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The Secret History of the War in Ukraine with Adam Entous

• Michele McAloon • Season 2 • Episode 130

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What happens when American military expertise meets Ukrainian battlefield determination? The answer lies in one of the most extraordinary untold stories of the Russia-Ukraine war.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, few expected Ukraine to survive. Behind the scenes, American military leaders faced an unprecedented challenge: how to support Ukraine without triggering World War III. Their solution was revolutionary – a secret command center in Wiesbaden, Germany, nicknamed the "V-spot," where U.S. generals remotely guided Ukrainian forces without ever setting foot on Ukrainian soil.

At the heart of this story are the remarkable personalities who forged an unlikely brotherhood. General CD Donahue, described as having "the ability to befriend inanimate objects," formed an immediate bond with Ukrainian General Zabrodsky that transcended military and cultural differences. This human connection proved just as crucial as the sophisticated weaponry that followed – from M777 howitzers to satellite-guided HIMARS systems that transformed the battlefield.

The partnership achieved stunning successes, including devastating attacks on Russia's Black Sea Fleet that forced its retreat from Crimean waters. Yet the relationship later fractured during Ukraine's failed 2023 counteroffensive when Ukrainian internal divisions led to a fateful splitting of forces against American advice. The resulting failure created mutual recriminations that continue to this day.

New York Times investigative reporter Adam Entous brings unprecedented insights into this secret military alliance, revealing how personal trust, technological innovation, and strategic disagreements shaped the war's trajectory. As Ukraine now faces an uncertain future under a new American administration, understanding this remarkable partnership has never been more important. Join us for this exclusive deep dive into the hidden command structure that changed modern warfare.

Subscribe now to hear more extraordinary stories from the front lines of global conflict and the shadowy world of military intelligence.

Michele McAloon:

You're listening to Crossword. Cultural Clues Lead to the Truth of the Word. My name is Michele McAloon, your host. You can find all my podcasts on bookclues. com, my website, and you can find out more information about me there and also a contact. Would love to hear from you. Please rate and subscribe. It helps the algorithms. thank you.

Michele McAloon:

. Welcome to Crossword. We have an exceptional interview today with a reporter from the New York Times. His name is Adam Entous and he has written an incredible article that came out on what was the date.

Adam Entous:

Oh, I don't know.

Michele McAloon:

Actually, I have to look at my I think it was March 30th when it came out.

Adam Entous:

Yeah, I think it went online on the Saturday night, on the night of the 29th.

Michele McAloon:

On the night of the 29th, and it is called the Secret History of the War in Ukraine. Adam Entous, and that's spelled E-N-T-O-U-S. And the reason why I'm telling you guys this who are listening, is you need to go read this article. Go to the New York Times website and find Adam Entous.

Michele McAloon:

Adam Entous, he's a New York Times investigative reporter specializing in narrative deep dives on national security and intelligence matters. He was born in Montreal, grew up in Los Angeles, attended the University of California Irvine, went to journalism school at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked for, I think, just about everybody. He's worked for Reuters, had worked for reporting on the Pentagon to the Wall Street Journal. He's worked on the Washington Post. He has been a staff writer at New Yorker magazine and he joined in 2022, which that's an auspicious year for this article. He joined the Washington Bureau of the Times as an investigative correspondent and the following year was a part of a team that won a Pulitzer for international reporting for an investigation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And, Adam, I have a feeling that you have another Pulitzer Prize coming towards you. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Entous:

It's great to be here, thank you.

Michele McAloon:

Adam, let's start from the very beginning. Let's start with the title the Secret History of War in Ukraine. Why was this a secret?

Adam Entous:

Well, I mean, obviously the administration, the Pentagon, was very public about parts of the relationship that they had with Ukraine.

Adam Entous:

They would put out a statement on the Pentagon website every few weeks updating us on how many shells, how many munitions, the types of munitions, the types of vehicles we were giving to the Ukrainians.

Adam Entous:

But there was another side of the relationship where they weren't as forthcoming. They weren't as transparent because of the sensitivity, because of concerns that if they were more transparent it would basically feed into Russian talking points that we were fighting them in Ukraine, which obviously we aren't directly fighting them in Ukraine. And so there was an important, big part of the relationship that they were not transparent about intentionally, because of the sensitivity attached to it. You know, obviously there are interpersonal relationships that were formed as part of this partnership, that to be able to explain the relationships between individuals, that was obviously not something that was public. And so this story was trying to basically explain what they didn't tell us at the podium, at the White House or at the Pentagon about, yeah, and at the CIA, about what the United States government in its different agencies were doing to try to help the Ukrainians be successful on the battlefield.

Michele McAloon:

Tell our audience exactly what that was with the Wiesbaden and Ukrainian cell.

Adam Entous:

Right. So if we back up a little bit, the Russians are about to invade and the Biden administration and the Pentagon make the decision that it's too dangerous for us to keep any US military officers inside of the country, and so we had all these trainers and we had advisors, and we had people at the embassy in uniform, and they were all pulled out of the country before the invasion because the Biden administration was concerned that if they were caught in the middle it could result in World War III type scenario, and they didn't want that. So they pulled everybody out, all the military officers out. There was a small group of CIA officers that was allowed to stay in the Lviv area in the far west of the country and during that initial phase, and so basically the US military had to create a way for them to help the Ukrainians without actually having boots on the ground inside of Ukraine. And this was unusual. This was really not the way that we've been doing these things in the past In Iraq, afghanistan, syria. We had boots on the ground, we had soldiers on the ground that were conducting operations against ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and then we had local partners that we were with co-located. And, yes, we would do our own operations and then we would enable our partners to conduct operations.

Adam Entous:

This would have to be different. Wiesbaden needed to come up with a way to basically provide the Ukrainians with information, intelligence, support, so that they knew how to use the equipment that we were giving them effectively, but without actually being with them in the country and being able to basically help them face to face, and we were obviously not conducting our own operations inside of Ukraine, and so they needed a way to do this. Now there was a model that CD Donahue, who at the time in March 2022, fleets up to become the head of the 18th Airborne Corps. Now, before that, he was Delta, he was the Delta commander, and he was in Syria working with the Syrian forces, a group that they brought together known as the SDF, and basically what CD and what Delta did at the time was provide intelligence and advice to the Syrians that they were partnered with to help them against ISIS, and obviously the scale of that was different. It was a war in Syria. Particularly, the goal of the SDF at that point was to try to prevent ISIS from crossing the Turkish border to enter the fight.

Adam Entous:

In this case, what Donohue had to do was basically support the Ukrainians from Wiesbaden, without having the boots on the ground this time, and so they had to come up with a system. At the heart of the system was a headquarters that they created in an auditorium in Wiesbaden, and they basically had the Americans. They had the 18th Airborne and all the various talent and capability that the 18th Airborne had, but what it needed was the Ukrainians to partner with them. It needed literally it needed to have Ukrainian partners who were going to take all this knowledge and intelligence and equipment and use it effectively on the battlefield. Otherwise, it was game over for the Ukrainians during this early phase.

Michele McAloon:

So where we're talking about, when we talk about Wiesbaden, and we're talking about Germany, it's outside of Frankfurt, germany, and the dates we're talking about, of course, when the initial invasion was in February 24th of 2022. So we're talking about the springtime 2022. Let me ask you a question here Whose idea was this? Was this a creation of CD Donahue, general Donahue, or was this? Was it kind of a mutual coming together from the administration? Was it organic, or how did this idea come about?

Adam Entous:

Well, I mean the highest level. It was Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, he's sort of the architect right and he and General Milley, at the time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They basically decided that the 18th Airborne would come over to Wiesbaden and oversee Again, it was an evolving mission. It starts off, as it was known, as sort of the coordination cell, which was basically figuring out a way to transfer equipment Thingers, javelins at the time, pretty basic equipment that was mostly in the defensive realm, that was basically being handed off to the Ukrainians at an airport in Poland which I can never pronounce. It starts off with that and then, basically then Donahue Cavoli is at the time General Cavoli is the head of US Army Europe at that point and Donahue is under him as the 18th Airborne Commander, and above Cavoli is Todd Walters who is the head of EUCOM European Command. Cavoli is Todd Walters who is the head of EUCOM European Command, and obviously Austin and Millie down to Todd Walters, down to Cavoli, down to Donahue. So you know, yes, donahue was basically kind of the tip of the spear, if you will having to, and obviously an exceptional officer who is very experienced at dealing with very uncertain environments, dealing with things that are very difficult to deal with and having to come up with solutions on the fly like that, and he had this unique experience of working with the SDF in Syria. And not only that, he partnered with the Afghan special forces when he was in Afghanistan, and so he had an ability to work with partners, experience in working with partners. One of the people I talked to said that he has the ability to befriend inanimate objects. You know, this requires winning over people and, according to one of the military officers I spoke to, he has a unique ability to make that connection with people.

Adam Entous:

Let's be honest here the US military and the Ukrainian military, even though they had been working together, particularly since 2015, 2014, 2015, when it came to military training and having a relationship, these were not close partners really. In the scheme of things, it wasn't like the US and British military. They didn't know each other very well, even though they had been working together since 2014 more closely, particularly since 2015, with a training mission that Cavoli and Agudo both oversaw when they were head of US training command. After 2014, when Russia seized Crimea. But these were not close partners really. The CIA, I would argue, had a much more close relationship with its Ukrainian counterparts. That relationship, I think, was more developed.

Adam Entous:

So in many ways General Donohue was starting kind of from scratch with a little bit of a deficit of trust. Frankly, general Milley's relationship with his counterpart in Ukraine, general Zeluzhny, was not very good. They barely knew each other really before the invasion and after the invasion General Zeluzhny felt like General Milley could be patronizing at times. They would have these calls and Milley would say things like build trenches and dig trenches and telling Zeluzhny what to do. And Zeluzhny kind of resented that Milley was looking at a satellite image and based on thathny what to do. And Zeluzhny kind of resented that Milley was looking at a satellite image and based on that telling him what to do. And he was on the ground and the Americans had left.

Adam Entous:

So there was this deficit of trust. Now in Milley's defense he had far more intelligence than Zeluzhny had at his fingertips Even though he was in Kiev or elsewhere in Ukraine had at his fingertips Even though he was in Kiev or elsewhere in Ukraine. Milley and his office in the Pentagon or at his house had on his computer screen stuff that would blow Zeluzhny's mind unquestionably if he had access to it. But he didn't have access to it. So he had to trust that Milley was seeing things on his screen that were valuable, that Zeluzhny didn't have, and there was this deficit of trust, and so General Donahue and General Cavoli are trying to build that trust in this early phase.

Michele McAloon:

What changes it?

Adam Entous:

What starts to change. I mean, they had the initial relationship with General Sersky, who was the ground forces commander at the time, and Cavoli knew him from when he was US Army Europe commander and they had a relationship of, I would say, of trust between the two of them. And General Cavoli introduces General Sersky to General Donahue when he's still the 82nd Airborne Commander in that airport. That I cannot pronounce in Poland. And so what happens is is then, after Donohue fleets up, donohue and Sersky are having regular communications. Donohue's assisting him, telling him oh, the Russians are over here, the Russians are over there. If I were you, I would do this or do that, getting information that he wouldn't be able to get from his own people, and he appreciates this.

Adam Entous:

And that's like the first relationship, but it's just part of the Ukrainian military. They needed to have a relationship with General Zeluzhny, who had this rocky relationship with General Milley. And so what happens is is there's a meeting in Ramstein in April 2022. General Milley's there, general Zeluzhny sent one of his deputies and the defense minister of Ukraine is there and Milley says Cavoli and Donohue are both in the room. It's in a skiff in Ramstein and General Milley says listen, these are my guys referring to Cavoli and Donohue. You need to work with them, they can help you. You need to send people Ukrainians to Wiesbaden to join this headquarters. So it's a unified thing, otherwise it's not going to work.

Adam Entous:

And Reznikov, who was the defense minister of Ukraine at the time, agrees to go back and talk to Zeluzhny about this. He goes back, tells him we need to send a delegation to Wiesbaden and Zeluzhny agrees. And Zeluzhny had this officer who he'd known. In fact, general Zeluzhny had been Zeluzhny's boss previously, before Zeluzhny became a parliamentarian, joined the Ukrainian parliament, but after the invasion, after the Russians did their large scale invasion, zeluzhny immediately put on the uniform and headed to the bunker with Zeluzhny, and so they became close during those initial weeks, very close during those initial weeks after the large scale invasion. Zabrowsky is a known commodity at the Pentagon by those who know Ukraine because he's studied in the United States.

Michele McAloon:

He knows the US military.

Adam Entous:

He speaks very good English.

Adam Entous:

People like General Breedlove, who preceded General Walters in the role of head of European command, knew him and met with him, trusted him, really thought he was really a very promising partner for the United States military. And so Zabrodsky comes to Wiesbaden to meet with Donahue and there is almost an instantaneous connection that was between Donahue and Zabrodsky. And I have met Zabrodsky and he is really like a remarkable person that I've. I mean he won me over immediately. He's very earnest, very emotional and aware of his emotions. He and Donahue immediately like brothers from you know, from another mother kind of situation. They have like similar backgrounds in their respective militaries, from very different systems and there was sort of a meeting of the minds between the two of them and in one of their first meeting Donahue says to Zabrowski if you ever lie to me, we're done. And Zabrowski says I totally agree and they basically agreed that they trusted each other from the moment they met. And then Zabrodsky sends an email or sends a message to Zeluzhny saying we found our partner after those initial meetings.

Michele McAloon:

Your story really is about relationships and, I will also say, about technology, as the war amped up and as the technology started flowing. So those were two components, but it was most definitely about these personal relationships that these men forged between these two armies. And I just interviewed Margaret MacMillan and we talked about Paris 1919, the Treaty of Versailles, and it was definitely about personalities. Ultimately, our human decisions are about human personality and war are about human personality and war is about human personality.

Adam Entous:

Yeah, and in fact I would say that that's one of the things that blew my mind about this project was realizing the importance of personnel, the importance of personalities. If it wasn't Donahue, things have been different If it wasn't Zabrowski. How things would be different If the commander't Zabrowski. How things would be different If the commander in the south was Surski instead of basically Tarnowski or Kovalchuk. How this might have been different If Zaluzhny had a different personality than he had right, how this might have been different. I think, you know, I did not appreciate until I did this project, the importance of personality and the connections and the disconnections and also, just like some people just are, like a force of nature, in a way that others aren't and can get along with other people better than others. That was something that really fascinated me about this project is realizing the importance of that and how maybe things might have been different if the personalities were different.

Michele McAloon:

You know, men exceptionally bright. They are exceptional human beings. America is really lucky to have those three men as generals and in charge, and especially in charge in this period of history. Okay, let me ask you a question. So they start off with some very rudimentary intelligence sharing, equipment sharing. When does it amp up? When do they go to the Toad Howitzers, the M777s, when do they actually start? And I want you to tell the story about the targets of interest, because this is very interesting.

Adam Entous:

I mean the points of interest. Points of interest, excuse me, yes, not targets of interest. Points of interest, commander, right, even before the invasion, he basically tells all the different components of European command, you know, reach out to your counterparts in Ukraine and establish channels for passing intelligence, right. And so the Air Force, europe is doing it, special Forces, europe is doing it, navy is doing it, down in Navier, down in Naples, and the army needs to do it, and Donahue's piece of it, general Donahue, and Cavoli's piece of it is the army piece of it, right, which is one part of it. And so there was a debate at the beginning like, all right, like what do we call this information that we're sending to the Ukrainians right Now? If this was all being done within the Army or within NATO, they would call it targets, right, because that's what it is. But this is like not that. This is a relationship with a partner, ukraine, which is not in NATO, it's not an ally, right? It's not technically an ally of the United States, it's a partner, and that partner force is fighting the Russians. No-transcript, the Russians are located on Ukrainian soil and you know the reason they chose points of interest was for sensitivity reasons, so it didn't sound that provocative. It sounded less provocative than calling them targets. Also, there's a logical reason to it. You know the Russians are moving around most sometimes. They're not always moving, but sometimes they're moving. You need to have spotters on the ground that are using binoculars and identifying their precise coordinate. We call them like JTACs in our system that are basically making sure that we have the accurate location after initially identifying their locations. So anyways, bottom line is they settle on this point of interest and system. What happens is is once Soborowski and Donohue have this meeting of the mind in their first meeting the Ukrainians, they start sending teams of Ukrainian military officers with different specialties to Wiesbaden to join the headquarters, to embed with the headquarters.

Adam Entous:

This was something that was cut out of the story that I wish was in there. Donahue puts them in the chews. I think you guys call them chews Chews, right, yeah, yeah, they're the trailers that you might find at a base in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria or whatever. It's basically just like these inglorious sort of like living quarters. There's a camp of them over in Wiesbaden. The Americans are there, the Brits are there, the Poles are there, and now the Ukrainians move into the Jews alongside their American, british, polish NATO counterparts, australians, japanese, you name it and they have soccer games together, they have softball games together, they eat in the same mess hall.

Adam Entous:

You get the sense of like integration here, which, again, I wish that wasn't cut out of the piece, but the sense of brotherhood is being formed not just at the Zabrodsky-Donahue level, but at these other lower levels, these officers that are forging these connections, and what they do is they have a daily meeting every day, maybe multiple times a day, where they decide what's going on on the battlefield. You know, the Americans have these things called satellites. The Ukrainians don't have these things, and the Americans see things that the Ukrainians can't see with their satellites and sensors and all this stuff. And so in these meetings the Americans get to tell them okay, we're seeing this over here, we're seeing this going on over here, and the Ukrainians can say well, our human sources on the ground, behind enemy lines, are seeing this over here. So it's a collaboration that's going on, but obviously the Americans have a lot of technical intelligence that the Ukrainians don't have access to and they're building that. But it's a process and this is a meeting to decide.

Adam Entous:

Okay, what points of interest are the priorities today, at this moment, and you know it might be command posts, because the Russians are surging command posts closer to the fighting, and it might be counter battery radar systems that are used to take out howitzers, that can be used to take out the Ukrainian howitzers. Basically, they have these meetings, they decide, they agree a meeting of the minds this is our priority, these are our priorities. And then those requests, those priorities, are passed to intelligence officers who are attached to what's called Task Force Dragon at the time, later becomes the SAG-U, and they basically look I mean, the Americans already have a lot of this stuff already at their fingertips. Sometimes they don't, they have to search for it and they find these points of interest and then they basically send them to the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians download that onto their you know common operating picture, which is their battlefield operation system, if you will, to help decide how they're going to use their limited forces, limited bullets, how they're going to use them based on these priorities that they had been agreed on.

Michele McAloon:

Adam, what was the initial success? When did they say, oh gosh, this is going to be successful or we're having success here?

Adam Entous:

I think that Donahue believed that it was going to be successful and there was a lot of skepticism at the Pentagon. There's a lot of skepticism in other quarters of the US military, and so it starts with the introduction of howitzers M-777s. The Ukrainians had a Soviet system that we did not have a lot of, or our NATO partners did not have a lot of in their warehouses, right, because it's a Soviet system. We have a NATO system that we use the M-777. And so we realized we're not going to be able to supply them with shells to keep them going. They're going to have to transition to the NATO system, which is the M triple seven one five, five millimeter shell. And so we had a lot of those in in our allies, had a lot of those. We had to transition them to this other system, and so that transition occurs, that's in the May, april, may timeframe, 2022,. They get their M777s. In order to use them, you have to make sure that they're not going to be hit by the Russians when you use them, and there's a system that the Russians have called a Zupark, which is a counter-battery radar system that can accurately detect the location of the M777 once it fires. And so to start the system to be able to use your M-777s without worrying as much about them being targeted by the Russians, you need to take out the zoo parks, and so the first strike using this system was taking out a zoo park. I can't remember it was in the east. So this is General Sersky's area of operation and basically this was the test of concept. Is this going to work?

Adam Entous:

General Donohue, according to General Zebrotsky, is very involved in this. He is making sure he's holding their hands. During this moment. He actually talks to one of the Ukrainian commanders before the shot is taken to make sure. You know he says something like are you good? And the Ukrainian says yeah, I'm good. And again, it's that sense of this connection is being formed right between these guys of trust and you know Donahue is obviously an American general.

Adam Entous:

That guy who took the call from Donahue before the shot, you know, is like who the hell is this guy? Probably, and you know it's sort of, I think, a remarkable moment. I always wanted to track down that Ukrainian guy and ask him what was that like to have that conversation with this American general? What happens is is the Ukrainians have to kind of trick the Russians to turn on the system, turn on the zoo park, which is basically a radar system that the Ukrainians had to shoot towards the Russian lines to get the zoo park to turn on its radar. The American intelligence agencies can detect when that system goes up. They can pinpoint its location based on its emissions. Somehow, I don't know how this works, but it detects it and gets the precise coordinates that point of interest. Those coordinates are fed to the artillery crew in Ukraine and Donahue's on the line on the phone. This failed. It's game over. It's sort of game over.

Michele McAloon:

Right.

Adam Entous:

Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. A lot was riding on success here, and so that first shot is taken and everybody's like we can do this. This worked. The zoo park lights up M-777 fires, takes out the zoo park. The Americans can see on the satellites that the zoo park was hit. We tell the Ukrainians success, then their M-777s can start moving forward in that area of the battlefields. Right, but what that showed was that it could be successful against the single target, single point of interest. Now the issue was okay. Now let's go to the next level here, which is multiple points of interest in a moving, kinetic fight Around the same time.

Adam Entous:

A few weeks later, maybe a couple of days later I can't remember exactly the dates Russians made it a priority to encircle a town in the east. They had to cross this river in order to do so, which required them to use pontoon bridge crossing Very complex. The Russians are supposed to be really good at this and at crossing rivers like this, but it's a moment, it's a choke point when the Russians have to slow down. It's a vulnerability at this moment. And the Americans could see what was happening. They saw the pontoon bridges being brought to this point. They could tell the Ukrainians.

Adam Entous:

Okay, this is about to happen here. This is an opportunity to test the system now on a broader scale, and so, in that case, task Force Dragon is feeding you know, I don't know how many points of interest, but several points of interest to the Ukrainians for their M-777 crews to open fire at this Russian force as it's preparing, as it's come to a crawl, preparing for this crossing, when they're very vulnerable and the Ukrainians are very successful in the strike. And that was like an early test of whether or not the system could be brought to scale. Again, m777s we're still using a system that really is a very limited in terms of range. It's precise, but not as precise as other systems that we are about to provide them.

Michele McAloon:

Right, and then it let's talk about.

Adam Entous:

It's about a 15 kilometer range, 15 to 19 kilometer range, yeah, I think with a standard 155 shell, but I think there is a package that could be boosted range, but that's sort of like the initial system, right, and this was a version of artillery system that the Ukrainians already had, so this was not like a giant leap for the Ukrainians to go from their version of a howitzer to our version of the howitzer. The next thing was the leap, which is the HIMARS right.

Michele McAloon:

When they suddenly which?

Adam Entous:

is a 50 mile, 84 kilometer range and is now satellite guided, which requires a level of American involvement. Now we're entering like a whole new ballpark of involvement when it comes to the HIMARS, because it's a satellite guided system and you know we have satellites and guess who doesn't? The Ukrainians. You know we have satellites and guess who doesn't? The Ukrainians, right? So we have to be much more involved.

Michele McAloon:

Adam, when did the drones come? I was surprised from your article because I did not know this. I know the US started supplying drones at some point, I don't know when we started providing that.

Adam Entous:

I can't remember exactly. We started providing them with aerial drones in 2022. I can't remember exactly. We started providing them with aerial drones in 2022. I can't remember exactly the timeframe. I believe it was probably in late spring, early summer. These were reconnaissance drones. These were not one-way attack drones like the ones that eventually the Ukrainians build themselves with our help.

Adam Entous:

And then there are maritime drones, sea-based drones, which basically the Pentagon provides an early prototype to the Ukrainians, develop their own maritime drone and aerial drone capability, which is beginning in the summer of 2022 and sort of gets bigger and bigger as the years go by in the conflict.

Adam Entous:

But in 2022, it's sort of a nascent capability for the Ukrainians, but one that is becoming increasingly capable by the summer of 2022 and into the fall of 2022.

Adam Entous:

And they're starting to field maritime drones that are capable of doing some serious damage to Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Adam Entous:

And in October of 2022, the Ukrainians carry out a quite sophisticated, with the help of the CIA, operation targeting Sevastopol, the Russian Black Sea, the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Crimea, with CIA help, and you know. So this is a part of the partnership is sort of evolving and growing in that 22 period and really doesn't become kind of the full what it becomes later in 2023 and 2024, which is a very capable capability, particularly on the maritime drone side. That proves like devastating to the Russian Black Sea fleet during that period of 2023 and 2024, to the point where I've heard I don't know what the exact number is, but I've heard anywhere from 60 to 65% of the Black Sea fleet was sunk or damaged using these kites and drones, to the point where the Russian Black Sea fleet ended up leaving all entirely Sevastopol and leaving the Western Black Sea in order to basically escape being targeted by these systems, which were being guided to their targets by a combination of the US Navy, the British and the CIA, which was working with them.

Michele McAloon:

And the one thing the British were actually on the ground too, right when the US was not on the ground, and that I know. I know that made a difference. So they're having success. But I remember following the maps in Le Figaro and in a couple of the other European newspapers, as one of the senior officials said, the red keeps getting bigger and red meaning the Russian forces. So, and the red keeps getting bigger and red meaning the Russian forces so, and the red on the map keeps expanding. So at some point they decide to do something called that is very, very militarily difficult, a counter offensive, and a counter offensive under the best of circumstances, and you can go back to World War I, world War II, all of it. It is very difficult to do and this is where things they kind of hit a rocky road. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Adam Entous:

They emerged in 2022 from conducting their first counteroffensive with a degree of success and there's a tremendous amount of confidence on the Ukrainian side at the end of 2022. And that, I think, is important for people to understand heading into 2023. So there's almost this, you know, in retrospect, irrational exuberance about what the Ukrainians can do, and I'm saying in retrospect because, of course, there was really no way to know at the time. It looked like the Russians were complete incompetence. Maybe they were complete incompetence, but they're also incredibly smart people and resourceful and have the advantage of size that the Ukrainians don't have. And so the Ukrainians come out of 2022 with this great deal of confidence and you know, they want to hit a home run in 2023. They want to pretty much win the war in 2023. And within the coalition there was sort of the belief that they could and maybe they wouldn't win the war outright, but it would still be decisive victory for the Ukrainians in 2023. President Putin would sue for peace. They set a very ambitious target for 2023 based on that ambition, which was a successful operation south towards Melitopol, the idea being that they would be able to cut the land bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea, to isolate Crimea and there's a bridge, the Kerch Strait Bridge, but that's a limited ability to bring resources into Crimea. So if they can cut that land bridge, it would be a huge strategic defeat for the Russians. That was the idea that Zeluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, really wanted to do in 2023. He sent Zebrowski to Wiesbaden to present this and this was embraced.

Adam Entous:

Donoghue is now gone. We have a new general in charge in Wiesbaden, LTG Aguto, and he's different than Donoghue. He's got different background. Donoghue's like you know. I mean he's got, he's done many things Donoghue has, but he's, you know, maybe best known for his work in special operations. Aguto is sort of a large army general, one whose specialty, arguably, was training, and he had worked with the Ukrainians in that capacity in the past, which is part of the reason why a big part of the reason why General Cavoli, who at this point fleets up to become the head of European command succeeding Walters, tasks him or chooses him for this role because of his experience training.

Adam Entous:

They have to get the Ukrainians ready, build these brigades and equip these brigades, train them for this counteroffensive south towards Melitopol and they have war games which take place in January 2023, and they decide on the way that counteroffensive should unfold.

Adam Entous:

There will be a supporting line of effort which was going to be in the east, led by General Sersky, to put pressure on the Russians in Bakhmut, where the Russians were investing a lot of their forces in the Bakhmut area, investing a lot of their forces in the Bakhmut area.

Adam Entous:

Sersky would do a supporting line of effort there, really a feint, to try to convince the Russians that this was the Ukrainian priority, and then from Bakhmut his forces would move in the direction, or make it look like they were going to move in the direction of Luhansk, which Putin annexed, and so it was really important to Putin.

Adam Entous:

And so the idea was is, if the Russians saw this activity in the east, towards in Bakhmut, in the direction of Luhansk, they would freak out and rush their forces to that area and in theory this would create an opening in the south, which would be the main effort under the plan that they came up with in Wiesbaden during these war games, and that would be a thrust down towards Melitopol, with concentration of Ukrainian forces and ammunition in that direction. And the American strategy is you got to pick your main effort and you can't spread your forces too thin and so. But they had an agreement on what to do that emerged out of these war games. But it was clear that Sersky General Sersky in the East was not of the same opinion as General Zaluzhny. He thought the fight in the East was more important than the fight in the south.

Michele McAloon:

Do you know why.

Adam Entous:

Well, he was the commander in the east and that's where the Russians were investing. Their bulk of their forces was in the east, and if we look at what they're doing today in Pokrovsk and other areas in the east, the Russians have been incredibly consistent on wanting to gobble up the East right and so. I don't think Sersky's necessarily wrong. I don't understand it necessarily, but I think the Americans really didn't understand it. Why this obsession with Bakhmut?

Michele McAloon:

I asked that same question this morning. Why the obsession with Bakhmut?

Adam Entous:

I don't think we understood their obsession with Bakhmut, you know, but that was their obsession and we can tell them what we think they should be obsessed with, but we can't make them obsessed about the things that we're obsessed with, I guess. And so Sersky had a disagreement and I would say maybe an honest disagreement, I don't know with Zeluzhny and the Americans. He thought Buckmoot, luhansk was the game and the most important game, and the Americans Cavoli Agudo and Zeluzhny thought that the South and Malatopol was the place. And the story says that General Agudo has a conversation with Sursky to make sure that he understands what the priorities are going to be, that it's going to be the South is the priority and he's the secondary priority. And you know, sersky says something like I don't agree but I have my orders, which the Americans believed maybe this was again a mistake was believed was a commitment by Sersky to go along with the plan.

Adam Entous:

Our system is very hierarchical, where Austin Milley down to Cavoli Agudo you know Daryl Williams in that case was the US Army Europe commander. There's a unity of command in our system. That's very central to our system and maybe we made the mistake of thinking at that point that there was a similar unity of command on the Ukrainian side, which did not necessarily exist, and you had a divided Ukrainian army between an army that was loyal to Zelensky and an army that was loyal to Sursky. But our system is we have a unity of command. Our counterpart is Zeluzhny as the commander-in-chief of Ukrainian armed forces. It's not General Sursky, the ground forces commander, right, and so maybe that was a mistake that we didn't understand. You know how divided their own system was at that moment, and so we thought, if Zeluzhny tells Sersky what to do, that Sersky is going to do it right. And Sersky's message to Agudo was I disagree, but I have my orders. Maybe gave us some comfort false comfort to think that he was going to follow Zeluzhny's orders. But what happens is.

Adam Entous:

The issue was is okay, agudo's job was training all these brigades that were supposed to come out to Europe, and at the heart of this training plan was the idea that there would be four battle-hardened brigades, four experienced brigades from the East, under Sersky's command, were supposed to leave Ukraine and come to Europe to basically be trained by us, and then they would be used as part of the force against the main effort in Melitopol. But Sersky didn't want to give up those four battle-hardened brigades. He felt like he needed them to hold his positions and potentially succeed in Bakhmut. And he goes to Zelensky, the president, and makes the case that you know, I need these guys. I can't afford to give them for the Melitopol fight, which was Zeluzhny's baby, you know, not his and Zelensky agrees with Sersky and basically says, ok, I understand, I'm going to prioritize Bakhmut. And then Sersky tells Agudo, take all new guys for the Melitopol fight. And they basically send largely untested, inexperienced soldiers to out of Ukraine for Agudo and the Americans to train the British to train for Agudo and the Americans to train the British to train.

Adam Entous:

And this is sort of like the first. This is when one of the wheels is coming off the bus. The first wheel is coming off the bus here, right At this point. Now, if you ask me, this was the moment when that first wheel comes off the bus, where maybe this was a mistake that we made Again, this is in retrospect that we maybe should have said oh, wait a minute here.

Adam Entous:

Do we actually have an agreement anymore about what this counteroffensive in 2023 is going to be?

Adam Entous:

Maybe we should have hit the brakes or the pause button and said OK, zelensky, you know? President Biden, jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, cavoli, you guys got to talk to your Ukrainian counterparts and, make sure, is Melitopol still the main effort? Right, because this is a warning sign that the Ukrainians are split on this. Right, and we decide because the Ukrainians I don't know why we exactly do this, but we think, okay, all right. We're like, hmm, this is not ideal. Right, our fundamental assumptions about the force that was going to be fighting in Melitopol is now being upended. Right, and again that's the second wheel is coming off the bus.

Adam Entous:

Now and again, it's a moment when maybe we should have said in my opinion this is again just my personal opinion this is a moment where we could have maybe said OK, not good, not only did we not get the experienced brigades that we wanted, now we're getting all these older guys that don't have experience. Now, they love their country. They're, I'm sure, really dedicated guys, really dedicated guys. But there's a difference between. I know as an older, you know as a 50 year old, that there's a difference between my ability to do things and an 18 year old's ability to do things.

Michele McAloon:

Oh, absolutely, especially for war type stuff.

Adam Entous:

I mean, you, you know what Young is good, so yeah, and, and so this was another warning sign, right and again the calculations were made that you know we can make this work Like. And then it became okay. May 1 was supposed to be the agreed start date of this counteroffensive. But you know, zeluzhny wanted to have all the equipment, all the ammunition in his hands inside of Ukraine before they started and there were some delays in deliveries. General Cavoli and General Ligudo would tell Zeluzhny, would tell General Zebradsky you know, listen, you have enough to start the counteroffensive. This other stuff is on its way, so you can trust us that this stuff is going to come, you're going to be okay, you're going to have it. But Zeluzhny wasn't willing to do that, so he delayed the start and this was another assumption that was suddenly thrown off because of that decision and that made it harder, because now the Russians had more time to build up their fortifications on the way to Melitopol, they had more time to build brigades and push them into the fight. And all the numbers that had been crunched and carefully calculated to make this work, because it's in some ways a numbers game here the numbers didn't add up the same way and this is another wheel that's coming off the bus and maybe that was a moment when they should have said you know, maybe we should hit the brakes, but they don't. Instead, the decision is made to proceed right.

Adam Entous:

And there's a very telling moment where Zabrowski is in Wiesbaden and Cavoli has tears in his eyes and he says to Zabrowski you got to go, you got to launch this counteroffensive.

Adam Entous:

If you don't, you're going to lose the war. And Zabrowski says I agree with you, general Cavoli, but I'm not the president of Ukraine, I'm not the Supreme Commander, and but you know he says something to the effect of you know, I should have cried along with him. You know Zabrowski and Agudo brief Millie on the plan in Wiesbaden when Millie's visiting, and after the briefing, millie says are you guys really committed to the plan? Are you guys going to change the plan? And Zabrowski says no, no, no, we're not going to change the plan, we're going to stick with the plan. And of course, when Zabrowski says that he believed that that was true. And you know this again is part of the disconnect when you're operating remotely, like we are where you know Zabrotsky's on board, he's got that sense of brotherhood, he's got that sense of trust. But there's a whole other thing going on in Ukraine that we're not part of.

Michele McAloon:

What would have changed that reality? Would a cell inside of Ukraine been?

Adam Entous:

able to change that. That might have been able to help. It might not have been possible to change that. It's impossible to really know.

Michele McAloon:

Not understanding their culture, not understanding their dynamics of what they were working under.

Adam Entous:

I think to a certain extent we didn't understand at that point but we were beginning to understand it the role that Zelensky was playing in micromanaging some of these decisions. We didn't, I think, understand how weak Zeluzhny was within the Ukrainian system. We didn't understand the internal politics within the Ukrainian military. I mean, we had inklings that there were divisions, but I don't think we realized how stark those divisions were. We didn't really get that until it was kind of too late. And then the story describes a meeting between the top commanders in Zelensky, the Stavka meeting in Kiev, in which Zeluzhny presents the plan for the counteroffensive with Melotopol, getting the bulk of the forces and the bulk of the munitions. And then Zelensky presents his own plan, which basically is a major offensive, not a supporting line of effort, not a feint, but a major offensive in the direction of Bakhmut and Luhansk. And then Zelensky approves that, even though that was not what was agreed in Wiesbaden. And so he divides the ammo 50-50 between East and South and he divides the forces. You know, seven brigades in the South, five brigades, new brigades that we helped build in the east.

Adam Entous:

And so then there's a border meeting where Zaluzhny presents the plan to Cavoli and Agudo. When Zaluzhny explains what's going to happen. They've got now a major front in the east in addition to a secondary front in the direction of Mariupol, and the idea is Cavoli. You know, kovoli's response was that's not the plan. The Americans didn't resource the thing that they decided to do, and there was so the disconnect between the resources and what the Ukrainians decided. And now that was another moment where this is like the final wheel is coming off the bus, if you will, and but it's now summer, it's June, you know, it's it's late May.

Michele McAloon:

June of 2023.

Adam Entous:

Yeah. And so you know time is out. There's no more time left Right, and they need to make the decision like are we going to do this or not? And the Ukrainians were going to do it. They were going to do their plan, and so our choice was do we walk away and tell them no, or do we support them? And the decision was made Ultimately, this is their war. They have to decide what territory is more important to them. We can't dictate that to them. And Zelensky decided that this is how he wanted to do it, and so we went along with it, even though it was not the plan that was agreed to in Wiesbaden, and we knew that it would be harder because we weren't concentrating our forces the way it was intended.

Michele McAloon:

And ultimately the counteroffensive fails. You lose men and resources. And what's the relationship after that? Is it still the brotherhood? At that point, it's definitely greatly diminished.

Adam Entous:

The sense of trust on both sides is shattered by this. The Ukrainians feel like if the Americans had only given us some additional stuff earlier, like long-range missiles, like ATAKOMs, they would have been successful. And you know, they have a point that that might have been helpful to them. Certainly it might have been. They have a point that that might have been helpful to them, certainly it might have been. It may have even been decisive in some key battles. And that was a decision that Mr Austin, the defense secretary, based on.

Adam Entous:

The combatant commanders in other regions in Asia and in the Middle East had munitions that they were required to have in order to carry out their own potential war plans in their regions, and they knew that if we took those munitions and gave them to Ukraine, they would not be able to.

Adam Entous:

Basically, they were worried they would not be able to fight those potential wars, and so these are all really hard decisions, right.

Adam Entous:

And so Austin made the hard decision to say no to providing those long-range capabilities, because he knew that if they gave those weapons to the Ukrainians, we would maybe potentially be exposed and vulnerable if a war were to break out somewhere that we had to fight. At the same time, we felt bitter because the Americans felt like the Ukrainians weren't listening to our good advice. You know right, we're wasting what we gave them and not listening to us and not like being transparent with us about their change of plans until it was too late a relationship of trust. They come into the fall of 2023 with increasingly distrust and at the same time in the American political system you had the return of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was very critical of the war in Ukraine and his allies in Congress were agitating to cut off funding for the war in Ukraine. And so you kind of had this perfect storm in late 2023, where confidence was shattered by the disconnect over the 2023, counteroffensive and the failure and then emerging doubts in the American political system about supporting continued support for the Ukrainians.

Michele McAloon:

Where is this today, and what do the Ukrainians and Americans feel, the officers and the men that you've talked to feel about this relationship and about what how they fought this war up to this point?

Adam Entous:

What happens after that is Congress holds up the money for Ukraine and, coming after the debacle of 2023, that's sort of another giant blow to the brotherhood. The Ukrainians no longer necessarily feel like they can count on us and they feel like they have to basically be more self-sufficient, more independent from us, and that independence results in them doing things that we did not intend on them doing, such as an operation on Russian soil in Kursk, which they do in August of 2024, right after Agudo leaves. This is the end of the Biden administration. Now they love the Ukrainians. They wanted to strangle them half the time, but they love them. And there was that sense of really deep commitment on the American side. Yes, they weren't willing to do everything the Ukrainians wanted. Yes, they had incredible disagreements, but there was that underlying sense of commitment to the cause, to who was right and who was wrong. Who was the victim here, who deserved support? It was Ukraine in the view of the Biden administration. Even though they wanted to strangle them, they wanted them to succeed. But incoming now was a new group of leaders in America. This is President Trump and his team. At least, a lot of them did not share that sense of connection, that sense of commitment, that underlying bond, towards the end of the Biden administration.

Adam Entous:

After Kursk and after the 2023 counteroffensive, there was still that underlying bond, but incoming was this new group that just didn't feel that and, in fact, they rejected it. They thought that Biden made a mistake by, you know, investing so heavily in the Ukrainians. President Trump and his team had a priority that they put on improving the relationship with Russia. That meant that their level of support for Ukraine was not nearly as great, and so, anyways, bottom line is for the Ukrainians don't know how much I think now they really are understanding it better. Maybe they thought that Trump in his first term continued, in some ways, expanded support for Ukraine by providing them with their first javelins, and he increased the intelligence relationship during this time. How much he was involved in those decisions, I don't know in this previous term, but now, in this term as president, president Trump seems to be committed to again improving the relationship with Putin and trying to find a way to end this war on terms that may not be as favorable to the Ukrainians as they were hoping they might be if Kamala Harris had won or if Biden had a second term. And so, yeah, we're in a place now where the partnership is sort of on this very unstable ground.

Adam Entous:

You have the return of General Donohue, who the Ukrainians do have a lot of trust in, to Vyazbodin as the head of US Army Europe, and I'm sure many Ukrainians to Wiesbaden as the head of US Army Europe and I'm sure many Ukrainians, including General Sersky, were very happy to see him return. But the decisions of the White House ultimately, and the president, are going to decide what General Donohue and General Cavoli are able to do to support the Ukrainians. We're still waiting really to get an understanding of what Trump is going to do. We had some taste of it when he froze some aspects of intelligence support. But if the ceasefire that he's pushing for doesn't happen, if Putin doesn't agree to it and this conflict continues and there's no ceasefire, trump is going to have to make a decision pretty soon when the Ukrainians begin to run out of their munitions Are we going to continue to support them or not? I don't know what he's going to decide to do.

Michele McAloon:

What do the Ukrainians think of your article? It's an excellent article. It really is such a good article. It's an article that I think will become a classical piece of war literature. It's a brilliant article. What did the Ukrainians think of it?

Adam Entous:

think are very proud of the article and they're proud of what it describes in the bonds that were formed and they were also happy to see detailed reconstruction of what worked and what didn't work, that potentially the Ukrainians can learn from that for the future. Right. But on the other side, on the flip side, I think some of the Ukrainians were upset by the article because there's a narrative that the Ukrainians have embraced, including Zelensky's office, that the reason the counteroffensive failed was because of the coalition's hesitation. And they're not completely wrong that there was hesitation, that there was support that was withheld because the Biden administration thought that it might be too escalatory, too risky, or because of concerns about American readiness for future conflicts its own conflicts.

Michele McAloon:

You're talking about like the high Mars, and the attack comes right.

Adam Entous:

Yeah, exactly, and so there was. You know, the Ukrainians have a point that the Americans were not willing to basically give everything they had to help the Ukrainians be successful. But then, if you look at it from the American perspective, there were things that the Americans thought the Ukrainians could have done to make themselves more successful, such as bringing younger soldiers into the fight, 18-year-olds into the fight, and the way they divided their forces and their munitions instead of concentrating them. So both sides have a point. Ultimately, what were the bigger factors in the course of the conflict?

Adam Entous:

From the American perspective, the bigger factors are guys holding guns more than attack them. How many soldiers do you have to fight to take territory? You can use, attack them and take out Russian targets in the deep as much as you want, but unless you have the soldiers to move forward and take the terrain, you're not going to gain territory. But from the Ukrainian perspective, the reason why they didn't advance to take that territory was because they couldn't hit them in the deep or across the border until very late in the game and the Americans just didn't have very many attackums, long range munitions and the Brits don't have very many attackums, long range munitions and the Brits don't have very many storm shadows and the French don't have that many scalps, and so the limitations in production on the American and the West side, the limitations on that production and the ability of the Russians to get their production up.

Adam Entous:

To get their production up, there was an asymmetry of production side. That I think is also, in addition to the number of forces, a critical factor here, where the Russians treated this as an existential threat and they mobilized their defense industry to produce the shells at an extremely fast rate. We did not, on our side, do the same thing, and so, in addition to the number of forces, you have an asymmetry of production. And so those are all factors. Historians are going to look back and hopefully be able to get a better picture of all the factors that influenced the course of this, and I obviously wasn't able to do that with the same hindsight that future historians will be able to do. So it's a very complicated picture and both sides obviously have reason to believe that things might have been different and decisions might have been different, and the course forward is super unknown at this point.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely? We don't know Absolutely, but I tell you, your contribution to documenting this, especially so soon after it happened, is going to be, I think, an invaluable contribution going forward in helping us to understand this war. And it's not just because I'm living in Wiesbaden, germany. This is an important piece of work that you have done. One last question You've spent so much time with me and I really really appreciate it, but what did you learn coming from this? You cover war, you've covered Gaza, hamas. You've covered the Middle East. You've seen conflict, you've seen violence. What did you get from this?

Adam Entous:

The rub against the Biden administration was that they hesitated, they didn't do enough. I was surprised by how much we were actually doing. I mean, some of it was the CIA and I was surprised by that. And I think I also emerged with a newfound appreciation of the importance of personnel and personalities the American generals, but also, critically, the Ukrainian generals and their different personalities, their different levels of trust, their different risk tolerances.

Adam Entous:

For example, general Sotol, the Marine general who was in charge of the Mariupol fight. He was an eager consumer of advice and points of interest. Agudo would send them to him and he would act on them. There was very little hesitation on his part. But the commander in the south, the most important commander during the counteroffensive, general Ternovsky, had a different take. He was much more cautious. He wanted to validate all the intelligence that he got from General Agudo using drones. This slowed the whole process down. It took away one of Ukraine's advantages, which was speed in addition to precision. Imagine if General Soto was the commander in the South. Might the 2023 counteroffensive succeeded? Would General Sersky, if he was made the commander in the South, which was one of the proposals that was made at the very end would it have been different? Yeah, we don't know the answers to that. No, we don't. Personalities, the predilections of individuals, their willingness to push the envelope, take risk, not be overly bureaucratic, really seems to. Is seems to me like like incredibly important and, in many ways, maybe the most important.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. It comes down to our humanity. I mean, I don't care about the technology and about it's, it's our humanity at the very end, and you know what our understandings and our sin and everything that goes into making us who we are, it really is. I cannot thank you enough for the time that you've spent to explain this article, to talk about your experiences. We are going to be looking for your future work, because I know you've got some great pieces coming up on probably a lot of different corners in the world. But hopefully especially is keeping our eyes open to what has happened in Ukraine, because it is important. It is so important. It's important to Europe, it's important to the US. So I really, really appreciate it.

Adam Entous:

No, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.