The Facts on the Ground in Ukraine

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0:17Kate Odell: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome to Potomac Watch. I'm Kate O'Dell, your host today. We have a special episode for you today with my colleague Jillian Melcher. Jillian is on the ground this week traveling around Ukraine. Is Ukraine regaining momentum on the front in the Southeast? How will Ukraine defend its cities now that it is short on defensive Patriot missiles? We'll touch, too, on today's U.S. House of Representatives vote on a bill to put more punishing economic pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war. Let's jump into it. Jillian, thanks for calling in and joining us.

0:56Kate Odell: Tell us a little bit about your impressions of what is going on. I understand that your trip has included a trip to the southeastern front of the war. And I think Americans have a dim impression that this war is pretty much locked, that no side has successfully regained momentum, that the Ukrainians are still struggling to retake territory. But I think that's maybe a flat picture that is not quite capturing some of the advances Ukraine is making, particularly in technology. But give us your impressions on the ground this week of that specific question.

1:29Jillian Melchior: Yeah, so I've been all over the country. And just to give you some color on this, no flights in Ukraine right now because of the air situation. And Russia is also increasingly targeting the civilian passenger trains. So when you want to get around, the safest way to do it right now is driving. And we have clocked up some serious miles. I've gone to the southeastern front to look at what's happening on the south and along the bottom part of the fortress belt, then went up to the northeast part, including the city of Izum, which is driving through it. It's under FPV netting. And then back to Kiev and then to Lviv in western Ukraine.

2:08Jillian Melchior: So I've gotten a pretty good panorama of the country. And what I'm starting to see, it's really interesting. I was here about a year ago exactly, and it's almost a reversal of what I heard before. So at the front, particularly in the fortress belt, and that is the critical part of eastern Ukraine, it's a strategic location, really important for the Ukrainians to hold this where they have the upper hand because it stops the Russians from rolling further west into Ukraine. The situation's actually looking pretty good. I'm hearing that Ukrainians have stabilized the front on the north part of the fortress belt.

2:42Jillian Melchior: I'm hearing about limited Ukrainian gains that are pushing Russians back, making it harder for them to target some of these frontline cities. And there's a sense of momentum. The other side that I'm hearing is, you know, last year there was a lot of optimism about how quickly Ukraine had innovated and addressed this large scale Russian combined arms threat in the air. So this This is back when Russia was sending 500, 700 drones a night. Ukraine was able to quickly develop and scale up interceptors. That was looking pretty good last year. This year in the air, it's a much bleaker picture. So Ukraine is running low or running out or is already out of Patriot missiles.

3:21Jillian Melchior: And that's the only thing that can reliably counter ballistic missiles. And the other thing is this is a war of rapid innovation. Things are constantly changing. Russia and Ukraine are playing a game of technological cat and mouse. Right now, Russia has developed jet Shahids. They're really fast. They're tough to intercept. And that's creating a situation where Russia can strike a lot of sites in Ukraine. And so headed into the winter, concerns about the humanitarian situation, but also concerns about Russia hitting some of these defense industrial sites that have helped Ukraine gain the technological upper hand and keep the Russians at bay.

3:59Kate Odell: Well, Jillian, there's a lot there. But one thing that comes to mind immediately is you're pointing out the kind of the split screen in the war between a front where the Ukrainians are doing quite well and holding the line and then Putin exploiting what you described as their lack of patriot interceptors as America is short all around the world on patriot interceptors. and Trump has been reluctant to give Ukraine more, Putin is exploiting that vulnerability to pound civilian targets in the Western part of the country that are very far from the front. I want to ask a little bit about that in the country's West and what that means, what it really means when you don't have patriots.

4:34Kate Odell: But before we get there, focus first, though, on this Fortress Belt visit, because I've covered the Washington theater of the Ukraine war for several years now. And one thing you hear in Washington all the time when you're talking about, you know, Ukraine should go for a settlement now. It's because this part of the country, Putin's going to take it. He's going to get there. He's going to break through the fortress belt. That land is gone. So Ukraine should trade it while they still can. And for years now, that has not happened. And so I would really like your analysis from your frontline visit.

5:06Kate Odell: What have the Ukrainians done to prevent that, to make that stable? What are the, you know, the innovation cycle, to your point, very short. I hear things like two weeks. Faster sometimes. Sometimes faster sometimes where, you know, technologies, there's a counter developed. But what is the latest in that cycle? What really accounts for their ability to make that line stable and to hold that territory that for so long more pessimistic observers of the war have thought it would just be gone soon?

5:30Jillian Melchior: First off, this is terrain that is favorable for Ukraine to defend. So we'll start from there. Good spot to camp out and fight if you have to do it. But I think what was cool about this trip is I really got to go out with some of the soldiers that are doing the fighting and see what is enabling their success at holding the Russians at bay. And so I want to talk about two different things. I actually got to go out and observe a mid-range strike happening. And that was really interesting because this is something that Ukraine has gained a capability just within the last several months. And what it's basically allowing them to do, it's striking at a depth on the Russian rear that basically they're able to take out Russian logistics, take out ammunition, fuel storage, warehouses, command and control.

6:20Jillian Melchior: And the effect of this is that if you're a Russian troop sitting at the front line, it's much harder for you to get the support that you need. And so you're just sitting there in this area that's drone saturated called the killed zone, and you don't have a lot of support from the back and you're in trouble. So that's one factor. The second factor that I think I didn't fully appreciate until this trip I got to visit a command and control center on the Ukrainian side is how they're using technology. And there's there's a you can call it a battlefield management system. You can call it a common operational picture or a combat workspace.

6:56Jillian Melchior: base, but it's called Delta and it's homegrown. And actually, I was looking at testimony earlier this year from Dan Driscoll, U.S. Army Secretary, and he was talking about what Ukraine has developed is actually superior to what the U.S. uses. And what it's doing is basically the Ukrainians have a real-time picture of what is happening at the battlefield. And this goes all the way from a strategic level down to like battalion or brigade level. So let me talk about what this looks like in practice. You go into this room, it's full of screens. It looks like NASA Command Center in a movie. And you've got every single drone that's in the air.

7:35Jillian Melchior: If it's not jammed, it's sending back real-time footage from the battlefield. So you can see what's happening and sometimes see it from multiple perspectives. You've got operational officers that are sitting in that control room on the phone with crew and pilots, telling them what's happening in their vicinity. So they have improved situational awareness. and drone pilots can literally like while they're on the flight path drop a pin and say hey i just saw an enemy troop or hey i just saw a really interesting enemy target and then through this common operational picture somebody else can pick it up almost like you're an uber driver picking up a ride and go strike it and in practice what this means is um like the technical term for it is an accelerated kill chain what it really means is you see something and you immediately strike it the response time is really, really fast.

8:23Jillian Melchior: And all of this is feeding data back into the Ukrainian system. And so they're able to quickly analyze and act on that data. So I was seeing like corporate style spreadsheets that are showing if you have a particular Russian target, here's the drone that has had the most success in taking it out. And here's the most cost effective way of taking it out. And all of this is allowing Ukraine to really leverage the data in a way that improves efficiency. They can also back channel with the weapons developers and say, you know, here's real time data on what's working and what's not working. But that combined with drones, and I'm talking about like both aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles that are increasingly commonly used.

9:06Jillian Melchior: It's putting Ukrainian soldiers further from the battlefield, letting machines do the job. And that's had a just incredible effect on the manpower disparity. Last year, when I was out in the same region in Izum, I was hearing people freaking out about, we really feel like a manpower hunger. This year, the mood has totally shifted. I was hearing that if Russia mobilizes, sends more Russian troops to the front, people are saying that just means more dead Russians. If we see them on the battlefield, we have the speed and the agility to take them out.

9:38Kate Odell: Jillian, that's fascinating. I mean, Ukraine's manpower limitations have been one big known of the war for a long time now. I mean, so when I look at the Ukrainians are imposing a seven or eight to one ratio on the Russians, meaning that they are imposing costs on Russia, even though Russia obviously is just a much larger country. Now, is Ukraine expecting that larger mobilization? We do see Putin starting to prepare for a possible mobilization. It seems in some sense, hard to believe. I mean, he has already started recruiting from prisons. He is risking losing more casualties on the battlefield each month than he can recruit.

10:17Kate Odell: It would seem like this is a failed strategy of just throwing more people into this fight. The life expectancy of a Russian recruit on the battlefield, to your point, very, very short. But does Ukraine expect Putin to keep just taking that grinding strategy and do another round of mobilization in Russia?

10:35Jillian Melchior: Yeah, I think they do, for the most part, expect more men to be thrown at the front. And the saying that I kept hearing repeated over and over is that this is a Soviet-style tactic. You're throwing men into the meat grinder. And that a small Soviet-style army will always lose against a big Soviet-style army. And so Ukraine can't fight in a Soviet way. And that's the mentality that's really driving Ukraine's upper hand in some elements of the battlefield. They struggle with scale. Russia's bigger. It's got a more powerful economy. It's got a bigger defense industrial base. But what I'm seeing on the Ukrainian side, I want to shift the conversation away.

11:17Jillian Melchior: I think it's an oversimplification to say that drones are the reason that Ukraine is winning or that flexibility. But what we're really talking about is an ecosystem here where Ukraine is making smart use of technology, using a really good common operational system, innovating fast in a way that's based on data, making battlefield decisions in a way that's based on data, having a check in the system to make sure that that data is accurate. So they're acting on what's actually happening there. And then decentralizing things in a way that they're trusting soldiers, even at a low level, to take personal initiative and to make decisions on their own without seeking permission within the guidelines that have been set.

11:58Jillian Melchior: And that gives them a speed advantage. And this is a war of speed.

12:03Kate Odell: I mean, you're describing that, too, that fundamental difference between Soviet and Western militaries. I mean, the pride of the U.S. military is that its ability to flow decision making lower down on the chain of command. And that makes an enormous difference on the battlefield. So we have to take one quick break. We'll be back in a moment with more Potomac Watch. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

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13:13Kate Odell: There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. Welcome back. I'm chatting with my colleague Jillian Melcher, live from Ukraine. I wondered if you would talk a little bit in more detail about these new jet-powered drones that Russia is using on the battlefield. What advantages are they providing Russia, and what is Ukraine doing so far to counter them?

13:41Jillian Melchior: Yeah, they're fast. That's the key thing to know about them. And so a lot of Ukrainians, interceptors that they developed last year to take down slower Shahids just can't keep up. Somebody likened it to like, say you're chasing a car down the highway. The trajectory of it is you're not chasing it from behind. You're perpendicular to it and it's going really fast and you're trying to T-bone it. That's a pretty tricky thing to do. That's what the interception kind of looks like. So Ukraine is innovating. It's trying to figure out a way to intercept these right now. But that's one challenge. Scaling it up is going to be another challenge.

14:19Jillian Melchior: The one thing I will flag is that, you know, Ukraine's got these incredible F-16 pilots. The F-16s have been a real asset. It's actually easier for an F-16 to take out one of these jet-powered drones than one of the slower drones. It's a little bit safer for the pilot just because of relative speeds. One thing that we can do to help them is make sure that those F-16s are well maintained and that they can be used to their full potential. That's a really important stopgap right now.

14:48Kate Odell: You know, that's a great point. And parts, contract support, you know, Western training, all of that, I think, is essential. I mean, it seems like to your point about Patriot missiles, we know that it looks like Ukraine is either extremely low or out of Patriot missiles because more missiles seem to be hitting their targets, not being intercepted by Patriots. We know the United States used quite a lot of Patriot missiles in Iran. I think there's a public perception that Ukraine is the reason why the United States is low on Patriot interceptors. I thought it was helpful when we had Mark Montgomery on the show and he was saying, you know, we gave Ukraine like 500 Patriot missiles versus using 1500 in Iran.

15:30Kate Odell: So Ukraine was not really the driver of our Patriot shortages. But what is Ukraine doing without Patriots? What is it trying to, you know, jerry-rig together to make some of these missiles easier to take down, kind of being aware that Patriot supply is low? And then secondly, tell us, especially since to your point, it's not your first visit, tell us what it's like in these cities in the western part of the country now that the war's front is just being brought closer by this lack of air defense, that it's a deliberate strategy to wear out the Ukrainian public to bring the war closer to them to get Ukraine to just give up.

16:08Kate Odell: How is that being received in Ukrainian society?

16:11Jillian Melchior: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. They are trying to wear people down. And I think what Russia is doing is it's playing with speed of innovation and scale of the number of drones and missiles that it can fire at Ukraine to fry and thin and stretch their defenses. So what I am seeing is a lot of really cool innovation in the air defense space. It's one area where Ukraine is actually using AI to a pretty good capability. So like the way I heard it described is you're slicing and dicing the strategic depth. So in the same way that Ukrainians are using Delta to act on battlefield data, they've got sensors and radars in the field that are picking up on to heed drones and then trying different manners of intercepting them.

16:56Jillian Melchior: So jamming is a cost-free way of doing it beyond the cost of the jammer. And then as it gets closer and closer to the potential target, moving up in the amount of expensive things that you try to intercept it with. So they are getting a lot more efficient in air defense, but the Patriot thing is a real problem. It's the only thing that can reliably take down a ballistic missile. Ukraine's kind of trying to adjust in a couple of ways. So for its electricity and for its defense industrial base, the thing I'm hearing is dispersion. They want to move it to a lot of places, have backup facilities, try to make it so if you hit one target, it doesn't take out the whole capability.

17:35Jillian Melchior: There's also a real effort to kind of help civilians cope with this. So I was noticing this time in Kiev, you know, last year when I was there, I felt like you're up 10 times a night going to the air raid shelter. And there's a real psychological component to that. You end up just like beyond exhausted and struggling to function and having to make a decision about like, is it more dangerous to your health not to get sleep or to gamble your chances that you're going to be the unlucky one that gets hit that night? That's kind of the mentality. my perception is that ukraine's getting a little bit more specific with the air alerts that it's issuing so that um you're able to act on better information and decide your level of risk so that was something that i saw improve this trip you know just for civilians it's september in ukraine there's a chill in the air the leaves are starting to change people are drinking warm drinks instead of cool drinks and i was sensing a pretty deep sense of heaviness just given how how difficult last winter was.

18:36Jillian Melchior: A lot of people were without heat, without power. There's a sense of dread. There's also a sense of like, we kind of know what to expect and how to prepare this time in Kiev. It's still a functioning city. It's very vibrant. You can go out and get like the best coffee ever. And these incredibly intricate desserts, one of my favorite spots ended up getting hit last week. Windows all shattered. I went there today. It was open again. But, You know, when you're driving in and out of the city, you see warehouse after warehouse that's been hit. Russia's been targeting gas stations. So I mentioned before that driving is the best way to get around right now.

19:13Jillian Melchior: Definitely out east, but even driving to Lviv, gas stations are being hit. So you have to stop for fuel at some point, but you're just kind of nervous and monitoring Telegram to see if there's an air threat. It's a weird place of contrast right now. Like Ukraine is still very much up and functioning. But it is also very much under aerial attack.

19:33Kate Odell: Hang tight. One more break. We'll be right back. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

20:03Kate Odell: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back to Potomac Watch. The fundamental background of our conversation here is that Putin's war ambitions have not changed over the four years of the war. He does not seem willing to negotiate. He does not seem willing to compromise. He is not abiding to even temporary ceasefires, not interested in them. The president has tried to broker a temporary ceasefire fire before. We did have a high profile visit of American negotiators to Kiev. I think it was the first time they had visited Kiev. But what is your sense on this trip, especially again, versus your other ones, of what a durable deal would look like that what that the Ukrainian public might accept and whether there's any evidence at all that Putin is interested in one?

20:52Jillian Melchior: No evidence that Putin is interested in one. If he wants to stop, he can. He's gotten many good offers. The Ukrainians keep saying, like, you want a temporary ceasefire? We'll give it to you. You want a permanent one? We'll give it to you. Let's make peace. Let's stop shooting. Putin's answer has been a resounding no. And that's been delivered by explosion. Now, on what a peace deal could potentially look like, we got to look at what Putin is demanding. And that's as a starting point for negotiations. Ukraine gives up significant additional territory that's not currently occupied, including that critical fortress belt.

21:26Jillian Melchior: And I think that's just a non-starter with Ukrainians because nobody trusts that Putin is going to stop there. If you surrender your hard defense, if you unlock your door in hopes of keeping the intruder out, it's not a winning strategy. In terms of kind of freezing the conflict along current lines, I've heard that, you know, any peace deal might have to be put toward Ukrainian voters. Pulling on this is kind of mixed. But one thing to keep in mind is that because of the nature of drone warfare, and I'm using that as a catch-all phrase, right now tanks are very vulnerable. It's very tough to use them to do protected mobile firepower and to advance.

22:07Jillian Melchior: And that's making offensive operations on both the Russian side and the Ukrainian side really hard. So one factor to keep in mind is that it may be tough to reclaim territory.

22:19Kate Odell: But overall, would you describe Ukrainian morale as higher because the front is more stable and they gain real momentum there? Lower because their civilian cities are really bearing more of the brunt of the war or about the same?

22:30Jillian Melchior: I ask this question. Ukrainians do seem more tired than they were last year. It's been a tough winter. I think they were buoyed by the successes of this summer. They have really enjoyed the strikes on Russian military targets, Russian energy warehouses. Anytime one of those happens, you should see the memes go around social media. But, you know, the answer that I get when I ask that question most often is that it's almost kind of irrelevant. They are fighting a war that they view as existential. They see that in occupied territory, Russia is carrying out a genocide. It's stealing children from parents.

23:06Jillian Melchior: You're not free to speak. You're not free to practice religion. And if you've been a dissenter, you may be hauled off, disappeared and tortured. And so in those circumstances, if the choice is between fighting when you are exhausted and surrendering to a worse fate, you're going to keep fighting.

23:22Kate Odell: One other thing I wanted to mention was that the House is supposed to vote Wednesday afternoon on Lindsey Graham, the late Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina's bill to set out new sanctions on Russia and allow kind of secondary sanctions or tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil. Now, this could go after major Russian oil purchases from, for instance, China that do allow Putin to get financing for his war. The bill is expected to pass the House. It's already passed the Senate with more than 80 votes. I wondered what you're hearing about this bill in Ukraine and if Ukraine thinks this will substantially improve the economic pressure that the United States is putting on Vladimir Putin to come to the negotiating table and get a deal.

24:05Jillian Melchior: Yeah, it's a really important thing to do. It's another tool of squeezing the Russian economy. And you're already starting to see some really interesting fault lines in the Russian economy. Energy is how Vladimir Putin sustains his war machine. So that's a good lever to push on if you want to get him to the negotiating table. I also wouldn't view it as a solitary thing. I mean, Western pressure, Western sanctions, Western tariffs will work best if they're happening at the same time that Ukraine is using mid-range strikes to strain the Russian front line, using long-range strikes to hit Russia where it hurts.

24:42Jillian Melchior: That's been described by the Ukrainians as kinetic sanctions. But you start compounding these effects, and it makes it tougher and tougher for Russia to continue its aggression. And that is the most sustainable path to peace.

24:53Kate Odell: Long-range sanctions is the phrase I've heard for those strikes, yes. Jillian, fascinating conversation. Stay safe in Ukraine. And thanks for taking the time to update us. That's a wrap for today on Potomac Watch. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow for more of the show. Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.