Pod Save the World - Can Ukraine Outlast Putin?

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the military defeat of Avdiivka, panic at the Munich Security Conference over Republicans blocking more aid to Ukraine, and how Ukrainians have adapted to living in a state of war. Then they talk about calls for accountability for Alexei Navalny’s death and his wife Yulia’s promise to continue Alexei’s work, the arrest of an American dual national in Russia, Tucker Carlson’s Moscow metro propaganda videos, and an update on Russia’s space nukes. They also look at Netanyahu’s insistence on invading Rafah, a pro-Israel group’s attack on a Washington Post reporter, the Indonesian elections, why Jared Kushner is still a sniveling little prick, and a very Australian mankini scandal. Then Tommy talks with Mstyslav Chernov about his incredible documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben is back from the Munich Security Conference. He brought a piece of the blob with him. It's just sitting there kind of moving and shape. I re-uped my credentials. How to go? You know, it's an incredibly condensed environment, and it's crazy to, like, walk into, like, this kind of old hotel in Munich

and recognize, like, 90 people in the lobby immediately. And, like, it's nice to not be in government. I actually don't miss it at all. But you see, you'll remember this Tommy, like 20 people you know just, like, steamroll by trailing like Kamala Harris. Like, yeah, there's Derek Chalet. There's like, Dan Kittenbrink. And everyone's harried and everyone's on their phone.

Every's harried. Every's like looking over every else's the shoulder to see if there's someone more important that they should be talking to. You know, there's like people gawking at, it's funny because it's like inverse celebrity culture. You know, it's like, um, who's the Latvian foreign minister? Exactly. Instead of like Dulaipa, it's like, oh my God, that's the ex-president of Estonia.

You know, like, so it was good. Yeah, I saw our buddy David Limey. Nice. Yeah, he was like the mayor of Munich, you know. I wanted to ask you about this later, but, you know, I saw he put out a video today talking about recognizing a Palestinian state. Yes. Purs for two-state solutions. I was very excited to see that.

Labor is definitely getting, you know, after having been pretty close to where the Tories were at the beginning, you know, they're definitely differentiating themselves, which is good. Yeah, and labor just crushed into by elections, which are like special elections for, you know. congressional seats. Yeah. Equivalent. Yeah. So good. Hopefully.

Pretty soon we'll have a labor government. Okay. Well, we got a pack show today, Ben. We are coming up on the two-year anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. So we're going to spend a lot of time on that subject today. Also, it's been nearly a decade since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. So nearly a decade of war for people all across Ukraine. We're going to dig into the latest in the battlefield.

We're going to hear stories from Ukrainians inside and outside the country about what life is like. And then we'll talk about what might. come next. And then later in the show, you're going to hear my interview with Mr. Slav Chernov, a filmmaker in the director of an incredible documentary, 20 days in Mary Opel. Have you seen this film, Ben? I haven't. I've read about it, but I need to see it. Yeah. Like, emotionally prepare yourself. Yeah. Don't do what I did, which was watch it a couple hours before going out to Valentine's Day dinner with Hannah. And then just being like emotionally vacant. Yeah. This is not about me, but it's a very powerful film. Incredibly powerful. He was like the only journalists, a couple of these folks,

were the only journalist in Marriople in those first days of the war. And you'll watch it and you're like, oh, my God, all of the coverage that I watched in those early couple weeks was from this one guy shooting in like while getting barbeded and then like desperately finding a place to upload his footage. Yeah. And I think, you know, in the one thing I'd say about this is that in this age of like social media and short attention span, the documentaries are like more and more valuable. So powerful. You know, just to be able to sit with something for a couple of. couple of hours. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, Alone and I were talking about this. You can read a thousand print stories. You can do the New Yorker deep dive, but you

watch 20 days in Marriopold and you are like affected for days in the powerful way. Tough New Yorker hit. Yeah. Well, listen. Love a good New Yorker story. You know, no offense to all our friends over there. We're also going to cover the latest news about the murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We'll explain why Tucker Carlson loves the Moscow metro. I do a quick update on Russian spake's nuke's. which Ben thinks I like a little too much, I think. Then we cover the war in Gaza, Indonesia's recent election, what Jared Kushner is whining about and mankini's.

So, ranging show. I didn't see mankini's on the list. Well, you're going to be wearing one. Okay, another awkward pivot to our first topic, which is two years of war in Ukraine. So let's start with some grim statistics. So Russia has taken 11% of the Ukrainian territory since February 24th, 2022. Obviously, at one point, they had taken more than that. Ukraine battled back and retook some territory, but they're so have lost over a tenth of their country.

130,000 Ukrainian troops are dead, severely wounded or missing. More than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. Nearly a quarter of the Ukrainian population has now been displaced by the war. On the Russian side, 200,000 Russian troops are dead, severely wounded, or missing. And 800,000 Russians have fled the country for a variety of reasons, political, economic, etc. So this is just existential for both countries. Astonishing number, yeah. Astonishing numbers. In recent months, the momentum in the war has shifted pretty decidedly against Ukraine. After a month of brutal fighting, Ukrainian forces fully withdrew from the city of Divka, the Denedekhsk region. The New York Times said that British and Ukrainian intelligence estimate that in 2024 alone, Russian forces dropped about 1 million pounds of aerial bombs on this 12 square mile area around Abdivka, while the Ukrainian troops were forced to ration ammunition like artillery shells,

and they also basically ran out of air defense systems and interceptors, which is why these Russian planes were able to just fly over them and basically carpet bomb the area. Russian and Ukrainian troops have been fighting for control of Divka since 2014, but this is really the biggest battlefield victory for the Russian side since Bukhmut. Avdivka is one of about five places in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces are trying desperately to hold defensive lines, and new Russian forces are just, showing no sign of letting up despite taking massive casualties.

This, your artillery shortage, I know Ben, we'll talk about this in a second, was a big topic of discussions at the Munich Security Forum. Last year, the EU pledged one million shells to Ukraine by March of 2024. They say the efforts to ramp up production are on track, but it looks like they're only going to deliver half of those shells by that March deadline they had set for this year, so falling well short. As we've discussed, Congress here pissed away months in the Senate working on an immigration bill that the Republicans walked away from until the Senate passed a supplemental funding bill that includes $60 billion for funding for Ukraine, but the House of Representatives is dithering on what to do about it next, because Speaker

Johnson is a coward, and he is worried he might lose his speakership. Here's a clip of President Biden talking about the delays in the House last week at a press event. Are there anything you can do to get ammunition to the Ukrainians without a supplemental from Congress? No, but it's about time they step up. don't you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation? Two weeks. We're walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God. This is bizarre. And it's just reinforcing all the concern and almost, I won't say panic, but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous.

And here's a clip of President Zelensky asking for more support at the Munich Security Forum. First, we all must do not, do not something but ever seen possible to defeat the aggressor. Please, everyone remember that dictators do not go on vacation. Hatred knows, no pause. Enemy artillery does not fall silent due to procedural issues, warriors. standing again the aggressor need sufficient strength. Second, we should not fear Putin's defeat. Putin is a threat to all three nations.

So, Ben, EU hasn't really gotten it shit together fast enough to help Ukraine, at least enough. The U.S. is being held hostage by Trump and the Mago Republicans. That was plan A was to get those bills through Congress. You just got back from Munich. Is there a plan B being discussed, or is everyone just kind of waiting on us? I mean, I think panic is an appropriate word to describe actually the vibe that I picked up in Munich. You know, I think that most every conversation you have, and I met with a lot of different Europeans, the panic is about two things. It's about the supplemental and it's about the U.S. election.

And that's kind of coloring the backdrop. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of coloring the backdrop to all this stuff. And look, I actually think that Biden's tone, Zelensky's tone, what I think is, I think, is right about it is for a while, I think the strategy was to be really grateful. The Ukrainians, you know, thank you so much for all the support and kind of courting the Republicans. And actually, I think it's better to just kind of go right at this and call it out as they're doing because we're not getting anywhere, you know, we're not catching flies with honey here. And I think there

has to be an effort to just really just pound away at the irresponsibility of this. There are enough Republicans, by the way, who agree with that, that maybe there's some procedural way in which you can get a vote that, you know, sidelines the MAGA people. If not, if it was up or down vote, I bet you'd get 300 plus votes in the House. I mean, maybe more. You would. And so that, that's the only thing you're going to be able to take a shot at. You know, I don't know that you can Mike Johnson, whatever his name is. I don't know that you can count on that guy, you know, pulling a rabbit out of a hat necessarily. So. You just went to Mara Lago on Monday.

Yeah. The plan B, you know, I think there are some things that can be done and there have been already some reports around, you know, the U.S. could essentially replenish European stocks and then the Europeans give their weapons to the Ukrainian. So there's a kind of bank shot way in which you can move stockpiles, which, by the way, just highlights the inanity of the Republican opposition. Like there's a supply chain of arms around the world that, you know, emanate from U.S. defense contractors. And instead of just the more efficient way of like spending the money here in the United States to manufacture arms that then go to the Ukrainians,

maybe they'll have to be some bank shot where we're escalating our sales to Europeans who then are providing the arms to the Ukrainians. It's just just stupid all because of some kind of maga politics. It points to how dumb it is. But I do think you have to be looking at that plan B. I think that the Europeans, you know, there's a lot of talk in Munich about their need to be kind of recapitalizing their own capacity to provide arms to the Ukrainians. They're not going to be able to do that in any kind of immediate term time frame. But I think they're thinking about what happens if Trump wins. And we may need to have the capacity to provide artillery and things like this, shells.

And just because that's a year out or two years out even, look, I'd rather there not be war. I'm like not suggesting that that's the best case scenario. But as a hedge, I think they do need to be doing that because, you know, sometimes a year or two can seem like a really long time. But look, we're two years into this war. It's a stalemate. There's no reason not to be thinking about 2026 or 2027. Again, not because anybody wants there to be a war then, but just because you need to have a certain. capacity to deal with contingencies. Russia, despite sanctions, has managed to dramatically

increase its own domestic production of those kinds of armaments. They've managed to find alternative supplies from the North Koreans, particularly on artillery, from the Iranians, on other capabilities. So, you know, whether it's unsticking some stuff from U.S. politics or whether it's the Europeans ramping their capacity up, again, that's not necessarily going to close the gap right away, but it's all necessary, especially because if the supplemental does get through two, it's unlikely to be one at the scale that the administration asked for. You know, maybe they can get some skinny down version of it done. But, yeah, like, it's in a war of attrition in which Russia is a bigger country with a bigger,

you know, a pool of people to draw from in its own conscription efforts and a huge military industrial complex, it's turning this stuff out, time is going to work to their advantage. And again, even if you want an end to the war, and even if you're open to a negotiated settlement, short of Ukraine taking back all its territory, which I think, as we've said, is like, most likely it can be the case. They're going to have to do, you want them to be in a stronger position that negotiation. You don't want them in the negotiation having run out of weapons. Because then Putin's not going to negotiate. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean, it takes so long to ramp up these supply chains and get the infrastructure going.

Think about how long it takes to build a factory to make more Patriot missile batteries, right? Like, that's not a fast process. That's why the Estonians put forward a plan to win the war by saying all the NATO allies should spend 0.25% of GDP for the next four years and commit that to Ukraine. And they think that would be more than enough to defeat the Russians. I did see some good news in sort of like little bits like NBC News reported the Biden administration is close to giving Ukraine longer range attack of missiles that could hit Crimea. So it seems like some of the guardrails are coming off. I don't know that that's good news, but I think it's what I think, you know, Ukraine supporters would like to see. Also, I saw that Japan announced they're going to

provide 12.1 billion in aid to Ukraine. So you're seeing other allies stepping up. I was thinking about how the 2024 NATO summit is in July, in D.C. in July. Trump's attacks on NATO, the general state of the war is really going to up the pressure on that summit to deliver in a big way for the Ukrainians or to at least get all the NATO allies to commit to the 2% level of defense spending that they're supposed to hit. Yeah, I think what is was also kind of evident at Munich is first of all there was some premature trampleism at the, you know, early stages of this war. Yeah. So last year at Munich, it was a lot of like mutual congratulation as if like Russia had been defeated and we'd saved, you know, democracy. And that wasn't the case. Now I think there's some

premature defeatism, you know, like the reality is somewhere in between. But to your point, if there's nothing kind of particularly consequential beyond the same rhetoric about NATO standing together in July, I think that would be problematic. So between now and July, I think you need to be building some sense of what the plan is and what the vision is and how Ukraine can be support in the long run, as we've talked about, I think it's all the more reason to be accelerating things like Ukraine drawing closer to EU membership, you know, kind of a vision for where this is going, what kind of security assurances Ukraine might have. Because if this seems to be moving in a direction of some kind of frozen type conflict in which Ukraine doesn't control a big chunk of its territory,

you at least want to be showing that we're going to be able to help Ukraine defend itself with the territory it has, rebuild, be kind of woven into the infrastructure of Europe, so that it's not just a sense that they're dangling out there to be incrementally cannibalized by Russia. Yeah, one little bit of good news on the politics here in the U.S. There's a Pew poll that came out of the question that's informed policy polling. 74% of Americans view the war in Ukraine as important to U.S. national interests. 43% describe it as very important. And 59% of Americans describe the war in Ukraine as important to them personally when asked. So again, if Congress was responding to the wishes and will of the American people, we would actually be passing the supplemental.

We would have done it five months ago. But again, we wanted to hear from people, Ukrainians, either living in Ukraine or forced to live abroad because of the war. Many of them who are still in Ukraine have been forced to adapt to life living in a war zone under a constant threat of shelling. We spoke with Maria Avdiva, a security analyst base in Kiev, about what it is like. Here's a clip. I have just had a conversation this morning with a friend of mine, and she said that I would never imagine that we will be in this war for two years. And this is, I think, what a lot of people in Ukraine, including myself, feel.

People can't live in the basement or they can't hide all the time. They need to continue doing their everyday jobs because if everyone will move out or will start sitting in the basement and nothing will work. And this is actually this remarkable resilience of Ukrainians, which you can see in many places. like those teachers who continue teaching underground in the metro school or from their homes hiding somewhere in the bathroom when there is an air siren continuing their online lessons or the restaurants that reopen after they were destroyed for two times. There is a restaurant in Kharkiv in the city center

that reopened after the first attack and then another strike, it was destroyed again, and I saw the owners are again cleaning everything up, and they will try to reopen for the third time. So this is something very remarkable about Ukrainians, and when I ask people, how do they do it and why? It's because they say that then who else will do that, if we all abandon what is important for us,

who else will do that. She also mentioned that the kids in Ukraine are either doing fully remote learning for school or they're going to school in literal bunkers. Those are basically two options. Yeah, and I think what comes across in that clip is that there's this new normal of living through the war and that it's open-ended, you know, and the kind of uncertainty this could go for a year, three years, five years, you know, there's this kind of sense of an open-ended nature to this. Now, in some way, that was always going to be the case because, as we've said,

like, Russia's not going anywhere, you know, and for the time being, Putin's not, you know. So, you know, even, you know, this is what was wrong with some of that triumphalism of a year ago, like victories at hand and, you know, were one more, you know, op-ed about F-16s away from, you know, it's just. More weapons, but I think what comes across. you know, there's been so much focus on Zelensky. Understandably, I mean, he did a lot right and he showed a lot of personal courage. But in a way, it almost obscures that, like, the enormous courage of just everyday people in Ukraine.

You know, it's not just Zelensky giving speeches and stuff. This is people adjusting to unimaginable circumstances. And there's a resilience to that. Because what this war is ultimately to become about, I think, is who does time work for? You know, does time work for a Putin who's just grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding down the will of the Ukrainians and the attention of Europe and the United States and able to there incrementally cannibalize more and more of Ukraine?

Or does Ukraine become more resilient, more interwoven into the security architecture of the United States and Europe, more capable of defending itself? And Putin is the one who's starting to suffer from, you know, people. people, the huge loss of life on his end, the communities that are hollowed out, the longer-term impact of having this kind of bizarre war economy, that's the question, is who's going to be stronger three to five years from now, and even a frozen conflict scenario? Is it Ukraine or is Russia? And hopefully, you know, we can help it be the Ukrainians. Yeah. We also, as we mentioned at the top, there's also millions of Ukrainians who have been forced to live outside the country.

Here's a clip from our conversation with Darya Kirstenko, a Ukrainian refugee in Poland working for an aid organization. I remember when we first came, we had a feeling that it will be for several months. I came with my mom and my son, and my mom was sure that by May, she will be home. It's already a second year and we don't see that it's coming. I can not talk to my son and promise him that we will come back soon because, it is not safe. We are from Kiev and every day there are attacks and the people are killed. So and, you know, being in a place where we are at risk of, you know, dying every day, it's very stressful. And this is what I explained to my sense, that we are in a safe place. We need to

adjust to the situation and we need to just accept what it is and to find the best out of it, to find the best solution and to we don't know it's very difficult to have long-term plans to be honest because I had my whole life planned and now and then in one day it all disappeared. I had a job, I had the flat and now it's I live in a completely strange country and now I know that maybe I shouldn't be planning for long term. I should be just talking and the same with my son to be honest and to say that this is what our life is now, let's just make it the best life for the current situation. It's not easy to communicate with children, but it's very important, I think, to be honest and to say what it is. And of course, to be hopeful to return home one

day, but also to be realistic that probably this is not going to be soon. Just another example of, you know, courage and fortitude there after two brutal years. Yeah, I mean, and like a couple quick things on this. One is, you know, comes across in her voice. Sometimes people look at this and think, well, they're safe. They're in these other European countries. But oftentimes these are people that you can't do the same job, that, you know, maybe you were a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or whatever you were in Ukraine. You can just kind of go pick that up in some other country. And your welcome can get worn out. Yeah, your whole. Well, that's the second part is like there in this, I heard from some Europeans, there's a kind of. you know, with in the American discourse of like, why are we giving so much more assistance, that never counts. You know, a German told me, for instance, that they spend something like $7 billion a year hosting just the Ukrainian refugees. And that number is sometimes not counted.

There's a fatigue, but also like this costs money, too, to support those refugees. And you obviously want to see that continue. But the third and most important thing I wanted to say is that the longer this goes on, it is a huge danger to Ukraine's future about whether or not those people return. Right. Because if they lose, you know, millions of people to just permanent emigration, that's going to make it much harder for them to rebuild. It's, you know, you and I talked about that Masha Gessen piece, I think, last week. There's some resentment growing up, the people that are in Ukraine, kind of resent the people who aren't there. And that creates societal tensions.

You hope that the conditions emerge where even if the war is not, quote, unquote, over, that people feel confident going back to at least parts of Ukraine. So. Yeah, it's not guaranteed, though. I mean, especially imagine if you're a five-year-old kid and you spend two, three, four years growing up in some part of Poland. Like, you're not going to want to go home to a country you barely remember at that point. I mean, impossibly difficult challenges for these families and these parents in particular. Yeah. Quick housekeeping item before we go to break.

So on Friday, February 23rd, the Dissident of the Doorsteps host, Alison Klayman, Colin Jones in Yangang Chung, will be joining to answer your questions about the making of their crooked series called Dissent in the Doorsteps. An Excellent, Excellent Series on the Pod Save of the World Feed. If you have not listened, you're missing out because it's, truly, truly excellent. If you're around, come join the conversation. If you're not a member yet, you got a head start. The rest is up to you. Go to kirka.com slash friends to join and to learn more. Okay, so let's turn to Russia Ben because last Friday we recorded a bonus episode on the death Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. If you want to dig deeper into

his life and legacy and murder, I recommend you check out that episode. We're going to focus on events since Friday. So Navalny's mother says that Russian authorities have told her they won't hand over her son's remains for at least 14 days. And on Tuesday, she released a video message appealing to Putin directly to release his body. Hundreds of Russians have been arrested for laying flowers at memorials or otherwise trying to pay tribute to Navalny. There's an awful video that. I don't know if you saw this, of the police taking one mourner and like shoving his face into a snowbank and just like humiliating this guy for no reason. But perhaps most significant since Friday, is the fact that Yulia Navalnya

Navalnya's widow announced in a YouTube video that she is going to continue his work. It was all in Russian so I'm just going to read a couple quotes. One of them is, I'm going to continue the work of Alexei Navalny and continue to fight for our country.

I calling you to stand beside me to share not only in the grief and endless pain that has enveloped us and won't let go. I ask you to share my rage, to share my rage, anger, and hatred of those who dared to kill our future.

She also said, we know exactly why Putin killed Alexei three days ago. we will tell you about it soon. We will tell you their names and show you their faces by killing Alexei. Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul, but I still have the other half half and it tells me that I have no right to give up. So, Ben, I mean, I think that starts to answer one question we got a lot in the Discord questions

from last week, which is whether anyone can fill the void left by Alexei Navalny. Yuli also met with a bunch of EU leaders while in Munich. So she's serious about planning steps to get accountability for his murder. So, Ben, a lot of Putin's critics are hoping to use this moment to galvanize support for Ukraine to get Western countries to, for example, use the 300 billion frozen assets for Ukrainian reconstruction. We saw right before we started recording, the Biden White House said they're going to avail a big sanctions package. Is there anything you see like that, I know, people should be motivating around to seize this moment and kind of like force action on something? Well, first of all, on the body piece of this and what Yulia said about, you know, releasing information, look, nobody should be surprised that they're hiding whatever happened to his body. And of course they are. The reason that does matter, though, is you can kind of open all these court cases, you know, the European Court of Justice or international justice. That's all worth doing, by the way, because, you know, you want to. to show that there will be kind of open-ended efforts to hold people accountable, from Putin on

down to whoever the people were at the prison. I think that's a worthwhile thing to do. I think she can fill a lot of space in terms of being a moral authority and in terms of being a kind of rallying point for the existing infrastructure, particularly in people that are in exile. You know, and Navalny, as we've talked about, has this kind of essentially a media enterprise outside of the country. It'd be good to see that continue and get support. And, you know, she uniquely probably can get meetings with the heads of, you know, the EU and European government. So that, that's useful, even if she's not going to fill the same political space that Navalny did. She's not a politician like he was. But she can kind of keep that kind of connectivity in a way

that nobody else can. But in terms of like the consequences, you know, I really, and you and you and I were kind of dark joking about this on the way in, like, and it's not that it's funny, but there's just that there's a repetition of like sanctions as somehow being the tool that's the, you know, the punishment. I just, it doesn't matter. Like, there's not some sanction that's really going to really hit home here. I do think that the transfer of assets, though, like, that's a real thing. I don't get what's holding that up. I mean, it's a lot of, you know, it's setting a new precedent.

Sure. You know, it's a norm breaking thing. So is invading Ukraine. So is assassinating, you know, people all over the world as Putin has done. So I do think that, like, getting the, you know, it's a new thing. that money out the door, getting it to the Ukrainians, shaming the Republicans who are sending the way of assistance. Again, like I was saying on our special episode, like doing some of the work that Navalny did in his organization, exposing the corruption of Putin, you know, maybe the sanctions

package, okay, in addition to sanctions, like just more effort to go after, you know, all the money that's hid in all these places, the kind of enforcement side of it is important too. But we should not, you know, overstayed any of this. I mean, this is part of the message of Navalny being dead is that, you know, this is, it's the same thing as with the war in Ukraine, barring some rapid collapse of the kleptocratic House of Cards in Russia, which would be great if it happened. This is a long-term struggle here. And I do believe that Navalny's example will be powerful one year, three years, five years, 10 years from now. And it's worth keeping infrastructure in place so that when there is an opening in Russia for some change. There are voices out there. There's organization out there. There's international

legal procedures to hold people accountable that are out there. But, you know, this isn't going to be a light switch with some sanctions and a new leader that just leads to change. No. You see Trump's comment on Navalny three days later? Yeah. Basically said it reminded him that America is bad and he seemed to maybe compare himself to Alexei Navalny because he's being prosecuted for breaking laws. Yeah. I mean, just no bottom whatsoever. No. No. No. No bottom. A couple of things you should also know. Twitter briefly suspended, Yulia Navalny's account. They were also blocking our ability to search for her account.

So God knows what is happening at that company at this point. The New York Times did a piece on some. Well, you know, Putin flattered Elon a bit in his tuckering. Right, that's true. So maybe now I'll sell them a bit the all in, you know, the PayPal brigades or the David Sachs. They turn their eyes on Yulia and Navalny. Secretary suck.

New York Times did a piece, Ben, on Navalny's, some of his most recent letters I thought was very worth reading. That was a great piece. You want to hear about him. And again, a sense of humor just comes through all of them. The Washington Post had a report on how Russian disinformation has been used against Zelensky and against Devalny. That was interesting. And then worrisomely, on Tuesday, the FSB announced that they had arrested a 33-year-old woman who was a dual national and lives here in Los Angeles.

So apparently she was visiting her parents in Russia. Her little sister lives there as well. her 90-year-old grandparents, the charge is some bullshit that she had supported the Ukrainian efforts. I heard it was like a $50 donation maybe to some charity in New York. But it's worrisome that Putin seemingly is taking more American hostages. And I think last week, Tony Blinken spoke with Paul Whalen, who's been detained in a Russian prison for like five years now. Yeah. And I saw this other report about, you know, a potential assassination in Spain of some.

A Russian pilot who had flown as like helicopter out of the country. Yeah. And I guess the point between the detention you talk about in St. Petersburg and the assassination in Spain and Navalny, you know, this really is what's so intense about it is there's just no boundary that like, like, beyond not dropping nuclear bombs, you know, like Putin, there's just not a lot of restraints, you know. Like, even in the Cold War, and I, you know, I'm sure historians could at me on this. It felt like there was these kind of unwritten rules about, like, you know, assassination in third countries. I'm sure that did take place.

But Putin keeps pushing the envelope. And I guess the point I'd make in response is just echoing what we're saying earlier. But things like seizing assets from oligarchs and giving it to Ukraine, I think in response to Putin busting all these norms, there has to be a greater willingness to do a new. unusual things in response and not obviously killing people. But yeah, like, and not just sanctions, but I mean, literally getting creative. Again, blowing the whistle on and exposing the kind of the kleptocracy flowing through the international financial system, like just seizing assets and, you know, giving them to the Ukrainians. Like there has to be kind of an asymmetric response to the asymmetric stuff that Putin's doing.

And I don't- He's whacking people in London. Yeah. And that's, look, I'm not, you know, this is not just about being on some ladder of permanent escalation. I think there needs to be diplomacy. I think there needs to be an openness to negotiation around the war in Ukraine. There have to be, you know, what we, in bad foreign policy parlance would call off-ramps.

But you also just kind of can't, this guy's, you know, this guy is doing unusual stuff. and there has to be a sense that there's creative ways to respond to that, that are not just violence that are more about other things that expose the nature of the regime and what he's doing. One more thing on the Russia point, and this is far from the most important thing we'll talk about today, but we did want to quickly underscore how poorly timed and humiliating Tucker Carlson's visit to Moscow was to interview Vladimir Putin. So remember, Tucker did not ask Putin about Alexa Navalny, of course, because he was too busy, trying and failing to get Putin to blame the U.S. for the invasion of Ukraine. But Tucker did have time to go film some propaganda videos. Here's a clip

from one of them. We're standing in front of the Kievskaya metro station and there's a train station next to it. Now, the metro station was built by Joseph Stalin 70 years ago. And the question is, how's it doing now? After 70 years. So we went into it to take a look and what we found shocked us. It's perfectly clean and orderly. And how do you explain that? We're not even going to guess. That's not our job. We're only gonna ask the question.

And if your response is to shout at us, slogans dumber than the slogans we used to call Soviet and mock, that's not really an answer. How to get the soaring strings there at the end. I'll cut it off. I hope you all enjoy that. So what takes that from like a little travelogue vignette It's just pure propaganda, as Russia is Tucker saying how shocked he is at how nice the subways are.

The reason he shouldn't be shocked is because Moscow's metro system is famously beautiful. Google it. You can buy books entirely about this subject because the Moscow Metro was built to be functional, yes, but it was also built for propaganda purposes. Stalin wanted to show idiots like Tucker Carlson that the Soviet system was superior. And to build it, by the way, he diverted food from rural areas to the... construction workers and left farmers to starve, many, many of them. So again, great leadership. Tucker could learn this. What, he did 30 seconds of Googling? But obviously, he left it out on purpose because we know how easy it would have been to just figure out that the subway was nice.

Your thoughts on the subways. I think we had to kind of keep coming back and replaying some of these clips. I do too. I want to watch these every day. There's so much fun. I mean, first of all, like maybe he should go to like Pyongyang next because that's the poorest fucking country in the world and there's like some amazing parade grounds like Tucker's the kind of guy who go and be like wow look at these goose stepping North Koreans

big missiles they seem to really love Kim Jong-un you know like I stayed in a nice suite you know with a stocked minibar and Pyongyang they don't have any shortages here like this guy should be doing like a tour through like the gut wrenching hollowed out industrial heartland of Russia or like the war decimated

agricultural villages, you know, I mean, what a fucking idiot, you know. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. Well, either, because this is the thing, either he is the stupidest person alive and is like, wow, I'm in a beautiful metro stop that Stalin built. Or he knows full well it's propaganda.

And he's literally just making himself the most useful idiot ever for Putin, who's simultaneously like killing his main oppositionist. because that opposition exposes the lie of Russia being, you know, not being a hollowed out corrupt country in which most people get totally screwed over by the regime. Like either way, and I just can come back one more time, time. I know this early with Tucker. The royal we really- It drives me crazy.

Like, we were shocked. Yeah, who are these people that are with him? Are they imaginary friends? Like, you know, Stalin? They work at Tucker Carlson.com. It's not some big organization. Yeah, Ben, he also did one where he said he was radicalized by lower prices at the supermarket. He didn't mention that, you know, there's lower prices, but also per capita GDP in Russia as one fifth of that in the United States.

You'll like this, Ben. He flew, Tucker flew from Russia to a conference in Dubai where he spoke to some group of autocrats and said, if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it's too dangerous. You have to sort of wonder, like, isn't that the ultimate measure of leadership? I don't know. Maybe one other measure is, like, not killing your political rival. Yeah, yeah. It seems like a measure of leadership.

Do you see that Putin later complained that his interview with Tucker was too soft and he was hoping that he would be aggressive and ask tough questions? Yeah, that was like a plus troll. It just shows you that Putin can't like, he's going to troll you in the end. You know, like you're not going to be his friend. Such a fucking asshole. Quick update on the space nuke story then. So we talked about this quickly on the bonus YouTube I did.

last week, Congressman Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released this cryptic statement calling on President Biden to declassify information about what he described as a serious national security threat. Obviously, reporters freaked out, called every source they had and quickly figured out that Turner was referring to intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be used in space to destroy satellites by releasing an electromagnetic pulse. If you want to go deeper on this, check out the interview I did with an expert named James Acton. It is available exclusively on the PAD to Save the World YouTube page, but here's a quick

clip of him explaining how nuclear weapons might work in space. So, I mean, the answer is the nuclear explosion itself works differently in space, but the effects of the nuclear weapon are different in space from, I mean, one of the things that you mentioned

is if you have a huge explosion in a vacuum, you're not creating this massive shockwave, this huge amount of pressure. On the other hand, there are still effects of nuclear weapons that happen with space-based detonations. I mean, you're still creating intense amounts of energy, these gamma rays, which basically, if you're close enough,

could fry satellites. It turns out you can generate an electromagnetic pulse in satellite, which is actually generated in the body of the satellite itself, rather than by interactions of the nuclear explosion with the atmosphere. So the physics of this is quite different. You know the fucking space nuke's PDB piece was sweet. Well, nothing like a nuclear weapons nerd because they talk about nuclear weapons like, you know, we might talk about sports. You know, if you draw up the play, it's a little bit different if you're in the red zone of the opponent.

Then if you, and, you know, you get lulled into thinking it's just this kind of normal thing to talk about. But it's talking on nuclear explosions. exterminating entire country. By the way, maybe this accounts for Yulia Navagna's account being, uh, suspended that Starlink might be a target for these space nukes or space weapons. I don't know. So, Ben, now that the news is all out, there's sort of an interesting debate about why Congressman Turner, like, freaked out and released this crazy statement and de facto declassified all this information. So I want to run the two theories by you. The first is that Turner thought

this intelligence might light a fire under the ass of Speaker Johnson, get him to schedule vote on Ukraine funding. Plausible, I guess. The second has to do with surveillance authorities. So the Washington Post reported that the space nuke intel was collected using authorities granted by Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. That provision allows the U.S. government to conduct surveillance on foreign persons outside the U.S. who are using U.S. technology. So, you know, if a Hamas leader is using Gmail, U.S. government can force Google to give us access to that information. Congress is currently debating whether to reauthorize Section 702. Some people think Turner might have been trying to use this moment to push for reauthorization. You buy either of those theories?

I mean, this Turner guy doesn't seem like he's the three-dimensional chest type, but they both seem like there's probably some truth to both. Because first of all, he'd just come back from Ukraine. And so he may have been thinking, like, I'm going to come back and show that I'm going to push my party. And like, you know, I'm glad he wanted to do that. I'm not sure this was the right way. And it is the case that whoever is like the chair of the Intel Committee is usually like a huge evangelist for things like Section 702. So these may have been in his brain, but why that led him to start like a one of these, you know, day long washing freakouts over space weapons. I'm not sure. The most cryptic statement I've ever read.

We should dig into this Section 702 authorization debate soon because I think it expires in April. Yeah. It's going to be a big fight. Yeah, it's going to be a big fight. There's strong feelings on either side. We can even talk about the P-Club. Remember the P-Club? Yeah.

President of Civil Liberties Advisory Board. I was, yeah, I've long familiar with the P-Club. I feel like the Klob actually has a good middle ground between like the ACLU position and the Biden position. Pete-Club is one of those things that sounds like the kind of disease you don't be told that you have. Only Washington could invent an acronym as bad as the P-Clob. It was the Obama administration that did it. I know.

I played a role in the origins of the P-Club, Tommy, which I'll spare you the story about. P-Clob. Okay. Let's turn to Gaza. So the focus area is entirely on the city of Rafa, as we talked about the last couple weeks. There's 1.4 million people are now living in Rafa. Most of them are intense or temporary structures. It's like four or five, maybe six times the population that it was before the war.

The Israeli government has been threatening a military assault on Rafa for weeks now. They say it's necessary to take out the remaining Hamas fighters. The Jerusalem Post reported that planning for the Rafa invasion has been done for a while and the holdup is just diplomatic pressure from Egypt and the West, mostly the U.S. But still, I mean, it's not at all clear where the evacuated refugees would go before this military assault. The options are basically push everyone into an already overcrowded corner of southern Gaza, or you just start sending people back into parts of northern Gaza that have already been cleared by the IDF. So these are all terrible options. The most recent military operations in Khan Unis took nine weeks.

A RAFA operation would almost certainly take longer. If you count the time it would take to evacuate civilians and then search the Hamas Tunnel network. for hostages and fighters, et cetera, right? So it would be a while. An article in Vox said that the Israeli government thinks they've killed about one-third of Hamas's fighters, destroyed half of Hamas's rocket supplies and demolished 20 to 40 percent of its tunnel network, so a lot more work to do. Channel 12 News in Israel reported that Israeli military intelligence believes that even if the IDF

dismantles Hamas's military units, it will survive as, quote, a terror group and a guerrilla group. So what we all probably would have expected before the war. So Ben, the Biden administration keeps saying that Rafa operation would be a disaster and that Israel first needs to present a credible plan to evacuate civilians. They obviously haven't done yet yet. I wanted to get your theory on why. One theory is that Netanyahu believes that, you know, he needs a credible threat of a Rafa invasion to get leverage in these ceasefire negotiations that are ongoing. Another is that he just doesn't give a fuck what the U.S. or anyone else says and that his political incentives are going to push him to, you know, keep the war going.

for as long as possible. Maybe it's a combo. But I don't know if you have a thought on the political motivation here from Netanyahu and, you know, what's likely to happen here. I think, I mean, it's more likely the latter with Netanyahu. And look, I think this is an absolute catastrophe. I mean, they're not going to achieve their military objectives by going to Roth because they can't achieve their military objectives. They're unachievable. We've talked about this. Hamas is going to be stronger as a movement, no matter how many tunnels they blow up. I mean, And it's just so obvious that that's the case. Like literally, you will strengthen Hamas by going into Rafa.

It doesn't matter how many, you know, you kill some more people and you have a higher body count of Hamas fighters you can claim and you blow up 20% more tunnels. Hamas is so obviously going to survive a Rafa assault. Meanwhile, the cost is going to be further incalculable loss of Palestinian life. the lack of assistance getting in could, you know, again, continue to have this exponential increase in Palestinian suffering, the ability to rebuild anything after you've destroyed it all, the ability. And all of this. So the point is that Rafa, I mean, this should have already happened. And, you know, we've been for a ceasefire for a very long time on this podcast, for conditioning military assistance. I don't see how the U.S. can possibly support Israel, this Israeli government. if they go forward with this. I mean, that's, that's the bottom line. Yeah, we're still pushing for a supplemental funding bill in Congress. Which is crazy.

Like, why? It has no conditions. And then just the other day, there was another weapons shipment to the IDF that just kind of happened through that other process where, you know, we keep, like, periodically there's just reports of like hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons sales. Why can't we do that to Ukraine? Apparently, if you can just do these things, you know. I too am confused by that.

Yeah, yeah. The one piece of pressure, look, I mean, you and I, we've been frustrated for five months now that there's a carrot, but. no stick approach when it comes to VBNYahu. And that you could see all this coming, you know, like when I see these reports like, wow, they've done an analysis and found that they can't rescue the hostages military. I know. They've done analysis and found that you can't defeat that, wow, Hamas seems to be getting stronger in Palestinian society with, well, what do you think is going to happen? It's like you say it's the obvious. You put it in, it's like an intelligence

report and it carries more weight. Yeah, it's worth mentioning. The one sort of stick I've seen is Al Jazeera broke the news that the U.S. has drafted a UN Security Council resolution, calling for a temporary ceasefire as suit as practical that involves all hostages getting released, lifts all barriers to humanitarian assistance into Gaza, and opposes a ground offensive into Rafa. Now, we're still vetoing every other UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, including today. But, I mean, that would be a pretty big change in terms of our posture at the UN to get put forward. I support that. I think that, so what does it mean for the U.S. to shift beyond just kind of rhetorical criticism of Netanyahu?

I think it means supporting a ceasefire resolution at the UN. It means conditioning military assistance. It means, you know, being much more willing to break from the Israeli government in terms of how you articulate your commitment to a Palestinian state, maybe recognition of Palestinian state. There's like this spectrum of options available here. Yeah, it's got to take them. Yeah, and just got to take them. Because the more Netanyahu drifts to this far right direction, you know, the more space. I think there is to, once you do the break, you know, you actually want it to matter.

Yeah. In the not helpful department, Brazilian president, Ludlid Silva, compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust while speaking reporters at the African Union Summit Ethiopia. The exact quote was, what is happening in the Gaza Strip into the Palestinian people hasn't been seen in any other moment in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews. Pretty outrageous, inaccurate, unhelpful comment there from Lula, exactly the kind of thing, too, that Netanyahu used to rally political support around from the right wing. Yeah, and it's just stupid, too, because it, look, even if you think that this is like the absolute worst case, like, why is that the analogy, right?

Like, you know, there's been, there have been other horrific, you know, things that have happened in the last hundred years that you could draw upon, you know, like, what, this, this does bother me, okay? Like, we should call this out. Because this happens a lot. Like, why does this have to be compared as like an apples to apples? like nothing like like there are no horrors that have happened in human history between the Holocaust and what's happening in Gaza now like I don't want to go through the list of horribles

but like this is strange psychologically and and it seems designed to to I don't know trolls not even a strong enough word but like I don't I don't understand it there's like two pieces of red there's like a rhetorical piece which is like to take away your trump card and your argument which say actually this is just as bad as the holocaut. Holocaust, which is not. Six million people is an unimaginable scale of death. But there's also, you know, sort of like a piece of it, like picking at your most deeply held insecurity and fear as a nation. And trauma. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because, again, I'm not doing any comparisons here for the record, but it's not like you couldn't pick other atrocities that have happened even if you

think that's what this is, you know? So there's just something, just come up with different analogies, You know, like it, it, it, I, yeah, this is a weird one to me that the people feel the need to do this. Me too. And like, Lula, you probably hate Netanyahu and you're trying to say something really harsh and mean, but you're offending millions and millions of people you're hurting them and you're, you know, just wrong. Yeah. Well, yeah, you're taking a, and here's the other thing I'd say. You're taking what should be moral high ground and you're kind of cheapening your own moral high ground. Absolutely.

Absolutely. The other thing we want to talk about is semifor reported that a DC-based public affairs company with close ties to the Biden administration is working behind the scenes to discredit journalists that they view as biased against Israel. This is called the 10-7 project. The 10-7 project staffers share daily memos about what they perceived to be unfair press coverage over the war and have gone after specific reporters that they think are biased. So one example in this semifor story was a five-page dossier was compiled on a Washington Post reporter named Louisa Lovelock. This dossier noted some errors or corrections to her stories and even got into tweets she sent in college back in 2009. Here's like the relevant part. The tweets included tweets from 2011 saying former president George W. Bush's memoir made her angry.

And former president Barack Obama's silence in Egypt's post-Arab Spring elections was deplorable and post-noting that she was. watch Al Jazeera with her mother. Ben, I have a few thoughts about this, some stupid, some serious. First of all, if you're a college kid and you're tweeting that a presidential statement or non-statement is deplorable, you should seek help because that is terminally lame. Yeah, yeah. You know, the only people to say deplorable with a straight face work in the fucking state department, and we should think about whether they should be doing that. Or Hillary Clinton. Or Hillary Clinton. A basket of non-statements. Second, like on some level, this kind of APA research is not new. None of us should be surprised in

24 that like stuff you tweet or posts in social media could be used against you. But big butt here. I do think this shit is a huge problem when it comes to this issue in particular and Washington in particular. So like just the listeners know Ben and I have burned the boats when it comes to potential future in government service. Because like our comments about Netanyahu alone would make us unconfirmable in some state department job. And I don't say that because like I think it's a pat on the back. It's just to show you when you, when you wonder why journalists, staffers, former staffers, people who want a life in foreign policy or public service are so cautious when they're talking about this. It's because of efforts like this to find everything you stayed into police speech and

police language. And yes, like comments like Lula to Silva's call that out, right? Like there's bias, there's anti-Semitism, there's unfair press coverage. Like some of that is fair game, but like digging up this girl saying she watched Al Jazeera with her mother? What the fuck is the point of that? What's the relevance? There's just like relentlessness to this effort to discredit and attack anybody that, you know, I mean, I remember like one of my last interviews in the White House was like PBS News Hour and we'd allowed, we'd supported or allowed the resolution to pass condemning Israeli settlements. And I'm not asking anybody to remember this. PBS, look at you flashy. No, but here's the thing. The point is that I said,

like the number of settlements that have been constructed. And what I meant was like the settlement units, you know. How dare you? So like the, you know, think of it this way. Like it's like the number of apartments, not the number of apartments. Not the number of apartments. Buildings. Yeah. You would have thought like there was this huge fucking fact check and they forced like, you know, Judy Woodruff to read a hostage statement condemning me the next day. I had like thousands of people tweeting at me like probably state sponsored. And otherwise like people were hounding me about this for like months. And I'm like, this is fucking crazy, guys. Like, this would not happen on any other issue.

There's a guy Josh Block who used to attack us on. Yeah, people. Like, this is not been on any other issue. Crazy, yeah. There's this kind of level of minutia. And what I will say also is it's really disappointing when you see kind of democratic firms like this doing this kind of garbage. Because do I expect this out of like some A-PAC affiliated, like, right-wing, mean, venal? Like, if you are the staff, yeah, if you are the staff putting together this kind of dossier on like a good, journalists to the Washington Post, be better.

It's like the Baghdad Bureau Chief, like a brave reporter doing really hard work in dangerous conditions. Stop going through college tweets. Like, we all know, look, we've done stuff in politics that we don't love. But if you're literally sitting there, like, trying to discredit a Washington Post journalist over which he's in college, you've gone way too far. You've strayed way too far from what is something you should be able to look yourself in the way about.

Yeah, be like us. Cut ads about how John McCain can't use a computer. Yeah, do some underwear ads here, okay? Hey, I didn't have any journalism. I didn't either. Deep cut from 2008. Two more, three more quick things. Okay, Ben.

So unfortunately, we had another tough blow for democracy in the latest election in Indonesia. So initial data shows that Praboa Subianto is likely to win with over 60% of the vote, which they landslide victory. Subianto is the defense minister. He is a 72-year-old former Army General who was once banned from entering the U.S. because of alleged human rights abuses. He was the leader of a special forces unit that was accused of killing hundreds of people in East Timor, and also kidnapping, torturing and killing pro-democracy students who impose the former dictator, the Suharto regime. So he is also married to the Suharto family and is considered part of the inner circle.

Subianto chose the son of current president Yoko Widodo to be his vice president, even though this guy is only 36 years old, and the rules say you have to be 40. Somehow got around that one. Subianto also portrayed himself as a cuddly cat-loving grandpa, which I guess appealed to the younger voters on TikTok. talk, half the population of Indonesia is under 40. So we don't have final election results yet because Indonesia is a country of 270 million people. It encompasses over 17,000 different islands. So elections are a massive logistical undertaking. But they do this thing called quick count data. They poll like a couple thousand polling locations like exit polling. And it made clear that it's not going to be a runoff election in June. Then I saw Subianto held a press conference earlier

this week while swimming laps in his pool. So that was a first. How are you feeling about this cuddly human rights violating grandpa running Indonesia? Not great. And I think there are a couple things that are depressing about it. One is it like the outgoing president Jacoey, he got elected. He was kind of this outsider man of the people guy, you know, like he'd been a mayor, he'd been like a worker. Like he didn't come from one of these like dominant ruling cliques or the military. And this, he beat this guy twice, by the way.

Right? And this guy did a Trump both times and said he was rigged and everything. Send people to the streets. And so, but Jacoey's like, you know what, what can continue my legacy? And what's pretty clear is he made some deal with this guy. He said, pick my kid. Take my kid. Make him the running mate. I'll be the power behind some throne.

Jacoey has this like plan to build like a $40 billion new capital of Indonesia in the middle of the jungle kind of a weird legacy thing. This guy's promised to continue that. God knows what corruption is involved in that, by the way. Couldn't even imagine. It was like, you know, billions of dollars in contracts. to build some capital. So it just has this whiff of, you know, this guy Jacochi was supposed to represent a different kind of politics, kind of turned into the standard politics, right?

Chicoe is what people call Wadodo. Woodoto, yeah. It's kind of like the... It's like the... It's like calling Abu Mazin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Like, we got to be in the know here on the pots of the world. But then the other thing I'd say is it just, man, like the year of elections. It's not going good. It continues to really deliver thus far. Max really fucked us for all these elections. I kind of give, you know, the other autocratic team has got a good team, you know, Buckele crushes.

You've got Jekoi, like, you know, they've got this kind of autocrat. Are we doing a draft? Well, I'm just saying, like, like basically every election is kind of confirming this negative trend. You know, we got India looming on the horizon. Like, I'm sure the BJP will crush there. You know, the coup de grasse is going to be, obviously, the U.S. election. But you can kind of see, you know, I don't. want to be too pessimistic here, but there is a narrative that could build that by the end of

this year, it's like, is there democracy anymore? I know. We need the labor party in the UK to kind of save us. Yeah, that's the only one that seems like it's a trending favorable. Two more things. Last week, Ben, Jared Kushner spoke at some conference in Miami, I think it was hosted by Axios. He was asked about the $2 billion kickback he got from the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund to his private equity firms, some called investment. I call it a kickback. Here's a quick clip. Here's a quick clip of the question and Jared's response. As you said, lots and lots of private equity firms, other folks are trying to raise money from Saudi Arabia and are raising money from Saudi Arabia.

Some, however, stopped after the Jamal Chukhugee murder. Some either gave money back or stopped. At the time, you didn't really, you said you wanted to wait for the DNI report, for the kind of official report, for the State Department report, before talking about it, you kind of only give very glancing mentions in your book to it. The DNI report came out a couple weeks after you left the White House. it says that MBS personally was responsible. Do you agree with the DNI?

Do you or do you believe that report? Are we really still doing this, Dan? So the question there was Dan Premack for Maxio. So we're sparing you his whiny little shit answer about how MBS is a visionary leader and he ducks the question of MBS's complicity by saying he didn't see the Biden DNI report. But Jared, you would access to all the intelligence at the time.

You know exactly what happened, you lying little fuck. here's the thing about Jared Kushner. He wants to be taken seriously as somebody who has any capability or capacity whatsoever. He wants to be taken seriously as this like diplomat, as this businessman, and he is a fundamentally unserious person. And dishonest and corrupt. And everybody knows, no matter how rich this guy gets, everybody knows that the only reason is because he's corrupt and because he's Donald Trump's son-in-law and because he did the bidding of a dictator

who killed people like Jamal Khashoggi and had errand boys like Jared Kushner cover it up for him. So everybody knows that no matter how much money makes, it has nothing to do with his own capacity. It has to do with his corruption. Just like everybody knows that nobody would even be pink. This guy, Jared Kushner, like, owned like the pink newspaper, the New York Observer. Like, his whole life has been this desperate quest. He bought his way into Harvard. Yeah, his whole life has been this desperate quest to prove that he's a person of substance.

And the more he does, the more he confirms the opposite here. And, like, the serious point I make, too, is that, like, the Jamal Khashoggi's, the Alexei Navalny's, like, these people are going to be remembered, right? And all the Jared Kushners are like, can't we get past this already? Like, why are you bringing this up? Like, why can't you just ask me about how much money I have? And, like, the point is, like, the world tends to remember people like Jamal Khashoggi and Alexei Navalini for a good reason. Yeah. And the fact that it annoys Jared Kushner is reason enough to do it.

And to like keep asking reporters, don't ever let this go. Yeah. Don't ever let this go. Everyone knows that this guy would not have gotten a $2 billion, quote-unquote, investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund into a private equity firm that he had like just started that moment, if not for favors he had done for these Gulf autocrats. That's sort of all his money's coming up. Isn't there a better way to being an annoying rich kid?

Like, can't you just like buy a place in Topanga and do you? drugs, you know, like, like, like, like, there's got to be something, you know, like, like, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, like, just take it out on the rest of us, you know? Yeah, like, do, like, uh, try rapping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, uh, just whatever the thing is, you know, like, be a judge on a reality show or something. Um, I launch a, a new line, write a screenplay, right? I'm, I'm trying to do, like, I'm, I'm trying to do all these things. You actually have an interesting story to tell. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

the worst father-in-law in the world. Right about that. Yeah. Right about your pain, Jared. Yeah, like, share your pain instead of like redirecting your pain on the rest of us. Take the bone saw to the pain. You have to treat the world the way your father treated you. Anyway, I hate that kid.

Last but not least, Ben, the Mankini story heard around the world. Of course, we have Australia. I'm popping a Nicorette lozenge because of that Jared said me. For this one, good. Another one. Okay, so Shane Rose, who is on Australia's equestrian Olympic team, made headlines throwing a G-string mankini at an equestrian event recently.

Those who know the G-string mankini would probably know it from Borat. It sounds like harmless horseplay, right? Well, then, his trips to the Summer Olympics was almost derailed due to this little cheeky stunt. The costume sparked an investigation by the equestrian governing body of Australia, which, no surprise, Australians, like, loved.

They rallied to the sky side. A bunch of Australian Olympians came out and said that a shame is not allowed to compete because of the mankini. whether they always are wearing them as well at events. Rose was quoted as saying it's a dress-up competition. I thought it would be funny to go into Mancini. I've never worn a G-string before,

and I can't recommend it to anyone. So great advice from someone with a sense of humor. Let me just once again credit the people of Australia who've delivered a lot of content to this podcast. Sure have. And I'm going to join these two segments that we just did, right? On the one end, you've got this kind of angry, you know, rich kid, you know, trying to, like, prove himself by, like,

taking money from MBS and covering things up. And then you got a guy who's just like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to wear a Mancini for my equestrian thing and become like a folk hero. I have a great time. This is like why the Australians, like they look, they don't take this shit too seriously. Like, come on. Like we need more of this in the world. Not necessarily Manquini's, but like the mentality behind the mankini.

Sure. The man, you know, because nobody wants to see me and a mankini, but. Kobe had Mamba mentality. You're doing Mankini mentality. Mankini mentality. That's what I'm talking about. I like that a lot. I like that a lot.

Well, that's a really hard pivot to our interview with Mr. Slav Chernov, an unbelievably brave documentary filmmaker who chronicled his time in Marriople at the beginning of the war. But there it is. I just did it. There it is. You did it. We'll take a quick break. We come back.

You'll hear from him. Mrs. Slav Chernov is a journalist filmmaker and the director of the new film, 20 Days in Marriopal. Thank you so much for joining and doing the show. Thank you for inviting me. So you directed, you narrated, you shot this just unforgettable, incredibly affecting documentary film 20 days in Maripal. It has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. Congratulations for that. I hope you win. I cannot imagine any other film. topping this film in terms of just like the impact on the world.

Mariupil, for those who don't know, is a Ukrainian city right on the border with Russia. Can you explain how you ended up in Maripal as the invasion started two years ago and what happened to the city while you were there? Well, this war, this invasion started for me as for most of Ukrainians 10 years ago. And at that point, it was eight years ago. So this escalation was not a strong. surprised that the size of the escalation, the scale of it, was astonishing, but we kind of expected it. And all these years we thought where Russia would strike, where would they attack. And Maripal was obviously always a big target for them as they tried to occupy it in 2014.

I was there too at that moment. So when it was already understandable that the Russia is going to attack the day or the day after we were in Bahmoud, That's another city that it doesn't exist anymore because it was destroyed by Russian bombs. We were there and we were discussing where would we go and the decision was to go to Mariupo because it seems to be so important and it probably was going to be surrounded just because of the location. It's very near to Russia. It's on the way to Crimea. So we went there and within Russia attacked, Russia attacked the whole country and within days, The city was surrounded and the civilian infrastructure was targeted.

There was no electricity, no water, no food supplies, and the most importantly, no communications. So the city was cut off completely from the outside world. And we found out that we were the only journalists at that point who remained in the city under the siege. And we were the only ones who were reporting miraculously, we were still finding very little signal to be. able to send what we saw and owe what we saw well the indiscriminate bombardment of the city was was more and more intensive more people were dying and and ultimately Russia bombed maternity hospital the images that that shook the world that everyone saw and probably the images which became become a bitter symbol of marupol so all that I was recording and of

course, I could send only very, very little of what I shot at hours and hours of footage, which were never published. And when we miraculously escaped from the city and carried all this with us, of course, I wanted to make a film. I wanted, because so much wasn't published. And the story was so symbolic and so important. And that's what we did. Yeah, so, as you mentioned, years were the only journalists in Miracle during this time. I mean, watching the documentary I was amazed at how many of your photos and videos that I remembered seeing at the time on every single broadcast in the world in the United States. Like you guys really were the only window into what was happening into that city for the rest of the world. I wonder what that responsibility felt like.

And if you were aware at the time that billions of people were seeing the work you were sending back. We weren't aware. We just didn't have enough connection in time to figure out. the impact or the scale of the how far these images go and what do they do we knew about russia trying to say we are information terrorists and saying this was all staged but that is kind of what we would we expected because every time something important impact will happen they they try to do it so it didn't really influence our work we just kept reporting i think i found out about the effects of what what those images really meant only when we left the city.

And when I started making a film, that became also a part, well, let's say impact or lack of impact, because sometimes it is a lack of impact that is the most painful, is actually a part of a film. The journalism and fake news is a part of the theme of the film. And I address exactly that as I was making. film and it gives a lot of actually gives a lot of useful context to people who saw these images and in use a lot of info important context to them how was how they were actually made people also know what's happening behind the camera right i mean incredible people all around you helping you guys

i mean you you mentioned this a minute ago the the russians tried to claim that images that you took from the bombing of a maternity ward in a hospital uh think about that for a second were fake you got swept up into this disinformation effort. Did you guys, were you aware of that at the time? And what did it feel like to know, like, the most horrific thing you could ever imagine was turned upside down like that by the Russian government? As a journalist, I don't get much, as international journalists,

I don't get much affected by that. Actually, it's kind of a compliment to your work, because if you are getting attacked for your work, if it's contested, it means it means something, right? It's just, it was seen and it made an impact. I knew that journalistically speaking and from point of view of documentary record, we needed to follow up this story. We needed to find those women who suffered in this bombing and who were called actors.

But nevertheless, we would follow that story anyway because it was so important to know what was happening with them. So it didn't impact my work at all. All that being said, I know how devastating it is to hear. for Ukrainians or for people of Mariupol and for people who lost their families in those bombings to hear something like that. It's not just to lose someone or to lose your city and to be injured, is also to hear that your pain and your suffering is fake. That is so painful for them and my heart is bleeding for them. But that's what drives me when I make this film, when I make sure that many, as many people as possible see that film. Just to make sure that there's something.

suffering is not doubted. It's remembered. Yeah. A lot of the scenes you capture in the film are shot in a hospital. There, some of the most challenging things I can imagine shooting or, frankly, I was sitting at my desk crying at work. You know, it's like footage of dead or injured children. I think for any parent, you probably watch and think, like, what if that were me? What if that were my child?

How would I escape? In the film, you include footage of people, in particular, doctors, encouraging you to film, thanking you for filming, and you also have people who are literally telling you to fuck off. I was wondering why you thought it was important to include both of those perspectives. And if emotionally for you, it was more difficult to cover these horrors happening in your own country as compared to, you know, you've covered so many conflicts around the globe. But, you know, this was home.

Yeah, this is home and my conflict journalism started from Europe. Ukraine 10 years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine and I learned everything about conflict journalism. And this is so personal. This is a story of my community and my country, of course. It's not only the cities that are being bombed, that your memories are being bombed, you see, and destroyed. So, but people are different and they react in a very different way on a stressful, on a stressful events. And these are the most stressful events you can imagine, losing your home or your or your families. And those people who are. told me don't film me they're not there but those people who wanted to to say something but even if it wasn't really nice or something you're wasn't agreeing with but they still wanted to say that they are in a film it was quite important for for us to to show all the variety of responses to all the

variety of of of different reactions to the events and to journalists because it's part of a story and if you if you hear my narrative narrate I'm narrating the film. I don't moralize anyone. I don't impose my emotions on the audience. I'm just telling the story in the best way possible, providing as much context as possible. Yeah.

So you and I are talking on February 15th, just before the two-year anniversary of the so-called special military operation that Putin launched. There are people in Mary Opel still living under Russian occupation. People throughout Ukraine deal with the constant threat of air strike. In the film, you say, war is like an x-ray, good people become better, bad people, worse.

I was wondering two years into this war how you feel like it has impacted the nation as a whole and how people have responded. I think in a complete, comprehensive way, we can understand that only when the war is over and we will be able to look back to our traumas, to our losses, to what we'll look at. live through right now everyone is is filled with the emotions with anger with sadness with with it was just a fear yeah but at the same time with determination i think what what happened a part of all the horrible things that have happened to ukraine and to its residents all the traumas something something something else, something hopeful, did come through. It's the emergence of a very strong bond between all layers of the society, between communities, local communities in the community in general of the country.

And that's what you see in a film as well. In the worst possible moments of loss of a tragedy, no one is ever alone in 20 days in Mariupo, right? There is always someone to be near to hug, it's a doctor or a journalist, I did that too, you see me doing that or a neighbor. So this feeling of community and identity and shared tragedy and shared resistance is what just holds the country together right now. Because things are not going well. And in Russia, every day becomes stronger and bigger.

And the attention and the support to Ukraine is fading. and but that that feeling of a community and shared responsibilities never going away anymore. That stays forever. Watching these doctors go from treating people in hospital rooms

to hallways to basements, watching these firefighters go from having infrastructure and trucks and hoses to the last fire station being bombed but still trying to do the jobs. It's just incredibly moving and inspiring. As you said earlier, you say in the film too, I mean, the war didn't start in 2022 for people, especially in eastern Ukraine.

There was Crimea, the war in Donbos, the MH17 shootdown, which you covered. Do you think that helped harden or prepare for the full-scale invasion in 22 or is that even possible? Yeah, it's a painful question because it also relates to me. As a journalist, I've been covering this war since 2014. And then the tension of the world shifted to Syria and to migration crisis in Europe and to many other stories, important stories that were unfolding in the world equally deserving attention, of course. But the world has chosen to forget about the invasion until 2022.

And that's why I think in 2022 it came such a surprise to everyone that, oh, Russia attacked Ukraine. But no, it's not a surprise. Russia did attack Ukraine eight years before that. And it was not a surprise at all. And it's just to have been ignored. And maybe if I did my job better as a journalist or a documentary filmmaker or as a writer to keep attention to the fact that the war wasn't going on for all these years, maybe people would be better prepared.

But this is what's constantly. constantly happening even now when the war is raging and not only in Ukraine you see the war is not only in Ukraine anymore and possibly it will be next day somewhere else right a lot of people still choose to ignore the fact that that they need to do something about it this can't be ignored anymore because it sooner or later is going to arrive at the door of every single human being on the planet Yeah, I think that's an important takeaway is watching the footage and imagining what you would do if it were you and what we can do now to prevent that. Along those lines, me, President Biden's been fighting to get more funding passed for Ukraine since last year. At the moment, it seems like that funding is being blocked by President Trump and a small but very extreme slice of the Republican Party.

Watching the film made me feel embarrassed all over again at the smallness and fucking stupidity of American politics, especially when compared. to the gravity of what people in Ukraine are dealing with and the courage they've shown. Are people aware of this debate that's happening in the U.S. and Ukraine? Does it feel existential for them? Is there any message you want to convey to people listening about maybe lobbying Congress or doing what they can? Again, I can't be, I'm a Ukrainian and I'm international journalist. I cannot be trying to convince anyone of doing anything. I believe rational and informed decisions should be made but everyone has to decide for themselves i can say how that looks from a ukrainian perspective that's for sure first of all ukrainians will keep fighting regardless of

what's whether whether there is support or not it just means if there is no support it means more death and means more destruction for civilians more marupil uh type of the events but but it's a fight for survival you know if russia was attacking u.s and if u.s. was losing its territories god forbid but if no one even was supporting at that moment right the people will still keep fighting yeah so regardless of that people will keep fighting i think what's the most regrettable part for ukrainians when they look at what's going on right now in in in europe and in us it's it's that they see that there that ukraine became a political, that supporting Ukraine became a political question. Because it's, first of all, it's a humanitarian problem.

It's a humanitarian issue. And that's what comes through in 20 days in Maripo when you see that. You see humans, civilians suffering and they need help. And this can't be used as a bargaining political chip in any way. And that's why Ukrainians are frustrated sometimes when they hear the news. But obviously they are grateful for. for everything that for all the help that already came to Ukraine and they will be grateful for everything that will come they will be grateful for any support but it's

just when when they're suffering and their fight is made into a bargaining political bargaining chip that that's what insults Ukrainians that's what I see in their like in their eyes when I when I speak with them it's not a political question yeah it's existential last question for you So, you know, President Zelensky's leadership in the early months of the war was, I think, universally seen as astounding and heroic. Obviously, after two years of war, it is understandable that the situation grows more challenging and complicated in politics sort of take over in some sense. He recently made some changes to the military and political leadership. There's been some reporting about concerns over elections getting postponed or maybe martial law remaining in place, questions about the draft.

Do you have a sense as a journalist just what, if there's been a change in terms of popular support for this government or if people are still just, you know, behind him? You know, what's great about Ukraine is Ukrainians are always very, very aware of what's happening to their country. They're very active citizens. There's a huge layer of active citizens, active citizenship. So you can't really lie to them. You can't really hide anything from them. People see everything that's happening. So they are very sensitive to any changes

or any political conflicts that are happening. But at the same time, they clearly know what the country needs. And Ukraine right now needs a unity, political unity, a military unity, international unity. So understanding that, Ukrainians do keep supporting the government. And what they support, even if they see problems, they support the unity. Here's what's the main thought here. And they will be supporting those who provide that unity to the country.

And so far, that's what's being happening. But of course, all the problems that are happening, we see them and we see them, it's because Ukrainians are so sensitive and very well aware of these changes. They're very well aware of the fight against the corruption. They're very well aware of what's happening on the front lines. So, yeah, of course, there are problems, but any country would have problems during the war. And especially when you fight to an enemy, which is, so much bigger.

Yeah. I mean, I think what's just so astounding from my perspective is just the way Ukrainians have been able to adapt despite all that's happening around them. You've got, you know, kids going to school, people going to work, you know, getting, you know, playing guitar for the kids in the bomb shelter to try to keep things feeling a little bit normal, you know, the scene in your movie. I'm just wondering, how is it possible to adapt? Is this just necessity or is this something unique to Ukraine?

Partially it is because Ukrainians have been adapting for this for years. Maybe when it was the first year, it takes a lot of effort and time to be able to exist in a kind of a normal way when the war is so near you, when the rockets every day hit your city. But it was happening for a while already. So that really helps. And humans in general and Ukrainians are. are amazing into in their resilience in their in their in their wish to live the normal lives and and actually that's what you want to do when you when you raise children you want to provide as much normality to them as possible even when yeah when it's not possible you know what what scares me a

lot is that in the beginning of the war in the beginning of the invasion uh in full-scale invasion Russia was saying that they're all this absurd, all this absurd claims that they're fighting Nazis and they're protecting Russian-speaking population. They were killing Russian-speaking populations at the same time. They were excusing themselves with that. But right now, they say they're very different narrative. I'm not sure that international community hears that narrative that is happening within Russia. They motivate their people and their society, which also is getting used to war.

And their politicians and soldiers with one single thought, they are at war with US and Europe. They are currently at war with everyone, with the West. And a lot of people in the West choose not to notice that. That's more than 100 million people, country with a nuclear weapons, very aggressive, producing a lot of weapons, getting a lot of money from oil, is currently at war with them and no one seems to be fully prepared for that even mentally.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point and people should probably do a little more listening to especially the countries, or people in Ukraine, of course, but also the Baltic countries and parts of NATO that are closest to the front lines that are increasingly alarmed. But listen, the film is 20 days in Marriople.

You can find out on YouTube, it is one of the most affecting things I've watched in many, many years. I cannot recommend it enough. And Mrs. Slav Chernov, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you so much for inviting me. Stay safe. Thanks again to Mrs. Slav Chernov for making an unbelievable film and for joining us on the show.

Thanks again to the Mancini guy. Not so much to Jared. He can just go fuck himself. Oh, God, Jared. And Maria and Darya for talking to us for the show about their experience, both inside and outside of Ukraine. And to that, yes, to all the Ukrainians who've shared your stories for two years, actually. We're glad we could use this anniversary to bring that back and remind people of like the human piece of this. Thanks to that unbelievable space nerd you talked to, too.

I really did rules. He really broke things down too. So good job by you. James Acton. James Acton. James Acton. Great guy is the best. Okay, that's it for us.

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