Transcription
While we've all had eyes glued on the Gulf, an awful lot has been happening in Ukraine. Russia has started its spring offensive. I think they're definitely not where they thought they would be. Ukraine has been hammering Putin's oil before he had the chance to sell it at a higher price because of the Iran war. So, this is really a new quality of attack. Russia has been hitting Ukraine with everything it's got in response. All while Ukraine has been taking a lot of ground from Russia operating without Starlink. I don't think Elon Musk is going to be a hero in Ukraine. And we haven't even mentioned machine gun robots yet.
So, it's time for questions and we have the privilege of asking one of the best journalists in the business who is going to hate this introduction. His name is Nick Connelly. Hi, Anthony. For over four years, DW's Kev correspondent has been living there covering the war. A calm and measured voice on the front lines Nick's LinkedIn page is probably really boring for a guy that does hair raising things to bring us smart, accurate stories. He's the perfect man to ask questions at a really important moment. First among them, Putin's ability to profit from this war. The oil price is up, but Ukraine has been sending drones by the dozen to try and stop him from cashing in. I don't think there's necessarily a lot more of them, but they're having bigger effects. I think it's definitely important. I think the important difference now is that the warheads are bigger, so the impact is bigger.
So, Ukrainian drones are making a big bang, slamming into oil refineries and depots. It's got our attention, but is it enough to make headlines in Russia? Well, definitely the kind of military bloggers on Telegram are getting very, very nervous. They're obviously a bit more independent and largely uh you know less directly towing the line than state media. But definitely you've seen those oil ports on the Baltic Sea closed for days time. You've seen talk of maybe halting production because the Russians don't know to put all that oil that they can't get out. So this is really a new quality of attack. We've seen these attacks for a few years but previously they were more about the fact of getting there of flying a few thousand kilometers but with very small small warheads. The fact that large numbers of drones are now arriving and carrying more is actually a new development.
So if you are joining the Ukraine war after a month of watching what's happening in the Gulf, yes, these Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil facilities have been successful asterisks perhaps too successful. Definitely. And there is just the worry in Ukraine right now that those attacks on the energy system of Russia, which really are starting to have a systematic effect, that they're going to be blocked, vetoed by Donald Trump and other uh Western countries who are worried about the oil price going up and that right now, just as it's starting to work, Ukraine might be put under such a tremendous pressure to kind of pause those attacks for a while.
Headline number two, Ukraine's quiet advances. The story we're hearing that we want to check with Nick is that Ukraine has made significant somehow low-key advances in the Zaparisia sector that have slowed parts of Russia's southern push and forced redeployments. So, are Ukraine making these quiet gains? Well, definitely there are hundreds of square kilometers of territory that have been taken back. That is confirmed and potentially more that have yet to be announced by the kind of uh people in charge. And this is a big deal. Lots of villages in Nepro regions, a Parisia region are coming back under Ukraine control and it seems like they've actually taken more than in 2023 when everyone was talking about a counter offensive that then didn't really materialize.
So a big tick I would say the interesting follow-up I think is why is Ukraine not singing about this from the rooftops? I think it's about being burnt by that experience 2023 of overpromising and underdelivering as definitely a thing. There is also a situation where in this drone warfare we're seeing the kind of kill zone. You have a kind of no man's land of about 10 kilometers inside of the kind of front line where it is very difficult to kind of confirm and say this is now definitely under our control.
Bringing us to our next topic, Russia's messy spring offensive. I think they're definitely not where they thought they would be. At the end of last year, you saw Russia Putin in kind of triumphful mood claiming Kyansk in Khiv region. And then a couple weeks later after Russia claimed to take the city, you had Zilinsky doing selfies from Kyansk showing that actually this is not under Russian control. We can still get even the president there with some degree of security. Moscow kicked off its spring push in mid-March, but the story is that it's been incredibly slowgoing, going nowhere fast, and it's costing an extraordinary amount of Russian lives. That's the thing. Last year, for all their efforts, Russia was able to take less than 1% of Ukraine's territory in an entire year. I think it's important firstly to say that when losses talked about that often includes wounded and killed, right? That's not just killed, but certainly the numbers are huge. They're in the hundreds of thousands. Um, there is, you know, there there is talk of Russian losses being upwards of 300,000 dead and many, many more wounded. Lots of these people potentially never going to be able to work again. uh Ukraine potentially kind of half that number given that Ukrainian defense is fighting less aggressively and taking fewer risks. Um, but it is massive.
Headline number four, the Starlink shock for Russia. Is Elon Musk a hero in Ukraine? I don't think Elon Musk is going to be a hero in Ukraine uh whatever he does at this point, but certainly it was welcome.
In February, Musk cut unauthorized Russian access to Starling. Multiple reports say it disrupted Russian communications and drone ops and briefly opened space for Ukrainian forces to move with much greater ease on or near the front lines. I think the interesting thing when we when we were on the front line seeing the drone pilots, the Ukrainian drone pilots taking out Russia's alternatives. So Russia is having to, you know, use antenna that are a lot more obvious and now they're having to kind of put up these sticks with kind of improvised antenna to try and get any connection to the outside world. and you know Ukrainian drone pilots can just very cheaply and easily take those out bit for bit and basically strip those Russian forces of their connection with the outside world. It's definitely been very helpful. Russia's obviously now coming up with alternatives uh and that's slowly kind of being balanced out but especially in the first few weeks of this. This was something that Ukrainian soldiers will tell you was really noticeable and led to a lot of chaos in terms of you know miscommunication between Russian units.
Right then here we go. It's time for machine gun robots. I'm not sure they're as useful and playing as big a role as maybe people would want them to. Um, they're obviously very slow. They're pretty easy to spot. I think they work best or make the biggest impact when they're kind of hidden somewhere in the bushes and then they can surprise someone and that's the kind of bigger talk of these kind of loitering uh drones, loitering or sleeper drones that are sitting on a on on a road, right? And then fly up or start firing when comes past. Um, I think the kind of land drones make more of an issue are more kind of relevant in terms of supplies, bringing in uh restocking positions and also bringing out sometimes uh wounded soldiers from the battlefield. That's something that's been used quite a lot and obviously you have all these tragic stories of, you know, several soldiers losing their lives trying to take someone who's wounded out. That is incredibly dangerous where these drones come in.
Okay, we might need to let machine gun robots go a little and move on to where I'd love to finish because I've often asked Nick about the end of the war, peace talks, victory on one side or the other. Is it a new weapon? Not the machine gun robots, a bold new tactic, hundreds of thousands of cheap, unjammable drones, maybe. Is it possible with all this new technology, we're getting close to the end via a stalemate where drones make it somehow pointless to keep going? I'm not sure if drones actually do that because they bring down the price of warfare, right? They make it more realistic to carry on doing this. You can overwhelm expensive defenses with lots of very cheap drones. I think there is certainly the kind of broader picture is that this war is going to carry on as as long as both sides can carry on doing that, right? And for all the kind of pressure on Ukrainians and people being, you know, psychologically burnt out after years, especially those who've been fighting, but even those in Kiev, uh, from all the nights of of of bombing, there is no currently situation that is acceptable to Ukraine that is being offered by Trump or by Russia. The same for the Russian side, they are still demanding the same stuff they were doing in 2022. Uh so unless Ukraine runs out of money, unless Trump pulls the plug on all intel and the Europeans don't compensate that or something happens unexpectedly in Russia, like you know, we had the precaution mutiny uh at the beginning of the war, something that we weren't calculating. I don't see any end to this in a hurry.
It's a kind of sobering way to leave the chat, but we are talking about an incredibly destructive war that's been running for 4 years. I hope you enjoyed listening to Nick Connelly. If you have questions for Nick, now is the time. Maybe next time we can do another Q&A straight with the man himself. Thanks to Nick, thanks to you. And bye for now.