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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

The Ukrainian army has swept across areas in north eastern Ukraine.

Russian troops appear to have been thin on the ground, unprepared and quick to retreat.

The stunning collapse could be a turning point in the war, but it’s also increasing pressure on Vladimir Putin at home, with previously loyal politicians and media figures criticising the leadership and decision making in the Kremlin.

Today, journalist Charles McPhedran, on a humiliating Russian defeat in Ukraine.

It’s Thursday September 15

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RUBY:

Charles, maybe you could start by telling me where it is that you are right now?

CHARLES:

Right. I'm in Kiev, Ukraine, the capital of this country. And on what is a fairly sort of crisp autumn day, the fog has already started to shroud the city. So we've already seen the end of what's been a pretty eventful summer for this country. The mood at the moment in Ukraine is, I would say, a mixture of elation because the Ukrainian offensive in the northeast seems to be going very, very well. But also, there's always sadness, people losing loved ones, even with the successes of the Army. The fact is there's also a sense of determination, because most Ukrainians, in fact, I'd say almost all Ukrainians don't see really an alternative to this offensive and to the war and in general, after Bucha and Mariupol. But on the whole, certainly morale is a lot higher than a week, a week and a half ago when this offensive began.

RUBY:

Mm hmm. Let's talk about the Ukrainian offensive in the north east in a bit more detail, because as we speak, it appears that Russian troops have suffered a stunning collapse and have been forced to retreat. Tell me about what it is that's happening on the ground.

CHARLES:

What we saw was, I think, a successful info operation in advance that really played on Vladimir Putin's ego. Basically, the Ukrainian forces built up the idea of an offensive in a very different part of the country. In the south of Ukraine, which is the only provincial regional capital that Russia has been able to capture and hold since this war began in February. And then they launched an offensive in a very different part of the country in the north east. So the anecdotal reports we have and they are not 100% confirmed, is that Russian troops were very thin on the ground in the northeast by the time that operation began.

Archival tape - [Machine guns firing - Ukrainian special forces]

Archival tape -- News Anchor (CNN):

“Transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defences and recaptured more than 3000 square kilometres-…”

Archival tape -- News Host (CNN):

“It is a fast-moving counteroffensive by the Ukrainian military that analysts say shows the tide of the war is shifting…”

CHARLES:

So what we saw over the weekend was an absolute collapse of Russian positions in Kharkiv region, troops effectively running for the border in some cases, huge amounts of equipment being captured.

Archival tape - [Machine guns firing - Ukrainian special forces]

Archival tape -- Military commentator:

“The key here is Izyum, that was the main centre of command and control, but they did a classic military pincer movement…”

CHARLES:

The Russian base in that region, Izyum, falling without much opposition given the number of troops that were there.

Archival tape - [Sustained machine gun fire - Ukrainian special forces]

Archival tape -- News Host (BBC):

“More territory has been recaptured by the Ukrainians-…”

Archival tape -- Foreign Correspondent (BBC):

“Kiev is claiming to have taken back almost all of the Kharkiv region-…”

Archival tape -- Journalist in Ukraine (BBC):

“We’re talking about more than 50 villages in the east of the country, in the Kharkiv region, places that had been under Russian occupation…”

CHARLES:

Ukraine has seized back an immense amount of territory from the Russians in just under a week. We're talking about just about the size of Cyprus, so a very large megacity size worth of territory has come back to Ukraine as a result of this offensive. The Russians are confirming that: they're saying they're pulling out entirely of the north east of the country, that is Kharkiv region, and they're trying to stabilise the front lines in the Donbas, that is Luhansk and Donetsk region.

Archival tape -- Military commentator:

“Ukraine has the initiative right now, it’s so important. And you look at the Russian military, they’re in almost full retreat-...”

Archival tape -- Foreign Correspondent (BBC):

“This is the most significant Russian withdrawal since they pulled out from Kiev in late March…”

CHARLES:

Russia doesn't have a lot of room to manoeuvre those troops back. It seems they didn't have the reserves that you'd need to have to kind of stem losses when that offensive began. So real questions about the sort of manpower that Russia has at its disposal at the moment and just how many casualties the Russians have suffered. We've seen estimates from the Ukrainians of over 52,000 dead, a significant percentage of the 200,000 who were originally involved in this invasion in February, killed and injured over the past few months. And that is really starting, I would say, to have an effect on Russian strategy on the battlefield and and really prevent them from striking back. So it really has been a stunning offensive, one of the most significant of the war so far.

RUBY:

And, Charles, up until this point in the war had been Russia making most of the advances, albeit in sometimes a slow and costly way. But now for the first time, it's Ukraine making these gains, managing to take back, as we said, thousands of square miles of territory in only a matter of days. And this is partly down to the strategy that they've employed and the lack of capacity of Russian troops, which came as a bit of a surprise, I think. But when you take a step back. What are the other things that have underpinned this and made this turnaround possible? What has changed for Ukraine?

CHARLES:

Let's put it this way: they would be in a very different position were it not for the aid that came over this summer. So what has changed for Ukraine is an increasing number of Western weapons which enabled Ukrainian forces to soften up the Russians ahead of this offensive, really create logistical problems for them.

You know, the first round of aid enabled them to fend off the Russians in Kiev and the north. And this round, which came over the summer, has enabled them to really launch this offensive because their domestic arms capacity is basically nil right now, you know, they had a lot of their defence industry knocked out in the opening months of the Russian attack. Russia has targeted everything from, you know, power facilities to oil depots through to even sort of bread baking factories. It's rather a miracle that things have held up as they have actually over the six months of the invasion, that there haven't been dramatic shortages.

So I think the support of the West has been crucial, specifically the support that Ukraine has received from its neighbours, such as Poland, has enabled it to overcome some of the major problems it had and which have arisen throughout the war. I noticed also that the Australian Bushmasters have been deployed in the Kharkiv region, and that the Ukrainians are really thankful for those.

Archival tape -- Ukrainian soldiers:

[Speaking Ukrainian]
[In English]
“Australia, thank you!”

CHARLES:

So we've seen a really ongoing reaction that has enabled the Ukrainians to target Russian supply depots, Russian ammunition depots, so that by the time this offensive was launched, the Russians had significant problems with logistics, which has always been their Achilles heel.

We saw the same problem in the north of the country when they tried to to indeed take the capital in the late winter, which was that there simply weren't the logistics in terms of resupplying the troops to maintain an offensive for any sort of period of time. And so this has been repeated, but in this case, it's sort of ended the Russian offensive and it has enabled, I think, the Ukrainians to push forward with the advantage they now have.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment

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RUBY:

Charles, as this counter offensive unfolds, as Ukraine retakes villages and large parts of the country back from Russian occupation. What are we hearing from Russia? Is there any concession through official channels that this is a significant defeat or are there signs that Russia might try and regroup and counterattack?

CHARLES:

There is a sense that this has been a defeat, but they keep on saying that we're regrouping and that's why we're falling back, we're conceding another region Kharkiv, but we are determined to hold on to the Donbas, Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The fact, though, is that this was by all accounts a disorderly retreat. So while the government in Moscow, the Kremlin, is conceding, it still maintains that the things are under control enough. Whereas the reports that we're seeing are far more dramatic. Talking about total breakdown of communication, seeing an increasing amount of discontent on some of the Russian Telegram military channels, people wondering, ‘well, is that really the plan?’ or ‘what is the plan? You know, entire units of troops just hiding in the forest, or dressing in civilian clothes. So it's unclear to what extent the Russian spin on this defeat will be. But severe trouble, I think, for the Russian forces, no matter how much the Kremlin spins it.

RUBY:

Yeah. We have begun to see criticism within Russia of how the war has been conducted. For the first time, Russian propaganda figures and even politicians seeming to turn on Russia's leadership. Can you tell me a bit about what they've been saying and the significance of that?

CHARLES:

Indeed. And it's really unclear how far that criticism extends. What is certainly clear is that we've seen municipal deputies in Saint Petersburg and Moscow who've come out to criticise the handling of the war.

Archival tape -- News Host (CNN):

“Deputies from 18 municipal districts in Moscow and Saint Petersburg have now signed a petition demanding Putin's resignation, calling his actions, quote, “detrimental to Russia's and its citizens' future”...”

CHARLES:

In an even more unprecedented way, we've seen criticism of what looks like a massive failure on state television.

Archival tape -- Foreign Correspondent (CNN):

“If you speak to some of the folks, Russian officials, if you speak also to some of the people in Kremlin-controlled media, you do really get a sense that there is a very muted, very difficult feeling there right now as this Ukrainian counteroffensive rolls on…”

CHARLES:

A lot of this criticism doesn't target the president personally. That's still really a no go in Russia in many ways, particularly in the media. So it positions him, as, you know, the tsar who's been misled by his advisers in launching this operation. But it certainly looks like we're seeing the first inklings of a dissent in Russia against this war, which has been massively costly and so far has led to very mixed results and has really degraded the capacities of the Russian army in any other theatres it might choose to fight in.

RUBY:

And what about Vladimir Putin himself? What are we hearing from him?

CHARLES:

The day the Ukrainian offensive in the northeast of the country, the day where it really became clear that there'd been a breakthrough? Vladimir Putin showed up in Moscow to a celebration of the city's birthday. He unveiled a massive ferris wheel and he didn't really address the issue. One also hears that he's left the capital to go to Sochi, his favourite sort of southern retreat, the beachfront city on the Black Sea. So publicly he's had very little to say given the magnitude of these events.

RUBY:

And so how damaging is all of this likely to be for Russia? Is what is happening now a fundamental failure for Russia and for Putin? Is it something that we might look back on as the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine?

CHARLES:

I think it's too early to say that it's the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine. We can already say that Vladimir Putin and his regime have been highly damaged by this war. At the start of the war, they wanted to take over Kiev in 72 hours and they believed they could do so. They clearly could not. We saw Finland and Sweden apply for NATO entry, which was one of the big reasons why he said he launched that war to prevent NATO's from expanding. Well, now that ratification process is underway and nearly concluded. So he's getting more NATO's on his borders. So that's a geostrategic loss. And now we're seeing a major military loss. We'll have to wait and see what happens on the southern front and whether there are significant Ukrainian gains. But it certainly is a very significant battle within the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

RUBY:

Mmm. It’s clearly too soon to know how this is going to play out, but if Russia does end up losing the war in Ukraine, the consequences for Putin could be catastrophic couldn't they, given how personal this conflict has seemed for him at times, and how much of his reputation he’s really staked on winning this?

CHARLES:

As much as the Kremlin might like to say that this is the problem of advisors. We've seen Vladimir Putin really put a lot of his reputation on the line here. So if the Russian army were to suffer a catastrophic defeat, which is certainly not out of the question now, then the question would be what would happen in Moscow? I think either President Putin would be under threat himself for the Army leadership. So I see significant political turmoil in Russia as a result. And you certainly can't predict the outcome if the army and the political leadership end up in some kind of confrontation over who's lost this war.

RUBY:

Charles, thank you so much for your time.

CHARLES:

Thank you, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Protestors in the UK have been arrested by police while holding anti-monarchy signs during mourning events for the Queen.

Blank banners and white pieces of paper are now being used by protestors as a sign of their opposition to the monarchy.

Yesterday, civil liberty groups in the UK raised concerns that police were using wide ranging anti-protest laws to quash freedom of expression.

And...

Yesterday, railway workers in Sydney announced they will turn off all payment machines for the Opal card system as part of ongoing industrial action with the NSW government.

If it goes ahead, the action would mean travellers ride for free from Wednesday next week.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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