Deep Dive
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Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. We're told by our hosts, keep looking up for drones. And so we head up, we head a few more kilometers north. And I'm thinking this is, you know, we're now really right on the edge of what's comfortable and sensible. There is more and more nationalism, more and more my country first, not humanity first. It may come to haunt us. They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.
I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing for me. I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battlelines. It's Friday, November 29th, 2024.
On today's episode, I'll be hearing from Associate Defence Editor Dominic Nicholls about his recent trip to Ukraine for our sister podcast, Ukraine the Latest. Plus, a rare glimpse into the war in Sudan. I've been chatting to Norwegian Refugee Council head Jan Egerland about what he saw when he travelled across the country and why the conflict there is widely believed to have caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
But let's start with Ukraine. Now, we very rarely cover the war there on this podcast, and that's because Ukraine the Latest does such a fantastic job of doing that. In case you haven't listened yet, Ukraine the Latest is a daily show hosted by Dominic Nichols and Frances Durnley. It was created by the late David Knowles, just like Battlelines, and it's the only podcast to have covered the conflict every weekday since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. I would highly recommend it.
Now, Dom and Francis and a few other members of the team have just returned from a week-long trip to Ukraine, where they visited Kyiv and Kharkiv. I'm lucky enough to be joined now in the studio by Dom to hear a bit more about their trip. Welcome to Battlelines, Dom. You've been to Ukraine several times before. What was different this time? Different this time because the threat, I suppose... So last time I was there in February, glide bombs were not necessarily a thing. So glide bombs being a dumb bomb...
but with some very basic guidance technology and steering technology added to it, some fins. So once it's launched from an aircraft, it's not powered, so it only has the energy that's imparted into it from the speed of the jet once it's released. It's largely physics that determines how far it's going to go. But they are big 500-pound bombs.
and they come whacking down at the speed generally that it was released from the aircraft plus a little bit of gravity so you get no warning at all and they are just piling in and make a very very big hole I mean the drones that we've been talking about for the last couple of years the Shahed drones 136 variant 131 there's lots of them but they've got a much lower explosive payload so yes we talk about drones an awful lot and they are very damaging
But actually, they are low, slow, noisy. You can shoot them down quite easily. Most drones are shot down these days. Glide bombs, completely different weapon. In the northeast where we were this time, you get so little notice because Russia is launching these things from their MiG-31s, I think, inside Russia. And then they're gliding over the border into Ukraine. And so they arrive in somewhere like Kharkiv with missiles.
if it's any notice at all it's a very small low single digit minute notice and then they're just they're just wiping out buildings what was that like being in kharkiv i know there were multiple air raid sirens while you were there do you get used to that kind of stuff quite quickly or what's your what's your sort of risk appetite as an ex-army man there's a number of things going on there i don't know if you ever really get used to it i mean people still carry on their lives the same in
and elsewhere and bizarrely so you know you cross the border into Ukraine you travel for about five hours on a train this is on the night train from Warsaw Kharkiv is another five hours beyond that I mean it's a big old country and yet it's
I know Kyiv isn't far from the border, 100km I think at the closest point, but Kharkiv is right on the border, 20km north is the border with Russia and just north of the city is the area around Lipsy and Vovchanc that Russia pushed into some months ago. They haven't gone very far.
But equally, Ukraine hasn't been able to push them out. But actually, the threat is broadly comparable. Lesser glide bombs I was talking about a moment ago. But the amount of drones that are hitting Kiev and missiles is a significant number. And yet, when we came out and you get back to Kiev, it's quite easy to mentally relax and think, oh, we're out of the danger zone. We're back in nice conditions.
with cosmopolitan cities, sun's shining, the cafes are open. Actually, no, the threat is very, very broadly comparable and it takes a mental effort to keep ramping up and say, no, no, keep thinking about the threat. What's the risk? Where's the nearest shelter? What am I going to do if I hear an alarm now? Where's the team? All that kind of stuff.
You guys were there in an especially interesting week just after Biden had given permission for attackams to be used. We know storm shadow missiles were fired and Russia sent what was initially thought to be an ICBM later turned out to be a new hypersonic intermediate range missile. All of that sort of playing out while you guys were travelling around Ukraine. Could you feel that on the ground? Did the war feel like it was shifting? No, I felt that before we went. There was a very charged atmosphere, largely driven by the press about Ukraine.
Yes, the decisions by Biden to provide these policy permissions for attackants to be used wherever, and same with Storm Shadow, that added to a fevered debate.
the predictable response from Russia, the escalation and all that nonsense. Then this IRBM, the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Launch, which doesn't seem to be a new category of weapon. This seems to be a bodge job of old experimental stuff got off the shelf. So this is between kit and capability. They got that one off the shelf. They could probably make two or three more, but it's not a long-term production line of these things. That's not to deny how effective it was. Question for NATO. Like...
Would you have been able to shoot that down, NATO? Anyway, that's a question for another day. So it was a very charged atmosphere going out there and I was taking soundings off, well, anybody that I thought was sensible to try and judge the risk. So, you know, do we have to go? Do we stop it? Do we pull the team out? Do we not do this anymore? Do we come back another day?
So this calculus was running through my head the whole time and it's very difficult in an atmosphere where there's information poor but sort of rhetoric large. So I was struggling to get a real good feel for what I genuinely thought the risk was.
And then conversely, when you get into the country, most people you speak to are pretty resigned to it. They ignore the air raid alarms. So they're not the greatest barometer either. It was pretty tricky. OK, so let's talk about Kharkiv, because that's where you were doing the bulk of your reporting. What kind of stories were you looking at while you were there? Well, we were looking at a number of stories. We were looking at how children are educated in these newly built underground schools.
And the teachers carry on as they can and provide education. And kids are pretty resolute and they bounce back. But it would have an effect. And especially some children. I mean, think about kids who are 10, 11, 12-ish now. So they know what's going on. And they've lived through this for three years. And then, of course, just before that, they had COVID. So their childhood was totally disrupted.
And so, yes, there is provision of education now underground, but with no daylight. So, you know, what's going to be the long term effect of that? So we were looking at that. I was concentrating on the military side. So I was through various contacts. I was hosted by the Kraken unit, which was the genesis is slightly odd. It was one of these units that was set up.
after the full-scale invasion. It's part of HUR, the H-U-R, Military Intelligence Directorate, but it's a sort of self-starting group of misfits, artists, creatives. When you say artists and creatives, and I heard you talk about this in Ukraine the latest yesterday, do you mean literally artists and creatives, or is that an army term for people who think outside the box? Well, probably more so the latter. I mean, I spoke to some IT engineers and guys who worked in the
advertising industry so yeah there's some creatives there but yeah it's a little bit of the of the bolshiness of being a self-starter and not necessarily fitting into a rigid hierarchical organisation and then culturally the unit resisting there hasn't been a huge amount of effort but resisting any effort to bring them into the wider fold of the Ukrainian armed forces they prefer being slightly to one side and
The military intelligence director under General Kurylo Badanov is a separate chain of command. He doesn't work for General Sersky, the head of the armed forces. The military intelligence is separate. Now, yes, the ultimate boss is Zelensky. So Zelensky can tell Badanov what to do and then he sort of passes it down to Kraken and they may or may not do it. But Sersky cannot. And there's a real tension between those two people, Badanov and Sersky, and a tension between these self-starting
new units that were set up after the full-scale invasion and the regular armed forces. And they sort of take pride in that. And what do the Kraken do? I mean, can you give us some examples of recent operations that we know about? Well, so they were fairly instrumental in the original defence of Kharkiv and pushing Russia back.
They then have since been deployed elsewhere. Down in the Donbass, they fought in Bakhmut and elsewhere. They've largely moved back up to Kharkiv in the last few months in anticipation of a renewed threat from the north and east. You guys have reported extensively on how morale is a real issue in the Ukrainian army now.
Was that also an issue in the Kraken? That wasn't the impression I got. They're aware, but they just don't really care for debates about, oh, do you think Trump's going to make a big difference? They're like, whatever, I'll just line the Russians up. I'll just shoot them until I run out of ammunition. It's not going to make any difference to me. So they don't really care. We say, well, this could be, you know, if the US withdraws support, that would put Ukraine in a very tricky position. And they sort of shrug, take another sup on their vape.
And then he told her, yeah, OK, it's going to be a bit harder, but we're not going anywhere. We're still here. Are there any other stories that you guys are reporting on that people should be following Ukraine the latest in the coming weeks to hear about? Yeah, other bits and pieces. So we've yet to, I mean, what we did do, we got a lot of good material. We took the temperature, if you like, of Kharkiv right now. So I was with Jack Leather, videographer.
We were invited to go to one of the villages north of Kharkiv. And as I said, there ain't a lot of north of Kharkiv before you start hitting Russian lines. We were invited to go up there to speak to the head of a civil military administration in a village.
And so we went north, went into the closed military district. So civilians can't go wandering around the front line. So we went through there with our Kraken sort of sponsor. You got all these people come out the checkpoints, stopping traffic. And this guy just waves or says something, waves something on his mobile phone. I think basically Ukrainian for fuck out my way. And we go through. So it's like, OK, fine.
So we got to this village, speak to the civil military head there. That was very interesting talking about, I mean, the village we went to 90% bombed out and 10% brand new where they've, where they've rebuilt, but everything is, everything's been hit. Some bits disappeared and hence rebuilt.
But the whole place has been smashed to bits. They're stocking up on supplies for winter. So they've got temporary accommodation that they're getting ready and food and beds, sleeping bags and all that kind of stuff, anticipating a hard winter for people in his area. And this area had been overrun by Russia and then pushed back. So I was talking about what was life like under Russian control.
temporary control and he said actually he said it was hard but not initially anyway they didn't seem to hit Russian units who were inhuman and brutalised the population there was a and they were overrun within the first few hours of the start of the full scale invasion on February 24th so they kind of basically woke up to suddenly finding Russians on the street so it was almost a peaceful transfer of power if you like
He said thereafter there were some instances of violence and some people that were taken away and not seen of again. But generally it was an ordered fait accompli within the confines or the construct of Russian control. He was able to look after or to administer to the people in the town to a certain degree.
However, he's now, you know, that was two and a half years ago when Russia thought they were going to roll in. I mean, they went in in some areas with their parade uniforms packed, thinking there'd be a little bit of fighting, and then it would be uniforms on, marching up and down, big band and welcomed. So, you know, at that time, we hadn't seen the atrocities in Erpin, Bucha, Donbass, you know, Mariupol.
But now we do. We know what it is. And Russia's had its nose put out a joint. It feels humiliated because they've been shown up to be utterly ineffective really as anything other than just a meat grinder with no moral bar. So I asked this chap what would happen if the Russians came back and he just said, well, they'll shoot me. It's simple. No question about it in his mind.
But then he didn't say, "So as soon as we see them moving, I'm out of here." He's staying. He's staying to look after the people as best he can, knowing that if the Russians come back, he's probably going to die. So it was very interesting to see him. And then this chap says to me, "Would you like to see my town? I'd like to show you my town."
do you want to go for a drive around the town? It's like, yeah, yeah, we do. But again, I'm thinking that's just another little, another little bit of risk. Is it the duty of a journalist to go just that little bit further for a story? So we say, yeah, okay, yeah, let's go for a drive. And so we get in the car and we keep going north. So I'm thinking, well, there's not an awful lot of north left. And I'm looking at Jack saying, are you happy? Are we okay here? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. And then he says to me, you okay? Are we good? And I'm like, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, we had an in-depth and quite articulate discussion about risk management. But we're told by our hosts, just keep your eyes out, keep looking up for drones. Great. You always want to hear that, don't you? And so we head up, we head a few more kilometres north. And I'm thinking this is, you know, we're now really right on the edge of what's comfortable and sensible. So it was all a bit silly. And I've had a word with myself since.
I felt that was worth it. Of course, I can say that because we came out OK. If something had happened, I would have been extremely disappointed with myself. Just finally, while we have you here in the studio, what do you think is the prospect of a peace deal next year once Trump becomes president? I would divorce the two. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Just because Trump is going to be president doesn't mean there will be a peace deal. Of course, you know,
They are connected. But I think the bigger factor is that both sides are exhausted. Both sides are absolutely wiped out in terms of personnel and equipment. Now, Russia's had to go to North Korea for troops and artillery. It's gone to Iran for ballistic missiles, gone to China for dual use technology and its sophisticated missiles and all the rest of it.
I've seen reports that some of the very sophisticated weapons, they have components that are months old, not years. So the Russian procurement system is build it, use it, build it, use it, build it, save it up for a little bit of a winter barrage like last night, use it, use it, use it. So they haven't got, there's no depth to their equipment supply. There's no depth to their personnel on both sides. So both of them,
at the moment publicly are holding to their maximalist lines of, you know, Putin wants to take the whole country, Zelensky wants to eject every Russian from Ukrainian soil. They have to say that at the moment. But in terms of what's happening on the ground, I mean, yes, there's been some advances in the Donbass by Russia. But actually, if you look at how far they've gone, the ground they've taken in these lightning advances over the last two or three months is almost exactly the ground that Ukraine took in Kursk, inside Russia.
But the lines aren't shifting. In any meaningful sense, they are not shifting. So the desire for peace on both sides is high. The desire to freeze the lines where they are is probably stronger on Russia's side because they just want to stop, restock and go again in five years.
And that's when you start getting into interesting debates about the effect that Trump will have. Some of his comments about lukewarm on support for Ukraine and some of the appointments he's made that could be interpreted as lukewarm. Equally, you could look the other way around. You know, he's made some fairly strong calls. It was under his...
his first presidency that they put a lot of shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles into Ukraine. Slightly separate, but he did authorise the strike on Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's IRGC. So, you know, he's not... For all this America First stuff...
What he doesn't want is America to appear weak on the world stage. And the situation now is different to Trump 1 in that back then, if you try to knit together the threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, it would be a bit of an intellectual exercise. And he might have lost interest after the second or third paragraph. But now it's much easier to make that argument.
and to say there was a real challenge to the American-led world order here. And if you want to push back on some of these things, that starts in Ukraine. So he might actually come out very strongly...
He might try and push for a peace, push for a ceasefire, but peace through strength by giving Ukraine everything they need to go into negotiations in as strong a position as possible. If the only security guarantee in town is NATO, NATO Article 5, what short of that can you offer Ukraine that would be a meaningful and credible deterrence to Russia? Well, question mark, is there anything other than NATO Article 5? But if the lines were frozen where they are today on some issues
negotiated peace. And there's a UN-mandated ceasefire line, the same with many, many other conflicts throughout history. And Western troops, NATO troops, British, French, German, are part of that UN-mandated ceasefire line. Would a Russian attack against that line be deemed as just pushing the edges of this UN ceasefire? Or would it be deemed unconstitutional?
an Article 5 attack on British forces, French, Polish, Estonian. Right, so like a way of circumventing Ukraine joining NATO, which appears to be a red line for Russia, but still providing that security. Yeah, it might be an Article 5 light, Article 5 brackets minus. But, you know, if you attack a British forces in Ukraine, I don't think any Western politicians go, oh, no, no, no, that doesn't count. That's just sort of normal violence. That's not Article 5. Of course it's Article 5.
So that might be a way of cementing the line where it is. That would require Ukraine to politically accept they've probably lost 20% of their territory and a couple of million people. But is that the price if they get de facto NATO protection the next day?
ideas out it's not for me to say they should or shouldn't but politically it's going to be very very interesting to see what happens next year fascinating thank you so much for joining us that's dominic nichols our associate defense editor and co-host of ukraine the latest coming up after the break a rare look into how the war in sudan is playing out on the ground and why it's the world's worst crisis at leidos a brilliant mind is smart but a brilliant team is smarter
Welcome back. Now to Sudan.
We've covered the war there several times on this podcast, partly because it's a major conflict with extreme consequences, but also partly because of the near total silence in most media.
Norwegian Refugee Council's Secretary General Jan Egerland recently went to Port Sudan and Darfur. Welcome to Battlelines, Jan. Can you start by telling me what you saw on your trip? It's so rare to speak to someone who's actually been inside the country, so I'd love to hear as much detail as possible. My one week in Sudan, both in the east, Port Sudan, the Red Sea coast,
and in Darfur, where few people go, all that I saw was confirming that this is indeed the biggest humanitarian crisis on our watch, the biggest displacement crisis in the world, the biggest hunger crisis in the world, and thereby the biggest drama, the biggest news story, in my view, in the world now.
So, of course, sitting down with mothers, widows, with the many children who have no food for these children, who have fled multiple times, many of them survivors of horrific sexual abuse. They've seen their homes go up in flames.
They have been driven across Sudan and in the neighboring countries. I find it very hard to understand why this is not a bigger concern
to the rest of the world. We'll come on to that more a bit later, but I'd love to hear some more stories about the people that you spoke to and the things that you saw. Well, first outside of Port Sudan, where actually the UN and many of the large non-governmental organizations have their headquarters, I went to a school and in the schoolyard
There are now 3,700 people in miserable tents and there is no food. There was food distribution the first couple of months by local groups. There is some provision of water and that's it. There were families who had fled from Khartoum, the capital city.
They lived a comfortable life there many. This was a big city, a relatively well-off capital city. And now they have fled for their lives and they cannot sustain themselves. Many have disabled people among them. There was this lady, grandmother, and she had a
A daughter who was in her 30s, who was really a skeleton, still living, but cannot have many days left because she was not able to take in any food. There is no health care for her. And then this grandmother is alone with the grandchildren, the husband.
had fled after he had lost one of the sons. He went into a deep depression and he was wandering around and then in the fighting, he just disappeared. So she was alone. And it was heartbreaking. And again, we in the Norwegian Refugee Council, we're reaching now more than 700,000 people
But it's a drop in the bucket because there are 26 million people who need assistance in Sudan and in the Darfur area, which is on the other western side of Sudan, next to Chad.
Most of the large organizations and most of the UN agencies are not really present at all, in part because the recognized government for the UN that sits in Port Sudan has not really allowed the UN to set up a sizable presence in Darfur. So there were problems.
pretty much alone, some non-governmental organizations. We're scaling up as much as we can, especially with U.S. aid money. But again, most of the people are off-limits for us because we're overstretched, underfunded, and too few to meet the needs. Can I ask how you were able to travel around because the restrictions on aid has been a huge hallmark of this war?
Well, I did after months get a visa which is necessary to go to Port Sudan that is now the de facto capital since everybody fled Khartoum. And that was easy. That's by plane. Then you have to go via
Nairobi, Kenya and others, Ethiopia to get to Chad's capital in Jamena to go with a small UN plane to eastern Chad. Then went, had two and a half hour ride by four wheel drive on hopeless roads to Adra, which is the border town to Darfur,
in Sudan, and then we drove over and into Darfur. I didn't ask for permission for anyone there. I'm a humanitarian worker. I need to go where people are. And you've described it as the world's worst crisis. Why do you say that? What are the numbers that are making you say that with such confidence? Well, it's now 26 million people
who need food aid and other humanitarian assistance. And this is not just to get a better life, it is to have a life, it is to survive. So, of course, Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon have and are living through untold horrors.
But in each of these places, we don't see these kind of figures. So it's the size of the problem, size of Sudan, big country, and half of the population, more than half of the population is in deep crisis and face hunger.
because it's all over the country. These armed men are fighting each other to the last woman and child in the east, in the west, in the south of Sudan. How have things got so bad? Well, it started when the rivalry of two of the armies and two of the leading generals in April of last year, so one and a half years ago,
And then the war just spread because these were spread, all these armed forces were spread all over Sudan. Conflict was popping up
in one province after the other. And now, of course, other ethnic armies and militias have also started to fight, to defend themselves, to take territory, to settle old grievances and so on. And when a conflict like this erupts, it's very hard to avoid there to be an uncontrollable scale up
Because now too many people live by the gun. They plunder for a living. Their revenge is what drives them, etc. What are the long-term consequences of this kind of instability and particularly of this scale of hunger and famine? Well, I mean, it is, of course, that we lose untold numbers of lives. In Sudan,
Number two, that millions flee to the neighboring countries. Altogether, 14 million people have been driven out of their homes. 14 million. I know of no other place on earth this last generation where we had that number. I think in Syria, there was 12 million people and the whole world was outraged, really. Here's 14 million. And then when you think beyond that,
this initial displacement, it's very clear for Britain, for Norway, for Europe, that people who have no hope of a better life in Sudan, Darfur, Chad, they will not stay. They will go north. So I met with youth in Eastern Chad,
And I asked them, where do you see your future as youth leaders? Is it to return to Darfur, Western Chad, or is it to stay here in Eastern Chad? And they said, we're not going back where we saw our houses go up in flames and our friends being massacred just because we belong to an ethnic group. And there is nothing for us here in the poorest place on earth, which is Chad.
We're going to the Mediterranean, we're going to Europe. Even if we risk our lives, our future is in Europe. Friends have gone, most have drowned, but some made it. We're going. So I think this needs to sink in in Europe. If it's not our ideals that drives us to have much more of an engagement in and for peace and aid to and hope for Sudanese,
It should be our interests. As I understand it, the UK is not so interested in more small boats. Well, it will happen if people give up any future life where they are. I would go north. You would go north. If you have children and you see them starving, you will go.
Just finally, we've touched on it before on this podcast and you've mentioned it at the top of this interview. The silence around this issue has been deafening, in your words. You know, no one's speaking about the fallout from the conflict, media largely ignoring it, aid agencies struggling to get funding they need. I noticed in the Norwegian Refugee Council said that soup kitchens in Khartoum have even closed down because they don't have promised funds. Why do you think that is?
Well, I also wonder really, because 20 years ago I was the UN's humanitarian leader and led a response to the crisis at that point in Darfur. That was the first time the world really learned about where Darfur was. And George Clooney went there with a lot of media. The US president discussed it.
The then Prime Minister Blair had it in his cabinet meetings. So did the French president, the European Commission, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State of the US went there. I went there with Kofi Annan, the Secretary General at the time. We had all the money we asked for and we had all the pressure.
on the authorities and the parties that we asked for. Today, the crisis is three times that, and we don't have this interest at all. I think it is because the world seems to be able to concentrate on three things, that is Trump and what he's doing every second hour, then on Middle East and then on Ukraine, which is understandably important because there's war in Europe.
But the biggest crisis is then forgotten. And then, of course, we're also having a bad moment in international relations where there is more and more nationalism, more and more my country first, not humanity first, my country first, my interests, my pocketbook. And that is a short-sighted policy. It may come to haunt us down the road. Thank you so much, Jan. That's Jan Egerland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
That's all for Battlelines this week. Join us again on Monday for a Middle East-focused episode. Goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph, created by David Knowles. The producer is Jolene Goffin.
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