Transcript: US aid package offers fresh hope to Ukraine

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘US aid package offers fresh hope to Ukraine’

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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about the war in Ukraine. My guest is Chris Miller, the FT’s correspondent in Kyiv and author of a recent book, The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine. The US Congress has just voted through $61bn in new military aid for Ukraine. But will it be enough to turn the tide in the war?

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Gideon Rachman
After many months of wrangling and disagreement, the US House of Representatives finally passed desperately needed military aid for Ukraine. The vote came after a congressional briefing in which Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, had warned that without fresh support, Ukraine could face defeat by the end of the year. Most Republicans in the House of Representatives still voted against the new aid. But after the vote, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, himself a Republican, explained his thinking.

Mike Johnson voice clip
It’s a dangerous time. Three of our primary adversaries, Russia and Iran and China, are working together, and they’re being aggressors around the globe, and they’re a global threat to our prosperity and our security. Their advance threatens the free world, and it demands American leadership. If we turn our backs right now, the consequences could be devastating.

Gideon Rachman
Congress's vote came at a time when Ukraine was losing ground in the war. The Ukrainians are very short of ammunition and Russia is sounding more confident. So I started my conversation with Chris Miller by asking him what difference he expects the military aid to make.

Christopher Miller
This aid, it’s no secret that it’s critical to Ukraine’s survival, as Bill Burns said. But in the short term, it’s important because Ukraine needs this ammunition to stop Russia’s advance on the battlefield. So we saw the capture of the industrial city of Avdiivka in February by the Russian forces on the ground in eastern Ukraine, and since then Russian troops have continued to press ahead beyond Avdiivka, beyond the city of Bakhmut that it captured last year. It’s now pressing on the strategic town of Chasiv Yar, which is a really important point from which, if captured, Russian forces would have a launch pad towards other strategic cities and railroad junctions — cities like Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk.

But when I was out in eastern Ukraine with Ukrainian forces this month, they were only able to respond to every seven or 10 Russian artillery fires with one of their own. Some of the commanders operating American M777 howitzer systems, for example, have only been given anywhere between nine and 12 shells per day to fire at Russian forces that were firing shells at them in the dozens or hundreds. So this is a Ukrainian army that, for months now, has been outgunned, outmanned beyond the roughly 10-to-1 artillery ratio. Ukrainian forces are also outmanned compared to their Russian opponents about the same, 10-to-1, if not more, on the front line. So they’re being pressed by a much larger, much more powerful force. And this aid is crucial if they want to turn the tides of this war, which is the plan.

So what Ukraine has been doing while aid has been blocked in Congress by Republicans, there has been digging in. They’re creating these new fortifications, many thousands of kilometres worth of trench systems, bunkers, dragon’s teeth — these concrete obstacles that help to stop the advance of tracked armoured vehicles. And so the plan this year has been to dig in, try to get the Americans and Europe as well to provide more military assistance in order to stop Russia’s advance and put Ukraine really in a much better position by later this year, for it to start turning that tide and possibly planning for its own offensive operations in 2025.

Gideon Rachman
I mean, it does sound — given that situation you saw at the front, you know, outgunned 10-to-1 but also with 10 times as many soldiers facing them — that it’s remarkable that the Ukrainians were able even to hold on as far as they have been able to.

Christopher Miller
Absolutely. It’s grit and determination. You know, for the Ukrainians, this is a war of existence. Every soldier I speak to says, you know, even without our American partners helping us, even without the Europeans helping us, if it came to this, we would still fight. Hammers in hand, pitchforks in hand, we would still fight. Because they know that each step forward for the Russians is one step backward for them and one step closer to the capital, Kyiv, the heart of the country, of course. And Vladimir Putin’s goal remains maximalist. He has not shown, despite some reporting, that he is willing to sit down and negotiate. And any negotiation at this particular juncture in the war would certainly mean something near a capitulation on Ukraine’s part. And Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that there’s no room for negotiations at this moment. Ukraine’s goal also remains maximalist. It wants to see its borders restored to where they were in 1991 when it declared independence. So this is an existential fight for the Ukrainians. That’s why they’re so determined to keep fighting.

Gideon Rachman
How much difference do you think the new military aid will actually make in reality? I mean, it sounds like people are quite optimistic about being able to get the fresh ammunition to the front, really, within weeks. Will that be enough? Or does the fact that the Russians have, you know, a 10-to-1 advantage in terms of personnel still mean that the advantage lies with them?

Christopher Miller
Yeah. So practically speaking, Russia will still have the advantage. It has the initiative and advantage on the battlefield now. It will still have the advantage in terms of manpower. And Ukraine will still be outgunned. Some of this military assistance is packaged and ready to go. Some of it is in Poland, some of it is in other EU nations. And it will start rolling into Ukraine within days of President Biden’s signature. Over the course of the next few weeks, much more of it will start coming. I think practically we will see air defence munitions come into Ukraine. Those will certainly help against Russia’s long-range missile and drone attacks that have been targeting Kharkiv and Kyiv and Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro. All of these big regional capitals and industrial cities that Ukraine and its economy rely on. It will help to shoot these missiles and drones down.

Lately, in the last couple of months, many of these Russian missiles and drones have gotten through or past air defence here in Ukraine. And even President Zelenskyy said earlier this month on an attack at the largest thermal power plant here in Kyiv region that it ran out of missiles and wasn’t able to shoot down the Russian missiles that were targeting it, which is why it was destroyed. On the battlefield, artillery shells, particularly 155mm artillery shells, are going to be crucial to Ukraine’s defence. They’ve not been able to fill the void of these shells in recent months, which is a big reason why they’ve lost ground. They’ve tried to fill that void with their small stocks of smaller artillery shells here. They’ve also used FPV drones, or first-person drones, and other attack drones to try to fill that gap.

But as the commander of the Achilles 92nd drone battalion told me, these attack drones do not fill the gap left by this artillery. So what it’s going to hopefully do is stop the Russian advance on the ground where it is now. It’s probably not going to be enough to beat them back to where they were six months ago. It is very likely also that the Russians could continue to press forward in some areas where they have enough momentum, because they do still have more weapons. And in recent weeks and months, they’ve been using these really devastating massive glide bombs to sort of pound their way through. So one of the top national security officials here in Ukraine that I spoke to last week was saying, look, this military assistance from the United States is great, but it is not, and it doesn’t contain a silver bullet. We’re not going to win the war just because we’re getting this $60bn influx of military assistance. But it can help us turn the tide and stop Russia’s advance if used well.

Gideon Rachman
Just briefly switching to the Russian side of things. You know, this time last year, the Russian army looked like it was very, very ineffective. Do you have the sense that they have learned, that they now know more about what they’re doing? Or is it just that they’ve managed to essentially mobilise all the resources of a much larger country, as well as getting in support from Iran, North Korea and others?

Christopher Miller
Yeah, it’s both. It’s a bit of both. Russia does have the ability to mobilise more soldiers for its fight. It is currently mobilising roughly 30,000 each month or enough to replenish its losses on the battlefield. But it is — and this is according to Ukrainian commanders who I’ve interviewed this month — learning, adapting. It’s no longer making the mistakes that it did in the first days, weeks, months of this war when Ukraine had a lot of success, pushing the initial Russian advance back, or in the 2022 counteroffensive that autumn that saw Ukraine take large areas of Kharkiv and Kherson region back from them.

The one thing that I heard from every commander that I spoke to this month — and there were several of them — was we cannot afford to underestimate our Russian enemy. They’re more powerful. They have more weapons, and they’re not stupid. Despite the sort of image of these convict battalions, storm battalions on the front that are being sort of thrown into the fight that they describe as a meat grinder, the regular Russian army is not that. These are people that Vladimir Putin, they say, views as expendable. They’re essentially meant to gain little pieces of ground here and there. Just moving ahead, you know, 50m, 100m at a time. But Russia’s officers, which have seen some casualties, are still very skilled. Their soldiers are very skilled. And the one thing that I heard was that they see a lot of Russian soldiers that are well-armed and well-dressed, and they have good protection. And the other thing is that they say they’re operating more along the lines of the sort of Russian force that many people believe they were prior to 2022. They view them as a very powerful foe, not to be underestimated. And that was underscored by everybody that I spoke with.

Gideon Rachman
So turning to the Ukrainian side in this crucial issue of manpower, I mean, I must say that one of the things that struck me when I was with you in Kyiv last year was that there were still quite a lot of young men on the streets of Kyiv, and they weren’t all being rounded up and sent to the front. But obviously, since then, Ukraine has had many losses. How many more soldiers can they mobilise? And what kind of strains will it put on Ukrainian society?

Christopher Miller
Yeah. So this is the other big issue at the moment. So we’re looking at, you know, more than two years into a full-scale war. Ukraine’s experienced soldiers have been exhausted. Many of them have been cut down in battle, wounded or killed. Zelenskyy has said at least 31,000 were killed. We know the true number is much higher than that, and he has admitted to that because there are tens of thousands that are technically missing in action. Their bodies haven’t been recovered. And so this is a force that needs to be replenished. And the big issue right now is mobilisation. There are recruitment posters on every street in Kyiv. And it’s really interesting. It’s like a contest now to sort of recruit for your battalion or your brigade. And there are various ways that they’re trying to attract new people by saying, you know, that your contract is only going to be, you know, this long or you’re going to get a guaranteed six weeks of training or a guaranteed two weeks of training, or you can choose your own adventure in this war. If you sign up now, rather than be mobilised by the government, you can choose to work in a drone unit. You can choose to work in an assault brigade, something along those lines. But in terms of the numbers, what we heard last autumn from Ukraine’s general staff was that upwards of 400-500,000 new troops would need to be mobilised.

But the new commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, who came into his position earlier this year, has said that it’s not necessary to mobilise that many people. He’s not really put a number on it, but it is clear that tens of thousands of new soldiers will be needed if Ukraine wants to continue this fight. Just if you look at the attrition rate of the war, that’s what’s going to be needed, if not more. And they’ve taken some pains here to replenish these forces. Zelenskyy has signed earlier this month a new law lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25, and parliament has passed a new law on mobilisation that allows for a little bit more time off, a little bit more pay, some other things to sort of sweeten the deal if you do get mobilised. But right now there is a conscription problem. There aren’t a whole lot of military-aged men left to draw from compared to the first days of the war. The war is not going in Ukraine’s favour at the moment, so a lot of men are not excited about being mobilised or running to recruitment centres on their own to join these brigades.

I mentioned the age of conscription and it’s 25 now, right? And there aren’t a lot of countries at war across the world where the age of conscription is so high. I’m American and I remember when I was in high school just about to turn 18, every military recruiter knocking on my door to see if I was interested in joining the Navy or the Air Force or the Army because the age to join the military was 18. And so here, there are some people saying Volodymyr Zelenskyy really needs to use his power to lower this conscription age even further, so that we can draw from the ranks of younger, physically able men. Right now, the average age of the Ukrainian soldier on the front line is 43 years old. Not great when you’re fighting a force that’s much larger, more powerful and has a larger populace to draw from. So that’s going to be an issue going forward. You can get all of the guns in the world from the United States and Europe, but if you don’t have able-bodied soldiers to use them, you’re not going to win this fight.

Gideon Rachman
So despite the kind of semi-euphoria that accompanied the congressional vote, I mean, the picture you’re painting is, you know, in some respects still a very worrying one. Do the Ukrainians, when they look at all these various factors, do they have a vision for how this ends, for victory? I mean, do they have a military perspective? Do they have a political perspective? Or is it still just a question now of holding on?

Christopher Miller
It’s very much, at the moment, a question of holding on. But what this military aid package does, and hopefully what these new measures on mobilisation will do, is allow Ukraine a little bit more time to build out its strategy and plan for the future, for a moment when, if it is able to stop the Russian advance this year, it’ll be able to turn around and launch its own offensives to win back territory. There is still this maximalist image of victory, which is pushing the Russians out all the way out — out of Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014, out of south and eastern Ukraine, and all the way back to the independent borders of the country established in 1991. There isn’t a lot of talk, certainly not publicly, of what a victory in Ukraine and for Ukraine would look like if Russia remained on those territories. And so right now, what this aid is going to be able to give Ukraine is some breathing room, some room to manoeuvre, fight back, defend well so that it can have some time to decide what that victory looks like, what is possible and how to achieve it.

Gideon Rachman
I suppose one thing that might help them a bit more is that, isn’t it expected that this summer they will finally get receipt of advanced fighter aircraft, which I remember Zelenskyy appealing for when he visited Britain? Could that make a change?

Christopher Miller
They’re hoping that it will make an impact. I think there’s no weapon in this war that’s essentially the weapon that’s going to end the war. But these jets will help the Ukrainian forces to keep Russian fighters and bombers away from the front line. I mentioned these devastating glide bombs earlier, and they really are having a huge impact on the battlefield. They’re just pounding Ukrainian positions, pulverising residential buildings, and they’re allowing for Russia’s ground forces to push through the rubble and gain the territory that they’ve gained over the last five, six months. If the Ukrainians do get the F-16s as promised — and Dmytro Kuleba had told me just a couple of weeks ago that he expects some of them to begin arriving in summer — then they could also, with this military assistance the Ukrainians are getting now, stop the Russians in their tracks. And hopefully, in the future, they’d be able to turn that tide and push them back. But those jets, they’re not going to win the war for Ukraine. There’s just not enough of them. But they will be able to fight against Russia’s air force and keep it away from the front lines. These are jets that are dropping massive glide bombs. They’re launching long-range missiles and rockets on Ukrainian infrastructure. And so, you know, the sooner these jets get here, the better for Ukraine’s defences.

Gideon Rachman
And what is the political atmosphere at the top like in Kyiv? Because we’ve seen open arguments at times between Zelenskyy and some of the military commanders, reshuffles of personnel, some suggestion that there is nascent discontent with Zelenskyy himself. So how united is the Ukrainian leadership?

Christopher Miller
Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, Zelenskyy has lost some popularity, if you look at the polling of the last few months versus the polling that was done in 2022, for instance, when he was back up to his election-level popularity of, you know, roughly 70 per cent. I think the highest it got in wartime was somewhere in the 80 percentile. You know, he is still a popular wartime leader. A majority of the populace still supports him and has trust in him. But, you know, this wave of personnel changes, particularly the former commander-in-chief, who is very popular, even more popular in Ukraine than Zelenskyy himself, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi. That was something that really saw Zelenskyy take a hit among the population. He has made these shuffles in government and his administration. I think they’re ongoing. Some of his lower-level staff are being moved around or fired completely. Zelenskyy, we know from his now five years in power, he likes to reboot his team every so often. This is not the first time he’s done this. He did it at least twice before the full-scale invasion began, and he’s done it now twice since in removing top-level officials and mid-level officials. So this is Zelenskyy’s way of, in his words, rebooting his government and his administration, looking for fresh faces with fresh ideas to come in. But it is something that has frustrated the public. They’ve seen some people who are deemed to be very savvy operators pushed out, new people who are viewed as being too close to Zelenskyy come in, and there’s a concern that he is consolidating power around himself and really closing his circle of people he trusts. And that’s something that is of concern to anti-corruption activists I speak with, civil society members who watch these moves closely.

Gideon Rachman
And beyond the kind of immediate atmosphere around politics and around Zelenskyy, what’s the atmosphere in Kyiv itself like? I mean, you described what it feels like up at the front line. I must say, and thinking back to about a year ago when I was in Kyiv with you, the thing that surprised me was how normal things seemed. The electricity at that point was still functioning. People were going out at night. There weren’t that many air raids. People weren’t spending that much time in bomb shelters. Has all that changed now, particularly with the attacks on the power infrastructure?

Christopher Miller
There’s still some of that here. It’s still difficult to get a restaurant reservation in Kyiv on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday if you don’t call ahead. But, you know, in the last few months it’s not been doom and gloom, but it has been more downcast than I’ve seen it over the last two and a half years. These missile attacks have had an impact. Ukraine’s inability to defend itself because of the lack of air defence missiles has really hurt morale. The losses on the battlefield in the east and the south also have seen morale take a big hit. People, I would say, in the last couple of months were more down than I’ve seen them in quite some time.

That said, the passage of this US aid bill last weekend really brought this palpable feeling of relief. I was in touch with some of the commanders on the front line, who were watching from their Starlink internet systems on their iPhones, in bunkers or command centres, and they were jubilant when this was passed and were texting me about how happy they were that artillery shells would start flowing to them. And if you were monitoring Ukrainian social media or watching Ukrainian television at the same time, like I was, everybody was online talking about this and thrilled that the House of Representatives had finally passed this. So, you know, after several months of this real downbeat mood, there is this sense of, OK, things are now turning back in our favour. We haven’t been forgotten.

There is always this talk of Ukraine fatigue in the west. And I think there’s certainly this sense that people are tiring of this war. But for the Ukrainians right now, they’ve gotten a little boost, and they’re hoping that this will give some momentum. And I could see if they’re able to actually stop the Russians in the east and better defend themselves in the skies over their cities here, you know, I think the mood really could brighten. But, you know, nobody’s under any illusions. They know that this is a long war. They really are settling in for a long fight. And there is exhaustion here. So I don’t want to give the sense of, oh, everybody feels like everything’s going to be fine now. That’s not the case. I think generally people are more realistic now than they were a year and a half ago when Ukraine was coming off of these victories on the battlefield, where they had the successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv in the east and Kherson in the south. I think there’s a lot more realism that has been injected recently.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Chris Miller, the FT’s Ukraine correspondent, ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening and please join me again next week.

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