Missiles and Ukraine

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 17th of November, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Up first: Moscow leaves Ukraine in the dark after Russia’s defeat in Kherson.

Russia initiated its biggest missile attack yet on Ukraine’s power grid, launching up to 100 missiles at Ukrainian cities.

On the same day, a rocket landed in a Polish border town on NATO soil, sparking fears of a major escalation of the war. But it now appears that it was a stray Ukrainian defensive missile that crossed into Poland.

REICHARD: Those events followed a landmark victory for Ukraine in the war, retaking the city of Kherson from the Russians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called that victory “the beginning of the end” of the war.

WORLD’s Kent Covington spoke with John Hardie about the latest on the war in Ukraine. Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He’s an expert on Russian foreign and security policy and U.S. policy toward Russia. Here now is that conversation.

KENT COVINGTON, REPORTER: John, thanks for joining us. Let’s start with the missile that struck that border town in Poland. The Polish government said the missile appeared to be Russian made. But NATO now says it was most likely a stray Ukrainian air defense missile. How does something like that happen? Is it simply an error of entering the wrong coordinates for the defense missile, or what?

JOHN HARDIE, GUEST: Sure, so they've been at this for some weeks now, I think essentially the goal is to try to sap Ukraine's will to continue fighting by making life hard on the population, making a tough winter without much electricity. Already, Ukraine's had to impose some blackouts and energy rationing. I think, in fact, it will have probably the opposite effect in that it will bolster Ukraine's determination to continue fighting and to win.

COVINGTON: I saw a complaint online and I can’t verify the authenticity of its origin but it appeared to come from the Wagner group, the mercenary group working on behalf of Russia. They actually complained that Moscow was hitting the wrong targets. They were saying instead of hitting civilian targets and infrastructure, why weren't they hitting supply lines from the West and things like that.

HARDIE: Yeah, so I think a number of Russian commentators have had these frustrations for a while. Basically, Russia has various technical challenges it's not able to overcome when it's trying to target dynamic moving targets like supply columns coming from the West. So the Russian Air Force has been very limited in its effectiveness because it was unable to take out Ukrainian long range and medium range surface to air missile systems. So it really hasn't been able to drop dumb bombs on key bridges of the Nieper, for example, and then the Russians just aren't really great at dynamic intelligence. And that that really makes it just impossible to hit anything but fixed targets deep within Ukraine. So, taking out a supply column with the cruise missile or something just isn't really something they're able to do, again, without being able to fly deep into Ukraine and drop dumb bombs.

COVINGTON: So, obviously we have you know missiles and technology we've had for some time now missiles and technology that allow you to even change course mid flight to really target to hone in on something whereas a dump bomb as you say is just you could drop it out the window and it goes where it goes is that what Russia has reduced to now or they they don't have enough precision guided missiles to be able to hit things?

HARDIE: So dwindling stocks of PGM is one issue...

COVINGTON: PGM meaning, what?

HARDIE: Precision guided munitions. That's certainly one issue. But another I think it's just a weakness that they came into the war with, which is a weakness in dynamic intelligence collection, a shortage of long range surveillance drones, other built-in weaknesses in the Russian military that reduce its effectiveness in targeting dynamic moving targets beyond the immediate battle lines and the very near rear.

COVINGTON: Talk a little bit about the significance of recapturing Kherson and what that means for this war?

HARDIE: Yeah, so it's a very significant victory for Ukraine and an equally humiliating defeat for Russia, especially since they've been saying for a while now that Russia is going to be here forever. This is now, in Putin's eyes, Russian territory. So to have to retreat is certainly an embarrassing loss. Militarily, it really puts the death knell in any hopes they had for taking Mykolaiv and then Odessa. So for Ukraine, that's obviously a big victory and this region is very economically significant for Ukraine as well. So it should help their economy in the years ahead. Going forward from here, I expect both sides will pivot some of their forces from that area to other fronts. I think that's probably already happening. Zaporizhzhia Oblast in the south, south-central Ukraine is likely a key area where the Russians will look to bolster their lines and that might be one area where Ukraine tries to watch another counter-offensive in addition to the ongoing fighting in the east.

COVINGTON: Well, as we mentioned, Zelenskyy called Kherson the beginning of the end of the war. What does that mean? And with winter setting in, that changes things somewhat. So what happens next in this war?

HARDIE: Well, I think Zelenskyy’s right in the sense that it does seem like an inflection point. I think the Kharkiv counter-offensive back in September was one. And this is certainly another important point in the war. But there's gonna be a lot of tough fighting ahead. I'd expect this war will last well into 2023, if not longer. So, the Ukrainians will have their work cut out for them. And then for the West, we have to think about ways to make our aid to Ukraine more sustainable and more rational over time.

COVINGTON: What would that mean?

HARDIE: So I think for sustainability we just have to make sure we're producing these things in significant quantities. In some areas, we're already running a tad low. And then on the rationalization side, I think Ukraine is operating something like 14 different artillery systems right now. That's a tough logistical burden. And so to the extent that we can hone in on just a few systems that can make that logistical tail a little bit more easy to manage. It's tough because in some cases we have Western countries scraping the bottom of the barrel and providing just about as much as they can. So you kind of have to take what you can get, but to the degree we can sort of marry those challenges that will be helpful for Ukraine.

COVINGTON: John, we just learned this week that Russia is in a recession, their GDP is dropping. Explain the impact that this war is having on the Russian economy. And how sustainable is this? How long can Moscow bear the costs of this war?

HARDIE: The economic impact has certainly been significant. I think the Russians, at least initially, were able to blunt the full force of the impact through creative capital controls, high energy prices, and what have you. But as energy prices have come down a bit, you've seen the Russian budget surplus really vanish and meanwhile, the Russians are burning through some of their foreign exchange reserves, half of which were really taken off the table by Western sanctions. So I think the sanctions will have an increasing impact on Russia's economy over time. But really, as long as they have the energy, especially the oil revenue flowing, I think they'll be able to sustain the war. If that goes away, which the West is at least trying to cut into, life will get a little bit harder for the Kremlin.

COVINGTON: John Hardie is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. John, thanks so much for your time!

HARDIE: Thank you.

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