María Senovilla: ‘The Ukrainian winter will be terrifying’

On the programme ‘De cara al mundo’ on Onda Madrid, journalist and correspondent María Senovilla, a contributor to Atalayar, analysed the Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy installations. She also considered China's restriction on exporting crucial components for assembling drones. 

It is very cold for the Ukrainians, and also for the factories that have to stop because, in addition to the combat fronts, Russia continues to attack energy installations and civilian targets in Ukraine. 

Right now it is 10 degrees below zero in Kramatorsk. The first heavy snow has fallen here, everything is white, and we have had an absolutely terrifying week of attacks on Kherson, on Sumy, on Dnipro, but the worst part has been borne by Zaporiyia. There, as well as attacking electricity substations, a few days ago the Kremlin bombed a petrol station and several housing estates with missiles, killing 10 people and injuring some 30. The images were breathtaking. The gas station turned into a huge fireball and people burned to death inside their cars while refuelling. And three days after that, Russia also launched another attack on Zaporiyia, on an office building during office hours, on several housing estates and on a hospital. Once again, 11 dead and several dozen wounded. The Ukrainian authorities have announced that there will be programmed cuts, at least until spring, i.e. what Russia is bombing is becoming increasingly difficult to repair, and with winter upon us. 

The winter that awaits the Ukrainian civilian population is going to be terrifying and, worst of all, there is no military presence in any of these places. There are a great many of us international journalists who are still covering this conflict and when there is a bombing we go immediately to see what has happened and I can assure you that there is no trace of military presence there. These are not legitimate targets, these are war crimes that Russia is committing without the international community stepping up and raising its voice against this wave of bombardment against the cities, the civilian population of Ukraine and its critical infrastructure. 

Maria, the city of Pokrovsk, could fall in a matter of days. That would be a heavy blow for the Ukrainians, but Russian troops are also advancing elsewhere on the front line. 

That's right, Pokrovsk is on the brink. We can already consider the city lost. But the Russians are also advancing in Chasiv Yar, where Ukrainian troops had been holding them back since last April. And fronts such as Kursk are also under constant fire and Russian drones are wreaking havoc. 

I haven't seen the battlefront this bad since 2022. I mean the whole front line because, obviously, after 2022 we have had terrible battles in Soledar, in Bakhmut, in Avdivka, recently in Vovchansk. But a situation like the one I'm seeing right now, where the Russian army is advancing in all directions on the front line, has not happened since the first months of the full-scale invasion.  

The situation in Pokrovsk, as we said, is the most worrying. Russian troops have advanced very rapidly in recent days. And although Ukraine is sending reinforcements, it is going to be almost impossible to stop the Kremlin forces. I was there a few days ago. I saw those reinforcements coming in. The roads were crowded with both truckloads of men and large weapons. But I also saw a terrible number of wounded people coming out of that front line who said it was hell. They were outnumbered by Russian troops. Some said at least five to one, but it could be even more. And although Ukraine had managed to contain this advance for weeks, relying mainly on the use of drones, they have a big problem, which is a lack of ammunition. All the battalions I asked agreed that they had no artillery ammunition to repel this concentration of troops that were advancing very quickly. And they couldn't work miracles with drones either. 

A similar situation, not so alarming, but worrying, is happening right now in Chasiv Yar, where they had managed to contain the Russian troops on the other side of the water channel at the beginning of the town. It seems that a considerable number of Russians have already managed to break through this natural defensive line and are already both inside the city and surrounding it, both to the north and to the south. It seems that they want to bag them, just as they did in Bajmut. I'm in Kramatorsk right now, where you're seeing a tremendous movement of troops going in that direction, all the way to Chasiv Yar. And they tell you exactly the same thing, that they don't have the artillery ammunition to be able to effectively repel this advance that is taking place at several points at the same time. 

Russia is putting a lot of troops at all these points. The casualties on the Russian lines are enormous, but we all know that Putin and the rest of the Russian commanders don't care if they kill people. The Ukrainians do care about these casualties among their personnel, but the Russians use them as cannon fodder and there is little that can be done about that. 

And also in the Russian region of Kursk, occupied by the Ukrainians, things are not going well for the Ukrainians. Are the Russians regaining ground? 

The Russians are regaining ground. The Ukrainians have a smaller and smaller piece to defend and there again Russia, apart from those 12,000 North Korean fighters that it would have recruited and put in to take back the ground, Russia is also putting in Russian men. They were telling me about new battalions that came in as reinforcements to hold the defensive lines that had been formed in recent months and manage to keep that little piece of the region that they could then use at a negotiating table to get something in return. And they told me the same thing, that Russia is launching everything, above all glider bombs and those attack drones that now account for 80% of the Ukrainian wounded. Eighty per cent of the Ukrainian wounded are injuries caused by these Russian attack drones.  

In Kursk, they are getting to grips with all kinds of weaponry that they are throwing at them, and here they are already going at them without a second thought. All they want is to drive them out of the region. They don't care how much damage they do, they don't care how much they destroy those parts that the Ukrainians have occupied. All they want is to drive them beyond the other side of the border. Less information is coming in than from Pokrovsk, because even in Pokrovsk we still have access to the press. It's complicated, but we can see first-hand what's going on. Obviously, foreign journalists are not allowed in Kursk, but the testimonies we receive from the wounded tell the same story. 

What you are saying goes a long way towards explaining why Russia has not been able to react in Syria as some of us thought it would. It is too busy with what it is doing in Ukraine. Speaking of drones, China is limiting the export of crucial components to assemble drones. Has this been noticed on the ground? Because this is a handicap for the Ukrainians as well, isn't it?  

It has been noticed, and very much so. This is another war, that of drone components, which also started with a trade dispute between the United States and China when Washington banned the sale of memory chips and semiconductors, and Beijing has responded by restricting the export of these components needed to manufacture drones to both the United States and Europe. 

As I said, this has already been felt on the ground in Ukraine. There are already problems getting many of these parts and this is delaying both the repair of Ukrainian drones and the manufacture of new ones, because Ukraine was not buying directly from China. Ukraine procured components through these third countries, mostly European countries. 

This crisis, the drone components crisis, comes at the worst possible time for Ukraine because Zelensky had just announced a few days ago the production here in Ukraine, on the ground, of millions of war drones, up to three million war drones very quickly in the coming months. And well, with what is happening, with the shortage of these crucial components to assemble the drones, we don't know if this is going to be possible now.  

And another very relevant fact. Parallel to the shortage of components in Europe and therefore in Ukraine, from the front line all my sources agree that Russian forces now have more drones than ever before. Of all types, of all models, newer, more modern, real swarms of drones that they have never seen in such large numbers to date. 

China is becoming increasingly clear about its position in this war, if there were ever any doubts. And Xi Jinping is increasingly profiting from the war in Ukraine and increasingly favouring the Kremlin, bordering on those international sanctions packages that have been largely ineffective. It has already been proven that Russia is being supplied with huge quantities of both components and assembled drones, which automatically come here to Ukraine. The Russians put them on the ground and attack with them on that front line where artillery has now almost been relegated to the background.