Firefighters put out a fire after two guided bombs hit the Epicenter shopping complex in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in May, as part of Moscow’s deliberate campaign against civilian targets. The sign reads “Garden Center.”
Andrii Marienko / AP

SELYDOVE, Ukraine — In this devastated small eastern town, in the heavily contested region of Pokrovsk, Russia’s deliberate bombing of civilian targets is visible everywhere.

I emphasize the word deliberate, because bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure is the centerpiece of Russia’s strategy to destroy Ukraine, even if it can’t occupy the country fully. As I drive around with Maj. Boris (call sign: Johnson) of the 59th Brigade, he points out an apartment building partly crushed by a glide bomb.

“What great military targets!” Boris laughs, without humor.

Two missiles hit the elementary school, one destroyed the kindergarten. The bank, the polytechnic college, a restaurant — all crushed. The roof of the local hospital was destroyed; a bomb even targeted the cemetery. This is not collateral damage from war; there are no military installations anywhere in the vicinity.

“They can’t take the big cities, so they try to empty and destroy every village and town, as well as civilian infrastructure for the entire country,” Boris said bitterly. “It’s nothing but civilian destruction.”

Indeed, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukrainian civilians makes clear what some NATO leaders are still too timid to face up to, as they prepare to meet for the alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit this week in Washington, D.C. Putin wants to destroy independent Ukraine and won’t stop unless he is forced to by giving Ukraine the Western weapons it needs right now and putting it on a clear path to NATO membership.

Ukrainians keep fighting, not because President Joe Biden and NATO force them to, as Russian propaganda blares daily, echoed word for word by Donald Trump and his MAGA devotees. Ukrainians keep fighting because they know what will happen to them if they agree to a cease-fire. It will only give Putin a breather to prepare for his next attack.

Most Americans have no clue about the extent of civilian destruction, rape, murder, torture, and de-Ukrainization Putin has brought to the territories Russia has occupied, nor the number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians he has murdered. My current trip to Ukraine has been aimed at examining how Putin wages war, how Russia acts within the Ukrainian territory it has seized, and how it has treated POWs — all contributing to Putin’s long list of war crimes.

What I have seen is a mountain of evidence as to why there is no point to negotiations with a Kremlin leader who disdains international law, commits war crimes too numerous to catalog — and has broken every accord Russia made with Ukraine since the Soviet Union dissolved.

As nearly every Ukrainian I spoke to repeated: Putin understands only force.

The Russian way

On this trip — my fourth since the initial whispers of war in early 2022 — I visited Kyiv, the key southern port of Odesa, the eastern front lines near Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar, and the cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, where many internal refugees from the occupied territories live.

One cannot fly into Ukraine because all airports have been closed since the war started. So my route took me by plane through Warsaw, Poland, to Chișinău (Kishinev), the capital of Moldova, and then three and a half hours by car to Odesa. No sooner did I reach the “pearl of the Black Sea” than I saw the results of Putin’s bombing campaign aimed at destroying Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure.

Odesa was dark, as rolling blackouts hit all of Ukraine’s cities. No air-conditioning, except at hotels, restaurants, and for those who can afford generators. That means no refrigeration, and often no water. It means mothers with kids who live in apartments have to carry them, along with nonperishable groceries, up punishing flights of stairs.

Many Ukrainians told me Putin’s goal is to freeze the people during the winter, driving millions more to flee to neighboring European countries, and denuding the country of population. This is a war crime. This is why The Hague, Netherlands-based International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in June for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and top Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov for attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, that won’t stop the Kremlin.

“From the first days of the invasion, the Russian army proved that human life does not matter to them,” I was told in Kyiv by Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, who is compiling data on Russian war crimes. “More than 162,000 civilian infrastructure objects have been damaged or destroyed, and of these, 130,000 are housing.”

I have seen this Russian destruction over and over in every big city I have visited — deliberate targeting of universities, high schools, markets, cinemas, shopping malls, even the Ukrainian equivalent of a huge Home Depot in Kharkiv.

“Plunging Ukraine into darkness and cold is an obvious plan of the aggressor and one more sign of the genocidal nature of this war,” Kostin said.

I traveled east by car, over bumpy roads and through partly destroyed villages where some people still refuse to leave. We passed endless fields of wheat and rye, and the early yellow buds of the sunflower crop.

In stark contrast to those cheerful blossoms, Putin’s disdain for humanity — including his own troops — was the subject of much discussion with the military units I visited. I also had many long talks about the death toll caused by Congress’ six-month cutoff of military aid, and the creative efforts of Ukrainian soldiers to hold the line by technological innovation, including drones.

Most revolting to Ukrainian soldiers is the Russian disregard for their own men, leaving dead bodies to rot in trenches and fields and even burying the wounded alive.

I won’t easily forget the conversation I had with 28-year-old Capt. Hans (his military code name), who heads an artillery battery in the 59th Brigade, and went through the painful “shell hunger” caused by the U.S. aid holdup.

Sitting on rough homemade chairs deep in the woods near a base outside Pokrovsk, Hans spoke of the human waves of troops Russia sends forward. When the first wave, usually draftees from the occupied Donbas region, are slain, the second wave advances over their corpses. The next waves are Russian convicts or members of its ethnic minorities. By the 10th or 15th attempt, they often manage to move forward.

“There are plenty of cases where they roll over or through Russian bodies,” Hans told me. “They throw bodies out of trenches to use the same trenches and don’t mind the smell.

“This is how they advance. When we see the way they treat their own with no respect, as if they are not human, all the hairs on our bodies stand on end.”

Stretching his long legs, Hans reflected on a question that deeply bothers many on the front lines.

“Putin said Ukraine needed to concede four regions” — which Russian troops only partly occupy — “to Moscow. But how can we accept that if there are Ukrainian citizens there who don’t want to live under Russia? They know what will happen, like Bucha, Hostomel, or Mariupol — massive killing and rapes,” he said. “For Russian troops in occupied territories, there are no laws. They can do anything they want.”

News from Mariupol

Capt. Hans’ thoughts on occupied territories touched on a place I often think about: Mariupol.

I visited the once beautiful port city just before Putin’s army blasted it into the ground in 2022. That included bombing the city’s iconic drama theater, which was sheltering 600 women and children.

I checked out the office of Me Mariupol in Dnipro, one of a series of centers for Mariupol refugees set up across the country by the city’s former and still de facto mayor, Vadym Boychenko. The mayor’s deputy for these centers, former Mariupol City Councillor Oleksandr Khaliavinskyi, was still visibly affected by the destruction of a multicultural city so many Ukrainians loved.

Although there was no electricity on a steamy hot day, at least a dozen volunteers — all escapees from the city — were busy helping fellow refugees go through a free clothes rack, fill out legal documents, or pick up their children from a day-care center on the site. “Eighty percent of the city buildings were destroyed, including 2,500 apartment blocs,” Khaliavinskyi told me. “Many of these were demolished with dead or wounded inside.”

I spoke at a nearby cafe with a 20-year-old university student who escaped from Mariupol in March 2023 — I will call him Alex because some family members remain in the city. “The most horrible thing I saw,” he told me, “was when the Russians blew up a whole building damaged by their rockets with injured people still in it. They took the rubble to the dump, then covered the building site with cement. No one thought to evacuate the living.

“People were screaming because you could see men and women stuck under collapsed concrete plates. The Russians didn’t bother to help. They waited for them to stop screaming. A nice lady wearing a pink robe was crying for help. Some humanitarian volunteers begged the Russian police to rescue her. They said, ‘Shut your mouth.’”

Putin has made a big show of visiting new prefab apartment blocks with yellow and green trim that are promoted on Russian social media as proving Russia is rebuilding the city. “The fancy buildings are for those Russians whom their government is bringing from the far east to repopulate the city and do menial jobs. Now the population is more of ethnic outsiders than of locals,” Khaliavinskyi said.

“All the population is forced to get Russian passports, otherwise there is no health care or pensions. In every neighborhood, there are checkpoints to stop and investigate your phone for any Ukrainian channels, which means arrest and torture. People are so scared to use the Ukrainian language and can only receive Russian TV or propaganda,” he added.

Youngsters are indoctrinated at school to believe there is no such country as Ukraine, and in adulthood are mobilized into the local proxy army for Russia, which is sent to the front as cannon fodder against brother Ukrainians.

Alex told me how Russians had stripped the facilities of his technical university bare, tossing out all books in Ukrainian and even Russian books whose content they disliked. The Russians also looted the local history museum. An avid techie, Alex managed to hack into the database of his university and found a series of presentations the Russians had designed for lecturers to give to high school and university classes. “The maps showed no more Ukrainian state, and the bulk of the country had been turned into regions of Russia.”

“They teach them the worst lies about Ukraine,” I was told angrily by Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk in Kyiv. She has the hopeful title of minister of reintegration of temporarily occupied territories. “Mariupol is practically a city that can be called a cemetery, with buildings constructed over Ukrainian bones,” she said.

Indeed, Russia’s treatment of Mariupol and other occupied areas seems identical to current definitions of genocide — attempting to erase the culture, religion, language, indeed the very identity of a people — all while deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia for adoption, and jailing tens of thousands of civilians accused of embracing Ukraine or its language.

It is little wonder Ukrainians feel their struggle is existential, with Putin openly declaring there is no such thing as a Ukrainian state. In March, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine issued a report condemning the Russian intimidation, violence, detention, and punishment of Ukrainians under occupation.

Putin does not care.

War crimes

One of the ultimate horrors of Russian war crimes is the unspeakable treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, especially the last holdouts in besieged Mariupol, who lasted for weeks inside the Azovstal steelworks.

They were guaranteed an honorable surrender and humane prison conditions by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which then did little to prevent them from being delivered to pure hell.

Prosecutor General Kostin spoke to me at length about the treatment of detainees and POWs and how it violates international laws of warfare. More than 160 torture chambers and places of detention were discovered in liberated territory. Mostly the goal was to eliminate community leaders or anyone who could resist Russian rule.

But the methods of torture used bear close resemblance to the Nazi torture chambers in World War II. Nothing is too ugly or disgusting. And as the U.N. report detailed, sexual violence is openly committed by Russian soldiers and interrogators against women and men as a weapon of war.

I spoke in Kyiv with Anna Sosonska, a deputy in the chief prosecutor’s office who supervises investigations of sexual crimes committed during the war, and who has been developing a process that protects women and girls from stigma if they come forward with complaints.

“The Russian military uses sexual violence as the cheapest method of terror,” she told me. “We have incidents everywhere that Russian forces are based.”

Sosonska said they have recorded incidents where Russia’s FSB intelligence agents told their victims, “You are tortured because you are Ukrainian.” As the U.N. report mentioned, more than half of the POWs from the Azovstal steelworks suffered from sexual violence, indicating it was standard operating procedure, not rogue behavior.

This is not surprising given the vituperation toward Ukrainians that dominates Russian social media and TV talk shows.

What moved me the most about talking with Sosonska was what she told me about the stories her Jewish great-grandmother told her about “the Nazi camps for Jews.”

“These stories were very similar to the conditions of Ukrainian POWs in Russian camps,” she said.

There is good reason why Ukrainians call Putin “Putler,” and why he tries to reverse this label by ludicrously calling Ukrainians “Nazis” — a lie ignorantly embraced in the U.S. by many in the MAGA camp.

Putin’s genocidal approach to Ukraine, and his cold-blooded inhumanity, make clear why Ukrainians believe he can only be stopped by force, and by Ukrainian membership in NATO. What I saw and heard in Ukraine illustrates why Trump’s embrace of Putin is reprehensible, and why Biden’s approach must be tougher.

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told me in Kyiv: “It is impossible to help Ukraine with one hand and shake Putin’s hand with the other.”

Especially when that criminal’s hand is covered in blood.

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Zelensky meeting with Inquirer Worldview columnist Trudy Rubin at the presidential palace in Kyiv,
Ukraine, on June 24. “We are grateful that the West did not let Russia occupy us [fully], but we need justice,”
he says.

KYIV, Ukraine — When President Volodymyr Zelensky walked into the high-ceilinged, ornate conference room in the presidential office building, the exhaustion on his face was so stark I almost felt guilty about taking his time.

Wearing his trademark black T-shirt and olive drab pants, and arriving after a morning of security meetings, he appeared to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. That may literally be the truth: The future of Western democracies rests heavily on what happens to Ukraine.

In a wide-ranging interview last week, Zelensky laid out how Ukraine could still win if the West can lose its fear of Vladimir Putin and recognize the Russian leader’s weakness.

Zelensky defined what victory would mean. And he insisted that direct peace talks with Moscow wouldn’t end the war but would encourage further Russian aggression against Ukraine, Europe — and America.

FILE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stands with soldiers after attending a national flag-raising ceremony in the freed Izium, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. A year ago, with Russian forces bearing down on Ukraine’s capital, Western leaders feared for the life of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the U.S. offered him an escape route. Zelenskyy declined, declaring his intent to stay and defend Ukraine’s independence. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

“It is impossible to help Ukraine with one hand and shake Putin’s hand with the other,” Zelensky insisted. “It will not work.” It is not just a question of the West protecting Ukraine, he stressed. “It is Ukraine which protects all of the democratic countries that Putin will attack further on.”

I entered the presidential offices through a heavily sandbagged rear building door and walked down long silent corridors. All electronics, including cell phones, were banned from the visit as a safety measure. There have been numerous Russian attempts to assassinate Zelensky, the most recent in May when Ukrainian intelligence busted a network of Russian agents aiming to take the president hostage and kill him.

It has been a rough few months for the Ukrainian leader. His forces stopped a Russian offensive in the north but Putin’s forces are still advancing slowly in the east. The ground war is essentially stalemated.

But the tech-savvy Ukrainians have been making astonishing advances in drone warfare, which have brought the war home to Russia and driven the Kremlin’s ships out of occupied Crimean ports on the Black Sea and back to Russian bases.

“The biggest [current] issue is with glide bombs,” Zelensky told me, referring to Moscow’s recent use of thousands of bombs each month that can be released at a great distance from their target, protecting the launching aircraft from antiaircraft defenses. “So you need to search for long-range solutions against their aerodromes where their military aircraft land, which Russia uses to launch glide bombs and missiles.”

If President Joe Biden would let Ukraine use long-range U.S. missiles such as the recently delivered ATACMS to hit those airports in Russia, then the attacks could be prevented, Zelensky said. But so far that permission has not been granted. Ukraine’s innovative, home-produced long-range drones are hitting those airports but don’t have the power of missiles.

Biden recently gave permission for shorter-range U.S. missiles to be used just across the Ukrainian border where Russian troops were massing, which halted the Russian offensive toward Kharkiv.

“But that doesn’t solve our issues,” Zelensky told me. “It is tactical, not strategic.”

I asked Zelensky whether he believed Biden wanted Ukraine to achieve victory.

“Yes,” he answered quickly. “I think that for the United States it is important and for Europe and for many countries. But we can have different ideas toward the word victory.”

“The West wanted to deny Putin the opportunity to fully occupy Ukraine and to put the aggressor in his place. I think for them it is the victory already,” Zelensky said.

“But for us,” he continued, growing emotional, “for the people at the front line who lost their brothers at arms, the civilians who lost their relatives, those who fled abroad but have husbands on the front line — for us, victory is a moment of satisfaction.

“We are grateful that the West did not let Russia occupy us [fully], but we need justice.”

In other words, Zelensky, who still maintains a 60% popularity rating among Ukrainians, must listen to the voices of his people and his soldiers, who won’t accept surrendering one fifth of their land to Russia after all they have suffered. That burden is visible in the lines on his face.

In practical terms, the first part of Zelensky’s “real victory” is “not to allow the full destruction of everything Ukrainian” by Putin.

In Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, Moscow tries to wipe out use of the Ukrainian language, the Ukrainian church, and the teaching of Ukrainian history. Children are taught that Ukraine was never a legitimate state.

Putin’s true and imperialistic aim in invading Ukraine is to rebuild the historic Russian empire — by physical force or political subversion. Zelensky described how Russia is already pursuing that goal elsewhere: in Belarus, Georgia, and next stop — if the West doesn’t push back against Putin — in the Baltic states, which are NATO members. By bombing Ukraine’s cities he is trying to make the country unlivable and drive out the population.

The second part of “real victory,” Zelensky specified, “is security for today and for future Ukrainian generations, and the impossibility of the repetition of aggression.

“We should be in the European Union for economic security. And we should be in NATO for physical security. If we don’t have these two, there is a huge risk for us that the enemy will come back,” he said. Ukraine has been invited to start EU accession talks, but the process is lengthy.

Yet Zelensky fears that the West — especially the United States — is still leery of pushing for real victory. “Everybody is still afraid that Russia can split apart, everybody is afraid of what will happen to Russia without Putin and whether it will stay as it is or get worse.”

As a result, he said, Putin is free to pursue his strategy of taking as much as possible. “Any step forward on our territory, any occupation, any village even fully destroyed is positive for them, because it is important for them to bargain as much as possible,” he noted.

FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, July 7, 2017. A Pew survey of democracies around the world finds that views of the U.S. as a model for democracy are slipping and confidence in Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is on par with Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

At the opportune moment (especially if Donald Trump wins the presidency), “Putin can then say ‘we are ready’ [for talks] and while they are ready, they always need a pause.

“A cease-fire is the best option for the Russians so they can prepare for taking even more,” Zelensky said.

Putin’s victory would be incompatible with life for Ukraine, Zelensky told me. “Bit by bit, they are washing away Ukrainian independence. They take territory, then legislate [to annex it] or invent economic or security unions with Moscow, and then they dissolve the country in this mud, in this Russian mud.

“That is why we need to be strong, not to lose our country.”

I asked Zelensky how Ukraine could overcome Russia’s superiority in manpower and weapons.

His reply was clear. And from what I saw in my two weeks in Ukraine — including a visit to the eastern front line — it makes sense.

“First of all, manpower. Really, they have much more people, and really, we are taking care of our people more. But today we have one dead Ukrainian for six Russians” on the eastern and northern fronts, he said.

British intelligence sources say the Russians are now losing 1,200 men a day, the highest rate of the entire war. Even for a Russian military that treats soldiers like cannon fodder, this ratio is untenable.

“Second,” Zelensky explained, “this is a different kind of war, a war of technologies, and the one who is more technologically advanced can win.” That means the West must deny the Russians the opportunity to develop the manufacture of drones (including copies of Iranian Shaheds) and missiles, by preventing Russia from dodging sanctions on chips and spare parts that come from European allies — and from China.

Third, Ukraine is already producing advanced drones and racing toward production of advanced missiles. “But we need funding so that we can be more technologically developed than Russia,” Zelensky said. This presents great opportunities for joint production with Western governments or private firms.

And fourth, further sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas exports are needed, which would mean that in 2025, the Russian economy will be shrinking and will force Putin to raise taxes and skimp on social benefits for the public.

“What’s the scariest for him is a dissatisfied Russian society,” Zelensky said. “That is the nuclear weapon against a nuclear Putin. As soon as the West stops being afraid of Russia after Putin, Russia without Putin will happen more quickly. His circle around him will feel that.”

The only possible negotiations Zelensky envisions would be talks based on his own peace plan calling for full withdrawal from Ukraine, reparations and justice for Russian war crimes.

But what about Trump, who wants to cut off military aid to Ukraine and says the war can be over in 24 hours? The GOP presidential candidate has said he’d demand a cease-fire from both sides and force them to “negotiate,” effectively giving Putin what he wants and preventing Ukraine from taking back more occupied land. Not to mention that Putin has broken every accord between Russia and Ukraine in the last three decades.

“If Trump has such a model [to end the war in 24 hours], well, everyone would like to finalize the war. Maybe even in one hour would be better,” Zelensky joked. “But if the idea is to give up our territories, no, it will not solve the issue. It will not work; it will not lead to peace [globally] or between Ukraine and Russia.

“What is needed is to give us security. Membership in NATO is good not only for Ukraine; it would provide security for Russia,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian border would be fixed, no further Russian invasion could produce another war, and “the world wouldn’t be afraid that Putin would come back again.”

Sadly, the upcoming 75th NATO anniversary summit July 9-11 in Washington will not offer Ukraine a clear path to membership. “We understand that the White House is not ready to give us the invitation,” Zelensky said with a weary shrug. (And Trump is saying the war is NATO’s fault.)

“Unfortunately, this is the policy of one step forward, two steps back,” the Ukrainian leader said, regretfully. “I don’t think this is the policy of world leaders. These are the very cautious steps of my de-miners in the minefield.

“If the United States is afraid to annoy Putin, and this is the reason why we are not invited, then we ask our strategic partners to give us what would protect us: Patriots [anti-missile systems], a substantial number of F-16s, and the opportunity to use weapons [inside Russia].

“If NATO is not ready to protect us, and to take us into the alliance,” Zelensky said firmly, “then we ask NATO to give us everything so we can protect ourselves.”

At this moment, Putin smells American weakness and hopes for a Trump presidency that could cut off Ukraine and abandon NATO. Meanwhile, Putin is allied with Iran, North Korea, and China, which sees the fate of Ukraine as a litmus test for whether it can seize Taiwan. So it would be catastrophic if the White House failed to provide Ukraine with everything it needed — before the November election.

Watching the bone-tired Zelensky exit the conference room, bereft of the full backing he needs to defeat Putin, was painful, because Ukraine could still repel Russia. But that would require Biden to display the level of courage that Ukraine’s president must summon every day.

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, prefers to operate in the shadows — in military operations as well as at his desk.
Serhiy Morgunov / The Washington Post

KYIV, Ukraine — There have been at least 10 Kremlin attempts to kill one of Ukraine’s most admired heroes, the legendary head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov.

Russian agents have blown up his car. They even poisoned his wife.

She survived. He pledged revenge.

When I met the spy chief in his darkened office recently, during a rare interview with a foreign journalist, I asked whether the Russians are still trying to kill him. The poker-faced Budanov shrugged. “It’s normal,” he said.

Then, allowing himself a half-smile, the lieutenant general added: “Let’s put it this way: Since we are talking with you now, it means they are not succeeding.”

There are good reasons why the Kremlin will continue to try.

Budanov’s spy agency, known as HUR, has carried out some of Ukraine’s most stunning military successes, including long-range drone strikes inside Russian territory. Meanwhile, the agency’s Magura sea drones — a game-changing Ukrainian invention — have helped push most of the Russian fleet out of its main Black Sea harbor in occupied Crimea and back to ports on the Russian mainland.

These gains are probably Ukraine’s most important victories in the last year — and could lead to more surprising maritime successes to offset the stalemate on land.

HUR headquarters is located on an isolated peninsula that juts into the Dnieper River. Inside a grim, gray, low-rise block, Budanov’s office is barely lit. He prefers to operate in the shadows — in military operations as well as at his desk.

Behind that book- and paper-laden desk hangs a large painting of an owl sinking its claws into a bat. The HUR adopted the owl as its symbol in 2016, two years after Moscow invaded Crimea, to troll the Russians. The bat is the symbol of the special operations unit of Russia’s military intelligence agency.

On a nearby table, a set of polished metal chess pieces shines through the gloom, as if to warn that Budanov is poised to out-strategize Moscow.

Appointed to his post four years ago, the 38-year-old spymaster has been known to lead his men on daring raids into enemy territory. “He is a pirate who loves operations,” an admirer told me. He is also famous for his tight lips.

But in our interview, Budanov spoke openly about the need to expand drone attacks inside Russia and to make it impossible for Moscow to hold on to Crimea. And he was frank about the challenges Ukraine faces — including the continued need for U.S. weapons and the possibility of an election victory by Donald Trump.

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s 38-year-old spymaster, at his desk. Behind him is a large painting of an owl sinking its claws into a bat. The military intelligence agency adopted the owl as its symbol in 2016, two years after Moscow invaded Crimea, to troll the Russians. The bat is the symbol of Russia’s premier special operations unit, the Spetsnaz.
Serhiy Morgunov/For the Washington Post

Striking back

Asked whether Ukrainian troops could stop the current Russian offensive in the east, where Moscow has been making small but steady territorial gains, Budanov spoke plainly.

“The good news is that no Armageddon will emerge,” he told me. “The bad news is that the situation is quite difficult. It will remain like this for at least one month, and will not become easier.”

Moscow is expected to pound Ukraine as hard as it can in the lead-up to the 75th anniversary NATO summit in mid-July in Washington, and before the U.S. delivers more of the artillery shells and other critical supplies that were held up by Congress.

The Kremlin has been trying since the war began to take control of the entire eastern Donbas region. “We will do everything possible to prevent them, and to minimize the Russian successes,” Budanov said.

However, when I inquired whether Ukraine could hold one of the most hotly contested eastern towns, Chasiv Yar, which sits on high ground that bars a Russian advance across flatter steppes and toward large industrial cities, his reply was cryptic: “I will refrain from response.”

When I subsequently traveled to the Chasiv Yar area, the situation did not look good, and there was great bitterness among the troops over the many lives lost because Ukraine ran out of artillery shells and other vital supplies while Congress dawdled over whether to provide additional military aid.

Now, more artillery shells are arriving slowly, from the U.S. and Europe. “For sure, weapons delivery is faster than it was several months ago,” Budanov allowed, “but Ukraine’s needs are very high, which is why it has been strategically important for us to have the deliveries renewed. Still, there is a question of volume.”

A Ukrainian soldier passes by a damaged apartment building in Chasiv Yar, the site of heavy battles with the Russian forces in the Donetsk region, Ukraine.
Iryna Rybakova / AP

Manpower is also a critical problem for Ukraine, with Moscow prepared to grind its troops up like meat while much smaller Ukraine is anxious to preserve its soldiers.

Budanov believes the answer to Russia’s superiority in manpower is battlefield technology, in which Ukraine has become a global leader, replacing humans on the battlefield whenever possible with new variants of drones and electronic warfare. “Technologies will have quite a significant meaning in this war,” he predicted, “so that we don’t fight the war until the last citizen’s left.”

Technology is key to one of Budanov’s most intensive projects: taking the war to Russia with long-range drones.

“I am a fan of this,” the intelligence chief said with an intensity that broke through his laconic style. “I have been advocating this since the very first days of the war, saying openly that so long as the war is contained on our territory, it will not affect Russia.

“That is why since spring 2022, we have started to conduct significant operations on Russian territory, and we will go further the more resources we have for this. And Russia has started to feel it.”

In other words, Vladimir Putin can no longer pretend to his people that this war doesn’t affect them.

“It is still not critical for Russia at this stage, but it has led to the situation when the average citizen in the European part of the Russian Federation for sure knows and feels that the war is ongoing and has experienced some of the explosions himself. It influences, even on a small scale now, their morale.”

Budanov later publicly confirmed that the night after my interview last week, Kyiv launched a swarm of at least 70 drones on Russia’s Morozovsk airfield, located about 150 miles from the front lines and home to dozens of Moscow’s vaunted Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bombers. HUR has also been involved in attacks by long-range Ukrainian Liutyi airplane drones that have destroyed dozens of Russian oil refineries.

A White House warning to Kyiv not to hit refineries makes no sense since they are a legitimate war target. These attacks may not turn the war around, the intel chief admitted, but he believes they can affect Russia’s economy “and psychological state,” which in turn “affects the military component.” HUR has announced that it considers any Russian military target within a 500-mile range fair game.

Ukrainian serviceman Andrii (left), of the Air Assault Forces 148th separate artillery brigade, sends receiving coordinates for a Furia drone at the front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine, in May.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP

Shifting policy

I asked about the usefulness of President Joe Biden’s shift in policy to allow U.S. weapons to be used to hit sources of Russian fire just across the border from the major city of Kharkiv.

“It will ease our lives,” said Budanov, but he added that if Kyiv were permitted to use U.S. weaponry “to the whole so-called operational depth in Russia that we can reach, of course, it will be easier for us.”

Budanov believes that the Crimean Peninsula — captured by Moscow in 2014 and turned into a huge military base that controls most of Ukraine’s southern coast — can be cut off from resupply and forced into submission.

Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, has long argued that this would be the key to putting Putin on the defensive. “I share the opinion of Gen. Hodges, absolutely,” said the Ukrainian spy chief. “So we need to do everything to implement it.”

HUR’s Ukrainian-made Magura drones have already been used to destroy several Russian ships and force them to relocate from Crimea. “They are already trapped near Novorossiysk port,” Budanov said. “We just need to make sure that all the remains of the fleet are pushed back to the territory of the Russian Federation. There have been no combat ships left in the Black Sea for a long time.”

Next step is to cut all resupply for Russian forces in Crimea, including Putin’s pet project, the Kerch Bridge.

Budanov has already been “arrested in absentia” by Moscow for his agency’s role in seriously damaging the bridge in 2022, apparently with a truck bomb. He considers that an honor.

He believes that long-range ATACMS missiles, which Biden finally delivered to Ukraine in recent months, could ultimately take out the bridge. Those who claim ATACMS aren’t powerful enough to do the job are mistaken, he said. “They should read the technical manuals. The only question is their quantities, but principally speaking, these missiles will allow us to fulfill such a mission.”

In this undated photo provided by Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine a Magura V5 (maritime autonomous guard unmanned robotic apparatus V-type), Ukrainian multi-purpose unmanned surface boat capable of performing various tasks, is seen in Ukraine.Read more
Daniyar Sarsenov / AP

Budanov scoffs at the idea that Moscow would use tactical nuclear weapons if control of Crimea were threatened, a fear Putin constantly fans. The Ukrainian believes he understands Putin’s mindset and limitations.

“First of all, I know what is really happening out there. Secondly, I know the real characteristics of Russian nuclear weapons. What use would it have? We don’t have big concentrations of troops for which such nuclear weapons would be appropriate.

“And to break holes in our defense lines is possible with conventional means of warfare. Besides, using nuclear weapons would lead to big political risks for Putin.”

I would add that Putin’s redlines on Crimea have been crossed many times when Ukraine fired British missiles at bases there, and nothing has happened. If there is any chance to convince Putin he can’t win, it may lie with making Moscow’s hold on Crimea untenable.

As for Budanov, he sees no point in peace talks, because “we have no option but to get back what was occupied. Otherwise, the state of war will go on forever.”

A bigger problem may be Trump, who keeps repeating he would cut off military aid to Ukraine if reelected. Budanov remains sanguine at the prospect of a Trump win in November.

“I have a calm attitude to the possibility of Trump coming to power,” he said. “Your elections are very unpredictable. If you analyze his public speeches, he has changed his position several times. And the power of your system is that it doesn’t allow one individual to make decisions unilaterally.

“In the end, I believe in the USA and that we will reach victory together. And here I am stressing, together! This is what I would like to finish with.”

Indeed, as Ukrainian officials are starting to hedge their bets about a Trump win, I can’t help thinking that Budanov might be one Ukrainian who could appeal to Trump as a derring-do military figure who “wins” and can show exciting video of the new style of drone warfare.

Before I left, I asked Budanov: If I come back in a year, will things be better?

“I will refrain from replying,” he said. “This is a very philosophical question.”

His reply reminded me of the famous social media video in which he stares at the camera in silence for 32 seconds. Then, three words flash on the screen in Ukrainian: To be continued.

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer