Ukraine’s special forces picking off Putin’s commanders one by one | Maxim Tucker

also the fact that the Russians blew up they kind of kadam has helped drain the waters in that part of the river so in fact the you know it's easier for ukrainians to get across that areas of land so Maxim in today's article for the times you've told the story of the Ukrainian kill squads and they're picking off Putin's commanders inside of Russia how are they doing this so they're taking advantage of the fact that Russia has deployed most of its active forces in the south of Ukraine so they've left the priyanskin Belgard regions of Russia unprotected on the northern border with Ukraine um and Ukraine has already sought to exploit that by sending um Russian partisans who are aligned with Kiev across the border to try and cause problems for the Russians in those regions and this Special Forces Unit the shaman Battalion the Ukrainian Special Forces Unit told me that they have sometimes accompanied and escorted those Russian partisans into Russian territory and then they've broken off on their own missions to to go and hunt for and kill senior Russian commanders in those areas how many Russian commanders do we estimate that they've killed well they wouldn't give numbers and they wouldn't give names um for obvious reasons but they said that they have committed more than 10 of these operations over the past six months um so you know some of them may have been successful some of them may not have been successful but that's what they were prepared to say to me we know that Russia has admitted losing six Generals in the war and and actually over 100 Colonels so it's a really high casualty campus in your offices and this might help explain some of those casualties how significant of a loss is this for the Russian military which seems to be in somewhat of a state of disarray it's very disruptive to have senior officers kills um it's it's bad for morale as well um it's it makes it complicates Russia's Logistics and command and control functions even further when they've already had difficulties um massing their forces for offensives and motivating their troops so it is very it's it's further disruption and further um problems for the Russian forces and what other operations have have this group been involved in so they they weren't specific about the operations but they did talk about taking on targets as large as air bases and we know that there have been two attacks on Russian strategic bomber bases hundreds of miles inside Russian territories um uh we don't know quite the results of those because Russia has always sought to downplay them but certainly they will have an impact on Russia in terms of having to allocate more resources to guarding those areas and disrupting preparations on those bases for strikes against Ukraine so there's two air bases that we've seen attacked inside Russia and then other airbases we've seen attacked inside Crimea far more frequently the times encountered these forces last year how much has changed in terms of how they're operating um between last year and this year so when we revealed they were crossing the border for the first time this time run a little bit earlier than this time last year it was a big surprise because people had thought the Ukraine's were limited to operating on their own territory and they they um considered in fact they had been a cross into Russian territory and they were hitting infrastructure objects so trying to disrupt the logistics chain um hitting Supply bases and uh TV masks and radio masks and things like this to try and disrupt Communications um they've now grown they've become because of their heroics everywhere from the defense of Hospital airport to an assault on Snake Island they're very popular and people who are very highly motivated want to want to join their forces so they're they've grown from a kind of a smaller Special Operations group to a big Battalion with with hundreds of people involved in their missions and that has meant that they've had to take on some of the kind of nitty-gritty work of Defending trenches and special Special Operations that require them to stay on positions for months at a time such as defending the road of life as it's called to back moves which was allowing Ukrainian resupply in the city when it was besieged by the Russians um but they've also decided that they are now competent enough and experienced enough to take on these more daring rates where they go further into Russia deeper into Russia and targets really big targets such as air bases do we know if they've received any sort of like Western training or anything to kind of get to that point well some of them will have received Western training and some of them been fighting since 2014 when Russia first launches hybrid invasion of the Don bass and we know from previous interviews with them that their soldiers had received special forces training from from the Brits and and from the Americans during that period of time from 2014 to to now um obviously are not telling us about any further training that they received but really I think this this unit is very very involved in the war effort and do not have a great deal of time for training when we talked about trainings they said actually we've got more to offer the the NATO allies now because we have so much experience of fighting the Russians who know more about this type of combat that NATO hasn't been experiencing for a very long time they are using some Western Equipment to do this one of them is a US Blackhawk helicopter I mean doesn't that kind of go against the Western warnings not to be using their equipment inside Russian borders no it doesn't because the U.S Blackhawk helicopter is actually privately purchased so it wasn't given by the investment the tree they purchased it privately there are some contractors that have them um and it was purchased without any arguments so they've taken the Blackhawk and they've fitted their own machine guns on it and there has been some controversy with Belgium because they've got special assault rifles that were produced in Belgium um but none of the kind of the heavy armaments that they promised the ukrainians have promised not to use against Russia are being used in Russia every time you know you reveal something like this to us we get loads of comments saying stop sharing this stop sharing what the ukrainians are doing um I mean is there is there danger in you sharing this information publicly with us well it's important to remember the ukrainians don't talk to me under duress they they're happily willing to talk to me and they share details that they think will be useful for them to share um and sometimes that is a judgment call about the balance the the impact on morale and the impact on Russian morale versus the impact on their missions so they share within me a level of detail that they're comfortable with in order to achieve that objective without um rendering the other objective more difficult I mean I think at this point we've seen that there are um ukrainian-backed incursions into Russia already we've seen the paths and movements there's a lot of these things that Russia will already be aware that is happening and they share with me perhaps a little a little bit more detail about how that works but not enough to give away anything that is an active operation I wanted to just ask you a few questions just in general about how the counter-offensive is shaping up um how how are we seeing the counter-offensive progress it seems to have been quite stagnant but are we seeing things move a little bit more so it's been slow going I mean there's been movement there's a lot of fighting there's a heavy artillery barriers going on every day um and the ukrainians have made progress but slow progress measured in in kind of hundreds of meters and single digit kilometers because they've you know at the beginning of the counter-offensive they experience quite a lot of vehicle losses um and they're worried that they won't get those Vehicles replenished by the West so they they've now chosen to Dismount from those vehicles and are sending troops in infantry on infantry combat which is really grueling difficult Warfare um and is perhaps not the right decision I mean if they had more reassurances from the West that those Vehicles would all be replaced then they might seek to conserve um human Manpower more efficiently and and rather than um but it won't be so worried about sacrificing vehicles but we have seen last night very interesting river crossing of the Negro um where Ukrainian special forces in in a considerable number in the hundreds have crossed the nepro on boats and take in some Russian positions on the Russians occupied Bank of the nepro and those special forces seem to be now withdrawing and leaving um Regular infantry to hold those positions they will face a difficult task to keep those positions resupplied but it does to be appear to be a significant attempt to dislodge the Russians from that side of the nepro OR at the very least to distract and to move some of the Russian forces away from defending against the main thrust of the counter-offensive and zaparita region last week you were writing about the denipro delta in kind of these these little islands in the river that Ukraine was taking back with the help of British vets do you think that's come into play as to how they were able to take that overnight definitely those are those actions taking Islands on the nepro River delta have provided a staging post to get across the Negro and also the fact that the Russians blew up the dam has helped drain the waters in that part of the river so in fact the you know it's easier for ukrainians to get across that areas of land but it's still a very very tough battle it's going to be very difficult to supply those units that have got a foothold on the other side we've seen the Russians really been quite determined to drive the ukrainians out from a Bridgehead near the antonovsky bridge and they've used kind of very heavy weaponry and 500 pound bombs to try and get the ukrainians out but they're still clinging on there so the the interesting part will be now can the ukrainians keep these bridgeheads resupplied and can they move from a Bridgehead into expanding their operations on the other side of the Negro so you're saying from a from a battle perspective blowing up the dam I mean of course there was a huge cost to you know human life and there were humanitarian concerns but from a battle perspective it actually kind of backfired on the Russians it's made it it's made it much easier for Ukraine ruins it much easier in the first instance it delayed the Ukrainian offensive across the nepra I think the ukrainians were planning to try and launch a a direction of attack against across the nepro anyway and so they haven't been able to do that in tandem with a zaparizio offensive which has been to Russia's Advantage but now as the flood waters dry out those areas of lands are actually easier to cross than they were before and also Russia washed away some of its defensive positions which just make it a little bit easier to get across but it's still very difficult because on the other Bank of the nepro it's still very heavily mined there are there are Marine mines in the nepro river itself um so the ukrainians still face an uphill struggle to try and get across that especially without air power when you've got um Russian attack helicopters that can be targeting boats on the river that can be targeting tanks and anything that you do get across as soon as it's across so it's still going to be very tough going there were reports this morning of Ukrainian drones being destroyed over Moscow and an explosion at a Russian Factory I mean this like combined with what you've revealed and your piece in the times it shows how the war is spilling over into Russian territory I mean how bad is this for Vladimir Putin so I think we've gone through stages of the ukrainians thinking what will it take to stop the Russians and stop the Russian invasion to get them to meaningfully agree to meaningful peace talks and withdrawals of troops um and that started you know to always in the first six months of the war ukrainians thought oh we just need to hold out a certain amount of time the Russia will have used up its Armament we've now seen that Russia has increased its armaments production they then thought we need to kill a certain number of Russians 200 000 and then the the social upheaval will be so great that the person will not be able to to stay in power we're now at what the Ukrainian say is 250 000 um killed and certainly hundreds of thousands of people wounded in this war um and still that hasn't had the major upheaval effect that they'd expected in Russian Society in fact you've had people leaving Russia and you do have that you had the precaution Mutiny but that seems to have somehow been amicably resolved um with with Russia now even attending conferences in Saint Petersburg so it's difficult for the ukrainians to know what they can do to bring the Russians to the peace table and I think you know in the meantime Russia is still pounding Ukrainian cities so they've decided we'll show that this can go two ways and we'll start trying to hit military targets and government Targets in Moscow and show that there is a weakness in the Russian regime so I think that's already becoming a pattern we've seen it's a consistent drone attacks over the past few weeks um they have also throughout the war been a lot of fires on military industrial complexes in in Russia there was a fire at this particular complex last year um and now there's an all Mighty great explosion with which is an enormous mushroom cloud going up from it we don't know what the cause of that is yet Russian authorities are saying that it's a there's a human cause but we don't know if it's a drone or if they were explosives moved into the plan um and we don't know who carried that out if that's Russia and partisans or people that the ukrainians have paid in order to carry out activities or indeed the work of the special forces that I've been talking to I mean it's a bit ironic isn't it because you know we look at Ukraine and they've really been able to enhance their anti-missile technology to mean that you know we are seeing strikes on Ukrainian cities but there's also a lot more that they're being able to you know make sure that they aren't reaching residential buildings and during the Mutiny there were some commentators talking on our station saying you know actually this proves that Russia may not be able to defend itself anymore and maybe it does maybe all of this does show that that you know Russia Russia's military just isn't in a state to be able to defend its borders anymore well it's it's a huge border with Ukraine um and it's about really where the troops are located so if Ukraine was able to launch a counter-offensive in the Belgard and briansk regions um I think you'd see a very different result from the counterfeit there were not significant defensive in those regions and if it was a traditional War where one country attacks the other and then another country retaliates by attacking the other country's territory um Ukraine could obviously make significant progress in the north um but because it has these restrictions imposed by the westers as with regard to the supply of Western weapons it can't do that it has to focus its resources in the in the obvious places and that is where Russia has significant um Power and it still has it you know incredible Fleet in the Black Sea with Incredible missile capabilities that Ukraine doesn't have it's still a very one-sided aerial battle when it comes to cruise missiles and Hypersonic missiles these are much more powerful much larger much more difficult to hit than Ukrainian drones Russia seems to be struggling with it because they are there are a lot of them these drones are cheap it's the same as the kind of Chartered drones the Iranian drones that have been used against Ukrainian cities they just fly on mass and some of them get through and it's difficult they're quite small it's difficult to see them on on radar you need to have line of sight to shoot them down um and they're just Russia just doesn't have the same near defenses as Kiev does but there are lots of other cities in Ukraine that are still very vulnerable to Russian aerial attack and that's why they're so Keen to have more Patriot missile systems that can defeat against defeat ballistic missiles which are hard to shoot down um and more of the kind of British supplied azeram missiles rigged onto a super cat truck that we revealed in in our article um because they helped that shoot down these these swarms of short-haired drones we're also seeing tension surprise kind of on other borders with Russia and Belarus I mean along the border of of Belarus Poland is sending 2 000 troops to the Border due to fears of the Wagner group kind of setting up camp there and some hostility along that border should we be genuinely worried about more tension in this region or do you think it might be a false flag and I don't think that no I don't think the Russians will be looking for a war with NATO I don't think that Poland I mean Poland is is right to move troops there because it might encounter some subversive activities but it won't be an all all-out invasion of the type that Ukraine has experienced um and Russia really doesn't have the resources at this point to to certainly not to fight NATO let alone to mount significant question into Poland um there is still a threat to Ukraine from Belarus Belarus is still very close to Kiev and Ukraine will have to to watch out for that but shoigu's comments today about deploying significant resources to the border with Finland look very Hollow because there are no available resources to spare along the border with NATO they haven't put resources there for the past few months knowing that Finland is going to become a NATO member um and because simply they don't want to war with NATO they know that they can win a war with Nate so it's it's increasingly clear especially at this point um so what is what is the point in in allocating your resources there is it is it distraction though do they think that maybe maybe this will distracts you know the west or you know Poland and Finland or NATO um from from Ukraine it's it's the same as the nuclear threat it's a consistent threat of escalation in order to scare Western politicians away from supporting Ukraine and giving Ukraine the support that it needs um and they've consistently offered red lines red lines have been crossed and they they haven't been able to escalate um so it's it's the same kind of saber rattling it's Hollow saber rattling um with with the tools that they think they have to scare Western politicians that was Maxim Tucker he's the former Kiev correspondent for the times and now he's an assistant editor on our foreign desk thank you so much to Maxim for providing us with that fantastic Insight if you want to hear more from Maxim Tucker go to times.radio forward slash subscribe all of his articles come with fantastic maps and videos and incredible analysis of the inside of the war in Ukraine

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 758,282

Keywords: special operations forces (sof) of ukraine, 72nd marine centre for special operations, putin's war, ukrainian forces, russia forces, reaper drone, ukraines kraken unit, us drone, belfer center for science and international affairs, shot by sniper, russia-ukraine stand-off, ukraine front lines fighting, ukrainian soldiers fighting, russian invastion of ukraine, putin invades ukraine, russia-ukraine stand-off 2022, putin speech ukraine war, russia ukraine conflict

Id: 5jOUkDOSnjI

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023