Consider This from NPR - Russia Meets A Strong Resistance

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Russia's war against Ukraine rages on, but for now Russian troops appear to have been met with a level of resistance they were not prepared for. While the U.S. and its allies have pulled together in an attempt to cripple Russia's economy. NPR's Chief Economic Correspondent Scott Horsley reports on sanctions have led to Russia's currency falling, which will mean higher prices for Russians. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A 16-year-old named Damian. We're using first names only here for safety reasons. He's one of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled their country over the past few days for neighboring Poland. The Russian troops were moving so fast, I was afraid they could manage to get the Blitzkrieg right and invade Lviv in no time. Until war broke out just five days ago, Damian lived with his father in the western Ukrainian city, Lviv. When it was time to flee, his mother, Anna, who was in Kiev, came for him. She picked me up, she picked my sister up, and as soon as we could, we packed our stuff

and we hopped onto the first train. He says the train journey was horrible. The train was filled with 3,000 people approximately and it broke twice on the way. Yes, it was very hard because 15 hours we have not seen. 15 hours standing? Yeah. Damien's mother, Anna, told NPR's Leila Fadl that in those packed quarters, kids were often screaming, and among the adults, tempers flared. They fight, they talk to each other with emotion, because it's a hard situation when you're closing this train. You don't know how long time we have to wait. But now she, her daughter, her son Damien, and their little white dog Archibald are safe in Poland, while the father is still across the border.

All Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60 have been ordered to stay and, if called on, to fight. So with his father still in danger, Damien says he feels he's between two islands. One island is leaving somewhere safely, and the second island is my dearest father, who cannot leave with us. And I had to leave because I didn't want my father or me to possibly see each other die in the most horrible ways. While many people are rushing west towards the border to escape, some Ukrainians are headed the other way, towards the fight. A taxi driver named Yaroslav jokes with NPR's Lauren Freyer, saying the line at the border crossing better move quickly because he is 59 and the cutoff for conscripts is 60.

We're going back home. That's Olga. She and her partner Sergei are a Ukrainian couple who happened to be on vacation in Lithuania when Russia invaded. But instead of counting their blessings that they missed the war, they're trying to join it. I can work in hospital, and I know that many people need help. And, you know, when we will be there, we will understand what to do, because there is a lot of volunteers, and we can do a lot for our people. Sergei is 38, which means once he crosses the border,

he'll likely be asked to pick up a weapon to defend his country. He says, of course I'm afraid, but this is what we must do. Consider this. Russia's war against Ukraine rages on, but for now, Russian troops appear to have been met with a level of resistance they weren't prepared for, while much of the West has pulled together in an attempt to cripple Russia's economy. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, February 28th. It's Consider This from NPR. If, like me me you have been obsessively following updates from ukraine

these past few days you may have gotten the impression that so far the invasion is not going precisely as russia may have hoped we have heard of botched air raids on airports troops running short on supplies and there are videos of armored vehicles destroyed. And this is one of those Russian Soviet era vehicles which is completely burned out. Footage from CNN on Monday showed an entire column of Russian military vehicles decimated on a road outside Kiev. I mean, what kind of munitions does it take to do that to a car, to a vehicle? I think the Russian strategy assumed that they would face little resistance from the Ukrainians,

would be able to move to secure Kiev quickly, and that the Ukrainian military would crumble when they did. Jeffrey Edmonds is a research scientist and former director for Russia at the National Security Council. He told NPR, as best he can tell, things are not going to plan for Russian forces. They haven't been really conducting the kind of modern maneuver warfare they've trained for. He says there is credible evidence that some Russian troops are confused, and they haven't received clear instructions. Throughout the military ranks, but also into the political sphere, there were many that had no idea that this was actually going to turn into

a full invasion of the country. And I imagine the further down the ranks that you got, the less soldiers actually knew that. Edmunds says Russia underestimated the level of resistance it would encounter, underestimated how hard Ukraine would fight. But he says that as things get bogged down in urban warfare, Russia may shift to more heavy-handed tactics. You may recall that several years ago in Aleppo, in Syria, Russia used something called thermobaric weapons, devastating bombs that create a gas clode that then explodes. You know, that's the kind of warfare we're hoping this doesn't turn into, but those are very indiscriminate weapons that cause mass destruction. Meanwhile, in Ukraine's capital city, Kiev, the threat of bombs, of shelling has many residents hunkered down in makeshift shelters.

I never, ever could have imagined that I would sleep on the floor in the metro station. Kristina Berdinsky, she's a reporter with a daily English language news site in Kyiv. When she spoke with NPR on Sunday, she and her mother were on their fourth day in a metro station about 15 minutes from the city center. They've been bundled up with blankets on the concrete floor. It's not very warm at night. I sleep in all my clothes. yes, and it's cold. Berdinsky says she's been keeping herself busy during the day reading news updates about the fighting above her head. But nighttime? Nighttime is tough. Because the main explosions in the city happened during the night, and maybe the hardest night and I saw that some women when they read the news they began crying and one woman even was praying. Tens of thousands of

people opted to flee Kyiv rather than wait out the fighting and Berdinsky says on the first night underground, she wondered if she'd made the wrong decision. But when I saw how brave are people outside, now I just have big hope that we will win. And I want to be in Kiev in that moment. Then I want to see our victory in Kyiv. That's why I just sit in here and wait in that moment. Beyond Ukraine's borders, the country's allies in the West are watching. And while not engaged in direct combat with Russia, they are providing weapons and have united in imposing sanctions against Moscow. NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley spoke with my colleague Sasha Pfeiffer about what toll those sanctions might take.

We have seen the U.S. go after other Russian banks and oligarchs. What's different about this latest move? This is designed to really put the squeeze on the broader Russian economy by targeting the central bank. Before the invasion, the Russian central bank had more than $600 billion in foreign reserves, which ordinarily it could use to prop up its own currency. The U.S. and its allies have now frozen about $400 billion of that. Josh Lipsky, who's a former IMF advisor now with the Atlantic Council, says it's really unusual to see sanctions leveled at a major central bank like that, especially in such a swift and coordinated way. What the U.S. and its allies are doing is bring down the heaviest financial hammer they can find on the Russian central bank and therefore the Russian economy. And it's working. The ruble fell to a record low today, even though the

central bank tried to support the currency by more than doubling its benchmark interest rate to 20%. What is that likely to mean for Russia's economy and for the Russian people? Well, nothing good. It's triggered a classic run on the bank. There were reports out of Russia today of ordinary citizens lining up at ATMs in hopes of getting rubles out so they could exchange them or just buy something before their money lost more value. Falling value of the ruble makes everything Russia imports more expensive. And Adam Posen, who heads the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says this is going to cause real hardship for Russian citizens. It leads directly to people having much higher expenses, cost of living, limited access to important things like medicine and

technology that come from abroad. I mean, this is very scary for the average Russian and therefore for Putin. Now, whether it's enough to force Putin to change course in Ukraine is another matter, Pozen says. There are plenty of examples in Iran and North Korea, for example, where economic sanctions caused lots of pain for ordinary citizens, but leaders just went ahead and did what they wanted. Whether or not Putin changes his mind, though, these moves have certainly raised the price tag that Russia's paying for this invasion. Scott, we've heard a lot about how Russia was prepared to defend itself against economic sanctions.

What happened to those defenses? Yeah, Russia may have overestimated its preparedness, just as it may have underestimated the resistance it would face in Ukraine. Russia still does have reserves it could tap in China. Beijing has not joined in this international squeeze play. There are other steps Moscow could take. But Lipsky says the idea that Russia had really fortified its economy to withstand sanctions has turned out to be kind of a myth. Fortress Russia does not exist. They are scrambling to figure out a response to these heavy sanctions. So it's just a major fell swoop that damages their entire financial position.

Now, the sanctions do include some loopholes. For example, they don't block Russia from continuing to sell oil and natural gas on the world market. Allies are worried about driving energy prices up even higher than they already are. Is there a chance these sanctions could backfire and end up hurting the U.S. and its allies? This is not without risk. Gasoline prices have already jumped in the last week by about 10 cents a gallon in the U.S. They could go higher with these sanctions. Russia could also try to retaliate with cyber attacks here or in Europe. Still, Lipsky notes, you know, Europeans have a lot more to lose from this than the U.S. does. And it was European leaders who pushed this

get-tough approach. We have to look at people in Germany and France and the United Kingdom and others who we know will be paying higher energy prices immediately. And they were willing to take that on to defend or at least hopefully defend or protect the right and democracy of the people of Ukraine.

Lipsky and others I spoke to were really impressed by how unified the allies have been. And they say that might not have happened were it not for the remarkable resistance we're all witnessing in Ukraine. NPR's chief economics correspondent, Scott Horsley. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.