One year into the Russia-Ukraine war, here’s what has happened and what lies ahead.
The first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is this month. L.A. Times global affairs correspondent Laura King has visited Ukraine at four key moments since the war started: Russia’s spring invasion, Ukraine’s summertime counteroffensive, Russia’s attack on civilians and infrastructure in the fall, and during the winter fatigue.
Today, she tells us about what she has seen and what has changed. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times global affairs correspondent Laura King
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Ambient Sound: Oh, here it is. That's an, an air raid siren
Gustavo Arellano: Days before sending missiles into Ukraine last February, Vladimir Putin said that the country didn't exist.
Vladimir Putin: “It should be noted that Ukraine actually never had stable traditions of real statehood.”
Gustavo: Boy was he wrong. A year since Russia unleashed its attack, Ukraine has not only held off a total occupation, but also exposed problems in Russia's military.
AP News:The British defense ministry tweeted that Russia's military is now both materially and conceptually weaker as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
Gustavo: In the meantime, Russia's war has battered the global economy, isolated the Russian people, and shored up support for the very thing Putin arguably feared the most, a strong Western alliance against Russia.
AP News: The European security architecture have changed fundamentally after Russia's invasion of Ukraine
AP News: The Social Democratic Party has concluded that Sweden should join NATO.
Gustavo: Worst of all, hundreds of thousands of people have died already because of the conflict.
Gen. Mark Milley: This is a very, very bloody war, and there's significant casualties on both sides.
Gustavo: The news coming out of war-torn Ukraine over the past year hasn't taken a break, and if you haven't been able to keep up or just tuned it out altogether or just want a refresher on how the conflict is affecting you in ways you might not realize, this episode is for you.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times.
It's Monday, Feb. 20, 2023. Today, we look back at one year of war in Ukraine, forward to where the conflict might head from here, and look at how we all feel its effects. Here to talk about the anniversary is my L.A. Times colleague, global affairs correspondent Laura King. Laura, welcome to The Times.
Laura King: Thanks for having me.
Gustavo: There's just so much to discuss and examine with the war in Ukraine, but maybe the best place to start is with the human toll. What are the estimates on how many people have died so far, and how many refugees have left Ukraine?
Laura: Well, the human toll altogether is just enormous. There are estimates from the U.S. and other Western analysts that something like 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or taken off the battlefield with serious wounds. Perhaps half that number of Ukrainian troops. That's a very rough estimate. Nobody provides official figures. Ukraine has a population of a little over 40 million, and of those, about 8 million have fled the country, about 6 million have been internally displaced. And it's really just been, I don't think there's anyone in the country whose life hasn't been touched.
Gustavo: What about infrastructure? All the bombs destroying buildings and all of that.
Laura: Oh, enormous damage. I mean, there are whole cities, parts of which are just leveled. And major cities such as Kharkiv, the second largest city in the country, and several others that have just large sections reduced to ruins. So the rebuilding is going to be an enormous task. It's estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars and it's not even going to be possible to make a firm guess as to what the cost is going to be until the combat quiets down sufficiently for that.
Gustavo: Yeah. And what about territory? I know in the early days of the war, Russia's goal was take over Kyiv and by default, at least in their mind, all of Ukraine. But that obviously didn't happen. So how much of the country does Russia control right now?
Laura: About a fifth of the territory is under Russian control. And some of that though was seized when Ukrainians considered the war to have really started, back in 2014. Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and also took large chunks of the eastern industrial heartland known as the Donbas. And there have been additional Russian territorial seizures since then, so it's a large chunk of the country that is under Russian control.
Gustavo: So, Russia wanted to take over Ukraine, only has about a fifth of it, so it hasn't exactly been a success for Russia or for Vladimir Putin. But then what are the aims that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has? Like what would be an acceptable end to the war for him?
Laura: Well, he's gotten a little bit more maximalist as the war has gone on. I mean, I think at first the Ukrainians were feeling lucky to have survived the initial onslaught. But more recently, what Zelensky has said is that they want it all back, including the Crimean peninsula, including all of the areas that Putin now claims are part of Russia. So there's a pretty vast gulf between what the situation on the ground is today and what the outcome that Ukraine hopes for.
Gustavo: Yeah, the war is still continuing and you're currently actually speaking to us from Ukraine, so I'm curious, what exactly does it take to get into Ukraine these days? You're in Kyiv right now, the capital. So how'd you get there?
Laura: Well, I got there the way a lot of people do, on the train from Warsaw.
Laura: So this is Warsaw Wschodnia, Warsaw East, the main train station for travel to the east, including to Ukraine. This is a big, busy station and there are all kinds of people, but sometimes you can spot the people who might be on their way back to Ukraine. Millions have crossed over into Poland for safety in the years since the war started…
Laura: So I took the train from Warsaw to Kyiv. There's an overnight express – it's called an express, but it does take 18 hours.
Laura: So people are getting settled with their bundles and their parcels and their children. It's not quite six in the evening, but it's fully dark already. It's very cold. Piles of snow on the platform.
Laura: It's almost all people who left and then are coming back. There's just this huge churn of people who leave for some period of time and then some urgent thing draws them back. The health of elderly relatives or just missing their homeland and preferring to be here rather than in the safety of Poland.
Train conductor: Hello? Where you go? For what?
Uh, journalist
Laura: Sometimes in about the middle of the night, you know, they wake people up and say, where's your passport and what's your business in, in Ukraine? And you tell them,
Laura: Press, yes. Thank you.
And then you go onward.
Laura: It's about 13 hours into the train journey now, and uh, it's been a very quiet night. The sky is just beginning to get light and you can just see the misty landscape through the train windows, which are covered over in plastic film so that they don't explode inward.
Arriving on any train journey, whether it's from outside of the country or within Ukraine, there are always many, many emotional reunions on the platform. You see people in uniform, embracing people who have arrived or people arriving in uniform if it's from elsewhere in Ukraine. Just people who clearly have not seen one another for a long period of time. It's always an emotional scene.
Gustavo: Coming up after the break, the war in four acts.
Gustavo: Laura, how many times have you visited Ukraine now? Ever since the beginning of the invasion?
Laura: This is my fourth visit.
Gustavo: Yeah, so I think it would be really illustrative for me and our listeners, on this one-year anniversary, if you just describe how things have changed each time you visited Ukraine.
Laura: Yeah, the war has really changed with the seasons.
Gustavo: So your first trip, that was in early May of last year, in the early months of the invasion. So where'd you go, exactly? And what did you see then?
Laura: Last May, the immediate danger to Kyiv had passed. The Russians had pulled back from their attempt to seize the capital and from the suburbs surrounding it.
But what was happening at that time was that all these horrible atrocities were coming to light in places like Bucha, and other sort of satellite towns around Kyiv.
AP News: Bucha had been controlled by Russian forces until recently when evidence of mass killings and more than 400 bodies were found.
AP News: Zelensky says it's inevitable that the Russian troops will be held responsible.
Laura: And I think up until that point, people hadn't realized how savage the occupation might be.
AP News: Journalists have seen more evidence of killing and torture in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine's capital
Laura: You had the mass graves and the reports of atrocities committed against civilians. So many bodies found with their hands bound
Mitch McConnell: The photographs and reports are sickening and appalling.
Laura: And war crimes investigations were only beginning to ramp up.
Jake Sullivan: We have seen atrocities, we have seen war crimes. We have not yet seen a level of systematic, deprivation of life, of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide.
Laura: It was a time when there was such a mixture of relief that the capital had not fallen after all, and just horror and utter dismay about the atrocities that were coming to light very close to the capital within, you know, within a commuting distance.
Gustavo: I remember how one of the big surprises in those early days was how resilient Kyiv was to that Russian advance. What were the global expectations of how the Ukrainian army was going to handle this Russian invasion?
Laura: I think Ukraine surprised everybody, perhaps even including themselves. The Russians made a number of very, very serious tactical and strategic errors, you know, lining up this enormous convoy of tanks on the one main road, leading to Kyiv. And the Ukrainians just were able to pick them off and disrupt this gigantic invasion in all kinds of ways, some of them very innovative. So it was a surprise to the outside world, in especially the early stages of this fight.
Gustavo: Then the next time you went, your second trip, I think it was around in the summer, in July. Where'd you go and how were people feeling at that point?
Laura: Well, it was so different in different parts of the country. In Kyiv, to some extent life was returning to normal, I mean, there was still a curfew, but there were bars and cafes opening, nightlife. There's a beach on the river that runs through the center of Kyiv that was open, and there were, there were actually beachgoers.
Gustavo: Yeah. I remember you wrote this really powerful story about a boom in the number of weddings that were happening then.
Laura: I think a lot of people were just kind of taking stock of their lives so for some couples, even some people who had been together for a very long time, they just decided that they wanted to be married, that they wanted to formalize it. Young couples, if perhaps one of them was being deployed to the front lines, they also felt that they wanted to have a wedding. And they wanted to be married.
I'd say also there was another interesting thing that came up about the weddings, which is that in Ukraine, gay marriage is not yet legal. And so there are a lot of gay couples who were separated by the war. One of them would be deployed to the front. And it really brought to the forefront their demand that they also be allowed to legalize their unions if they so desired.
Gustavo: Oh wow. That's really interesting. So while some people were trying to go back to a sense of normalcy, what was going on in the front lines in July and August of last year?
Laura: Well in the front lines, the Russians did make some important gains early in the summer in the east. And the Ukrainians were managing by and large to hold the line. But one really game-changing thing was some artillery systems, some sophisticated, longer-range artillery systems that were provided by the U.S. and other Western allies. And the Ukrainians began to be able to strike at Russian troop concentrations and ammunition dumps in both the south and the east. And it really did start to turn the tide. And that set the stage for a large Ukrainian offensive in the northeast at the end of the summer, the early fall, in which they regained thousands of square kilometers of territory.
AP News: Ukraine's lightning advance has had Russian troops on the run in the country's northeast.
Anthony Blinken: It's early days, but it is demonstrably making real progress.
AP News: A Ukrainian airborne assault trooper in Kharkiv saying the Russians were running like mice, abandoning vehicles and even comrades.
Anthony: We're also seeing Ukraine not only hold the line in the Donbas, and in the northeast, but make a significant advance.
Gustavo: Yeah, that counteroffensive really surprised a lot of people and it ended a few months later when Ukraine retook one of the big cities in the east, Kherson.
AP News: Russia's military has said that it will withdraw from the only regional capital that it captured, marking one of the worst setbacks for Russia in the war in Ukraine.
Gustavo: How big of a loss, Laura, was that for Russia?
Laura: Well, Kherson is very important because it sits right at the top of the Crimean peninsula, the loss of which sort of launched this whole conflict back in 2014.
Kherson is symbolically important too because it's the capital of one of the regions that Mr. Putin has declared to be eternally part of Russia after holding a sham referendum leading to an annexation there. So to lose it was a pretty bitter blow for the Kremlin.
Troops: “Glory to Ukraine”
AP News: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posed with soldiers in the city's central square.
Zelensky: This is the beginning of the end of the war. We are, step by step, coming to all the temporary occupied territories.
Laura: And so Kherson is, it's strategically important, and getting it back was a huge psychological boost for the Ukrainians.
Gustavo: And that counteroffensive continued into the fall of 2022, and was still going on during your third visit in November. How did Russia respond to all those setbacks that they were facing?
Laura: Well, they responded with a tactic that horrified a lot of people, but probably shouldn't really have surprised anybody.
In October they started concertedly bombing the power grid with winter coming on. Really trying to bring Ukraine to its knees by depriving people of electricity, of light, of heat. And there were about a dozen waves, between October and now, of bombing that was really aimed not at military targets, but at civilian areas and particularly at energy infrastructure.
The early winter was a difficult time, in Kyiv, the capital, and elsewhere, when the power grid just started being pummeled. There was something really kind of awe-inspiring in a terrible way, seeing a huge metropolis like this – I mean, Kyiv is a city the size of Chicago – plunged into almost complete darkness. And people in high-rise buildings, without elevators to get up and down, daily life was very disrupted. But one thing that was really notable and striking during that period is that cultural events continued in the darkness. People were continuing to stage classical concerts and plays, and an audience would turn out for it.
Even in Kyiv, you would hear people say, OK, I don't have power. I don't have light, so what? You know, there are people in trenches at the front. I'll light some candles. I'll cook dinner over a little propane stove. I mean, it's fine here. And the ones we're thinking about are the ones at the front.
Gustavo: After the break, Zelensky’s intermission, and the fourth and perhaps final act – for now.
Gustavo: Laura, before the break, you were talking about how Russia resorted to attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and it was around that time in December, that Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, he made a surprise visit to the United States
Ambient Sound: Speaker, the president of Ukraine.
Gustavo: So what did he want to accomplish with that trip?
Laura: So coming to the United States was a big gesture, just by leaving the country. And I think that he was concerned that there might be a lessening of support, both among members of Congress and the American public for giving Ukraine the aid that they so desperately need to continue this fight. So that was very much his goal.
Volodymyr Zelensky: Our two nations are allies in this battle. This battle cannot be frozen or postponed. It cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide a protection.
Laura: I think he sounded defiant, and I think people did find it moving.
Volodymyr: Against all odds and doom and gloom Ukraine didn't fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking.
Gustavo: What did he ask for?
Laura: Well, for more of, more of everything. I mean, heavy weaponry is really crucial to the fight as far as the Ukrainians are concerned.
Volodymyr: We have artillery. Yes. Thank you. We have it. Is it enough? Honestly, not really.
Laura: The West has been incrementally upping the effectiveness, the lethality of the weaponry that they're providing. Right now what the Ukrainians want is fighter jets. And so that is being discussed. Before that it was tanks, long range weapons. It is kind of a case of the goalposts always moving. But in general, there has been a little bit of a lag between what the Ukrainians want or are hoping for and what the United States and European allies are willing to provide.
Volodymyr: Your money is not charity. It is an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.
Gustavo: What's the hesitation for the allies in giving them weapons? Because it seems like they are giving them weapons. As you said, they seem to be escalating the firepower of those weapons. So then what's the delay?
Laura: Well, I think always the concern has been that it not be a direct fight being waged by NATO and there is a feeling that providing certain kinds of offensive weaponry would be crossing that line. And Mr. Putin, of course, has not hesitated to rattle the nuclear saber now and then. So I think that's just a calculation that gets made every day in European capitals and in Washington: How much is tiptoeing right up to that line of waging an offensive war?
Gustavo: So what's happened since Zelensky’s visit on the warfront in Ukraine? Has either side made any significant gains?
Laura: It's been a difficult winter, I think, for both sides. The battle lines have been relatively fixed during the last couple of winter months. But there have been really very bloody battles around one city in the east in particular, Bakhmut, which it's a city that Russia has seen as a prize that they would like to capture, sometime around the anniversary of the fighting. It may very well fall in coming days.
Gustavo: Hmm. So yeah, now you're back in Ukraine, your fourth visit since the beginning of the invasion last year. What are you noticing now?
Laura: Well, I think there is a great sense of resolve and resilience, but I think also that people are tired. They're very tired, and I think this kind of deep fatigue does come through sometimes, when you're speaking with people. But I think at the same time,there's just a sense that maybe this is how life is going to be for quite some time to come and people are just kind of trying to steel themselves for that.
Ivan Fedorov: It's a war between evil and good
Laura: A war between evil and good. OK.
Laura: I recently spoke with Ivan Federoff. He's the mayor of Melitopol, which is a strategic city in the south, and it fell to the Russians in the very earliest days of the invasion.
Laura: You are one of the youngest mayors in Ukraine, I think. How old are you now?
Ivan: Now? 34 maybe. I don't know.
Laura: Okay.
Ivan: I never check it.
Laura: OK. It's unusual to be able to speak with a mayor whose city is occupied, and Mr. Federoff was determined to stay in the city. But, very quickly, he attracted the attention of Russian authorities by refusing to go along with some symbols of Russian rule, you know, to stop displaying Ukrainian flags, that sort of thing. So, a few weeks into the Russian occupation, he was arrested, detained, President Zelensky says he was tortured. He doesn't talk about that.
Ivan: You know, I have very great aggression for Russians. Very great aggressions, because I can't believe that in 21st century it's possible.
Laura: He was released in a prisoner exchange and now spends a lot of his time trying to rally support for the people who remain in his city and for those who have been displaced and are staying in other parts of the country while they wait for their city to be liberated from Russian control.
Ivan: Of course, first thing, we need to put our Ukrainian flag to our central square.
Laura: You're gonna raise the flag in the central square.
Ivan: It's first thing, but then we will have a great job, which we need to do to return after our citizens. It'll be very important to connect our family, our citizens; family. Melitopol, it's intercultural capital of Ukraine. Before the 24th of February, we lived in peace and harmony, and we need to build such society again.
Gustavo: And finally, Laura, what does all of this, all these stalemate, back and forth, the war itself, what does it mean for the rest of us, those of us who are not Russian or Ukrainian, with no ties at all to the region? How are we going to feel the effects of the war once it ends or even during it?
Laura: Well, I think, I think the world felt the effects of this war as soon as it started. It was a huge jolt to the global economy, to energy costs everywhere, to things like gasoline prices. So I think the economic effects are going to continue to be felt. Certainly, Russia managed to weather months of some pretty harsh sanctions from the West. And so there's a real question, you know, what else can be done to squeeze Mr. Putin financially in a way that he's really going to feel. So, I think that Mr. Putin is hoping to wear down the West, by continuing to impose economic difficulties. And in turn the West is hoping that a combination of military defeat and economic pressure might cause him to change his mind.
Gustavo: Laura, thank you so much for this conversation.
Laura: I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times. Kasia Broussalian and David Toledo were the jefes on this episode. It was edited by Jazmín Aguilera, and Mark Nieto mixed and mastered it. Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown.
Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our fellow is Helen Li. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Wednesday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.