Empire: World History - 95. The History of Putin's War

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022, but how did we get to this point? After the brutality of the Second World War, Ukraine was completely under the control of Moscow. Then in the 1980s, with Chernobyl as the catalyst, the Ukrainian nationalist movement regained momentum and on 24th August 1991 declared independence. This was never accepted by Russia and all the tension, discord, and conflict since then has led us to the devastating war of today. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Pulitzer-winning historian Anne Applebaum to discuss the history of Ukraine from the Second World War to today. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mptopopuk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. We are in the thrall of our special guest today, Anne Applebound Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. And Anne, we sort of left off part one, which, of course, we spilt into two parts because you're too interesting to let you go. But we got to the end of the famine.

And we're in sort of now, we're heading towards the late 1930s. A famine that Russia refuses to, or the USSR or the Soviets or the Walshviks refuse to acknowledge is a famine and talk about. With four million dead, or even up to five. Yeah, it could be higher. But the Second World War is on the horizon. horizon. Tell us about how, you know, the Soviet entry into that particular battlefield centers around Poland and Ukraine. So when Poland is invaded in September of 1939, it is in fact invaded twice. The Germans invade on September the 1st and the Soviet Union invades on

September the 17th. This is the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Right. There has been a pact between Hitler and Stalin, and they come to an agreement, and there are various different things they agree, but one of them is the division of Poland. And what had been Eastern Poland becomes Soviet and is incorporated immediately into the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, which I should say, where it remains to this day, because when Poland's borders were redrawn after the war, Eastern Poland was left in Ukraine. So the city of Leviv, which had been a Polish-speaking city and very heavily Jewish, I should say, also before the war, is now an important, Ukrainian city. I'm glad to say that in Poland, there's not much resentment about this and, you know,

or anger as there is in some other cases of redrawn borders, partly because another thing that happened after the war was a massive transfer of population. So, Poles were ethnically cleansed from what had been eastern Poland and is now Ukraine, and Ukrainians were moved out of Poland and into Ukraine. So that's how we have the modern border. But the Soviet occupation was a Sovietization of the reason. There was a mass murder, roundup deportation of Poles. It was followed immediately, of course, and famously in June 1941 by a German occupation of that region and then the German push farther into that Ukraine. And that occupation was also, you know, in that case, followed by another round of attacks on Jews. This is actually the center of the Holocaust, really, where the most Jews were

killed was in Ukraine, not mostly in camps, the way we famously remember in Germany, but Jews were literally just marched out of villages and into forests and murder. You talk of Germany sort of just marching in in 1941, were they not met with resistance? Was there no sort of Soviet resistance? Or what did it look like? A lot of places that had been occupied by the Soviet Union, initially when the Germans came, some people welcomed them because they thought, you know, the Soviet occupation was so horrible and had been so bloody, and there had been so much mass death that the Germans could only be an improvement. And there was that reaction in some parts of Ukraine. Famously, you know, the peasants meet them with bread and salt or whatever.

Somewhat like the white army in a previous generation, the Germans had immense scorn and very little respect for Ukraine, and they took no advantage of this. And they almost immediately began their own plan for Ukraine, which also involved famine. So the, the Germans, the Germans, German plan for Ukraine. It was called the hunger plan was that Ukraine would become a kind of breadbasket for... They literally call it the hunger plan. There's no bones about this. It was literally called the hunger plan. There was a Nazi official called Herbert Bakke, who was in charge of food and agriculture. And his idea was that Germany and the rest of Europe could only be fed if Ukraine was taken over. And if most Ukrainians died. I mean, so there was

also another plan for mass murder of Ukraine's. But on the face of it, talking at first, aren't they about turning Ukraine into a client state? I mean, do they never mean it ever? Or are they always intending on wiping the people out and dividing the place up? They were pretty much always intent on wiping people out and dividing it. I have a document. This is the guidelines for the economic staff east, which was supposed to exploit conquered territory in the region. And the first line of it is, many tens of millions of people in this territory will become superfluous and will have to die or emigrate to Siberia. Oh, God. And in contemporary rhetoric coming out of Putin's Russia, you hear a lot about Ukrainians being Nazis.

The roots of that lie in this period, don't they? The roots of that lie in this period in that, you know, the Nazis, you know, again, there were some people who collaborated. There was a moment when the Nazis occupied most of Ukraine. And they did get to Kiev. They got to Odessa. As I said, there were Ukrainian collaborators. But for the vast majority of Ukrainians, the occupation was, everyone.

every bit is tragic and every bit is catastrophic as the Soviet occupation in a previous generation. But explain the legend as put out by Putin. It's not referring to anything that you or I would recognize as real. I mean, it's referring to the idea that there were Ukrainian collaborators during the Second World War, as there was collaboration in most of the territory that the Nazis occupied. I mean, I think Putin's idea about Nazis is actually newer. I'm not sure it really refers to the history. It's a specifically Putin thing, is it?

It's more specifically Putin. I mean, you can find photographs of modern Ukrainians with swastika tattoos, just as you can find, you know, Germans and Russians with swastika tattoos. Or indeed, members of the British National Party, for that matter. Exactly. If you put them at the center of your, you know, propaganda, then you can, you know, you can talk about Ukrainians being Nazis. I mean, I think for Putin, it's more of a, you know, it's a reason to get the Russians

unified in the war against Ukraine because there isn't really any other reason. Most, I should say, before this war, I don't think most Russians thought of most Ukrainians as their mortal enemies. Because one of the things that happens after the Second World War is that you have this long period of Ukraine being, you know, an integral part of the Soviet Union, lots of Russians moved to Ukraine, lots of Ukrainians move to Russia. Khrushchev, who's a leader of the Soviet Union, is actually a Ukrainian. He's one of the Ukrainians who merges as a leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party after the famine. I never knew that. Khrushchev is Ukrainian. Yes, he's from eastern Ukraine. Another jaw-drop moment. And just, I mean, also, I mean, there are Ukrainians who have

memories of their forbearers being put on transports as slave labor, because there were hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who were moved by the Nazis who were treated as slaves. Yes. So, I mean, the Nazi, I mean, I cannot stress enough, the Nazi occupation was a, was a catastrophe for Ukraine. It was a catastrophe for the Ukrainian Jews. It was a catastrophe for ordinary Ukrainians who were treated as the Poles were treated as, you know, the Slavs were also untermentioned. They were not real people. Their rights didn't have to be respected. They were taken all mass to work as slave laborers in Germany. The plan for them, which the Nazis weren't there quite long enough to carry out, as I said, was to occupy Ukraine, eliminate Ukrainians,

and just run the whole place as a gigantic German farm. So Stalingrad happens, the Nazi armies begin to retreat. By 1943, the Germans are out there. of Ukraine. What happens next? As the Germans leave Ukraine, you know, there's a, I should say, there's also another period of famine and chaos and disorder. There's a kind of post-war famine. And then you get a long period of, as I said, this normalization when Ukraine is kind of reabsorbed into the Soviet Union. And there begins to be this mixing of Russians and Ukrainians. You know, in a way, the real Russification of Ukraine, especially of eastern Ukraine, starts then. you know, Ukrainians come to accept or, you know, they have no choice really that they're part of the

political system and they begin to try and try and move up the latter. I should say before we get to, there is a Ukrainian resistance movement, especially in Western Ukraine, but also elsewhere, that does try to resist Soviet reoccupation. And some of the reason why what's now Western Ukraine is historically more, more nationalist or more interested in national independence, is that's the region where the post-war independence movement was started. A lot of those people were arrested. That movement was defeated, and they wind up in the Gulag where they lead a series of Gulag rebellions after Stalin's death.

So you can actually trace the Ukrainian resistance leaders from the LeViv region to Siberia where they're running rebellions in 1956. And just before we leave the Second World War finally, the total loss is about $7 million. citizens. Does that sound right to you? That sounds right. I mean, a lot would depend on who you count as Ukrainian and who you count, you know, as Russians. And at that time, I don't think the numbers are kept that carefully. But I mean, you know, Jews died, Ukrainians died, soldiers died, civilians died. I mean, it was an enormous catastrophe. Okay. So, I mean, you mentioned the death

of Stalin. That is 1953. And it is on the death of Stalin that you see the rise of Christchew. So tell us how that is significant. How does a, if you've painted very graphically a picture where by a lot of Russians are looking down on Ukrainians, how does Khrushchev get to the top of the system? That would seem to go against what you're saying. Well, Khrushchev was the one who successfully conspired against Beria, who was Stalin's secret police chief. The nastiest of all of them. So Beria thinks he's going to be the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death.

And he begins plotting. And of course, everybody's afraid of him because he has all the fire. on everyone and he has the secret police forces behind him. And there's a kind of coup d'etat set up where he walks into a trap. He walks into a room and is arrested and taken away and disappears. And Khrushchev is the leader of that. And Khrushchev initially, he doesn't hide his Ukrainian roots and he's a counterpoint to Stalin. I'm an ordinary peasant from an ordinary peasant family. He tries to, he says, a slightly different style of leadership. There's a moment called the thaw when there begins to be a little bit more public conversation in Russia.

You know, some taboo topics become possible to speak about. And then famously in 1956, he gives this secret speech that doesn't stay secret that long, you know, in which he denounces Stalin in front of the gathered communist elites. But I should say, at no point, does Khrushchev ever talk about the famine? Does he ever talk about what happened to the Ukrainian Communist Party? Or does he ever talk about his own role in any of these events? But he does. Under Khrushchev, there is an inflow of money that comes in to the region. I mean, how much do you put that down to actually just being pragmatic and keeping the union together? Or how much is it, you know, maybe he does feel something for his brothers in Ukraine? Khrushchev feels some kind of, you know, sentimental attachment to Ukraine. He is the one who, and this is another, you know, controversial point now, who redraws the borders of Ukraine slightly and makes Kremia part of Ukraine, which had had an,

kind of autonomous status before that. If you look at a map, it's logical because Karaymi is attached, you know, by a peninsula to the mainland and that peninsula is in Ukraine. So he makes that decision. He, this is also a post-war decision. And he creates this normalization idea that Ukraine is a normal part of the Soviet Union. He never eliminates Ukrainian opposition both to the Soviet system and to the absorption into the Soviet Union entirely. And there is a small, you know, secret Ukrainian nationalist movement that lasts, you know, all the way through and periodically raises its head, you know, in the 1970s, again in the 1980s, and by the end of the 1980s, this is long after Khrushchev. You know, there are enough people and there are enough connections between

them that as soon as it becomes possible, a Ukrainian national movement arises again. And it arises in particularly the first time it really makes a public appearance is after the Chernobyl disaster. Oh, interesting. So, I mean, that was a disaster which affected, I mean, a great sway of land, some three million people endangered close to 30 million people who relied on the Denepe River for their water supply. Why did that awaken this sentiment in particular? Partly because the initial reaction to the disaster, as you will remember, was that it was kept secret. So, for example, there was a big May Day march in Kiev, and the Mayday march was allowed to go ahead.

even though people should not have been outside. The 26th of April was the day that the plant went up, didn't it? And then this is what, five days later? That's right. That's right. And so, and eventually Gorbachev did speak about it. And this was really the beginning of Glasnosed, this policy of openness in the Soviet Union as well. So under pressure from outside, he'd become clear, you know, Geiger counters all over Europe were going mad.

Yeah, people were shouting that it had happened and they were saying nothing to see here, nothing to see here at all. They said nothing for a long time. And then Gorbachev spoke about it. and he spoke about it publicly. He talked about what had happened. And in Ukraine, this caused a very strong reaction, almost a kind of deja vu. And people immediately made the comparison to the famine. There's a famous speech given by a Ukrainian poet at the time who says, you know, this policy of hiding the truth about our nation is genocidal. In other words, when we don't tell the truth,

this is when we die. He compared the hiding and concealment of the famine to the hiding and concealing. of the Chernobyl accident. And it's really from that moment that there's an organization called Roach is born, which just means movement. And Roach is the first Ukrainian national movement to have a legal identity and to be allowed to act publicly since the 1920s. And it immediately begins to snowball. Actually, I was in Ukraine at this time. I saw the little knots of people in public squares talking to one another, arguing about it. This is now in 1989. We're talking about This is in late 80s is when it emerges. 9091 is when it becomes very important.

And then there's a referendum on Ukrainian independence in 1991. And Ruch plays a very, very important part in that. And the referendum on independence goes very strongly for independent Ukraine everywhere, including eastern Ukraine and including Crimea. Willie, before we go to the break, you've got some really important figures that you'd like to share. So in August 1991, the Ukrainian parliament hold a vote on independence, quote, in view of the mortal danger hanging over Ukraine, and the results are surprised to everyone. 346 deputies vote for independence, only five abstain, and even more remarkably, only two vote against. Does that reflect the general opinion, Anne, do you think, in the wider Ukraine?

It does, and there was also a popular vote, which also echoes those numbers. And again, it was a vote against the Soviet Union. It was a vote in favor of integration with the West. I think 90% of the voters in the popular vote go for independence. Yes. In the way that Ukrainianness in the early 20th century was also a movement about fairness and against the establishment and about, progress for the peasants. Ukrainianness in the 1990s, early 1990s, was also about a different

vision of Ukraine, a different kind of country. It wasn't just pure nationalism. You know, we want to be independent because we want to speak our own language. There was that also. But there was also a desire to become a democracy, a desire to become a capitalist or a market-based economy. there was a desire to be integrated into the rest of the world and especially into Europe. And that was a part of what it meant to be Ukrainian from the beginning. How quickly does that manifest itself? How quickly do people start talking about joining Europe? So joining European institutions doesn't come up as a serious point for a while. It doesn't seem realistic. It seems far away. But the idea that Ukraine is European is there from the beginning.

And that Ukraine, again, the new Ukrainian state will be a democracy and that it will be integrated into the world. It won't be isolated. It won't be somehow an appendage of Russia. There's another important point, which is that independent Ukraine isn't really ever accepted by Russia. So the mood in Moscow at the time is, okay, we have to cope with our own problems right now. You know, we can't keep the Soviet Union together while Russia is falling apart economically. But there is very early on this idea that sooner or later we will deal with this problem again, and sooner or later we will want Ukraine back. Well, it's a good point to take a break. Join us after the break when we take a look at what we take a look at what we will deal.

what that relationship between Ukraine and Russia looks like after independence. Welcome back. The fabulous Anne Abalbaum is with us. And before the break, you were saying something really fascinating that, you know, although Ukraine has this whopping great mandate for independence, Russia never, although it has to accept, it, never truly, emotionally, spiritually is at peace with this decision. Does that mean that they are on a collision course from day one? Or is there sort of a different, sort of an oscillating relationship between different leaders, of Russia and the Ukraine?

Yes, so there are different moments. There is a moment when Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian oligarchs work together to extract as much money as possible from Ukraine and more generally. There is a moment when Putin backs his own candidates in Ukrainian politics and helps them win elections as a way of keeping Ukraine close. So with the idea that Ukraine will be not quite independent, that will have a kind of dependency role to Russia, that it will be a sister state rather than an independent state. There's an extremely important moment in 2005. This is the first Ukrainian rebellion against that kind of oligarchic form of

rule when Ukrainians protest against a stolen election. And they say, we don't want this kind of government. We don't want leaders forced on us by Russia. We don't want this vast level of corruption. We want a democracy. And this is the first moment when you really hear Ukrainian. talking about European institutions. But even before that, even before that, you know, you've got the highly contentious issue of the Black Sea fleet. Well, even now, you know, those places are the ones that Putin most wants to get his hands on.

So just after independence, is there no discussion between these two parties of what will happen to the fleet? Oh, no, there's a discussion. And there's an agreement that the Black Sea fleet is allowed to remain. So the Russians are given essentially a base in Sebastopol. And that's part of the post-Soviet arrangement. And how far is Crimea the center of Russian disaffection from the beginning? No.

No, Crimea is not the center of Russian disaffection. There is something that starts to happen, which is that there's an extraordinary movement of Russian pensioners to Crimea. I mean, there's almost a kind of surreptitious attempt to Russify Crimea that happens well before 2014. But it's not a big public thing. They're not talking about Crimea in Russia. It's not a, nobody's agitating around it. that happens later. You talked about this sort of, you know, the rise of the oligarchs and the thing that bound the two sides together with, there were oligarchs from Russia and from Ukraine trying

to get as much money out of their place as possible. It's sort of during this time that you have Leonid Kuchma, who rises to the helm. Tell us about him. I mean, Kuchma is a, he's typical, in a way, politician of the year. You know, he's a former Soviet leader who, for his own reasons and other reasons, you know, sees an advantage in Ukrainian national. So one of the things that happens is that a lot of people see that, you know, an independent Ukraine gives them more power. So there was a lot of fear that these ex-Soviet leaders wouldn't be in favor of independent Ukraine, but actually many of them wound up, I don't know, good for Ukraine is the right word, because they were often very corrupt, but they saw an advantage in independence and they were determined to

maintain it. Sometimes they did so through wheeling and dealing with the Russians. Sometimes they were wheeling and dealing with their own oligarchs, but starts to fall apart in around 2005, six, and then it comprehensively falls apart in 2014. And by this time, Putin is in power in Moscow. So it's very important. So Putin is in power in Moscow, and Putin is someone who has a particular anxiety about street revolutions and democratic rhetoric. One, because he's a great admirer of Andropov, who had an obsession, having been the Russian ambassador in Budapest in 1956 and having seen the Hungarian uprising. Also because Putin himself lived through 1989 in East Germany,

where we all thought that was a great moment when, you know, the street revolution won and democracy triumph and the Berlin Wall came down. For him, this was a personal tragedy and a disaster. And for him, these street movements in Ukraine, starting with the Orange Revolution, then increasing to a much higher level in 2014, become a kind of warning sign. In the way that Stalin was afraid that unrest in Ukraine could be bad for the Bolsheviks. Putin is afraid that unrest in Ukraine, street revolutions in Ukraine, pro-democracy, pro-EUUroupian movements in Ukraine will be bad for him. They will set an example for Russians. Russians will see what's happening in Kiev, and they'll say, we know Ukraine, we know Ukrainians, we have cousins in Ukraine, why can't we have it

too? I mean, one of the reasons, and we've got to skipped over it, but it's kind of important, is that, you know, you have a former Soviet in the form of Kuchma, but it's a Kuchma screw up that makes people lean against authoritarianism. Kuchma Gate is a thing, isn't it? What does he do? And it involves a story that is as old as time, politics taking on journalists and being found out for it. So tell us a little more about that, which might explain why Putin has reason to be scared and that the people really are leaning against his preferred style of authoritarianism. Yes, so Kuchma orders the murder of journalists who have, you know, who have learned too much about him. And this.

creates an uproar. And generally speaking, the democracy in Ukraine and democracy in Russia are unfolding in a different way. So whereas Russia under Putin is becoming more centralized, news and information are becoming more controlled. Ukraine is always looser. So there's always more public conversation. There's always more dissent. As in the Kuchma Gate story, they're always, they're real journalists doing real investigations. There is more grassroots support for those. journalists. It's easier to organize protests in Ukraine than it ever is in Russia. And Ukraine is slowly becoming a different kind of polity. I'm sorry, I yanked you back. I just thought it was really interesting to me that that might be one of the reasons why there was a sort of a

sensibility in Ukraine that wasn't where Putin would then go on to dominate. I dragged you back from the Orange Revolution. Give us the roots of the Orange Revolution when it was and why it shook Russia so very badly. So the Orange Revolution was. So the Orange Revolution was, was a protest against a stolen election. There were two candidates. One of them was the so-called orange candidate who was pro-Ukrainian, who believed in Ukrainian independence and that Ukraine had a role that was different from that of Russia. And a second candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, who was clearly the candidate of Russia and of Moscow. And Yushenko, at the time, who is the one who is sort of leaning towards the West, as many thought, very handsome man, very charismatic.

Very unlike you and I to notice these things. Because no one. You just look at it. Oh my God. You know what, Anne? I'm being accused of being boy crazy. There is a reason why I'm saying that he was good-looking man. Watch Anita Anna's Twitter account for pictures of him seen. It is not my boy crazy.

I am not boy crazy. This is relevant. Why because, Ann Applebaum? Because he is poisoned. He is poisoned. And his face turns black. And he is disfigured beyond recognition. He is disfigured and his face becomes a kind of symbol of Russian corruption in

Ukraine, that Russian corruption and Russian-led activity are destroying and undermining Ukraine. And it's really the Orange Revolution, again, it's a combination of things. Okay, it's Ukrainian identity, but is also against the oligarchy and against Russian influence. Is this the first time Putin shows a great fondness for poison? I mean, I think he's had a, his fondness for poison goes, goes back, you know, a long way and has probably been used more times than we know. But yes, this is one of the first public movements when somebody is poisoned publicly in Soviet space, ex-Soviet space. And while all this has been going on, Putin has invaded very violently first Chechnya, then Georgia. Yes. Well, the Georgian invasion is 2008. But he has invaded Chechnya.

1999. That's right. There were two Chechen wars. He has begun to reestablish the idea that Russia is an empire. And he, having played around with different ideas about what modern Russia could be, he settles on as the symbol of his power and the historical event that he wants to evoke is the moment of Stalin's triumph in the Second World War. So he restages on Red Square the victory parade at that time with people marching in Soviet uniforms. He brings back the Soviet National Anthem. Now it's the Russian National Anthem, but it's the same tune. He brings back a number of imperial symbols and imperial holidays and markings. And he begins to talk again about Russia as a great power. And part of being a great power is controlling Ukraine.

The invasion of Chechnie was brutal. I'm really very brutal. And that's why, and just, I mean, it's a sidebar issue. But I'm always astonished when you hear that some of his most faithful fighters are Chechens. Why is that happening? Think of those Chechens as defeated people who have decided to work for the empire. They destroyed and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Chechnya. They turned Grozny into rubble. I mean, Grozny looks like. like what some of those eastern Ukrainians cities look like now at the end of the war. They wipe out the chest in resistance and they put a new class of Chechen, you know, collaborators essentially in charge. And those people are fantastically loyal to the empire and they're very loyal to Russia.

And they even turn up fighting in Ukraine in 2022. Okay, so he's flexing. Putin is flexing. He's taking territory. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Yushenko has failed to deliver largely for his people. And And that then creates this kind of, well, again, turmoil in the place where people start asking, was this really the right decision to make? Yeah, Yushenko is an ineffective leader for lots of reasons. Maybe some personal, some people thought he was corrupt. There are a lot of explanations. I have a memory of going to interview Yushenko once in Ukraine.

And I had a theoretical appointment with him. And it was postponed and delayed and postponed and delayed over sort of three or four days. And I finally said to whoever it was I was speaking to, I'm really sorry. You know, I have a plane this afternoon. I just can't stay. And they said, we'll hold your plane. So it was that kind of country. Okay. Okay. And I did eventually see him, but he was chaotic. He wasn't able to fight the oligarchs. He wasn't able to take the economy under colon. And he was tremendously frustrating for a lot of Ukrainians. And the result was that his opponent, his rival, the more pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych did win the next election. Okay, but he wins, but they're still dissent. And this leads to what you refer to and what is known as the Maidan Revolution, which is, you know, so he may have won Yanukovych, but not everybody is happy about that. Well, in particular, they're not happy because one of the other things that happens now is that the European Union creates something called the Eastern Partnership. And here I have to declare a declaration of interest. It was the original sponsor of it was the Polish government. And at the time, the foreign minister was my husband. a Willie's old friend at Roddickskerskie. But the essence of it was that it, you know, I won't tell you all the

details, but the essence was that a trade deal was offered to Ukraine so that it could have a special trading relationship with the EU. And this is after, by the way, there had been a discussion of Ukraine joining NATO in 2008. After the Georgian wars, it was defeated, mostly the Germans and the French didn't want it. There was some rhetoric about maybe Ukraine will one day join, but it didn't happen. Instead, the EU said, all right, there's no NATO's not possible, but we will, we'll create this kind of European relationship with Ukraine. And it was Yanukovych's decision to reject that treaty. The treaty was negotiated over many years, very agonizingly. What year are we talking about? 2014. 2014, he says no, right. His decision to reject that treaty, it's actually December 2013.

His decision to reject it leads tens of thousands of young Ukrainians to go into the central square in Kiev and start this protest. And the protest lasts for months and months and months. And people come, the protest itself becomes a kind of, you know, it's almost a village. You know, people set up camp there. People rotate. They come and stay there for a while. They come and go. You know, middle class people in Kiev come and bring them food. It's a very, very wide range of people from, you know, the kind of LGBT community all the way to the far right nationalists. And it's very much, it's about Ukraine independence. And it's about your own. Europe and people wave European flags and they say, we want to be in Europe. And it's about a kind of

mental or ideological emancipation from Russia. So we don't want this oligarchic system that Russia has created. We don't want this kleptocracy. We want something different. But what does the, what does the Ukrainian government do in response to this? So Yanukovych hunkers down, tries different things at different times to break up the demonstrations. At the height of the crisis, begins shooting people. And it's at that moment when a group, actually it's a group of of European foreign ministers fly to Kiev. One of them is, again, my husband. And they try to negotiate a deal whereby Yanukovych will leave office early. The deal essentially falls apart. Yanukovych escapes the country. Okay. Well, I have to ask at this point, I mean,

since you've declared, you know, your personal association with all of this, we hear from the Russian side, countlessly, that all of the agitations from Medan onwards were by the West. They were going and infiltrating and prodding and poking and causing problems. then they have to deal with? All of the instigation for everything comes from Ukrainians. So the Ukrainians created the Maidan. Ukrainians wanted the relationship with Europe. I mean, it's actually now a footnote.

I mean, this sort of agreement that was signed that Maidan was signed by the Russian representative there. It was then Yanukovych's decision to leave, to abandon the country and to take with him, you know, many of his colleagues that led to, you know, to the consummation of the revolution a few months later. It was at every step of the way, the initiative is taken by Ukrainians and the desire to get rid of Russian influence, which it's not just cultural influence, it's mostly economic influence, comes from the Ukrainian grassroots. And there's this extraordinary moment, isn't there, in the 22nd of February 2014, when the crowds break into his compound in Kiev and they find a private zoo, a collection of classic cars at a restaurant that was designed to look like a pirate. ship. I love that. Is he six? How old was he? I mean, that's like, you know, my eight-year-old would quite go for that. That's bizarre. Yeah, no, there is a moment that feels revolutionary in that

the corrupt power had gone. And I should say Yanukovych, as president, had taken over a lot of Ukrainian citizens. He was seeking to capture the Ukrainian state. It was actually the moment in Ukraine where you had the most corruption. It was most difficult to do business there. The refusal to have a trade agreement with the EU was the turning point because it illustrates everybody understood in Ukraine that it illustrated Russian influence. You know, there they'd been negotiating this thing for years. Why did he turn it down because Putin made him a better offer? And within a week of the Rada voting to remove Yanukovych, we get Russian troops infiltrating into Crimea. Right. So, So Putin's punishment in a way of the Ukrainians for their revolution was the invasion of Crimea.

And the invasion of Crimea to me was, you know, I saw it happening and I had just written a book on the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after the Second World War. And when I saw the invasion of Crimea, I thought, oh, now I understand things that I didn't get before because the playbook was exactly what the Soviet troops, the Red Army had done in eastern Poland in 1944 and 1945. They were wearing fake uniforms. They were pretending to be maybe they were local separatists. Putin made this famous comment about how, oh, you know, somebody said, well, how did they get all this military equipment?

He said, well, you can buy that in any shop. And I looked at it and I thought, you know, and I knew exactly what it was. I knew it was the KGB. I knew that it was an occupation. I knew they were Russians, but a lot of people were fooled. This is where it helps to know your history. I have this memory of being on BBC programs, maybe this is a, you know, maybe this is a separatist movement.

Maybe it's a Ukraine. I was like, no, it's not. Trust me. And then of course, months later, Putin gave medals to all the leaders of the, you know, of the invasion because in fact they were all Russian soldiers. But as a result of this, this infiltration, you have Crimea declaring its independence from Ukraine on the 28th of February 2014. Ukraine, though, rejects any notion of this, rejects this, rejects the rest,

referendum results. And it's important to say that so many people have cried foul about this referendum, a reported 99% turnout and 99% support for cessation. So, you know, those people who look at these numbers go, hang on a minute, this is fixed. And the stage is set for what we have kind of now. I mean, just talk us through. So I should say the Ukrainians did not resist the Russian invasion of Crimea. There was a lot of chaos at the time. You know, they didn't have a clear presidency, clear leadership. Also, they were advised by Western allies, also not to resist. They were encouraged not to fight back. But one of the results of the successful invasion of Crimea was that then Putin tried it again in eastern Ukraine and also in a number of other Ukrainian

cities. So he would send in the piece of it that I hadn't captured in my book was that a lot of it was criminals, you know, local criminal gangs were deployed to try and take over the television tower. How did that work? How would Putin? and have got in touch with the local criminal and paid him off? You know, they would have been, you know, friends with the local oligarchs who were friends of his. I mean, you know, some of it had been prepared in advance. Some of it was FSB, formerly KGB, contacts, you know, around Ukraine. So some of it was clearly prepared.

I said in Crimea, there was clearly a long preparation. You know, they were ready to go. They knew exactly what to do. In eastern Ukraine, they also had created this kind of fake separatist movement, some of which, some of whose members weren't even Ukrainian. They brought them in to fight. This is in Donbas in eastern Ukraine. They tried coup d'etat in Odessa. They tried in a couple of other places. And then the Ukrainians began to fight back. And when they began to fight back, because there was enough, you know, there was enough of a Ukrainian army. There began to be volunteers,

often from Western Ukraine, who created in some cases formal parts of the Ukrainian army. And in some cases, these volunteer battalions is where the famous Azov battalion comes from. They came to fight in eastern Ukraine because they understood that giving up territory was, you know, that okay, you could give away one piece of it, you could give away another piece of it, and then the Russians are going to want to come from war. Putin classified the Azov Battalion as Nazis and fascists. Is there any basis for that? No. I mean, you know, the Azov Patelian, I've met people who fought in the Azov Battalion.

You know, some of the people who fought in it were, you know, very extreme nationalists. Some of them were profoundly and maybe even criminally anti-Russian. Some of them were very brutal. But there was a range of people in it. and they won some credibility because they were the people who volunteered to fight in that war, and they prevented the Russians from moving further into Ukraine. And then, I mean, it brings us to 2019 where Volodymyr Zelensky becomes the president of Ukraine, and he is very, very much Europe-leaning as anti-Russian as you can get.

Although that's true, and we certainly see that now. He's from southern Ukraine. He is originally Russian-speaking. He's a native Russian speaker, as were all the people around him. And he had a reputation as someone who, remember, he was a comedian, but he was more than a comedian. He ran a television company. Most of what it had done was Russian language, and he had worked and performed all over the former Soviet Union. He was perceived as being someone more likely to be able to achieve some kind of compromise because between 2014 and 2019, there had been an ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. It never stopped. It was a low-level war. It was, you know, small numbers of troops. You know, there wasn't much progress one way or the other, but it was a nonstop war. And people were hoping that Zelensky would end the war. So actually, he was not elected as a sort of raving nationalist. So they voted for him as a bridge. I mean, that's really interesting. That's so, he was meant to be the person to fix this. As president, he made some attempts to negotiate with Russia. These mostly failed. And by the time of the invasion, he had, you know, reconciled himself to the idea that there wouldn't be peace. And of course, he made. course, the invasion radicalized him and changed him forever. I had a very interesting interview with Victor Orban last year, and he said that he was hugely surprised by Putin's invasion,

that he had received all the intelligence from the West, that it was coming, that he had read all the papers, but he didn't believe it because he couldn't see that Putin would actually gain anything by this, or he thought it was hugely unlikely. Did you think it was unlikely, or did you see this coming? No, I thought it was very likely. You know, what Victor Orban, well, I mean, he's also a liar, so you have to be careful what he, what he says. But Putin had begun to remake Russia as an imperial nation. And he began to think and speak about Russian empire. Over the summer, in the summer before the invasion, he had written an article that re-described the history of Ukraine as a fake state, you know, saying, you know, the Ukraine is a Bolshevik invention. It was, you know, it wasn't a real place. It was just southern Russia. all the old cliches that Moscow always had about Kiev, he repeated and brought them back. And once he had done that, you had to expect some further action. Because if Ukraine isn't a real state, if these are just really Russians who have been somehow,

you know, brainwashed by a band of, you know, Ukrainian Nazis, then there are people. And then we are going to go in and save them. Say a bit more about that extraordinary Putin article, because it's very, very important. It's very important that he wrote it. It seems to have been a product of the pandemic. Putin was very isolated during the pandemic. He saw very few people. Nobody was allowed to see him unless they'd been in quarantine for two weeks. He seems to have consulted with one or two historians, but it seems to have been mostly his own conclusions. We had Seabag on earlier. We know that Putin read Seabag's Potemkin book. Have you dealt personally with Putin and has he read your work?

No, I've not dealt with him personally. I don't know whether he's read any of my work. However, I do know that someone saw a copy of my Gulag book in Russian, which was printed in Russian, on his bookshelf. Really? That's all I know. I'm, by the way, banned by Russia. You can't go at all. No. But you've been into Ukraine, haven't you? And you've met Zelensky. I've been to Ukraine, I think now five times since the war started and interviewed Zelensky a couple of times. Yeah. What's he like, actually, up close and personal? So Zolensky is the anti-Putin. He presents himself as an ordinary person.

That's why he's wearing army fatigues. He's wearing the uniform of a territorial private soldier. You know, he could wear an army uniform if he wanted. You know, he could dress up as commander-in-chief, but he doesn't. No epaulettes, no braid. No epaulettes. He doesn't do epaulets. The thing about him is that it's both on the one hand, they do think about it.

They think about how to present him and how to speak to people. And on the one hand, it works because it's authentic. He can't pretend to be a soldier because he's not. That's not the world he comes from. And so he authentically identifies with ordinary Ukrainians. He was also surprised by the invasion. There were these many decades of kind of cross-border marriage and trade and exchange. And Zelensky himself was performed in Moscow many times and was a comedian beloved by many Russians.

And so they couldn't quite believe that Putin would really do this at the scale that he would do it. It didn't add up with what they knew about Russia and Russians. In that sense, Ukraine was unprepared for the invasion, but he instantly understood, and you know, I know people, a friend of mine predicted that this would be the case, partly because he's an actor. He instantly understood his role in the story, you know, that he was going to stay and he was going to fight, and he made this famous video on the night, night or two after the invasion, and he stood in the courtyard in the middle of the city in Kiev, and he had his kind of main advisors leading officials around him. He said, we are here. You know, we're not leaving.

Slava Ukraini, glory to Ukraine. And that was a really transformative moment, because if he wasn't leaving, then people were going to fight. I mean, we're running out of time, but I really do want to ask you what happens now because we're in a situation where his success may be the thing that is weakening him now because people seem to be talking about Ukraine fatigue,

that there is almost a Zelensky fatigue of seeing him so much asking for things. And we've just seen now in America a right-wing leader of Congress, who may well oppose U.S. aid to Ukraine? This will go up sort of a week after that has just happened. And we also, you know, we had the Polish elections where there was a very real threat or belief that you would have a right-leaning government who were talking very much about cutting off Ukraine, that, you know, we're not interested anymore. So where are we with that and fatigue and what's going to happen next, Dan?

So just briefly about Poland, I mean, one of the reasons why the Polish far-right government lost was because that kind of transactional attitude to Ukraine, as soon as maybe it became useful to attack Ukraine or fight with Zelensky, people really disliked that in Poland. It was very unpopular. We should say quickly that one of your sons was closely involved in the campaign. Yes, one of my sons worked for one of the candidates who won, who had a really good result in the city of which. But in the U.S., the problem is complicated again by several layers of things. I mean, a part of the Republican right, they're in opposition to everything that by. Biden does, and because they're increasingly isolationist, has picked on the Ukraine issue as one

that they would like to, you know, they talk about it in different ways. Some talk about ending AIDS. Some talk about getting more evidence of how the aid is used, although there is plenty of evidence for how the aid is used. So that's kind of a straw man. To be clear, the majority of Americans and the majority of Congress, especially in the Senate, continue to support aid for Ukraine and continue to understand it as a core interest for the United States. Putin is still, interested in conquering all of Ukraine. He has not given up that dream. He is still interested in occupying Ukraine, and he and people around him still talk about Poland. They talk about the Baltic states. They talk about other former Soviet or former Russian imperial provinces and states

as being naturally Russian. And that includes some, you know, countries that are now part of NATO and the European Union. So the idea that Putin would pose an immediate threat to NATO remains. It's taken very seriously in Washington by everybody except this group of cranks who have unfortunately become powerful. We are a podcast about empire and we've dealt with a number of empires. The British Empire is over and gone. The Ottoman Empire is over and gone. But from what you've said, the Russian Empire is still living today and is still expanding and wanting to expand further. Putin's idea is that Russia will regain its old imperial territories and remember who he is. Remember how his career started. He was a lieutenant in the occupying army of

Eastern Germany. He is a colonial officer. He was a colonial, effectively he was a colonial officer. He was a KGB officer in Dresden, in Eastern Germany. So he remembers when Eastern Germany was part of the Soviet Empire and when Poland was part of the Soviet Empire and Czechoslovakia and Hungary. So in his lifetime, these were Russian imperial provinces by his by his, by his, by his reckoning. So if they could have been once, why can't they be again? It's important to take seriously what he says, because he says this. And people near him say it. And what they say, they do. We find it difficult to take seriously because it sounds so outrageous and, you know, how could you challenge NATO and why would you even need this territory? You've got plenty of empty space in Russia.

That's not how they think. Okay. But does this then end with him? Or is this imperial fever widespread? now in Russian thinking. I think it's mostly him and an important coterie of people around him in Moscow. I think that elsewhere in Russia, people understand the cost of this or they're less enthusiastic about it. One of the interesting aspects of this war is although you haven't seen a mass movement against it, there were a lot of people who arrested at the beginning of the war protesting. You also haven't seen a mass movement for it. It's not as if people rush out to join the troops or even support the troops much. You know, it's not a popular war. And that tells you something both about the apathy inside Russia and about the ambivalence. In a way, this war ends the way, for example,

you know, the French war in Algeria ended. You know, there has to be a moment when people say, this isn't worth it. It's not our country and we're going home. That turning point will be the moment when it's over. And maybe Putin could come to that conclusion. And whenever that moment comes, there will be some turmoil in Moscow as there was in Paris at the time of the end of the Algerian war. And is there any chance at all that the map could be redrawn and, you know, Ukraine or Zelensky or whoever it is can say, you know what, we'll just draw the line there and whatever you've got, that's yours, but just leave us alone now. So right now, the fear is that any territory that is left under Russian occupation, first of all,

it means a catastrophe for the people who live there. They are arrested. They are interrogated. They are a totalitarian system is being imposed. on then their children are kidnapped. That's one concern. The second concern is that if they leave him any territory, then he'll be encouraged to take more. I can imagine after some kind of change in Moscow, I can imagine there could be a negotiation about where the final borders are, you know, where they might look slightly different from the borders of 2014. But until we have come to that

moment, until the Russians have stopped wanting to conquer all of Ukraine, which they have not stopped. You know, once they have given up that idea, then there might be a negotiation to be had. But the difficulty for us is that even if we wanted right now to trade land for peace or whatever formula you want to use, there is no one on the other side who wants to do it. So the Russians don't want to trade land for peace. They want to conquer all of Ukraine. Until they stop, the war doesn't end. So your prediction would be, we're in for a long grind now?

My prediction is we're in for a longer war, yes. And I'm writing something now about how to think about it and prepare for it. And thank you so much. That's just been wonderful. A brilliant way to draw our Russia series to a sad and rather bloody clothes. Absolutely, because as William says, that is now the end of our series on the Russian Empire. But we will be returning to Russia at some point in the future where we'll talk about the Soviet Empire. But William, where can our listeners get more Russia-related empire content? Well, you can listen to our bonus episodes that are available exclusively to our Empire Club listeners. And in these episodes, we will answer all of your questions and tell stories about Russia that didn't make it into the pod.

And if we sign up this week, you can get discounted access to Anne's fabulous book on The Red Famine, The Holladomor, and her new book, Twilight of Democracy. Anthony Beaver's book on the Russian Revolution, 1917, and Simon Seabag Montefere's fabulous look at the Romanovs. And you can gain access to all of these wonderful benefits and more if you sign up to the Empire Club right now. All you need to do is go to www.mpiruk.com. And you can sign up right there. That's www. www.empirpoduk.com. And that is all for Empire today.

Do join us on Thursday as we announce what our next series is going to be about. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. goodbye from me, William Duremberg.