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- [00:01]
Gordon Carrera
Oh, sheet.
- [00:02]
David McCloskey
Honey, chill. It's just laundry.
- [00:04]
Gordon Carrera
Not that I'm talking about these Arm and Hammer power sheets. All the power of Arm hammer laundry detergent in a convenient tossable sheet.
- [00:12]
David McCloskey
Oh, sheet.
- [00:13]
Gordon Carrera
That's what I'm saying.
- [00:15]
David McCloskey
And Arm and Hammer power sheets deliver an effective clean at a great price. Think of all the laundry we'll do.
- [00:20]
Gordon Carrera
And all the money we'll save. Oh, sheet, Arm and hammer.
- [00:25]
David McCloskey
More power to you.
- [00:29]
Unknown
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- [01:00]
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- [01:34]
Gordon Carrera
Do we have a deal? If so, I will start and demand to arrange a meeting tomorrow.
- [01:39]
Emmanuel Macron
Let's agree. As soon as we finish our conversation, I will study these proposals. But from the very beginning it was necessary to put pressure on the Ukrainians. But no one wanted to do it.
- [01:52]
Gordon Carrera
Well, no, I'm doing my best to push them. You know that.
- [01:54]
Emmanuel Macron
Well, I know, but alas, it's ineffective.
- [01:58]
Gordon Carrera
I need you to help me a little. The situation on the contact line is very tense. I really called Zelensky yesterday and urged him to calm down. I will tell him again that everyone needs to calm down. Calm down on social networks, calm down the army of Ukraine. But what I still see is that you can call your troops who are almost in position to calm down. There was a lot of shelling yesterday. What do you say? How will the Russian military exercises develop?
- [02:22]
Emmanuel Macron
The exercises are going according to plan.
- [02:25]
Gordon Carrera
So they will end tonight, right?
- [02:27]
Emmanuel Macron
Yes, probably today. But we will definitely leave troops on the border until the situation in Donbass is resolved. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I am not Vladimir Putin. I'm David McCloskey.
- [02:42]
Gordon Carrera
And I'm Gordon Carrera. And not Emmanuel Macron, despite my semi French accent.
- [02:47]
Emmanuel Macron
Gordon, I would say that you're French accent is improving. The deeper we get into. The Rest is classified.
- [02:53]
Gordon Carrera
Thank you. I Must say compliment.
- [02:55]
Emmanuel Macron
You've gone from a solid C minus to a regular C, I think, in your French accent. So it is improving. So that was President Macron of France and President Putin of Russia speaking on the phone on the night of February 20, 2022, just days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And you're just joining us, we have been, or we're in the middle of exploring the role of intelligence in the run up to that war. And in the early days of that war and in the last couple episodes, we have looked at this sort of incredible story of how the CIA, how MI6, how this collection of Western intelligence services and the Ukrainians have sort of been dealing with this emerging intelligence picture that Vladimir Putin seems to actually be planning to do the very thing he has said he will do, which is invade Ukraine in an attempt to sort of unite it to Russia and these services. The CIA, I think in particular, has had a really hard time convincing its allies, convincing even the Ukrainians that this invasion is now going to happen, and.
- [04:16]
Gordon Carrera
Convincing the French, amongst others. And yes, we've been looking at how the US and the UK have been declassifying some of that intelligence, as well as sharing with allies, trying to put it into the public domain, going public with it, trying to disrupt Putin's plans, including his plans for provocations ahead of the invasion in the Donbass. We just heard about that. That region in the east of Ukraine where there's been a low level, or not so low level conflict for the previous years, and which Putin appears to be using to build up tension. But the real question is, is it a bluff? Is it for real or is it not? And we're really now into this last ditch period of diplomacy in the run up to try and stop a war that many aren't convinced is actually going to happen. And President Macron goes out to Moscow. So before this phone call, he goes out a couple of weeks earlier on February 7, 2022, and he sits at the end of this, I don't know if you remember the picture of this almost comically long table, him and Putin at other ends of the table, which is possibly still Putin worrying about COVID perhaps at this time. And Macron sees himself as the great international statesman, the man who might be able to bring peace. And of course, he's being told by his French spies that the Brits and Americans have got this wrong, there's not a real plan for war. So he thinks he can deliver a deal.
- [05:34]
Emmanuel Macron
That is a critical insight there, isn't it? Because Although we do love a few cheap shots at our French compadres on this podcast.
- [05:43]
Gordon Carrera
Sorry to French listeners.
- [05:44]
Emmanuel Macron
Yes, our deepest apologies. He is being told by his intelligence services that maybe it's not as direct as this, but it's closer to, hey, this guy is bluffing. Or at least there are ways to walk him down. Right? Whereas I think Bill Burns, the CIA director, who we spoke about a lot in the last few episodes, is, you know, hearing from his analysts and is therefore telling President Biden that, well, Putin is really determined to invade and the CIA Americans seem to have come to this conclusion a lot earlier than the French in this case. And so Macron, I guess, is somewhat justified, given the information he's receiving, in thinking that he might be able to change Putin's mind. So we don't want to be too unfair.
- [06:27]
Gordon Carrera
And while there are Russian troops on the border, even some US Intelligence analysts are confused at the fact they don't appear to be getting any orders yet to actually do anything. Some of the things you'd expect to see in terms of the chain of command are not happening. But then as February ticks on, you start to see the pressure growing. On February 15, Putin himself uses the talk of genocide in the Donbas. And that's a warning sign, I think, for people who are watching closely, because if you're Putini, you're portraying yourself as the protector of Russian speaking people, then if genocide is being committed, it becomes hard to not act. But everyone is still thinking this might be what they call coercive diplomacy. In other words, Putin is ramping up the pressure to try and get some concessions from the Ukrainians, from the west, perhaps about Ukraine's future militarisational relationship with NATO. Then on February 16, you get an evacuation of civilians from Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbass. This is supposedly to protect them from an escalation of Ukrainian artillery fire. This is the start of that false flag operation we talked about last time, the false flag in which Russia is going to claim that its Russian speaking people are being attacked and create a scenario which will then justify the attack. And then two days later, Russia's Doomer appeals to Putin to recognize those two republics to protect them from attack. But still, I mean, it's so interesting, isn't it? Because still people are not sure that this is actually going to be an invasion. And on February 9, Zelensky goes to Munich to the security conference.
- [08:02]
Emmanuel Macron
Of course, now we know that this invasion happened. So there can kind of be a tendency, I think, to look back and say, well, if you doubted it in the weeks leading up to it, what was wrong with you? Right. What did you really miss? And it really, I think, comes down to the intelligence on Putin's intentions, because all of the other satellite imagery of the troop buildup, even the mobile crematoria having blood supplies on hand, the fact that there's even a plan to do it, all of that could be consistent with coercive diplomacy, as you call it. It's all sort of this theater to ramp up the pressure on Ukraine and use that as leverage to extract concessions. Right. But if. If you are Emmanuel Macron and you don't have access to the intercepts or the very sensitive human intelligence that shows that Putin intends to do this, you, I think, with some reason, can doubt at this point. The nitty gritty of this intelligence picture is so fascinating because that's the very stuff that the US Is having to. When they declassify the insights that come out of it, they have to really obscure in some ways how good the intelligence is to protect the sources and methods. And that act of obscuring it makes it harder for allies like the French to really believe it. Right.
- [09:30]
Gordon Carrera
And, of course, the Ukrainians are not believing it. I think that's what's so interesting. Zalensky isn't believing it. Kamala Harris talks to Munich, and in a private conversation, he still is saying, I don't think it's going to happen. And, you know, in Kyiv, there's still other officials, apart from maybe the military, are also thinking, you know, they're not coming for us here. And the cafes are still full, Kiev is still alive. And then on February 20th, we get that call that we started with the Macron Putin call. And the reason why it's very unusual that you've got the kind of transcript of a call like that. And it's because the French were making a TV documentary and they were following Macron, and so they recorded the whole thing. And it's the weirdest thing. Thing, it comes out a few months later, because at the end of it, Putin actually says, I'm actually at the gym at the moment. I'm about to exercise and go play ice hockey. Which is a kind of surreal moment. But it's also Macron finishes the call, and him and his advisors are really happy because they actually kind of whoop in delight because they think they've got an agreement that there'll be a summit or some kind of deal. But the reality is that they've been played by Putin. He is effectively bluffing them at this point.
- [10:37]
Emmanuel Macron
Putin also played ice hockey during filming of the documentary. He gave access to Oliver Stone to do so. Oliver Stone came to Moscow and did all these conversations with Putin back in like 2017. Pretty interesting. And he plays ice hockey in that too. And when we talked about his palatial estate on the Black Sea, he has a personal sort of ice hockey rink submerged in sort of Bond villain esque detail beneath sort of the Hill. So, yeah, Putin's a. He's a hockey guy.
- [11:06]
Gordon Carrera
So Russia is really now preparing the way. February 21, they say Russian speakers in the Donbass are being attacked. Basically this is their false flag moment, their provocation. There's kind of video about genocidal aggression appearing on Russian tv, but it doesn't land anywhere internationally. No one buys it, partly because, as we've said, it's been exposed in advance by the West. The Ukrainians are starting to kind of think something might be on. The Ukrainian foreign minister is in Washington and at that point he's actually shown some very sensitive intelligence that the Russians are planning to send paratroopers to Hostomel Airport, which we'll come back to. But still there's not a sense of understanding or believing it at the very top in Ukraine. And then also February 21st, something fascinating happens. I remember this very vividly is Putin summons his National Security Council. And it's worth looking at the film of it because it's very memorable because it's not in some normal room, it's in a palatial room in the Kremlin, the Hall of the Order of St. Catherine, not where they'd normally meet. And it's clearly designed for TV as a spectacle. He's there sat at the front and then in a kind of semicircle around him, but quite a long way away again, Covid are his top security advisors, all his top officials. Interestingly enough, the claim is that this is all being televised live on Russian tv. But close observers spot that the watches some of the people are wearing show that it was actually filmed five hours earlier. So it's certainly performance. And Mark Gagliotti, who's I think, one of the top experts on all matters Russian security, describes this meeting as King Lear meets James Bond's Ernst Stavro Blofeldt. And I think that's a very good description of this meeting because Putin is there. You know, those scenes in the Bond films where you have, you know, Blofeld is there at the top and then all his kind of underlings around the Table Scared for their own life and reporting back to the boss about the plans for world domination. I mean, that's. That's what it looks like. Basically.
- [13:06]
Emmanuel Macron
You think that these things are just, you know, invented in the minds of filmmakers and Hollywood types. But it is about as sort of villainous as you get, isn't it, this sort of meeting? It's pretty remarkable. And he uses it as an opportunity to personally embarrass Sergey Naryshkin, the head.
- [13:25]
Gordon Carrera
Of his Foreign Intelligence.
- [13:26]
Emmanuel Macron
Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service is sort of made to look the fool. And it was taped in advance, so they could have edited it out, and they chose not to.
- [13:34]
Gordon Carrera
I agree. It is the most interesting thing because they're there, all these officials, to say whether to accept a declaration of independence from these two parts of Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin sits there smirking. Sometimes he looks bored. And each of them is summoned to a kind of podium to give their views. And Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, bungles his lines. He screws up because he says he'll support it. And then Putin goes, we'll support or do support. And then Naryshkin, you can see him, he gets kind of flustered. And Putin goes, speak clearly. Because Naryshkin is kind of implying maybe they'll be annexed rather than recognized.
- [14:09]
Emmanuel Macron
He's like, speak plainly, Sergei.
- [14:12]
Gordon Carrera
Speak plainly. So it's a humiliation, and I mean deliberately broadcast as if it's live. That is a kind of power play, isn't it? And as Gagliotti says, it's probably fortunate for Naryshkin that unlike Blofeld, there's not a kind of lever by Putin's, you know, to drop Naryshkin into the kind of the shark tank below, because if there had been, you know, it might have happened. But I think what Putin is doing there is he is getting all of his people to kind of dip their hands in blood, as it were, to say, you are part of this decision of what's coming, aren't you?
- [14:45]
Emmanuel Macron
You're implicated, you're involved.
- [14:46]
Gordon Carrera
If you have any doubts, you're in on this. I think that's what it is. It's a kind of power play in a show to them.
- [14:52]
Emmanuel Macron
Now, do you think, Gordon, that all of these advisors knew what was coming, or do you think the information had sort of been so tightly held that a few of them were genuinely surprised by what was going on?
- [15:07]
Gordon Carrera
So I was told around that time that only about half a dozen people were really privy to the full plan early on that Putin was really going to do it.
- [15:18]
Emmanuel Macron
The best way to plan a war, get six people, kick back with some.
- [15:21]
Gordon Carrera
Vodka, bottle of vodka, six people, all think the same. I don't think Naryshkin was one of those six. So I think in a sense, some of them are being caught by surprise that suddenly that they might have thought this was coercive diplomacy, just like Macron, until this moment. But now it's starting to reach a kind of fever pitch. And that night, Putin goes on TV and he says the situation has become critical. He gives the lines we've heard before and we talked about, Ukraine's not a real country, says a creation of the Bolsheviks. NATO is on the verge of moving in. Still not completely clear it's going to be war. And in his book, the Diary of an Invasion, Andrea Kirchhoff describes Kiev actually that night, the next night, that for the first time there's a bit of tension, but the cafes are still open. I mean, people are still going about their lives in the Ukrainian capital. And he describes it as almost the first spring light day. People are still eating and drinking outside, but for the first time they're doing so in silence, perhaps aware that something might be coming.
- [16:19]
Emmanuel Macron
Well, and we talked last time, which I think is still true, that even if Zelensky believed the intelligence, and I think maybe by the 23rd, he's come to the conclusion that something is going to happen, he has this sort of dilemma of if he goes public with it in order to get prepared, he risks inciting panic. Right. He risks people fleeing the country. So he's kind of caught in this situation of probably doesn't fully believe the intel picture he's been provided. And then on the other hand, even if he did, his hands are kind of tied in some respects, or at least he doesn't have every incentive in the world to kind of go fully public with it up until the point where it actually happens.
- [17:01]
Gordon Carrera
I think that's right. So with that and with war about to start, let's take a break and look at the opening moments of what will be the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
- [17:15]
William Dalrymple
Hello, I'm William Dalrymple.
- [17:17]
David McCloskey
And I'm Anita Arnand. And we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goal Hanger.
- [17:22]
William Dalrymple
And we're here to tell you about our recent miniseries that we've just done on the Troubles.
- [17:27]
David McCloskey
In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1998.
- [17:36]
William Dalrymple
It's something that we both live through and remember from our childhoods, but younger listeners may not know anything about it. And it's a time when there was division along religious and political lines. Neighbours turned against each other. Residential city streets became battlegrounds. Thousands were killed and the IRA bombed London.
- [17:56]
David McCloskey
It seemed as if an end was out of reach. But in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end.
- [18:06]
William Dalrymple
But the memory of the Troubles is still present, not only within Northern Irish communities who experienced it, but in international relations and political approaches to peace. And new audiences are starting to understand this national trauma through films like Belfast and Kneecap and TV shows like Derry Girls.
- [18:25]
David McCloskey
In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden Keefe. Now he's the author of the non fiction book that inspired the hit TV drama say Nothing.
- [18:35]
William Dalrymple
It's one of my favorite books. It's, I think, the kind of Inko Blood for our generation, extraordinary work of nonfiction. And if you'd like to hear more about this very recent conflict that put Northern Ireland on the global stage and hear from Patrick Raden Keefe, we've left a clip of the miniseries at the end of this episode.
- [18:52]
David McCloskey
To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:03]
Emmanuel Macron
Well, welcome back. It is 4:20 in the morning in Ukraine on February 24th of 2022. And President Volodymyr Zelensky has been woken up by his interior minister who is telling him, Gordon, that it has begun and the war is on.
- [19:24]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, I mean, Zelensky is still groggy and he says what exactly? According to one account, because he doesn't quite comprehend what's going on. But then he's in the presidential palace, he wakes his wife and tells her, interestingly enough, he heads into his office. First call of a foreign leader is Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of Britain at the time. And Zelenskyy tells him, we will fight, Boris. We will not give up. At the same time, you've got Putin in Moscow announcing the start of what euphemistically called a special military operation, not.
- [19:56]
Emmanuel Macron
A war, no special military operation.
- [19:59]
Gordon Carrera
And we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. This, you know, very insulting term. I mean, not least because Zelenskyy himself is, is Jewish, you know, but meaning remove the, the leadership of Ukraine. And he also issues a kind of menacing warning to anyone tempted to interfere. Putin says they must know Russia will respond immediately and the consequences will be such as you've never seen. But this is the crucial moment isn't it for Zelenskyy because he, he's got to work out how to respond and he's in shock, clearly, that this is on. Gives his first address that morning saying to people, don't panic, convenes his Security Council. Christopher Miller, in his book the War Came to Us, describes this first meeting. You know, Zelenskyy actually already being at a kind of combative mood, giving a pep talk. People say it was like his Independence Day moment, that Hollywood movie where the president gives the big speech, you know, inspiring everyone to kind of stand and fight and defend, in that case the Earth, in this case Ukraine.
- [20:56]
Emmanuel Macron
Well, it's probably worth saying, I mean, what actually is going on in Kyiv at this point around Zelensky?
- [21:04]
Gordon Carrera
So what's happened at 4:20 when he's woken is a barrage of Russian airstrikes, missile strikes across the country, hitting critical infrastructure, hitting airfields, hitting command centers, and preparing for the full scale invasion which is happening at the same moment. So at the same moment you've also got the Russian armor and troops coming over in three separate directions. And I think that's what's significant is you've got it coming in from the south, over from the east into the Donbass, but crucially also over from Ukraine's north in Belarus, down in towards Kyiv. And there's a pretty short distance there. And I think that's what is really taking people by surprise, is the fact that it's a multi pronged full scale invasion rather than just say a push in the Donbass. And you know, Zelenskyy asked an official, you know, what direction of attack is the Kremlin using? And the official says all of them. And that's I think, what it feels like. And I think people are caught by surprise by that. One of the interesting facts is the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service is in Ukraine that day for meetings and he's caught out. So he has to be evacuated by land because they can't fly anymore because you've got airstrikes and you know the airspace is being fought over. So his special forces have to take him out by car. And I've heard Loosely say other intelligence officers from other European countries make jokes about the Ride of the Valkyries as the Germans have to evacuate at that moment. And it's one side, you know, the Germans really didn't believe it, just like the French and that the head of French military intelligence gets sacked a few weeks later because they are all surprised by it. I think some of The British spies I spoke to were semi prepared for it, for the idea it was going to happen. They knew it would happen in the early hours, but they still don't really believe it until they hear it on the radio. And I think one of them said to me, the people around them went from going, why are you being so hysterical about this possible invasion? To going, why weren't you more hysterical about this invasion? You know, why? Why did you tell us? And they're kind of like, we tried to tell you, we did, we told you everything we tried to tell you.
- [23:23]
Emmanuel Macron
The invasion largely conforms to the structure that Mark Milley had briefed in the Oval Office back in October. It moves on sort of the same axes that the CIA had predicted. We're at a bit of a fork in the road here in the intelligence story, I think, because up to this point you'd say, at least from kind of the CIA, sis, British perspective, the calls have been exceptional. They've predicted with incredible detail and precision the invasion.
- [23:59]
Gordon Carrera
And crucially, they'd also predicted that the Russian plan was to take Ukraine in three or four days with this multi pronged invasion and that that would work and it would be over. And they predicted some of the very specific tactical details about what Russia would try and do. And I think that is crucial in my mind. There was one particular battle which I think was absolutely pivotal in the Russian plan. And the course of that battle, which it's worth looking at in a bit of detail, really does determine, I think, whether or not the Russian plan is going to work. And if you remember back in January, the CIA director Bill Burns had told Zelenskyy that the Russian strategy depended on taking Hostomel airport in order to succeed in their master plan. And this is going to be a key place on that first day of the war. Because the reason Hostomel is so important is it's a cargo airport. It's got a particularly large Runway and it's right close to the capital. So it's about 20 odd miles from the center of Kyiv, but 6 to 10 miles from the outskirts. So the point is, if you can take that airport, if you're the R, you can create an air bridge, you can land big troop transports and you can have your troops into the capital within an hour.
- [25:18]
Emmanuel Macron
You can essentially staff your effort to decapitate Ukraine's leadership via the airport. Right? You just pump people in and then they can go in and sort of remove the government by violence or otherwise.
- [25:30]
Gordon Carrera
And that was, I think, the essence of the Russian plan. Is, yes, you've got the big invasions, but the key of their plan was a kind of coup de main of taking the capital fast, removing the government and then assuming everything else collapses. You install a new government, you don't have to fight your way through the country, you don't have to engage in a long armed conflict. And that's why this airport was so crucial. I visited the airport itself about just over a year after the battle took place and kind of walked around it. Absolutely fascinating because the wreckage is still there of the fight. It hadn't been moved. As I was walking around at one point, someone said, don't walk over there, because there's still likely to be bits of explosives and shells and things like that on that bit of grass. So it wasn't entirely safe. But the main thing it was famous for, it was home to the Mriya, which is the largest aircraft in the world. It was built in Soviet days. It's worth looking at pictures of it because it's just a huge, huge cargo plane.
- [26:28]
Emmanuel Macron
You look at those and you wonder how they possibly get into the air. There's no engine that looks like it should be large enough to make that thing fly. It's incredible.
- [26:35]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, it is enormous. It was used to kind of move turbines and, you know, you can put train carriages on it. You could put pretty much anything on it.
- [26:43]
Emmanuel Macron
Other gigantic planes can also be put on it, I believe.
- [26:46]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, yeah, it's that big. One of the tragedies was you. It was kind of iconic and one of the things people felt very proud of, I think, in Ukraine as well. And when I went there, so this would be 23, summer of 23, the ruins of it were still there, and I think they still are. But it was like a kind of the skeleton of a whale almost. You had the frame of much of the aircraft and you could actually get in, walk around, climb over it, see inside it all still there. Just the kind of shattered remnants of what had been a very fierce battle over a few days at the start of the war. So what happened there was on that first morning that the war started, There were a couple of missile strikes which may not have quite hit their target, which are some of the buildings associated with it, possibly using information from Russian informers at the site. But actually that morning, airport staff are still turning up for work on the 24th as normal, because they don't quite know what else to do. No one really knows what's going on that morning. It's crazy, isn't it? But then there's the sound of rotors. And at about 10.30am, an armada of Russian attack helicopters is heading towards Hostomel Airport. They've come from Belarus, so just over the border there's at least 30 of them, Ka52s, Mi24s, as well as some Mi18 Transporter helicopters. And they've got about 300 VDV, which are Russian paratroopers, on board to try and take the base.
- [28:13]
Emmanuel Macron
Had the Ukrainians prepared for this at all? I mean, with people turning up to work, I'm sort of led to believe. Not really, but at this point on the morning of the 24th, was there any sign that the Ukrainians had taken those warnings seriously?
- [28:26]
Gordon Carrera
Not that much, I think, is the honest answer. And I think that makes this a particularly close run battle. There's only, I think, 200 members of the Ukrainian National Guard at the base at the time, quite inexperienced because the more combat ready members of their unit are out in the east in the Donbas, where people are expecting the invasion to come. According to Yaroslav Trofimov's book, Our Enemies will Vanish, British special forces had placed some sensors and cameras there.
- [28:54]
Emmanuel Macron
Oh, Gordon loves us.
- [28:55]
Gordon Carrera
The Brits may have done a bit.
- [28:57]
Emmanuel Macron
Of work to protect those with their restless classified bingo boards. You can now cross off the tile that says Gordon mentions some element of British special forces coming to the rescue.
- [29:10]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, they always do, they always do, they always do. And so there might have been a few defenses, but not much. And it should have been better defended, I think Ukrainians would admit. But this small group, so just 200, they've got these attack helicopters coming at them. What's so interesting is it's the first sign that even when they're outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, the Ukrainians are going to be able to fight back and are going to show the willingness to defend their territory. And they shoot down, it's thought at least three of these helicopters using handheld surface to air missiles. Some of them have never fired these before. I mean, one launches one at a helicopter literally flying over his head. When I went there, there's just outside of the main air base, there's one place where still, when I was there, there were the remnants of a Russian helicopter which had been shot down. I'll try and see if we could, you know, put on social media some of the pictures of it, because it's extraordinary because it's like a puddle of metal and bits literally just disintegrated, a mess. I mean, you could barely make out that it was ever a helicopter. But that is the site of where one of them gets shot down. The Ukrainians are shooting at them. They're trying to fire back. But the Russian helicopters are also doing a carousel formation where four of them are taking turns to kind of circle fire on the defenders and then move off and let others take their place. But it means there is a battle there that's going on. And the crucial thing is the Ukrainians are holding the Russians off from being able to land as quickly as they thought they would. Now, eventually, they do get their 300 troops down by helicopter before they fly off. But at the same time, in Kyiv, they know and they've heard and they've gotten word, perhaps, I think, from the Americans that 18 large transport planes were planning to take off from Belarus with at least a thousand more troops to get to the airport, which, of course, if they got in, it would have been game over, effectively.
- [31:08]
Emmanuel Macron
And, I mean, at this point, though, the battle picks up around Hostomel Airport, and the Ukrainians are fighting, I think we'd say, quite valiantly, but are running out of ammo and by early afternoon are going to have to withdraw. Now, do they lose control of the entire airport, or is it just sort of a piece of it?
- [31:29]
Gordon Carrera
Effectively, I think they have to withdraw outside of the perimeter of the main airport. The Russians then look like they've got control and they set up a checkpoint. There's an amazing thing where a CNN reporter, Matthew Chance, goes to the airport because he's heard there's a battle, and he approaches some troops thinking they're Ukrainian, and he says, where are the Russians? He says, and these guys go, we're the Russians. And he doesn't realise it because it wasn't obvious that they've actually already at that point, taken control of the airport. And he's like, oh, okay then. But the Ukrainians, first of all, have bought time, about three hours by holding on, and that has prevented the initial landing of those Russian transport planes and has forced them to kind of circle and turn around. And the head of the Ukrainian Army, Valeri Zaluzhny, has also realised that it's critical now to try and stop the Russians keeping the airport. So he now orders in more paratroopers, special forces, there's volunteers. They're all being told, get to Hostomel. Some of them get there by helicopter, others are kind of going on civilian pickups. One group of paratroopers approaches that perimeter, which is now controlled by the Russians, cut through a barbed wire fence around the airport. They seem to be spotted perhaps by a small drone and a machine gun opens up on them. You know, they're pinned down by heavy fire. But then another unit comes in from the north. They're all trying to battle to stop the Russians keeping that airport. They also use artillery. I think this is important as well. They bring in the artillery, and they start lobbing the artillery into the airport. And of course, what that means is the Russians can't land planes because they're damaging the Runway. It's too dangerous to get any of those heavy transport planes in with the troops. So the result is actually, after a few hours, the Ukrainians again are forced to withdra withdraw, and the Russians, by the end of the day have control of the airfield. But by now it's unusable for their original plan. So even though they managed to then hold it actually for a few weeks before they have to withdraw, they can't use it for that original plan of being able to kind of capture Kiev fast by landing those planes and sending the troops in. So it's an absolutely critical moment in that opening day of the war, which I think is going to have a real impact on whether Ukraine survives or not.
- [33:47]
Emmanuel Macron
And I guess it does show some of the intelligence dynamics pretty neatly inside the story around the airport, because you have the advance warning buying the CIA that, hey, this is going to be really important to the Russian war effort, which is kind of ignored. And then on the day of, as it starts, it does seem, and I agree with you, Gordon, that there's probably some advance warning, whether it's CIA or another Western intel service that says, look, there's a whole bunch of planes and more paratroopers coming from Belarus, right? So there's. There's real time intelligence, even after this thing has started, that picks up, and that is going to help to kind of shape really the way the Ukrainians are able to defend themselves, which is going to be a major theme of not only the opening days of this war, but really the three years since it started. So maybe there, Gordon, with this sort of decisive battle for Hostomel, this sort of back and forth between the Russians and the Ukrainians, so critical to the opening hours of the war, we should end. And when we come back next time, we will look at this massive column of Russian armor that's heading toward Kiev, what in the world Volodymyr Zelensky has been up to, and how the CIA and the Russians may have made some of the same mistakes in their intelligence assessments of how this war was going to go down. So we'll see you next time.
- [35:17]
Gordon Carrera
See you next time.
- [35:24]
David McCloskey
So here's a clip from our series on the Troubles.
- [35:27]
G
This is the strangest thing about this story is that Northern Ireland is so small. And listen, there are other, I mean, you could tell a similar story about Sarajevo or any number of other types of places where there's been a conflict, Rwanda, and then the conflict ends and everybody still kind of lives in the same community. And you see these people. But, you know, there's an instance, even as adults, where Helen McConville was with her own family in McDonald's and sees one of the people who abducted her mother. There's a moment that I describe in the book where Michael McConville actually gets into the back of a black taxi in Belfast as an adult, and he sees in the mirror in the front of the taxi, he realizes that the man driving him is one of the people who decades earlier abducted his mother. And the strangest, most eerie aspect of this is he doesn't say anything and he doesn't even know if that guy recognizes him. And they drive in silence. And then he just pays the guy his money and leaves.
- [36:30]
David McCloskey
To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.