The Russians just hit a train on Ukraine’s border with Poland, missing trains that had been passing through, one of which had former prime minister Boris Johnson onboard, and another with ex-CIA chief David Petraeus.
“It’s good to have people coming to Moscow and Kyiv, but people expect some tangible results,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies.
If the CIA boss was there to tell the Russians the war was counterproductive and appeal for some common sense, “it doesn’t work. Putin’s thinking is a different thinking. What might work is a tangible, long-term commitment to Ukraine by our partners. And second, it’s more pressure on Russia.”
The battlefield is not moving
President Putin told the American envoys that Russia was doing well on the frontline. He said that during August, his troops had captured 270 square kilometres in the Donetsk region and that they had taken Sviatohirsk, just north of Sloviansk.
But the Institute for the Study of War said that Russian forces had consolidated or seized only 90 square kilometres, and the Ukrainians recently published a video of their forces still in Sviatohirsk.
“I don’t think that Russia has that many advances on the battlefield,” said Kateryna Bondar, from the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What Putin was mostly talking about, I think it’s the broader situation. Their attacks on Kyiv.”
Indeed, what we are seeing change is Moscow using new and updated weapons to inflict devastating physical and psychological damage on the people of Ukraine, ahead of what many are expecting to be the worst winter.
First, there is the Banderol, something between a cruise missile and a jet-powered attack drone. They are cheaper, relatively, to make for the Russians, and they require Ukraine to use their depleting air defences to strike them down.
“The goal is to scale production, to bring mass attacks to Ukrainian cities simultaneously in different locations,” Bondar said.
Then there are the new Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones, jet-powered upgrades of the long-range Shahed that are reportedly more than twice as fast and much harder to intercept.
Ukraine said that Russia fired more than 2,800 jet-powered drones in August. Interception rates were around 60%, compared to more than 90% for the slower drones.
Ralph Goff, a 35-year-veteran of the CIA, had an “up close personal encounter” with the power of a new Geran drone as he was two blocks from the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv when it was hit, and he was on that train with Petraeus.
“Here’s the most disturbing part in all this,” he said. “Everyone praises Ukraine for their ability to adapt, innovate. But people tend to forget that the Russians can do the same thing.
“The Russians can innovate maybe slower than Ukrainians, but they can also produce and scale things up to a much greater level.”
A long winter
Russia’s growing use of these weapons means Kyiv is under near-constant air raid alerts, upending everyday life. The Kyiv Independent reported 13 alerts in the city on 27 August alone, the highest single-day total since the war began.
“Previously, it was common just during the night, but now it’s 24/7,” Bondar said. “Ukrainians are tired of being resilient. Everyone is talking about Ukrainians being brave, but they are exhausted.”
All this comes ahead of winter, when Russia is expected to again target energy infrastructure. It has already hit around 300 petrol stations in recent months. Donald Trump said Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to hit each other’s energy targets, although President Zelenskyy, pictured below, says he’s not convinced Moscow would stick to the terms.
“It’s going to be a very difficult winter,” said Bielieskov. “Russia is producing ballistic missiles at a tempo of at least 60-70 pieces a month, plus hundreds of attack UAVs, jet-powered attack UAVs. To what extent our energy system is resilient, no-one knows, and no-one would like to test the hypothesis of what would happen if Russia indeed would manage to destroy our infrastructure.”
Where next?
Ukraine is still holding the line in Donetsk and is also using its own long-range drones to strike targets deep inside the Russian Federation. Those attacks are near daily and are hitting energy and logistic targets.
Zelensky has suggested the US-led talks could bring some de-escalation from both sides, yet the Russians are not just intensifying their attacks on Ukraine, but their allies too.
There was a drone incursion into Moldovan airspace that delayed the Ukrainian President’s plane. Germany announced that Russia was behind an attempted drone attack at Leipzig Airport in August.
And despite all this, the Americans are not helping. Donald Trump said he wanted Zelenskyy to stop striking diesel fuel refineries, while Jared Kushner seemed to imply the war could end if Ukraine just gave in to Russia’s territorial demands in the Donbas.
“President Putin’s laid out his line of what he wants to achieve,” he said. “If Ukraine, you know, wanted to withdraw to that line, then, obviously, you know, we have the rest of the deal set up and put together.”
Note, Kushner said that via video link to diplomats at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv. Some of those guests were then on that train that narrowly missed a drone attack near the Polish-Ukrainian border.
I asked Ralph Goff about that attack, given he was evacuated from a train nearby, and he said it was clear the Russians were sending a message.
“For me, it makes me angry,” he said. “Angry that the Ukrainians have to put up with this; angry that Russians are firing at civilian targets; and angry that the West is not stepping up to do more to prevent this.”
Russia Ukraine update: Putin’s winter war plan explained
From the FourSight newsletter from Channel 4 News.