Pod Save the World - Emergency Pod: Brink of War in Ukraine

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

In an emergency pod, Ben gives an update on the rapidly unfolding situation in Ukraine, the unfolding of Putin’s potential pretext for war, and how the world is preparing for a likely and looming invasion. Then Ben is joined by BuzzFeed correspondent Christopher Miller, who has been reporting from the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, for an on-the-ground perspective on what’s happening, what war could look like, and how Ukrainians are preparing.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 Pottae the World. I am Ben Rhodes, and this is a special episode with so much attention on the situation in Ukraine and so much speculation. And frankly, with the U.S. President being pretty forthright in saying that he thinks Russia is not only going to invade Ukraine, but try to conquer Ukraine's capital, Kiev. We thought that it would be important to give you an update here. So later in the show, we are going to hear from an extraordinary frontline reporter who's on the ground, literally all the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Christopher Miller from BuzzFeed. And we're going to unpack with him what the scenarios there are on the East, what he's watching, what the recent developments are, because a lot of what has taken place in the last just couple of days. And I'm talking to Saturday morning here has felt like exactly the pretext for war that Vladimir Putin would

set up in eastern Ukraine. So just to summarize here, because there have been a flurry of reports in the last day or two. The pro-Russian separatist leaders of these breakaway regions of Ukraine, Lahansk and Dynetsk, have made a series of announcements. They've ordered the evacuation of civilians to Russia on Friday, accusing Ukraine of planning a large-scale military offensive. You saw women and children beginning to be bust into Russia. And you also saw Vladimir Putin indicating that Russia was prepared to provide support, including 10,000 rubles to these refugees coming into Russia. And so that felt like there was some pre-planning behind this. There were also metadata that was analyzed of the videos that these leaders released that suggested

that even though they were acting like they were responding in real-time to events, that these videos were recorded as long as a couple days ago. So definitely feels staged, definitely feels pre-planned, definitely feels like what the Biden team was warning about. This continued to escalate into today as those leaders called for a mobilization of all military-aged men in those regions. So if you're a guy from 18 to, I think, 55, you can't leave because you're being called up to serve in the war. If you're anybody else, I think, you know, you can get out. Meanwhile, Russian television is kind of in a frenzy, reporting on ethnic cleansing, genocide against Russian speakers or ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. Again, another very likely

pretext for war being that Russia has to protect these people from the Ukrainians. Obviously, these reports aren't true, but we've seen also some things getting blown up in eastern Ukraine. One, for instance, being the car of one of these Russian separatist leaders, kind of felt very much like a staged assassination attempt that they were trying to show the world or, or, you know, show on Russian television at least. So that's what's going on in eastern Ukraine that feels like this pretext. Meanwhile, Russian President Putin on Saturday presided over the test launching of three ballistic and cruise missiles that were part of what was called a nuclear deterrence exercise. So kind of fluxing, reminding the world that Russia is a nuclear power. He was joined by the president

of Belarus, President Lukashenko, you know, kind of his supplicant. in the room at the time. Should note, importantly, Lukashenko and Belarus officials are now announcing that Russian troops will not leave Belarus as planned under Russia's military exercises. So the idea that this has all been an exercise, nobody's even making that excuse anymore. The U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday that he felt it's clear Russia had made a decision and was moving its military into positions to conduct an attack on Ukraine. He said, quote, they're uncorling and now poised to strike. The diplomacy continues insofar as there's diplomacy, and a lot of center of gravity there

has been at the Munich Security Conference where Vice President Harris is leading the U.S. Delegation, vowed in a speech that there will be swift, severe in a united response, if Russia invades Ukraine, made mention of certain sanctions, including on Russian banks. Ukraine's president, Zelensky, flew to that summit. We'll see if he gets back into Ukraine. kind of a risky decision by his part. He kind of double down while he was there on Ukraine's desire to join NATO, so no indication that he is backing down on Russia's core demands. But the most dramatic statement, I think, of the last day was President Biden speaking from the White House

late yesterday afternoon in which he was as forward-leaning as he's been to date about what he thinks is happening. Let's give it a listen. We have reason to believe that Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days. We believe that they will target Ukraine's capital key, a city of 2.8 million innocent people. We're calling out Russia's plans loudly and repeatedly, not because we want a conflict, but because we're doing everything in our power to remove any reason that Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine and prevent them from moving. Okay, so that was not a particularly caveated statement. You know, and what he's describing there is the worst case scenario, which is a Russian invasion.

It's not just the kind of escalation in eastern Ukraine that I'll be talking about with Christopher Miller here in a minute, but rather the full-scale invasion, the toppling of the Ukrainian government, the conquering of, as President Biden reminds us, a city of nearly three million people, which would mean a lot of suffering, a lot of death. what are the key takeaways for me from the last 48 hours? Number one, it just feels like this thing is happening. And here's why. First, because as I alluded to earlier, this is precisely the pretext that Putin would use to

justify an invasion. And you've heard everybody from Tony Blinken to Jake Sullivan to Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson, speaking about exactly these types of scenarios, kind of staged attacks in eastern Ukraine where the Russians control some space, right? So they can blow up some infrastructure themselves and claim that the Ukrainians did it. And then they can gin up their propaganda machinery. And if you're thinking to yourself and watching this, this is pretty hackish, right? Like these dudes are taping videos days in advance.

And they're not trying that hard to make the pretext look real to independent observer. like you, I think an important thing to note there is that Putin may not just give a shit how effective his pretext looks, right? I mean, I credit the Biden team for being out in front and putting all this information out to make it harder for Putin to run a play for a global audience that suggests that, you know, the Ukraine was semi-the-aggressor.

But we also have to remember that Putin may not care anyway. You know, he may not be deterred in any way by the fact that the U.S. is putting at his plans. And the fact that they're going ahead with the exact scenario that the U.S. has already blown the whistle on kind of demonstrates that not giving a shit, you know, and not giving a shit in general is one of Vladimir Putin's strengths and weaknesses. It is who he is, right? And so they seem to be running a play that they probably designed a few weeks ago in terms of claiming genocide against ethnic Russians and making some things blow up and having these Russian pawns get out there and say that war has come and we have to fight back

and inevitably probably call for Russian support. That's what's worrying to me about it. It's just how much they're not adjusting their plans because they feel like, you know, they were outed. They're just doing what they were probably planning to do all along if they wanted to have a ramp into an escalation. So that's the first point. I think the second point is when the President of the United States says that we have the information they're going to take Keeve, that is not a statement he would make if that was not, I think, a high confidence judgment of the U.S. intelligence community. I'd just say that as someone who, you know, consumed intelligence. It does not feel like he was speaking offhand or committing a gath here. The U.S. intelligence

evaluates a lot of different things, and it's not just overhead imagery. You know, it's intercepted communications, it's, it's, it's analysis of what is flowing to the border. It's probably analysis of what, you know, Russian groups like the Wagner group that's, you know, the paramilitary outfit that Russia's used in the Middle East and Africa. Are those guys going back to the region, are they going into eastern Ukraine? Are there Russian intelligence agents inside of Ukraine? And what are they doing? What are the pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians doing? all of these are the types of things that you would look at, never mind whatever intel you may be able to get on Vladimir Putin himself.

And clearly this whole picture suggests to the United States an inevitability of the larger invasion. And so I think we had to take that seriously. And which brings me the last point, which is diplomacy. And you heard Biden say, well, there's still a chance for diplomacy. And everybody says that, and they should, to the bitter end. Here's the problem. I don't know what the room is right now,

because Russia issued its formal written responses to the U.S. written responses to the original Russian demands, right? And Russia reiterated in those written responses that Ukraine can never be a member NATO, that these breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine essentially have to have a veto over all Ukrainian foreign policy that NATO has to pull back from Eastern Europe, you know, can't have any, you know, NATO presence in the Eastern European countries that joined NATO in the late 90s and early 2000s. That's the Russian position. Zelensky today reiterated that Ukraine wants to join NATO. NATO has actually increased a number of troops in Eastern Europe. As we speak, there are thousands of American troops in Poland who weren't there a couple weeks ago.

So somebody would have to back down significantly here. You know, like either Russia would have to essentially, you know, give up on all of its demands around NATO. and U.S. and NATO force posture and just kind of act like these are all just a bunch of military exercises into the genocide of Russians that they allege. It's not true. In eastern Ukraine is something that they're not doing anything about differently than they did before. Or Ukraine would have to completely change its position and say, no, we've actually decided we're not going to join NATO or are going to implement an agreement that allows these separatist regions to have a veto on our farm policy.

or the U.S. or other NATO countries would have to say that. And it just doesn't feel like that's happening. And so it's hard to see, you know, you look for those paths off like a highway into a war. And I just don't see the off-ramps at this point. So I hope there are. I hope, I mean, for the sake of the people of Ukraine, for the sake of the world, for the sake of the consequences I think we would even feel in the U.S. from this war, I hope it's the case that it doesn't happen.

but it just certainly feels like this is where we're heading. That's one of the reasons why we had this episode. Now, one of the things I talked to Christopher Miller here about in a moment is that that war could be the full-scale invasion and the effort to take Kiev and all the rest of the consequences we got into a few days ago on the pod, or it could be something that's much more Eastern-focused. And I think it's important for us to hear that scenario because that's quite possible as well. So when we come back, we'll have my interview with Christopher Miller from BuzzFeed. I'm very pleased to be joined now by Christopher Miller. He is a correspondent for BuzzFeed News covering

national security and extremism. He's also a deep expert on Ukraine and he is currently talking to us from Kharkiv Ukraine, which is along Ukraine's eastern border. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's just start with like what have you been up to the last couple days. It feels like, and we'll get into the fact that it feels kind of. of like the pretext that, you know, would have been the most likely one for Russia to gin up, has been jinned up in the part of the world where you are right now in eastern Ukraine. But what have you been up to the last day or two?

What have you seen? Who have you talked to? Yeah, I think that's right. You know, the last, I would say, a handful of days have felt much more intense than the last month. You know, there has been a sort of steady buildup. of this tension leading to something, possibly an invasion, an incursion attack of some sort. You know, certainly, and I've been back here, after living here for 11 years, I've been back here now for almost a couple of months. And I've spent part of January on the front line and then yesterday was back in the town of Marinka,

which is just a few miles from Danyetsk on the front line. And just between my first visit in this January and now, there has been a pretty steady increase in the number of attacks, artillery bombardments, the number of casualties on the front line. So we're seeing a pretty significant increase in fighting, which is different than we've seen in the past couple of years. I mean, throughout most of the pandemic and even a few years prior, it's been mostly a simmer on the front line. The front line has been static. Trenches have been dug. The line has not really moved since these Minsk agreements were signed back in February 2015. So for seven years now,

it's been a war of attrition, mostly trench warfare that sometimes resembles World War II. If you throw in some new technology like drones and some higher powered weapons, some more modern weaponry. But, you know, in Maureinka, speaking with the soldiers there, speaking with the soldiers in three other frontline towns in January, everybody is saying that since November, when this Russian military buildup began, that the intensity has slowly increased. And now we are seeing an amount of shelling and an intensity in fighting that is more close to the type of heavy fighting that we saw in 2015, 2016. We're not quite at the level of all-out war that we saw in spring, summer of 2014, which was really intense casualties, deaths in the dozens, if not hundreds,

on an almost daily or weekly basis. And hopefully we don't get to that point. But there are a lot of people who fear we're heading in that direction that if Vladimir Putin does decide to launch an attack, things could very quickly escalate and go beyond even what it looked like in 2014, which was indiscriminate, multiple launch rocket systems, artillery that's decades old and very imprecise. You know, there's a real fear here that higher tech weaponry and possibly even air strikes could be used. And a lot of the talk among the military here has to do with the,

military material that the Russians are placing around the borders. For instance, I'm in the city of Archev, like you mentioned, I'm only 20 miles from the border here. And just on the other side, you've got, you know, several battle tactical groups. These are battle-hardened soldiers that are ready for ground warfare. But you've also got attack helicopters in Belarus, which is, you know, just to the northwest of here. And in some places, in Russia, also northeast of Europe. here, you've got, besides these helicopters, you've got other attack aircraft. And so there is now this real sense of, you know, a major war looming in a way that, you know, the Ukrainians were much more skeptical about even weeks ago. Yeah. So, so tense. And in the last couple of days,

what we've seen is the separatist leaders, and put that in kind of air quotes, but the Russian-backed separatist leaders of Dignetsk and Lahansk, these are the two territories of eastern Ukraine that Russia's kind of de facto tried to, not annex, but at least carve out from Ukraine and use it as leverage to control Ukrainian politics. Those leaders made statements that there was a looming invasion coming from Ukraine. Then we saw what felt like staged efforts at, you know, sabotage attacks on infrastructure or assassination attempts in Luhansk and Dynetsk. And then we heard calls for both refugee flows into Russia from, you know, women and children from Lohansk and Denezsk to kind of create the impression that these people under assault. And then we heard about a military mobilization

where kind of military-aged men are not allowed to leave those regions. What's going on? What is your read on this? And maybe explain to our listeners who might not follow the trust in terms of this too closely, like who are these two leaders and on what basis do people kind of think they talk? You know, are they speaking for themselves? Or they mouthpieces for Putin? What do you make of these events?

Yeah. So plainly put the leaders of what are called the DHS, Donetsk and Lugansk, quote-unquote, people's republics. And throwback, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. They are merely figureheads. Essentially, they are proxy leaders, you know, working under the direction of Moscow. They, you know, they're not the first leaders to be at the heads of these self-proclaimed republics,

which really are, I mean, just occupied territories that Russia does control. I mean, Russia controls every element of, I mean, everything that happens within the Donetsk and Lugansk areas that are not controlled by Ukraine. And just to give you a sense of scale here, that's about the area that's under occupation right now is about the size of the state of New Jersey, maybe just a little bit underneath. So this is a large, you know, piece of land. these are not the first leaders. The previous leaders were assassinated under very murky circumstances. You know, there are some people who believe Ukrainian special operations forces knock them off. And there are others who believe that they had become a little too ambitious and that Moscow may have done away with them themselves.

And so the leaders that we see now in Dyneskin, Lugans, are people that have been handpicked by the Kremlin because they can be controlled. They're not ambitious. They merely want to behave as though they're these heads of states. In reality, these states are totally fictitious. Nobody in the world recognizes them and mosque controls every facet. And what we're seeing now in all of these reports that you mentioned about mass evacuations and attacks from the Ukrainian side on these territories are pretty classic examples of these disinformation. campaigns that Russia and these republics use to try to paint Ukrainians as the ones that are

wanting to go on the offensive as the aggressors. They use words like genocide and toss them around like pretty willy-nilly. You know, they say that Ukraine and the Ukrainian military is conducting a genocide of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people. And And that is because Russia has handed out Russian passports to several hundred thousand people on these territories. And a vast majority of the people in eastern Ukraine speak Russian as their first language. Ukraine is a bilingual country, at least. And we should make clear that that is not happening.

No, correct. And that's what I was the point to say. Yeah, you know, this is this is not happening. Like these are, these are false flag operations. This is disinformation and all of it is being done. in order to try to create a pretext for a potential Russian invasion, a new Russian invasion. You know, they are creating these videos that several journalists and open source investigators over the last 24 hours have found to be made well in advance.

The videos are being posted, you know, and meant to show events in real time. In reality, they were filmed at least two days ago, which certainly suggests that this is some kind of disinformation campaign. And it's all being waged to justify a potential attack and to lay the groundwork for Russia to say, well, now we need to go in. We need to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, which is something that Putin has said for years. You'll remember, I mean, back in 2008, 10, 12, 11. That was a Crimea pretext, yeah. Right, exactly, exactly. It's no matter where Russian speakers are in the world, we are the protector of Russian

speakers. And so, you know, we will go anywhere they need protection and do whatever needs to be done. And so that's the kind of pretext that they're creating in order to be able to say this. And we don't know if Putin has made that decision yet. But, you know, all of these reports are piling up now. and it may just be a matter of time before we sort of get to that threshold where, okay, now it's time to take that decision. And I mean, it's hard to say what is the what here because it could be, and we'll get

into kind of a couple scenarios, it could be kind of a much larger scale assault on Ukraine taking out and disabling its, you know, everything from its air defenses to its, you know, energy grid. But if it's there, if it's concentrated there, it's, seems like the mobilization of what you were describing earlier, those attack helicopters, the use of air power, basically the use of the kind of weaponry and units that have not been a part of the fighting to date, that would be the sign that this is tipped over, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of ways that this can go. And we can get

into that if you like. You know, I mean, certainly the war in Donboss is where there can very well be an intensification at first. Yeah. And, you know, setting things off there. We're in an all very heavily militarized and fortified area would be a very easy way to just, you know, turn the heat and get things started. But where people are really looking and what they're really worried about is what's happening at Ukraine's northern border and to the south where Russia has not only its troops on Crimea, but also in the Black Sea and naval forces in the Sea of Basel, too. Well, I wanted to ask you one question before getting to that potentially bigger scenario, which is, I think everybody, including President Biden yesterday, has been focused on the scenario

where Russia makes a play for Kiev and essentially is really trying to kind of conquer a chunk of Ukraine, overthrow the government and kind of control things entirely. There's always been, like, a potential for a more eastern Ukraine-focused scenario, you know, for instance, taking those to regions and kind of formally recognizing their independence or even annexing them or moving in more Russian forces to kind of connect geographically Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula, to the parts of the Donbos that Russia is already in. Or even, you know, by the way, if they really want to, you know, make a play for the, you know, not that it has huge economic benefit, but if they really want to cement this kind of idea of ethnic Russian and Russian majority speaking territories

being Russian, the city where you're in, Karheav, which is a big city, but it's a predominantly, I think, Russian-speaking city. What do you, as someone who's covered that war for so long, what do you see as that, that, the eastern focus scenario? If, if Putin ends up not going all the way into Kiev, but wants to kind of solidify his position, what are the types of scenarios that you you watch over there? Sure. You know, there's what many people would be, what would consider the sort of like low hanging fruit of these options. And that is just to really turn up the dial in eastern Ukraine where there already is a war in these regions of Danyask and Lugansk and extend the territory there that is controlled to the full border, to the full

region of Donetsk and Lugansk. Right now, if you think of Donetsk and Lugansk, they're called oblasts. If you think of them as states, right, about half of Donetsk and Lugansk states are occupied by Russia-controlled entities and the rest are under Ukrainian-controlled entities. And in the Russian understanding and in the understanding of the Russia-led separatist groups, all of Donetska and Lugansk regions are in their eyes meant to be a part of their territory. So there are people who believe that trying to push through the Ukrainian lines and take over the rest of those two regions are a possibility. Now, to do just that, I find that it would be much more of a headache for Russia to focus

really on those. plus you're not getting that much out of it in the end. Yeah. You know, this is the most militarized, heavily fortified part of Ukraine. You know, Ukrainian forces there greatly outnumber any other position and location in the rest of the country. And there's not a whole lot left in Donyask and Nogansk Oblasts that would really be worth taking. The main, like, key focus in Danyask would be far, far, far to the southeast in the city of Meriupil, which is this really important port city for Ukraine that would allow Russia to then push a little further west toward Crimea,

and it's Crimean forces to push east in order to create this land bridge. So if that is the goal, then we will see a lot of action in the south. I think the goal then would not be to take over necessarily all of Danyask and Luggan. Mosque regions to the north, but to make a very serious push south, swinging west, toward Crimea to create that land bridge. You know, it's, if you look at where the forces are amassed, and they are everywhere, you know, around Ukraine, just about, but the other place is, you know, north and northeast of where I am in Harkiv, and that could also play a role in this eastern scenario.

And so, you know, Harkiv is a city of a million plus people. It's known as Ukraine's second city. That's because it is, it used to be a Ukrainian capital, many, many, many, many, you know, years ago back. But it's also heavily industrialized. They have a tank factory here. They've got other heavy industries. And there are, there's a large population of Russian speakers. That's true.

But, you know, there are a lot of people who, have family just across the border. You know, like I said, at the top of this, we're only 20 miles from the border here. And before the war began, people could very easily just come and go. You could go see your brother or your friend, you know, just for an afternoon and come right back.

It would be, it's, you know, it's easier than going from D.C. to Philadelphia, right? And, you know, that's now not the case. And, you know, the sort of relationship that people here had with Russia is that doesn't before the war doesn't really exist but there are still many people here more in many other regions that are sympathetic to to Russia or um not convinced that Kiev has their best interest at heart and you know this could be a place where Russia believes they'll find fertile ground in fomenting um you know unrest and um attacking and and trying to occupy

Harkiv. You know, I think they're wrong in that assessment, but they would, you know, they're not necessarily getting objective intelligence or information, you know. And so this is one area that people in the Ukrainian presidential administration and the military, and certainly people on the ground here are very worried about being one of the first targets. You know, it's, it's, it's also not heavily fortified at the borders. You know, again, Doniskin, Lugan Skoblast, trenches, bunkers, I mean, major military bases and installations down there. And if Ukraine wants to wheel them out or needs to wheel them out, a lot of artillery,

tanks, armor, that sort of thing. There's a presence of that here, but it's not going to be as much. Plus, you've got, you know, a border, an actual international border with Russia, that is just not heavily fortified. The border guards there have dug. tank trenches, but even, you know, in my interviews with them, they say, these are really only meant to slow things down to give us some extra time to, you know, call in help or, you know, notify whoever we need to notify that things are now starting to stream over the border.

You know, so I think that the Eastern scenario is, is, if you're looking just at Donetsk and Lugansk, I think there's not a lot in it for Russia if they just try to take those oblasts. If they want, if the goal is to create that land bridge to make things easier for, you know, the, the residents of Crimea and for Russia to, to have, you know, better transport there, to help funnel water there and for other various strategic reasons. And I think, you know, that that point in the South is going to be key. They could also, you know, attack up here in Harciv just because of, you know, those many reasons that I said. also to spread the military thing, right? Yeah. That's the other thing that's being discussed. And this is if it happens, the Ukrainian military. Right.

Yeah. If it happens, one strategy could be to attack in multiple places in order to spread Ukraine's military thin and force it to respond in the north, in the east, in the south, which would also give Russia an advantage to. I wanted to ask you as someone who's kind of been there for, you know, really since, you know, off and on, but for the bulk of the time since this all started in 2014, you know, we've got people at the Munich Security Conference, including President Zelensky, you know, making speeches. You've got Vladimir Putin at, you know, very large tables with, you know,

Lukashenko and, you know, you've got all this geopolitical intrigue. But these are the people live there, you know, in eastern Ukraine. What do they think about this? Like, are they, are they sick of it? Are they, and I know you can't really generalize, but like, is the sense of like pride in that we are standing up for something here in East Ukraine? Is there a sense of some of the population is sympathetic to Russia and doesn't understand why Ukraine won't just say we won't join NATO? Or do they just not think about that because they're thinking about their daily lives and just hope that the things don't get more violent? I mean, how would you describe the interactions with the people that are so absent from the kind of conversation?

about their future and all these, you know, high castles out there. It's going to differ quite a bit, depending on where you are in the country. Yeah. If you are, we can start in the war zone, for example, where I just was yesterday, and I've spent a significant amount of time since the war began. You know, people in eastern Ukraine are tired of the conflict. They want peace. And if, you know, I would say a majority of people you speak to on the ground will say they

want peace on any terms. They've been living with war for eight. years and that doesn't mean the, you know, the occasional shell falling nearby. Like, it is a militarized area. There is no local civilian government. It is a military government. They have to cross checkpoints every single day to go to the grocery store, to go to medical appointments, school buses, like the one that I saw yesterday, that was near this place where a shell had exploded and shrapnel sprayed this woman in her abdomen and her hand, have to travel through checkpoints and through a street that is known as sniper's alley.

There was a school bus with like 20 some odd children, and I found that really jarring. I was pulling out of the city shortly after an artillery bombardment, and there's this bus full of kids driving by. And you speak to the parents, and I spoke with this woman. whose third grade daughter goes to this school. And she started crying, became very emotional in talking about, you know, the threat of a larger war happening again. You know, she described, you know, 2014 and 15 as hell, you know, and just being exhausted. And, you know, I put the question to her, like, are you even able to, like, think about the future, to plan for anything?

And, you know, she says, you know, on good days, I'm paraphrasing, you know, on good days, I think about the future. I think about, you know, what my daughter could do and what she could be and where we could go if war ended. But there's no sign of the end of this war. Instead, you know, we're talking about the possibility of it escalating and becoming much, much worse. Like, the best option here seems to be almost the status quo for a lot of people, right? this slow war of attrition that escalates from time to time and then ebbs and is quiet for a couple of years. So that's, that's, you know, what people in the East think. If you are in Kiev, you know, the war can feel like it's really far away. You know, it's a few hundred miles from the

war zone. It feels, you know, oftentimes like any other European city, everybody's going to the Philharmonic. You're going to the opera. People go to cafes, clubs. There's discos that go all night and raves that are some of the best in Europe. And they go on regardless of what the situation is like on the front line. I could list for you dozens of really fantastic restaurants that would be better than a lot of the places that you would go in Berlin or Paris either. And these days, it's getting a little bit more tense. Like people are going to firearms train. And you They're learning first aid. They're learning self-defense.

They're packing go-bags so they can leave at a moment's notice. At the same time, they're calm. They're not panicking. And, you know, they are worried about what may or may not happen. But they want peace on Ukraine's terms. They don't want peace at any cost. They really do not want the West to push it into some kind of agreement with Russia. That would mean very serious concessions.

That would mean pro-Russian politicians controlling the country or the territories of Donetsky and Luganski in the east having some sort of veto power over what happens in the country's parliament. And, you know, so they are ready to fight and resist. And I'm not talking solely about the military, but civilian people who are forming these territorial defense brigades, which are essentially just unofficial militias, even though there are. There's now some control over them through city administrations. But, you know, their mood and views on this are a little bit, are a little bit different. And then the further west you go, the more like staunchly European you get. Like, LeViv is this place where many people believe is safe haven and will go largely untouched if there is a large-scale Russian offensive. and it's, you know, right there.

That's where the U.S. embassies moved in Hungary. Correct. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the U.S. embassies, the small core team is now based there. Same with the U.K., several other Western embassies. There are some international companies that have moved over there. And there are some Ukrainians who are packing up and leaving the east or the northeast where I am or even in Kiev and moving west to just temporarily relocate for a little while. And they are, I would say, even, you know, anti-Russian, certainly anti-Puton, very patriotic, nationalistic in their viewpoints.

And, you know, they certainly want peace solely on Ukraine's terms. You know, they are worried about what might happen, but they also feel as though they're very far away from the war. And I was just over there. And, you know, there really was quite a difference, even from Kiev. in Western Ukraine. That's changed in the last couple of weeks just with the embassies, the Western embassies and U.S. Embassy in particular relocating people over there. And they're now talking about, you know, evacuation points and exits to the European Union. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of a perspective. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a swing east to west. You know, there is a scale.

And, you know, Ukraine is a really complex and much more diverse country than I think people give it credit for. And, you know, there is no real easy way to sort of generalize things here. So the last question for you is, you know, you clearly have like an investment in this place. You spend a bunch of time there. You clearly must know a lot of people there. What are your emotions like at this point? And what are your plans, you know, if things do escalate. I mean, put this in a context for someone who may not know much about Ukraine. Like, why have you felt so attached to this place and what's it like having felt that attachment to be in the moment that you're in? Yeah. I mean, I'm certainly, you know, really invested in the story.

I've been in Ukraine since March 2010. And, you know, I've made my career here. I've made a lot of friends here. I would really like to see this story out. And that could be, you know, a year down the road or many years down the road. I am so invested that I do hope at some point I will see some kind of resolution to the conflict. You know, I try to really focus on my work. Yeah. That's not to be, you know, at the same time, like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, stoic. You know, in the face of this, you know, it does, it does affect me. And there are days where, you know, I, I feel it a lot more. And, you know, I have to take a few deep breaths and, and just remember to sort of like, you know, consider where I am and the situation that I'm in. I'm also,

I'm also not alone here. I have a small team, you know, that includes a fixer and a driver and a photographer and I have to think about their safety. And so even if I might want to rush to, you know, someplace east or north to cover something, I have to consider, you know, the other people with me and what kind of danger and risk that poses to them. Something that's, that's gotten to me a little bit more in the last couple of weeks is a lot of my Ukrainian friends reaching out to me for answers. What do you know that we don't know?

What is going to happen? where is it going to happen? How can we prepare ourselves? You know, for the most of the last few months, Ukrainians have been very calm. They haven't panicked. And if you speak to them about, you know, the latest Russian threat and the Russian buildup, especially in the context of Washington's messages and Western news coverage, they would kind of, you know, toss their head back, scoff maybe, and say, look, we've been living with war for a long time. We know how to deal. deal with this, like just let us do our thing. But something shifted in the last week, maybe a little more. And they're really starting to, I think, to grasp the severity of this situation. Or, I mean,

most of them knew that this is serious. But I think, I think this, you know, maybe feeling as though we're edging much closer to something and the chances of happening rising. They're getting nervous. They're calling me. They're writing me and asking, you know, what should we do? with like any advice. And it's been tough to say, I really don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. And I don't know what you should do. I think you need to think about what's best for you.

And what is best for me is going to be very different than what is best for you because I'm not trying to leave. I'm not planning an evacuation unless things get so very bad that I absolutely need to find a way out. you know my my role in this is to stay here to observe to report and um you know to stay alive and all of that and and and you know i'm not i'm not a ukraine i'm not a civilian i don't have roots here and you know i i i tried to make that as clear as i as i can to my friends and and and um provide them at least with the information that i can uh you know but ultimately it's up to them And I think that's been one of the hardest things in the last couple of weeks that I've had to deal with.

I bet. I bet. Well, look, we appreciate you giving us your perspective and, you know, stay, stay, safe and well out there as you can. And, you know, maybe we'll keep in touch here. Yeah, let's do it. Thanks for having me. Thank you to Christopher Miller for giving us that perspective. You can follow him, not just at BuzzFeed, but he's a good Twitter follower at Christopher J.M. Thank you for tuning in here. We'll be back at our regular. scheduled a program with, I'm sure, a lot more to talk about in a couple of days. See ya. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford,

who film and share our episodes as videos each week.