Inside Kyiv's long, dark winter
A conversation with Tim Mak of The Counteroffensive during difficult days for Ukraine.
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When I spoke with Tim Mak for a Public Notice Q&A last May, shortly after he launched The Counteroffensive, there was widespread optimism that Ukrainian forces were on the brink of bold military operations that could push Russian invaders out of their country. But it didn’t play out that way.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive ended up being a disappointment, and as 2023 draws to a close, the war has settled into something approximating a stalemate. But perhaps just as worrisome for Ukraine is the fact that in the US, Republicans have so far blocked Democratic efforts to provide forces there with the aid necessary to sustain the war effort. And with the notoriously pro-Putin Donald Trump firmly entrenched as the GOP’s leader and presumptive 2024 nominee, the medium- and long-term prospects for more US help are uncertain.
The Israel-Hamas war has mostly pushed Ukraine off the front pages here, but the war remains a very big deal. Not only is it the frontline in the global fight between democracy and authoritarianism, but as President Biden likes to say, if Putin succeeds in gobbling up the country, it will set the stage for future Russian aggression, including a possible hot war with NATO. There’s a lot riding on Ukraine staying in the fight and ultimately winning it.
But as Mak details day in and day out in The Counteroffensive, the war is exacting a huge and morale-crushing human toll. Ukrainians continue to endure regular missile strikes, cyberattacks, and efforts to destroy the energy infrastructure that keeps them from freezing. And the country is starting to run dangerously short of manpower and weaponry. It wouldn’t be an easy situation under any circumstances, but it’s especially tough as hopes fade for ending the war on favorable terms anytime soon.
So to get caught up on where things stand militarily, what Ukrainians are saying about the US Congress and their own political leadership, and how people are trying to get through this winter in Kyiv, I caught up with Mak, who continues to do great work and has some big plans for 2024.
I highly recommend you subscribe to The Counteroffensive, which you can do so by clicking here. And if you want to learn more about Mak’s background and why he decided to make reporting from Ukraine his full-time job, I highly recommend you check out our first Q&A. Just click the link below.
Tim Mak on reporting from Ukraine 15 months into Putin's war
“It would drive you crazy to constantly obsess about whether or not a missile might come through the window.”
A transcript of our December 14 conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Aaron Rupar
How have you been?
Tim Mak
As good as I can be. It's been a little chaotic in Ukraine recently. There’s been no internet access and lots of attacks yesterday and today. So people are a little on edge.
Aaron Rupar
We heard a lot last winter about nightly strikes on Kyiv and other big cities in Ukraine. Are those a fact of life again this winter?
Tim Mak
There have been a series of bombings in Kyiv that have been deeply disconcerting and terrorizing, frankly, for civilians throughout the city. But the one element that's new this week is that those strikes were combined with a very devastating cyberattack by Russian hackers who hacked into Kyivstar, which is the largest telecommunications provider in Ukraine.
They brought down a system that provides cell phone service and internet service for millions of Ukrainians all across the country. This isn’t just a trivial matter of not being able to watch Instagram reels or TikToks. There are serious safety repercussions when things like emergency services or air raid alerts are down. Just earlier this week, 53 people were injured after Russian missiles were shot down in Kyiv and people had no way to receive alerts to go to shelters or know that strikes were happening. There are also big questions about whether Russia will continue to try to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Aaron Rupar
That all sounds quite grim. How’s the morale of the people holding up?
Tim Mak
Well, morale is definitely low. People are getting very pessimistic and it kind of coincided with temperatures getting cold and days getting shorter. But there’s recognition that the war isn't going to be over anytime soon, and people had very high expectations for the counteroffensive this year. It's obvious to anyone that Ukraine hasn't made as much progress as was hoped.
Meanwhile, the Western allies just haven't been as interested as they had been in supporting Ukraine with aid. In particular, the US Congress has dithered as Ukraine is spilling blood on a daily basis fighting off the Russian invasion. Here in Kyiv, there's a sense of growing bitterness and betrayal.
The common refrain from the US was “we’re going to back you and support you as long as it takes.” Now we’re midway through this war and the United States is already dragging its feet on providing aid. What I'm concerned about in the medium to long run is that despite all the American investment and support that's been provided to Ukraine over the last two years, Ukrainians will conclude that they weren’t as successful as they could have been because America didn't give them the help they needed. A strain of anti-Americanism could be a perverse outcome of this war.
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Aaron Rupar
Biden recently requested $110 billion in Ukraine aid from Congress but because of obstruction from House Republicans, all he can do right now is scrounge between the proverbial cushions for about $200 million. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of momentum for another substantial aid package. What impact does that have on the ground and what specific items does Ukraine need?
Tim Mak
Fundamentally what's happening right now in the east is an artillery duel. The Ukrainians and the Russians are firing at each other from relatively fixed positions and expending an immense amount of artillery. So that's a big need — both artillery guns and shells, which are being used at an incredible pace.
Another need is armored vehicles, because you can’t have success on the battlefield without some protection and mobility. Drone warfare has also become this incredibly quickly evolving thing in Ukraine. Over less than two years, we've gone from very large drones to swarms of relatively cheap ones that are out there doing surveillance and attacking enemy positions. Long range missiles are a third item the Ukrainians need. Things like ATACMS — missiles that can be fired over long distances in order to break up concentrations of Russian military force. These are just the bread and butter items necessary to keep the lines where they are.
But right now, the Ukrainians are struggling in another area where the Americans can't help much, which is manpower. The average age of of a Ukrainian soldier is rising and the Ukrainians will need to mobilize more people for their military forces. It's a sad indication of just how many people have died since Russia’s full scale invasion started, and a tragedy that's part of this holiday season for so many thousands of Ukrainian families. (Editor’s note: as of last month, the deaths of nearly 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been confirmed and the actual toll is likely well over 30,000.)
Aaron Rupar
Relatedly, one of the headlines that came out of President Zelenskyy’s trip to the states earlier this month was him telling senators he’s considering conscripting men over 40. What are people in Ukraine saying about that?
Tim Mak
One thing that's been missing is a clear strategy announced by the political leadership in Ukraine. Something like, “We acknowledge that didn't work, but here's what we're going to do now.” There have been no grand speeches outlining a new mobilization. There's just been no clear messaging on this.
And meanwhile, there are all sorts of signs that mobilization is picking up. People are getting picked up off the streets and getting conscripted and mobilized, and that's a great concern to people. Obviously you can imagine this is a big issue, one that's constantly being discussed here.
But in terms of the mood around this, the people who were most motivated to join the Ukrainian military joined at the moment of Ukraine's greatest need. So what you have now is a group of military-aged males getting pushed into soldiering roles that are less enthusiastic about joining the military. That's going to have an impact on readiness and the military's ability to perform. It is going to have an effect on how capable the military is going to be.
Aaron Rupar
Pivoting back to US aid, the line we hear from Republicans is that they’re against providing more help to Ukraine because the war is in a stalemate and they don’t think more aid will change it. They say the money could be better spent on border security or helping Israel. What case would you make to the Rand Pauls of the world to try to change their minds?
Tim Mak
We recently did a story in The Counteroffensive with the headline, “How to talk to your Republican uncle about Ukraine.” We went through the things that focus groups have found to be convincing. One is that the war in Ukraine is not just about Ukraine, obviously. This is a frontline in a global struggle for democracy, pushing back against authoritarianism, including in China.
China at the beginning of the full-scale invasion by Russia received a clear message that democratic forces in the West will band together to punish you. If you decide to try to reshape borders by force, they will sanction you. Your economy will falter, thousands of your soldiers will die, and you'll be isolated. And if Ukraine doesn’t continue to be supported, China is going to get a different message, and that message will be you can hold out and the West’s commitment to democracy will waver. And if you just wait long enough, the politics in the West will create enough disruption that you'll get away with it. That's a real danger.
Aaron Rupar
I’m sure you probably took notice a couple months ago when a Hamas delegation was hosted by the Kremlin. What if anything do you see as the connection between the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza?
Tim Mak
It’s obvious that Putin received a real gift in the form of the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. Authoritarians like Putin are counting on the war in Gaza to distract the west and fracture a coalition that could support resistance to them.
We’ve done some coverage in The Counteroffensive about the total drop off in public interest in the news about what's happening in Ukraine as soon as the war in Gaza started. I'm not complaining about that per se. What I'm saying is it really was to the benefit of Vladimir Putin. We’ve tried to tell stories in our publication about Ukrainians who left this war-torn country to go to Israel only to find themselves in another war-torn country. And there are interesting stories about the religious intermix between Ukraine and Israel. There's a big Jewish Ukrainian population and tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Israel. So there are some deep links.
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Aaron Rupar
You mentioned the lack of a speech from Zelenskyy announcing a new strategic vision. Are Ukrainians starting to lose patience with him?
Tim Mak
It's hard for anyone to do the hard work of introspection and blaming one's own self for failures, and I think people here have focused more on the United States not doing enough and less on Ukrainian mistakes. But that sort of introspection is necessary in terms of a new strategy.
You're starting to see little bits and pieces of dissent start to pop up in places like the Financial Times. They ran an interesting article recently about people criticizing Zelenskyy as too optimistic in his messaging on the war, saying he needs to revamp it and get more real, and noting that what they call his “rose-tinted” speeches are quite divergent from the bad news we're hearing from the front lines in such a way that it undermines his credibility.
And so I wonder if we might be due for a reset in that sense in the new year. But Ukraine is a democratic country, and one of the time-honored traditions here, at least over the last decade and a half, is the right of citizens to demand more of their government and complain when they feel like it isn’t doing enough.
We devoted part of a recent edition of The Counteroffensive to a demonstration in front of Kyiv City Hall and a broader debate over whether it's appropriate to continue repairing roads and bridges when all that money, according to the protestors, ought to be sent to the front lines to procure equipment for soldiers. I can guarantee you that these kinds of conversations, these public demonstrations, these chants that are critical of public leaders, aren’t happening on the Russian side. And this is actually a really good illustration of what people in Ukraine are fighting for.
Aaron Rupar
You’ve been in Ukraine for much of this year, which has obviously been a very challenging one for the country, but also I’m sure is difficult on a personal level as you endure regular Russians strikes on cities, cyberattacks, and so forth. How are you enduring all that?
Tim Mak
I've been reflecting a lot about death, which was the focus of a recent piece of mine. There was just this terrible accident that happened as I was walking to a source meeting this week. A construction worker was working not far from where I live, and a wall fell down on him and I rushed over and tried to help. For those who don't know, I'm a former US Army medic and an EMT, but very unfortunately, and sadly, I basically witnessed this guy die right in front of me. I’ve been thinking about this and the recent attacks, which are seen very abstractly by the rest of the world. It's given me some food for thought in terms of the meaning of death and how casually we dismiss it.
I make the point in my piece that I wasn't able to do anything about this particular Ukrainian man, but the United States still has a great opportunity to take seriously the death that's happening here in Ukraine and act to reduce it going forward. It's not particularly optimistic or flowery, but I think it's a reflection of what I think is a pretty dark time in Ukraine right now.
Aaron Rupar
Finally, what should readers expect from The Counteroffensive in 2024? And what are your expectations for the course of the war next year?
Tim Mak
The Counteroffensive will mark our first anniversary in April. We’ve got a very small team in Kyiv now, and we’re training Ukrainian reporters to do feature journalism and try to really show the human side of what's happening here and make it feel less far away for our readers in the United States and Canada and the UK. We're also going to be launching a new Taiwan supplemental issue every month. We're going to be taking our methodology and applying it to Taiwan, and trying to show these personal stories of what it's like to resist authoritarianism. That starts with the Taiwanese presidential election in mid-January.
As far as the war, there are now, for the first time in a very long time, talks about whether Russia will be on the march again this spring and whether Ukraine has a sufficient defensive posture to hold the line. And as we've discussed, there isn't a clear top-to-bottom strategy about what Ukraine ought to do to organize, to mobilize, to prepare for either defense or for a renewed counteroffensive.
Ukrainian presidents typically give a speech on New Year’s Eve, and I wonder if President Zelenskyy will use it as an opportunity to announce some sort of a new strategy. But it's a very uncertain time right now. We don't know whether US aid will continue to flow. We don't know what the strategy is. We don't know Russian intentions or capabilities in terms of whether they'll be on the march again. So there are a lot of big questions heading into 2024.
That’s it for today
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Hi Aaron and hi Tim! Yes, we now have to consider that Ukrainians could become anti-American. I hope, Tim, that you are able to explain to those you speak with that we are currently held hostage by the MAGA faction in Congress who, under the guise of holding back the work of Congress for the purpose of helping their intended dictator resume power, they are also helping Putin take down the US. We are in full asymmetrical warfare here and too many of us don’t know this. Slava Ukraini!
Thank you Aaron and Tim Mak. Counteroffensive is a
great Substack to support.
For those who want to
HELP Ukraine, see Professor
Tim Snyder Substack and his
Safe Skies for Ukraine. He is
sponsoring a second fund
drive to provide the small
drones Tim speaks about in
this article. Any amount will
help.