Frontline special - The Times' Maxim Tucker
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble, and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.

Hello and welcome to Frontline for Times Radio with me, Kate Chabot. And this time we're joined by Maxim Tucker. Maxim is the Times' Ukraine correspondent. He's been reporting from the front lines in Ukraine since 2022. Maxim, you're just back. I'll ask you about that trip in a moment. But I want to start off by this President Putin taking a couple of days to break his silence over this daring mass Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow.

multiple airfields in Russia. Donald Trump's account was he had a phone call with Putin and that was the first we heard of any kind of response where he's threatening retaliation. What do you make of that? Yeah, it's astonishing. It's almost a week now since these attacks. You know, a huge blow struck to Russia's nuclear capable military

long-range missile carriers and no response from Putin himself to this apart from what we hear from Donald Trump. I mean this is I think classic Putin when he is confronted with a difficult situation, a difficult decision, he doesn't know what to do, he stumbles a little bit and he doesn't respond so we haven't heard from him. He's pledged apparently to Trump retaliation but clearly he doesn't still know what kind of retaliation he can bring. I mean you

Russia is already attacking Ukraine pretty much the maximum of its capabilities. It's sending hundreds of drones now. It's been sending a lot of cruise missiles into Ukraine. This obviously limits the amount of missile carriers that Russia has, that Russia can send against Ukraine. Russia is already using chemical weapons in many areas of the front to try and dislodge Ukrainian troops.

So what's he got left? I mean, a nuclear response, but obviously that's going to be intolerable even by Donald Trump, I would have thought.

On the attacks, those daring drone attacks that hit all the news since the weekend, you've been looking into the planning of it, which was 18 months, we understand. And you've been in contact with the SBU, Ukraine's SBU, since finding out more about it. What more have you learned about that operation? I think one of the astonishing things about this operation is it's carried out right under the noses of President Putin's FSB security services.

from a warehouse in Chelyabinsk, maybe two miles away from the FSB office. And that's one of Russia's largest cities near the border with Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian agents were able to operate, assemble their drones there, put them into the false roofs of these log cabins and deploy them across the country using unsuspecting truck drivers. The audacity to do this right under the noses of Putin's FSB is really quite incredible. Mm.

And what are the SBUs saying to you about it? They're clearly wanting to push this and keep it in the media attention. It's a huge success for them at a time when morale has been very difficult in Ukraine. There have been concerted Russian attacks, the largest three in a row Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities over a couple of weekends ago. And, you know, people are starting to wonder when this war will end and not getting additional support from the US. And how will this war end without the support from Ukraine?

from Western partners it had been relying on. So a commission like this, which shows that Ukraine can rely on its own ingenuity and its own technology to deal a kind of asymmetric blow to Russia's incredibly powerful nuclear capable bombers, has really lifted the mood around Kyiv. And it was astonishing how many people were talking about this when I was still there. Ordinary people were getting this news in their channel, in their feeds.

and celebrating it actually, because these are the bombers that are night after night delivering cruise missiles that keep them awake, that keep them in the basements, keep them worried for their lives and they're worried for the lives of their children. So people are very happy to see Russia attacked in this way and also very happy that it didn't have to rely necessarily on any Western equipment to do it. And it shows that Ukraine has opportunities and abilities to strike Russia where it hurts most.

even if it's not getting Western support. You say you were there when this news came through. Were you there long enough to get any sense of what difference it has made to those aerial bombardments that have been so incessant? Well, I think, you know, it's been quite cloudy and rainy in Kiev, so it's always difficult to interpret what's causing delays in attacks. I mean, most recently, there have been a lot more drone attacks than missile attacks. The hundreds and hundreds of these Shia drones launched against Ukrainian cities.

And that's because the Russians are able to mass produce these and relatively cheap, whereas the missiles are obviously more expensive, more complicated, and they rely on components which are subject to sanctions and are more difficult to bring into the country as a result of that.

I think the number of cruise missile strikes, it's only been a week and Russia tends to launch these big cruise missile strikes every week or so. So we don't know exactly how it's impacted them. But certainly they're not going to be able to put as many aircraft into the air as before. They're going to have to rotate the same aircraft more frequently,

There's wear and tear on these aircraft. Some of these aircraft are probably going to have to be cannibalized to replace damaged parts and other aircraft. It will have an impact, but it remains to be seen exactly how much it will affect the amount of missiles that Russia can now launch into Ukraine.

And on your latest trip, Maxim, you found out about the way that radio electronic warfare is being developed and adapted to deal with the unmanned aerial vehicle systems. Can you tell me about the work and what you learned about the work of the specialised school you went to and what it does exactly?

So six years ago, these were farmers and truck drivers, and now they're having to learn how to save their lives and save the lives of their comrades by mastering radio-electronic warfare. This is something that the captain had spent six years learning himself and had to try and impart this in 24 days.

He said it was particularly difficult because people were selected for these courses almost at random. He told me a story about how one soldier had been selected to attend the class based on the fact that he had knocked a Russian drone after a tree with a long stick and presented it to his commander after it didn't explode. And the commander said, "Oh, right, you're going to be our drone expert, and off you go to learn about radio-electronic warfare." So warfare and the

technology involved in it has so rapidly advanced its way ahead of what people can now learn in the classroom. And that's one of the reasons why AI, I think, is increasingly becoming important on the battlefield. I find it really interesting in your dispatch, though, to find the kind of

ways that these people who are using electronic welfare are trying to deceive the drone operators, the Russian drone operators, into missing their targets or thinking that their drone is still up in the air. How are they doing that exactly? So there were some fascinating methods that they have. They've got these devices now which can intercept the data being transmitted back to Russian drone operators.

And they would use that. Initially, they said that they used these, the interceptions to transmit porn back to the operators so that they would be distracted. And then they realized they could actually record these flights and send the drone operators previous versions of their flight routes so that the drone operators would think that they're still flying one of their routes to attack a target. And meanwhile, they would be triangulating the position of the drone operator and attacking them. So it

using the broadcast of a previous flight so that the Russian drone operator would not know that he'd already been intercepted and targeted by the Ukrainians. And it's fascinating the kind of things that this technology enables them to do and how rapidly it's advancing. And this specialised school is the last testing ground before the front line. Did you get a sense of what works and what doesn't and why? So they've got like a good set of equipment. You know, they had these apparel

plan to use what they call a mirage system to build a radio electronic wall across the front line which would detect these drones based on their radio signals. It can detect them because they're too small to be detected by radar usually and it can use either a kind of conventional jammer to block the signal, the radio signal or it could guide a kind of automated turret to shoot them down. Now the problem with this is that

Almost as quickly as this technology is developed more technology is developed and Russia's obviously now got these fiber optic drones And fiber optic drones are not emitting a radio signal and cannot be jammed in the same way So they have to have some kind of physical means of destruction destruction now. There's still the minority there are not so many fiber optic drones on the battlefield as there are radio drones and

But, you know, as the war goes on, as these devices that intercept and jam signals are going to become more successful, we can expect to see more fiber optics and then a countermeasure to the fiber optics, presumably.

Is the school then already working on the next line of defence? So the school is really working on what it's having. It's trying to take lessons back to the manufacturers and the developers to see what are the things that work and what are the things that don't work. It's a testing ground for pilots as well. There are drone pilots learning their craft there.

So it's vital for feeding back information to the manufacturers, but the driving force of this is actually, it's not being done necessarily on the front line, but it's really being done in the tech hubs of Ukraine where there are software engineers coming together from across the country and often in rival companies, but working together to try and formulate solutions to the latest battlefield problems.

And they are a huge advantage to Western military tech companies now because they are able to go to the battlefield, learn from the soldiers, take those lessons back, test their products and then bring them back and also produce them at scale for relatively cheap amount because Ukrainians are needing to use so many of them in the battle against Russia.

And what is absolutely extraordinary is amidst these kind of gargantuan efforts that you describe for Ukraine to defend itself in a struggle for its own survival, you've got these kind of domestic political fights going on. And one of your articles was about the intense rivalry between President Zelensky and the former world champion heavyweight boxer, now mayor of Kyiv, Vitaly Klitschko.

How did that rivalry start exactly? So I think this rivalry stems back. It was a small scale then. But in 2019, Zelensky had hoped to ally with Klitschko in Kiev to win local elections and have a coalition in Kiev. And Klitschko then chose to instead align with Poroshenko, who was Zelensky's arch rival. And I think Zelensky never really forgiven him for that.

Now, Klitschko, obviously, he has his own presidential ambitions. He tried to run in 2014 and probably sees himself as a potential successor to Zelensky. And I think that kind of political feud has been bubbling away at the surface. What Zelensky's done since the war started is to appoint military administrations in many of the major cities across the country. And those administrations

powers mirror some of the powers that local mayors have. And Zelensky has been accused of consolidating his power at the expense of elected mayors and elected councils in different countries. Now, here's an argument to say you need to do that because it's wartime and you need to make sure there are enough shelters and there are enough defences and fortifications in these cities. And Glitchko has been accused of

There have been arrests of close members of his team who seem to have been actually caught red handed. And we spoke to several independent experts and said that these are legitimate corruption arrests. And none of it directly ties to Glitchco. But when you have 10 arrests of your subordinates, it does point to being very laissez faire at the very least about corruption under your watch.

Now, Klitschko has responded to that quite angrily, saying he told me that the Ukraine now reeks of authoritarianism. And he thought that Zelensky had been going too far in taking up powers from locally elected mayors. Ironically, no matter what the truth is behind this whole story, those kind of pronouncements about Zelensky are

would be welcomed by someone like President Putin, who's only looking for excuses to knock the leadership of Ukraine at the moment and sow division. Yes, that's exactly the kind of narrative that Putin will be happy to see and that Putin has been trying to spread across Ukraine's allies. So that kind of division is something that will be welcomed today.

in Russia. You know, you can see why Klitschko is doing it because there is this huge battle playing out for control of Kiev's resources and funding at the moment. And there are big questions about the priorities in the country, you know, because there's a lot of construction work still going up at the same time as fortifications and trench lines need to be built in the east of the country.

So what kind of things are we talking about? What kind of examples have you got of the kind of disparity between where the money is being spent and where people feel it should be being spent? The one thing that Ukrainians in Kiev have told me repeatedly and how frustrated they are at the traffic jams across the country and that a metro line that Klitschko promised in 2017 has failed to materialise, that the metro, even though it's underground, shuts down during air raids and you only have these

really awful little yellow buses which run across the city belching diesel fumes everywhere and they run in exchange for cash, it's a cash only business and city council has accused Klitschko of being linked to this what they're called a marsupial mafia and taking cash payments that don't pay taxes, don't contribute to the economy in any way and benefiting from that. He clearly denies that.

He denies that, of course. He said that those are lies and manipulation spread by the office of the president in order to smear his reputation. He was very strong on his rebuttal to that. But it's about it demonstrates this struggle for power that's going on, you know.

Zelensky's appointed kind of rival mayor, Timur Tkachenko, is now appointing different heads of different districts in Kiev. And that's very much taking away some of Glitchko's powers. And he'd be very cross about that. How much did you get a sense that the longer the war actually goes on, the more difficult it is to keep these kinds of rivalries and these political clashes?

at bay in the interests of pulling together in a war effort? It's very difficult. I mean, obviously, during the kind of Russian airstrikes that you have at the moment, there is just no feasible way of holding elections, at least in the manner that they used to hold elections in Ukraine.

So there is no way that dissenting voices can be represented at the ballot box. And now, as you have three years of war, so people might be dissatisfied with Zelensky. They might be dissatisfied with Klitschko, but nobody can have even local elections to express that dissatisfaction. And so you're going to see this kind of frustrations bumbling to the fore more and more often, I think.

And it shows how important it is for Ukraine to think about a way to allow these voices to express themselves without creating huge disunity in the country and without causing an ending up in large scale protests, which is the real big risk here is that if people aren't able to hold elections and express their dissent, then they will take it to the streets as they have previously done in Ukraine. And that could have disastrous consequences.

You are a regular visitor to Ukraine for your reporting trips. Can you tell me what your impressions were on this particular visit? How have you seen the country change?

So I think it's always remarkable how resilient Ukraine is and how people manage to go about their business, even if no one slept all night because they'd be there under air raids. And you can hear explosions in the streets outside when you're trying to sleep from midnight till six in the morning. People don't dress, but they carry on and they get up as if nothing's happened. And it is astonishing how people do that. I think the mood changes.

has soured in recent weeks, you know, with the election of Trump and the kind of expectation that at some point, surely Trump is going to see that Putin is playing him. And still he says two weeks, two weeks, I'm giving Putin another two weeks to show he's serious about peace.

There is frustration and there's worry that without these Western weapons that Ukraine will not be able to hold the line and that there is a greater threat. There's obviously the problems with mobilizations where men are scared to go outside because they're worried that they might be conscripted if they go to a restaurant or if they go to the gym or something, they'll be picked up by recruitment officers.

These are real fears, but I think that's why it was so important that we had at the end of last week this Operation Spiderweb, because it suddenly gave people a feeling of hope and possibility and a feeling that some kind of victories can be scored against the Russians. And I think that's really, really important for morale in Ukraine, particularly this point in the war when you see so many hundreds of drones being sent against Ukrainian cities every night. And that has a huge impact on the morale of the civilian population.

We started at the beginning talking about these very dramatic aerial drone attacks on multiple airfields in Russia. I'm just wondering whether you think in the context of things, this is a one-off because it

so long in the planning and so spectacular in its results? Or do you think there is going to be a follow-up and this is part of a concerted campaign? I think there definitely will be follow-ups. I think the technology is changing and Ukraine will be able to do this in different ways. So maybe 18 months ago, when you were planning this operation, you thought we need to drive trucks into Ukraine and they will deliver these short-range drones a few kilometres into Russian airbases. Now you have...

completely autonomous drones. You know, I was talking to a developer today that was talking about drones that they train it on a target, say you can give it an aeroplane, a video of an aeroplane, train their AI targeting software on that, and then just send it 130 kilometers to try and find this target. You probably have some intelligence giving you coordinates where you think it's located. It will recognize...

by itself the kind of the route that it's taking through landmarks um it learned you can teach it to dodge different uh countermeasures so the way that the war will will be fought is not necessarily drones delivered by trucks but drones delivered over increasingly long distances which aren't limited by the radio horizon or jamming or anything that is currently affecting drone warfare but they will just be programmed and sent to do a job and they will carry that out when they'd be

very difficult. The only way that you'll be able to stop them is to shoot them down. And these are very small devices with only a few kilograms of explosive. But obviously, when they hit the right spot, a precision spot on a major target, we've seen the damage that can have. So I think that both sides will be doing this. There are the long-range drones that

that already go thousands of kilometres. They can also be programmed differently in future. These kind of operations will continue, but they might look a little bit different, but they'll still be as devastating a consequence, I think. Maxim Tucker, great to speak to you. Thanks for your time. Thanks very much. Thank you.

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