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: I think majority does not know about this because it's obviously not covered by the national media because it's very controlled.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are multiple human rights organizations that are working to help these convicts because the convicts are not given any guarantees because mercenary service is outlawed in Russia.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: It's illegal. Nothing is written on paper. So their rights are also being violated by this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But a lot of these groups have been recognized as foreign agents in Russia, so they can operate on a wider scale and inform the general public about this effectively.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And it's really difficult to do so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think the majority does not know about this.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Do we have any idea what Putin's plans are to regain footing in Ukraine, if any?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The planning is really not public in any way.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: We don't really even know who is the overall commander of this operation in Ukraine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know, obviously, there's defense ministry, but there's somebody who's supposed to navigate all of that on the ground and be really hands-on.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And Russia has not even publicly announced who that person is.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's all really, really secretive.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: And we can glean things from, you know, social media through some of the, you know, soldiers who speak out or some of the, you know, intelligent assessments from the other side.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's quite difficult to analyze what Russia is going to do next.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: We know that they have some reserve forces, but they're also needed in some other areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we don't know exactly if they're going to be sent to Kharkiv to regain any footing.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: A lot of their battalion tactical groups have been depleted of forces throughout this campaign, and they have been sort of kind of a mince salad, and they've been throwing them together from different parts and trying to reassemble all these groups.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what that means is that the chain of command is really disrupted. And it's difficult to control all these groups because they really don't have any combat experience together.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: So that makes it difficult for them to quickly respond and efficiently respond to all these targets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How significant is this, all told? I mean, this conflict escalated just over six months ago.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: It felt like Ukraine surprised the world by making it last six months, though there have certainly been any number of low points for Ukraine throughout, but now it seems like they've got the upper hand.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All things aside, it is obviously very important.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: What is by now appears to be clear is that the fact that Russia thought Ukraine is a really weak country that's not going to sort of rally together and that the Ukrainian forces haven't spent the last eight years training with Western officers in vain, but they actually learned a lot of things and became much stronger than they were in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So all these things, I think, were not taken into account, which is showing now.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: It's showing. What's going to happen is obviously difficult to predict, especially when we have very little information coming publicly out of Moscow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think we shouldn't underestimate it as well.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: You know, it's maybe too early to say that this is the end, that this is the turning point, but we should also not underestimate it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mary Ilyushina, Washington Post.
--:-- Mary Ilyushina: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was brought to you by Miles Bryan, Amanda Llewellyn, Paul Robert Mounsey, and Matthew Collette. Vox, we were fact-checked by Serena Solon. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
