New drones, deadlier attacks: Dystopian reality in Ukraine

Dave Davies (0:00)

This is Fresh Air, I'm Dave Davies. Since Russia invaded Ukraine four and a half years ago, Ukrainian forces have held their own on the battlefield with support from Western allies, and morale among the country's civilian population has held up despite punishing air attacks. But our guest, Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist, says the war is changing in ways that bring a new level of terror to Ukrainian citizens and pose serious threats to the country's economy. Minton Beddoes recently returned from a reporting trip with a team of journalists to Ukraine, where she says both sides in the war are developing new weapons and refining tactics with lethal consequences. One example, so-called safari hunting drones that identify a person or vehicle as a target, then follow as the target flees in terror. The drone eventually dives and crashes into the target, detonating a deadly explosive charge.

We've invited Zanny Minton Beddoes back on the show to talk about Ukraine and catch up on some other important topics, including the war with Iran, trade, tariffs, and the state of US, European and Canadian alliances. Zanny Minton Beddoes is a former economist for the International Monetary Fund who joined The Economist magazine in 1994

She holds degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University and is a regular commentator on television and radio. We recorded our conversation yesterday. Zanny Minton Beddoes, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Zanny Minton Beddoes (1:31)

Thank you so much for having me.

Dave Davies (1:32)

You and this team of journalists from The Economist recently made an extensive trip to Ukraine. You've been there before. Why did you feel you wanted to make this kind of investment in this subject now?

Zanny Minton Beddoes (1:45)

So you're right. I've been there four times since the invasion by Russia, the full scale invasion. The first, I think, three weeks after the invasion, when I went to Kiev and was the first journalist to interview President Zelensky.

The reason I go is because I think this is the most important geopolitical conflict in Europe in the last 70 years. And I actually have a kind of personal soft spot for Ukraine. I lived there for a few months, 30 years ago.

I find it a fascinating country. And I feel that you can only really understand something, particularly a conflict like that, if you actually see it close up. And I have to say, Dave, that this is a very sobering trip.

And it was probably the most sobering since the very first time I went, which was the first time in 2022 The Russians were still just outside Kiev. The city was virtually empty. We went to see President Zelensky kind of in bunkers, in his palace, but there were sandbags everywhere. It really felt like a place at war. But the subsequent two times, when I went to Kiev, it felt like a normal city. The war felt far away because the city then had very good air defenses. And yes, there were occasional air alerts, but you felt as though you were in a very safe city. This time around, I went to Kiev and then I went to visit the brigade headquarters of one of the drone brigades much closer to the front, in a location that I'm obviously not going to disclose, but much closer to the front. And Kiev itself, and this is, I think, really important for people to understand. In the last couple of months, but really the last few weeks, has been under extraordinary bombardment from the Russians. And they are basically trying to make life unlivable in a city of several million people. And there are two big things that have changed, that have given the Russians an advantage. The first is that the Ukrainians have run out of interceptors for ballistic missiles, what are called PAC-3 interceptors produced by the US, which for the past couple of years have really helped them to defend themselves against ballistic missiles. And because these interceptors are extremely short supply, they were used heavily in the Middle East recently, in the Iran war, the Ukrainians have essentially hardly got any left. So the Russians are able to bombard the city at night with ballistic missiles. And the second is that the Russians have made an innovation to their drones. That kind of workhorse drone is something called the Shahed drone, which was originally made by Iran, that the Russians started producing at scale. And they have essentially attached jet propulsion to those drones, which makes them go much higher and much faster, and thus makes them much harder for the Ukrainians to intercept. And Ukrainians had built sort of defensive drones that could intercept the Shaheds with a sort of 95% success rate. But now that they have these jet propulsion attached to them, that interception rate has gone down closer to 40%.