Transcript: Putin steps up summer offensive against Ukraine

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Putin steps up summer offensive against Ukraine’

Ben Hall
Hello and welcome to The Rachman Review. I’m Ben Hall, Europe editor of the Financial Times, and I’m standing in for Gideon Rachman. This week’s podcast is about the state of the war in Ukraine, nearly three and a half years into Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion. My guest is Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst, author of The Return of War. He has visited Ukraine many times since 2022, travelling the length of the front line and talking to Ukrainian commanders.

Russia has ramped up its offensive operations in Ukraine. According to Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s military chief, Moscow has deployed nearly 700,000 troops for a summer offensive. Can we expect a decisive Russian breakthrough in the coming weeks? Or will Ukraine’s courageous but overstretched defenders hold on?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Donald Trump voice clip
Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly. (Crowd cheering) I will get the problem solved. And I will get it solved in rapid order and it will take me no longer than one day.

Ben Hall
The peace deal that US President Donald Trump said he could seal in one day looks more distant than ever. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is sticking to his maximalist goals of seizing the entirety of four regions or oblasts his army now partially occupies, and subjugating the whole of Ukraine. Russian forces have intensified their attacks on key points along the 1,200km front line. They are now bombarding Ukrainian cities with as many as 500 missiles and drones a night.

News clip
Just a day after it unleashed its biggest missile and drone attack of the war. Using well over 500 drones, five killed and over 30 people injured in the last 24 hours. Blasts lighting up the night sky. (Explosions) Kyiv residents hunkering down in shelters.

Ben Hall
Rather than put pressure on the Kremlin, the US has stopped deliveries to Kyiv of air defence interceptors and other missiles, although Trump suggested this week he might still send a few. Ukraine’s defenders and its city dwellers are living through some of the toughest weeks of the war. I began by asking Franz to assess the situation at the front.

Franz-Stefan Gady
I think it’s fair to say that Russia has been on the advance for the last couple of months. They’ve launched a couple of offensive operations for fairly marginal gains along the front line. The front line is not completely stable. The Ukrainians are conducting withdrawals from parts of the front line and the Russians are pushing on. But at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely that the Russians are going to achieve a breakthrough that could be rapidly exploited. I think the Russian centre of gravity of ongoing military operations is clearly the Donbas. They are trying to push on to the town of Kostyantynivka in southern Donetsk. There’s also a concerted effort to take the town of Pokrovsk, also push into the next oblast from west of Pokrovsk, and then also encircle the crucial towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, and here is also where the heaviest fighting is currently happening. But despite Russian efforts over the last couple of months, the gains have not been substantial for the Russian forces, but it’s really about the relative attrition rates. And here the Ukrainian forces have been able to inflict substantial amounts of attrition on the Russian forces, but also Ukrainian forces have suffered.

Ben Hall
There’s been quite a lot of attention recently on the Russian push towards the oblast in Dnipropetrovsk. How significant is that current effort?

Franz-Stefan Gady
One major question that I have is, can the Russian forces in that area continue to encircle Pokrovsk and also threaten essentially the rear of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, and then at the same time push on into the next oblast? Secondly, I think there’s political significance to this, of course. Russian troops on the ground in another oblast sends a clear political message because what you do if you push on, little by little you start threatening Dnipro, which now is sort of the economic heartland of Ukraine. It also clearly says that Russian war aims don’t stop at the Donbas, they go beyond the Donbas, although I should say that Russian war aims, by and large, have not substantially changed since February 2022. And this is also something to keep in mind here.

Ben Hall
You said that the main Russian effort is clearly in Donetsk. They are also advancing across the border in the north towards Sumy, a large Ukrainian city. Is that city becoming vulnerable?

Franz-Stefan Gady
Yes indeed, Russian forces have crossed the border, they’re trying to establish a buffer zone on Ukrainian territory, and they’re also threatening the logistically important town of Sumy, a town that had a prewar population of around 250,000 and is now constantly subject to bombardments by drones, artillery, other long-range precision-guided munitions. And here the Russian idea is that given Sumy’s pivotal role as a major logistics hub and then part of the front line, they tried to make Sumy untenable. The Ukrainians here have been able to push back the Russians over the last couple of weeks, but the issue is that the Ukrainian line is fairly thinned out. And I think people need to appreciate, we tend to focus quite a bit on the drone warfare aspects, the role of unmanned systems, the role of technology in this ongoing military confrontation. But at the end of the day, the most important element in this war is still the infantrymen. And Ukraine still doesn’t have enough infantrymen on the front line. And that’s a huge, huge challenge. And I think this is, in a way, a microcosm of what the strategy for the Ukrainian armed forces should look like. And I do think it’s also the idea of the Ukrainian general staff, that is, maintain essentially your position on the front line as it is now and make the Russian advance as costly as possible. And you can do that through infantry, infantry supported by artillery, supported by mines, supported by drones, all of this together.

Ben Hall
Indeed. And some of the Russian advances that have happened this summer have been in those places where the Ukrainians have pulled forces back, right, to redeploy them elsewhere. So there’s a sort of game of cat and mouse almost across the front line with the Russians seeking to exploit those gaps as they see them. Is this the big summer offensive from Russia, or might we expect actually an even bigger acceleration, a bigger push?

Franz-Stefan Gady
While I think the term offensive might generate the wrong picture in our mind, the Russians have been pushing since March essentially. They’ve increased the pace of operations, they’ve thrown more manpower, more material into this fight. The idea is really that they are gnawing themselves through Ukrainian defences little by little. The major issue that Russian forces are still facing is that they can’t really attack in large formations in a fairly well co-ordinated manner. A lot of people would think that’s because drones now are omnipresent and ISR, that is intelligence surveillance reconnaissance capability, have essentially made the battlefields of Ukraine transparent. No, that’s not the case. It’s really about organisational capacity into the Russian armed forces. And I should say that Ukrainian armed forces, to a certain degree, really don’t have the ability to scale up combat operations on the front line, which is also why the Russians still haven’t been able to actually exploit breakthroughs. The Russians push and they find a gap in the front line, they enter a trench, but because they can only do so in fairly small numbers, the Ukrainians usually are able to block the gap.

Now, of course, drones cannot hold the front line alone, and I think this is something that tech enthusiasts sometimes underappreciate. Just a little anecdote from a recent visit to the front line. We went to this brigade headquarters. The brigade commander showed us a part of the front line where essentially he has to hold a 900-metre stretch of the front line with a squad that is eight men. Eight men are defending 900 metres of the front line. Of course, they’re supported by artillery, they’re are supported by drones, they are supported by all kinds of additional capabilities but the idea that this particular part of the front line can actually be held by drones alone or just by artillery, once you are there, you see the lunacy of this argument. So manpower, again, is extremely critical in all of this.

Ben Hall
You talked earlier about Ukraine’s difficulties in force generation. Can you explain why they’ve had such problems in mobilising, training and turning those new recruits into effective fighting forces?

Franz-Stefan Gady
Well, I think we should look at this from different layers of analysis. First, there is a clear decision at the political level that Ukraine is not going to call up certain age groups for military service. It’s not going to force young men to serve in the armed forces for political reasons, for reasons that have not so much anything to do with the war, but with the future of Ukraine once a ceasefire or a peace agreement is in place. So this actually reduces the amount of manpower you can actually draw from.

At the same time, there have been issues with how Ukraine has actually been training people called up for military service or people volunteering for military service. In my opinion, Ukraine still hasn’t succeeded in establishing a good training system for operations at the front line. I should always say whenever we talk about the Ukrainian armed forces, it’s fairly important to realise that this is a horizontally organised organisation, right? It’s fairly decentralised, where you have excellent combat formations, excellent units, but you also have units that are not doing too well. And I think the hallmark of a good military organisation from a structural perspective is that it is trying to even out these differences so that you have a good base layer of combat effectiveness, and I think here Ukraine could still improve.

And I think the third issue is that for a while, Ukraine was actually standing up additional formations, additional brigades with inexperienced non-commissioned officers and inexperienced and not well-trained enlisted men. And the results were predictable, right, that these types of formations and units weren’t really performing too well. So I think it’s an assortment of all these three factors.

And this, of course, hearing the stories about training not being conducted very well, certain units not being really units that you would want to serve in, and then also perhaps an inability to transform from one unit to another if you had the desire to do so, is actually deterring a lot of people from volunteering.

And then, of course, the last factor, and I think that’s probably perhaps the most important factor in all of this, this is the fourth year of the war. Ukraine has suffered tremendous losses. Well, it’s not . . . in comparison to other high-intensity conflicts in the past, but for a war on European soil in the 21st century, Ukraine has suffered tremendous casualties. And there is obviously, after a while, a certain amount of war fatigue. And this, I think, speaks about a larger issue that I detect, and this is a growing gulf between the soldiers at the front line, those who are actually doing the fighting, and the rear, including the capital, Kyiv, the political class, the economic elite of Ukraine and so forth.

Ben Hall
I take your point about the growing gap. The other development, I suppose, we’ve seen in recent months away from the front lines is this increasing use of very large-scale mass aerial assaults on Ukrainian cities, sometimes with over 500 drones and missiles. What do you think the significance of these really large-scale Russian attacks are? I’ve heard a senior Ukrainian official predict that it will only be a matter of time before Russia is sending over a thousand drones and missiles a night. Does this have any military significance and do you think it will succeed in terms of grinding down morale?

Franz-Stefan Gady
Well, war is always a contest of wills, right? And one of the principal aims of this Russian strategic air strike campaign is essentially to break the Ukrainian will to resist. And I have to say, over the last couple of weeks, Ukraine has endured a number of large-scale attacks that have certainly impacted the Ukrainian morale, particularly the civilian morale. This also, of course, has an impact on the Ukrainian defence industrial base to a certain degree. It also has an impact on the future of Ukraine, right? I mean, any talk about investing in Ukraine or rebuilding is linked to this Russian strategic strike campaign because one message that Russia also senses is that even if there is a ceasefire in place or even if Russian troops are not advancing, they can still hold Ukrainian cities hostage. And this, to a certain degree, in my opinion, is also supposed to deter western investments in Ukraine.

So I think there’s a concerted effort by the Russians here to attrit Ukrainian air defences. This remains one of the principal weaknesses, I would say, of Ukraine’s defence industrial base. It really relies — when it comes to long-range air interceptors, particularly air interceptors that can be used to shoot down ballistic missiles — on western military support, particularly US support. And this is not something that can be remedied over the next couple of months or even years. So here, Ukraine will be dependent on the west for the foreseeable future.

And I think this is also the reason why Russia here is pushing and pushing and pushing because I still think that the Kremlin, that Vladimir Putin and certain elements of the Russian military leadership believe that this year could be pivotal in this ongoing military confrontation. They believe that this next push, this offensive now along the front line in conjunction with the strategic strike campaign could actually lead to a situation where Ukraine will find it in a highly disadvantageous position when it ultimately decides to enter negotiations with Russia. And so in my opinion, the strategic strike campaign certainly will have an impact on the overall military situation in the country.

Ben Hall
And it makes it, therefore, all the more damaging that the Pentagon last week decided to suspend certain deliveries of air defence interceptors and other missiles.

Franz-Stefan Gady
Yes, that is true, but I think that’s just a symptom of a larger issue that I think we Europeans have chosen to ignore to a certain degree. And that is that the Trump administration from day one has made it clear that eventually it wants to hand over the Ukrainian problem to the Europeans. And to me, no matter what really the internal mechanics were behind the scenes and who ultimately gave the order to stop this fairly limited amount of ammunition, by the way, I think the political signal here was clear. And it was meant for the Europeans. Sooner or later, you are going to own this war. You can’t rely on us, despite Trump’s promises of additional air defence interceptors. And I should say that deliveries have been ongoing over the last couple of months. And the United States continues to support Ukraine, not only with arms deliveries, but also with crucial battlefield intelligence, right?

So, the worst-case scenario here has not really come through, but I do think there are signals by the Americans, time and again, that they want to hand this problem over to the Europeans. And I’m not sure whether the Europeans are ready yet. Europe, by and large, still has refused to answer some principal or first-order questions when it comes to Ukraine. And that is: what is Ukraine’s role in Europe’s security architecture? Only if we have a clear answer to this question can we actually decide what we are willing to do to guarantee an independent and not Russian-dominated Ukraine. We’ve said that we are going to support Ukraine. We’ve said that we’re going to stick to Ukraine no matter what, that we're going to militarily support Ukraine. It all goes back to this question, though: what does Ukraine really mean to Europe?

And I think one discussion that sort of has disappeared now from the headlines is potential European troop deployments to Ukraine after a ceasefire agreement, right? And there are many reasons why this hasn’t materialised. But to me, the most obvious is because we couldn’t really find a consensus in Europe what Ukraine really means. Certain countries — France and Great Britain — were willing to do stuff, but they wouldn’t do it without an American backstop, to some form of US military support. Then you had issues with whether European militaries actually had the capacity to deploy it. But crucially, what Russia’s reaction would be. And it became clear to me that nobody wanted to state it out publicly, right, that ultimately, none of these European countries or the leaders of these respective European countries who were pushing ahead with this idea of deploying troops to Ukraine felt politically secure enough in asking their respective populations to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. And that’s, I think, a key question that needs answering.

Now, some said this is maybe a question that we don’t need to answer because it’s highly unlikely that Russia would go to war with European countries, particularly France, Great Britain, because they are also nuclear powers and nuclear deterrents to hold and so forth. And it is an unrighteous interest to do so for multiple reasons to expand this military confrontation. But still, I think if you have a coalition that goes into Ukraine with a mandate to stay there for a substantial amount of time and help stabilise the front line, or a reassurance force or whatever you want to call it, I think you need some clear-cut political objectives, because the easiest thing is to get yourself into war. The hardest thing is usually to get yourself out of a war. And this is also something that Vladimir Putin is seeing right now in Russia, because also he probably would have problems extracting himself from this war with face-saving measures.

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Ben Hall
That was Franz-Stefan Gady speaking to me from Vienna. And that’s it for this week. Please join us again next week for another edition of The Rachman Review.