Pod Save the World - How Russia could lose the war

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Tommy and Ben talk about reports about Russian intelligence and misinformation operations abroad, Biden on Taiwan, El Salvador and US policy towards Central America, the Queen’s funeral, Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Armenia, protests in Iran, how the EU might punish Hungary, the Saudi golf tour hires a lobbyist, and the scandal rocking the international chess world. Then Ben interviews Kyiv Independent defense reporter Illia Ponomarenko about why Russia is losing their grip and Ukraine's pathway to success. 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. 

The first vote by mail ballots are hitting people's mailboxes in the earliest in-person early voting starts this week. Do you know how you're voting? If your answer is, it's September, I haven't thought about it. I don't have a Halloween costume yet. This is the week to get your shit together, at least on the voting part. Maybe the costume, too. Voter suppression efforts have ramped up following the 2020 election, making it even more critical to ensure that every American has access to the ballot box. At Votesave America, you can find the most up-to-date information on what you need to make sure your vote is counted in all 50 states, and D.C.

use your ballot ready tool to request your ballot, find out how you can return it or get a reminder for when in person early voting locations to become available in your state. To win in November, it's going to take every single one of us making our plan to vote, getting involved in reminding everyone we know to do the same. Once you've made your plan to vote, visit voteesaveamerica.com slash every last vote to find out what you can do next, including donating to the Every Last Vote Fund to directly support the work of community organizations, organizers, and volunteers and states that are actively working to battle, disenfranchisement, communities of color, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and more. Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Remember last week when I said we should not talk about the NFL season O. Can talk about the Jets if you'd like.

Look at us, man. The story comeback. This podcast is 2-0 in week two. I take it all back. Yeah. I take it all back, Ben. It's enjoy it while we have it. It's not going to last.

Again, sorry, Mike O'Neill. Yes. His Brown's got Trump. I'm not sorry. I mean, if you signed Deshawn Watson, I'm not saying Mike O'Neill supported that sign. He's the GM. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, by association. It's the Flacco era. Not your fault, Mike. It's the Joe Flaccoa era. Ben, we got a great show for Michael O'Neill and all the other listeners today. We're going to talk about Russian intelligence and information operations, President Biden and Taiwan, El Salvador, U.S. policy towards Central and South America. The Queen's funeral. Speaker Pelosi visits Armenia.

Protest in Iran, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, and the scandal rocking the international chess world. And then, Ben, you did today's interview. What are folks going to learn? So I talked to Ilya Panamarenko, who's a defense reporter for the Kiev Independent. You guys may have seen him. He's kind of omnipresent on Ukraine Twitter. Oh, yeah. You know, reports from the front lines.

Great reporter. We talked about, you know, what has been the impact of Ukraine's offensive. How does that actually change things on the battlefield? What kinds of weapons Ukraine needs, which I thought was really interesting discussion because it wasn't exactly what you think. and also kind of what is success for Ukraine? Where are they trying to get to on what timeline? So I think he gave a really good nuanced answer on,

you know, people hear Ukraine talk about taking back every inch of territory. They know they're not going to do that. But he talked about how do you basically destroy Russia's capacity to wage war in Ukraine and how do you look for markers of success on the way to that? So I thought it was maybe the best answer I've heard yet on what military kind of victory looks like for you. That is super interesting. And so for listeners, you're going to hear the Ukraine War News all in the interview, and we'll do other things at the top today. But also, Ben, before we get to the news, we have our own YouTube channel, apparently.

We do. You're about to be a star. You're about to be a star. YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. We're coming for Dan Pfeiffer because full episodes of the show are going to post on Wednesday, and then shareable clips will post throughout the week. So please smash the subscribe button. Smash the button, share those clips, you know. I'll subscribe.

Educate your friends. Also, the election is creeping ever closer. If you do not have a plan to vote yet, please visit Votesaveamerica.com slash every last vote to make a plan and tell your friends to the same. You can also donate if you want to the Every Last Vote Fund. That helps organizers in key states who are out there fighting the good fight and doing good work. So we're going to talk about the war later in your interview. But I did want to start by talking about Russia because there were a couple of very interesting stories about Russian intelligence operations that ran in the news last week. The first was based off of, not surprisingly, a U.S. intelligence community report, which found that since 2014, Russia has secretly funneled at least $300 million to foreign political parties and candidates in more than two dozen countries.

The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Russia's goal is to weaken democratic systems and promote politicians and parties aligned with their interests. No surprise there. Countries where this has happened include Albania, Montenegro, Madagascar, possibly Ecuador. the tactics can be as brazen as handing cash to a candidate or more subtle like sponsoring think tanks. The report didn't get into Russian activities in the U.S. because, as you recall, that's been covered, I think, elsewhere. But the State Department did directly notify 100 U.S. embassies in foreign countries and suggest ways to push back. And they also said this is just the tip of the iceberg, they think, in terms of the spending. So then we knew about a lot of what was in this report anecdotally through press reporting over time.

But I did think it was powerful to see all these Russian foreign activities kind of bundled up and give in a price tag. Curious how impactful or helpful you think this report was and the guidance from the State Department for countries where Russia is kind of mucking around in their politics. And like, do you think this was news to a lot of them? I think that Russia for some time has kind of blown through any guardrails around how it throws money and intimidation and disinformation around to impact other. country's politics. There was another great certain of the times recently, too, about Russian trolls basically really fueling the divisions in the women's march. I want to do that one second.

Okay, yeah. That was amazing. Chilling, right? And I make that point because I do think warning like this and providing information like this can matter in certain places, right? So in like Europe, there's clearly antenna up for this. You know, like European countries, including some more recent democracies, right, in the Balkans, and other places, I think being specific and describing the influence campaigns and leaving

breadcrumbs for investigators or the public or the media to follow up on this can be helpful there because people kind of want to resist this dynamic to some extent. I think that the same is probably true in parts of Latin America where Russia may be showing up and trying to distort politics. That said, though, when you get to out and out corruption, whether it's a far right political movement in Europe or whether it's, you know, we've seen reports of Wagner group guys in Africa and Madagascar and the Congo. Well, you know what? Like bags of cash are going to speak louder than American intelligence reports in those places, right? So like it's useful, it creates antibodies. It gives people some tools and information to resist this, but only if they

want to resist it. And the rest of it, I think we have to understand as part of the landscape geopolitically of Russia trying to throw its weight around. I think part of what is. notable about Russia being somewhat isolated in Uzbekistan at this, you know, meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council, which is kind of a Beijing created. Great meeting. Great meeting. Good swag bags to the conference. You know, I don't overstate it, but Putin got a little shade thrown out and by, you know,

the G, Putin acknowledged his concerns. Modi said now it's not time for war, but not just that. The Central Asian leaders were a little bit less kind of, you know, sycophantic to Putin as they might have been. So it does feel like as Russia loses some of that luster as a bully that's been punched, back now, they can still do this kind of influence stuff, but it might not carry the same weight. Yeah, so you mentioned this story about Russia and the Women's March. This information came from a nonprofit called the Advanced Democracy Inc. They did an analysis of these Russian troll factory tweets, and they shared it with the New York Times. Here's what they found, or some of what they

found. Over the course of 18 months, 152 Russian accounts sent 2,642 tweets about Linda Sarsour, who's one of the original founders of the Women's March. Those, Those tweets were part of a broader effort to amplify any controversies about the group, its founders, to exacerbate divisions within the broader movement, especially racial divides, and then to attack feminism generally, basically. These Russian trolls, they posed as black women critiquing white feminists. They started a hashtag to rename the women's march and, like, suggested degrading titles, like Lonely Cat Lady March, that's a quote.

But what seemed to have found the biggest audience were effort to call Linda Sarsour things like, quote, pro-ISIS anti-USA Jew-hating Muslim, end quote. That's because right-wing figures in America giddily retweeted this stuff and just sort of spread Russia's propaganda into their bidding. So, you know, stepping back a minute, I mean, it's hard, again, as we felt in 2016, to measure the net effect of what Russia did. They didn't create these broader social divisions in the country or in the women's march, even.

They just exploited them and poured gas on them. But it's quite clear that these activities drastically increased the most of the of abuse targeted at Linda Sarsour and made her life hell. Twitter eventually suspended 3,841 Russian accounts in the summer of 2018. But while they existed, these trolls cranked out content like Black Lives Matter. They focused on Colin Kaepernick, players kneeling, the Mueller probe. So again, it adds to our understanding, I think, of something that we knew was happening. But I think, again, the scope of the activity and the degree to which the Russians built on the election interference in 2016 and moved into this broader cultural space was pretty

eye-opening for me. Yeah, I think we know the broad outlines of the story, but it's really useful to look at these details because they confirm and build on a few things. The first is, as you said, Russia doesn't invent these narratives. They're pretty good at looking at where the far-right media is going in the U.S. and they just come in with a thing of gasoline poured around and light a bunch of matches. Because frankly, that's propaganda. They know well because they share those views, Right. I love it. So mocking the women's march and creating divisions and painting a Muslim woman as a terrorist,

you know, that's pretty easy for the Russians to do. I wouldn't minimize the importance of it, though, because the thing that jumps on the article is the scale of this was pretty profound, you know, like things that might have been like minor controversies that passed on social media or that had one or two right-wing articles became months-long crises in the women's march, you know. and this was a big reason why, you know. And so I think we make a mistake sometimes after the kind of collective conventional wisdom and parts of Washington was that the Mueller stuff was overcranked, which I don't

think has ever really been in the case. But sometimes we minimize just how much this Russian social media type campaign matters. I mean, I remember feeling, Tommy, like I look at my own mentions, which were not nearly as bad as this, but back when I was really in the eye of the fire in like 2017 and 18 when I was being accused of being in the deep state and running conspiracy theories. You know, you'd see a bunch of stuff in your mentions that the English isn't exactly right. For sure. The person has like 15 followers, but it still creates a volume.

The only other thing I'd add. Tweeting on Moscow time exclusively. Yeah, tweeting overnight. Real subtle. Yeah. The last thing, though, is it also kind of, it's a tell that they went after the women's march like this. Like, why? You know, are they trying to help Trump?

and this is a Trump opponent? Are they just trying to radicalize kind of the right-wing male toxicity that they like? I mean... Just shut down a progressive social movement and try to strip it into pieces. But that's interesting. Why are they threatened by the Women's March? I think that that is, you know, it's not as obvious as why would they want to elect Donald Trump. And I think it speaks to there wanting to not only create societal divisions, but to really

specifically create societal divisions that fracture the left and more. mobilized the far right. Also, I mean, I remember talking to Jake Sullivan about this when he was on the Clinton campaign in 2016 before he was the national security advisor. I mean, initially, if you were to blame Russia or Russian disinformation, you were essentially accused of wearing a tinfoil hat. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I think this kind of nonpartisan academic research is very valuable. Yeah. To push back on that. Ben, switching gears to the current president. So President Biden did a sit down with 60 minutes recently. There were a bunch of headlines that on out of this interview. Very few of them were helpful. Six minutes is always good like that.

It's tough, man. You talk to Scott Pelley or whatever for like 48 hours and, you know, there's a lot of they can choose. But there's stuff about the pandemic, whether he'll run for re-election. But this exchange between Biden and Scott Pelly caught our eye. Here's a clip. Would U.S. forces defend the island? Yes. If, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack. After our interview, a White House official told us U.S. policy has not changed. officially the U.S. will not say whether American forces would defend Taiwan. But the commander-in-chief had a view of his own. So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces, U.S. men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Yes. So, Ben, this is, I think, literally the fourth time. Biden has leaned way further and said that the United States would go to war directly with China over Taiwan. and then the White House walks it back. What the hell do you think is going on here? Well, first of all, Scott Pelley has like the best announcer voice. Yeah. I just have to say surrepe, bass tones.

But anyway, on Biden, I've been like deeply immersed in Taiwan. And, you know, as I mentioned, you guys, I have a kind of writing project. So I'm going to share my, like, views and opinions about where to go a bit. But I will say this about what I think is going on. First of all, why does it matter? just to again get the background, right? So when the U.S. recognized the People's Republic of China as we essentially flipped diplomatic recognition from Taiwan, the Republic of China, the People's Republic of China, we left this ambiguous as to whether or not we would defend Taiwan if China invaded and sought to compel it to join China.

And we have the Taiwan Relations Act, which was passed in 1979. Joe Biden voted for it. And what that says is it commits the United States to provide Taiwan with arms sufficient to defend itself. So it's kind of murky. We'll arm them and we want them to be able to defend themselves, but we don't come out and say that we'll defend them ourselves. Entirety of the policy is ambiguous. Strategic ambiguity and what it means, what you need to defend yourself. So like literally, exactly, the name of the policy is strategic ambiguity because you want China to think we might come to Taiwan's defense. But you don't want to maybe trigger the Chinese to do something because we've made that statement or, you know, you don't want to trigger Taiwan declaring independence.

That's the theory behind strategic ambiguity. And what's interesting here, though, is that you have a trend. You said this four times. And so it's not like Biden said this once. And they came out and said, no, the policy hasn't changed. This has happened four times. So clearly Biden either believes this, and that's certainly his right as president to believe it. Or it's kind of like he's at the hawkish end of strategic ambiguity.

Like it may be, I'm beginning to think maybe they want, you know, hey. Nothing's changed, but something has changed. Biden keeps reaffirming this. You know what I'm saying? It's like. It's certainly confusing. Well, yeah, I mean, all I can think is they must prepare these, right? I mean, so he must know what he's doing.

He knows this is coming up. If he'd only done this once or twice. So to me, it's turning the dial on this. But I think watch this space. It's one of the reasons why I'm writing about it because Congress has a bill called the Taiwan Policy Act that aims to significantly ramp up the amount of military systems we provide to Taiwan that addresses some of the kind of symbolic issues around Taiwan's status and representation. You have these comments from Biden getting attention, obviously. And you have the Chinese, you know, particularly in the back end of the policy. is undertaking all these threats.

I mean, Taiwan is going to be a central focus for American farm policy in the world, really, in the next few years. And I think this is this question of whether these statements are actually a formal policy change or not, are those questions going to have to be answered beyond just clarifications from spokespeople after interviews. Yeah. So weird. I mean, imagine the fourth time you call the walk-eback.

I mean, he must just not want to, I mean, he must believe it, right? It's just like, well, you guys can do what you need to do after this is over. I'm going to say what I'm going to say, which is, I believe we should defend Taiwan, which is a perfectly legitimate thing. It's just a question of, I do think they'll need to be specific at some point about what is that, not what does that mean in practice, but like, are they really not changing policy. Yeah, I wonder what the calls are like from, you know, allies in the region or the Taiwanese or whatever. Japan's a good example because Japan hosts, you know, not Okinawa, a lot of the forces that might be called upon to join a Taiwan contingency. So this is not just a U.S.-Taiwan China issue, you know. And I think Japan's been leaning further into saying they would defend Taiwan in their own sort of strategic policy directors. In some of their policy directions, but then they get a little, you know, uncomfortable with tensions ratcheting up at times. So there's a lot to be watched here.

Agreed. The other policy that I think all. all of us are watching closely is the Biden administration policy towards central in South America, in particular the impact of immigration. And I wanted to talk about El Salvador for a minute for a couple of reasons. First, there was a fantastic profile of Naïbu Cayley, the president of El Salvador by Jonathan Blitzer and the New Yorker. It's worth reading if you have the time. If you don't, here's a couple quick highlights.

So folks, no, I mean, El Salvador is getting more, not less authoritarian. The National Assembly recently passed a law that criminalizes news reports, like reporting on gang violence. So journalists can get up to 10 years in jail if they reproduce or transmit information that might have come from gang sources or could panic the public, whatever that means. Sounds like something Putin would do. It is seemingly an effort to prevent reporting on secret deals that get cut over time between the government and gangs. Every administration has done it to try to ratchet down the murder rate. Several journalists have had to lead the country after being attacked by Buckele or his staff. Buckele also was like an early adopter of Bitcoin. He's a big Bitcoin guy, changed his

fucking profile of the laser eye thing. That has gotten him a lot of rich friends in the U.S. and invited to, you know, tech conferences in Miami. But it's worth noting that El Salvador's embrace of Bitcoin has not helped their citizens much. 86% of businesses have never conducted a Bitcoin transaction. And Buckele has repeatedly used state funds to buy Bitcoin. Those holdings are now worth half of what he paid for them because the price has dropped. So, The two points I want to just make is, one, if you really believe in Bitcoin, that's cool. Like, good for you, more power to you. Like, keep working on this stuff.

But you should absolutely not bet on this guy. He's bad news. He's an authoritarian. Two, what I think the broader public needs to understand is that he's an incredibly popular authoritarian. He's the most popular leader in Latin America because Buckely makes this show of brutally cracking down on gang violence. And it's what people want because it's such a dangerous place to live.

And that means, you know, there's a lot of collateral damage, innocent people getting arrested, innocent people getting killed. But Ben, I mean, you flagged this broader trend about how authoritarianism and this approach to governing is really growing in their region. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because my takeaway is we focused on Bikila a bit on the podcast. And he's just as autocratic and, you know, Bitcoin Broi as we've said. but I think you put your finger on the important point that he's quite popular, but he's also, there's a methodical transitioning of that country into an autocracy. Bitcoin is just kind of a bit of a side to that.

He's changing the law so he can run for another term in office. He's rounded up tens and tens of thousands of people. He's silencing the media. So this is happening. And, you know, early in the Biden administration, their line that Kamala Harris was put in the lead for, not the easy assignment to give someone was essentially the way to stem migration to our border is to fight corruption and improve governance in Central America, which is undoubtedly correct. I think that would undoubtedly help slow migration. I think what we're seeing, though,

is that the trend lines, and this is not really the fault of the Biden administration, it's what's happening. The trend lines in Central America are really moving in a rapid deteriorating autocratic direction. So you've got Buckele and El Salvador basically turning this country in a bit of a cult of personality where he doesn't really want to listen to the U.S. and he's sidelining critics. Yeah, and like shit posting and tweeting back at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S. if they criticize him and stuff. Like, that's his approach. To great effect, by the way, saying like, you're not, you know, you're not the empire anymore. Get the hell out of here. You've got Danny Ortega's turned Nicaragua into like a full-on autocratic one-party state.

the Guatemalan, who is supposed to be like the person we could work with, the Guatemalan president, is basically in the process of like rounding up and arresting the very people that we would want him, you know, to be working with. There's just not, there's no success story down there. And again, I do, I, this is not like the Kamala Harris's fault. This is just the direction that politics have been going in these broken places. And it is leading to more migration to our border. And I think that part of what we had to recognize is the kind of strategy that the Biden team has been putting in place is like a 10-year strategy.

Like we can't expect to transform places in a year or two years. Ten-year investments in civil society and governance and any corruption strategies, couple with political approaches that seek to nudge things in more positive directions around things like elections and free media can pay dividend. But right now, we should be honest. Like this region is moving in the wrong direction at a pretty rapid pace when it comes to issues around democracy and the rule of law, which are a part of, you know, our border strategy. Yeah. And look, in no surprise, it's leading people to leave these countries. I mean, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 600,000 apprehensions of Guatemala and Honduran, Salvadoran and Nicaragua migrants in the first 10 months of the fiscal year. It's just a massive exodus.

And, you know, there's a Times report on sort of the broader U.S. approach to Central America that noted, like, well, the U.S. hasn't sanctioned these countries yet or issued any indictments through this anti-corruption task force. And, like, indictments fine, but, man, like, how are you going to sanction these places? Yeah. I don't agree with that, right? I see the concern, but, like, piling a bunch of sanctions on, like, El Salvador and Guatemala is not going to fix El Salvador in Guatemala.

I actually think we have to be finding some ways to talk to these countries to figure out who we can work with either in the government or outside the government to work with other countries, Mexico and, you know, Colombia and other countries in the region. But the idea that we're just going to, you know, do to them what we did at Cuban Venezuela, well, that hasn't worked. No, that's not going well. It's just not working. And it's being demagogued by right-wing authoritarians in the United States, like Ron DeSantis, sending. people to Martha's Vineyard. Yeah. So if there's what, yes, if there's something worth sanctioning because it's an egregious violation of

something by, you know, like money laundering or human rights violations by an individual, I'm not saying don't do that. But I'm saying having like a sanctioned strategy to fixing Central America, I don't think it's going to work. I think to get in there and engage and work on this and have realistic

expectations and rhetoric around what can be achieved here and deal with the border in a multifaceted way because bizarrely, Ron DeSantis, you know, people like that have the maximum incentive for things to be maximally fucked up in Central America because they want people like this coming to the border. Absolutely. So the DeSantis story has been dominating the news this past week.

The other story that has been dominating the news somehow, shockingly still, is Queen Elizabeth's Funeral. It's like roadblock cable. Then she had 2,000 guests at her funeral service. Can you imagine doing that seating chart? It's like the wedding from hell. It was packed with British and foreign royals, you know, like kings of God knows where, past and present politicians and heads of state.

I saw that Donald Trump used the occasion as an opportunity to flag that Biden had a shitty seat and said that it would never happen to him. Admittedly, that's kind of funny. Some Brits waited in line for, you know, an entire day to pay their respects. French president and Emmanuel Macron might have been there incognito. Was that a real story? Or is that just a guy who looked like Macron? Yeah, well, let's just say there's a lot of enthusiasm here for the Queen.

There was an Australian TV crew that didn't recognize the new British Prime Minister Liz Truss and said that she was, quote, maybe a minor royal. So that was funny for everybody. People were bored enough about their lives, I guess, that they got excited about a spider on the Queen's Casket. Ben, any final thoughts from you as hopefully we lay this entire story to rest? Well, we did get excited, like, Resistance Twitter did it about a fly on Mike Pence for like too many days. That's so embarrassing. Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. My two main takeaways, one petty and one, like, aiming for profundity.

The Liz trusting was notable. Like, she was not really like a, I don't know, a figure of note at this event. Like, you have to think that this happened, like, deep into Tony Blair's tenure or even, like, a solid mid-David Cameron. And, like, you would have at least kind of noticed the British Prime Minister. She kind of completely faded into the backup. as Boris didn't try to climb into the casket. He kind of tried to elbow his way in when they were coming into the abbey, I noticed, and he had to kind of be directed with the other former.

To the bar where he belongs? Yeah. But my main takeaway in reading all this stuff, and I even went back and listened to the Dan Snow conversation we had on the bonus episode, is a part of what was going on here is, like, the Brits' mourning Queen Elizabeth, but kind of mourning, and I really don't mean this to sound harsh, but like their own demise is an empire. Yeah, like she was the last vestige of their status, right?

So that you go from being like 100 years ago, you're the absolute most powerful country in the world. You know, then you lose that and you lose a lot like your colonies and you lose kind of the juice in the world stage and suddenly you're showing up the meetings and people are less interesting from what you have to say. And then you're like in the European Union and you're resentful of that and then you leave that.

And Queen Elizabeth threw it all. was this last person who was the most famous person in the world and she represented all this old glory. And it's not like it's coming back. Like even if you're like a huge stand for Charles, like I just don't think that's happening. If you are, you should question some things first of all. So I feel like they were kind of collectively mourning like the dusk of empire. And I think that's fair. And as Americans here are probably at the beginning of that process. Like there may be some event in our lifetime that it won't quite play the same role. But I know there's a great scene in a John LaCari book, the Honorable Schoolboy,

where the main character of the Brit is in an American base in Thailand the day that Vietnam falls, South Vietnam Falls. And the American asks if he can join the club of washed up empires. It's a pretty hilarious scene. But anyway, like, I don't know, there's a bit of that going on. Uh, we'll always have Love Island. Did you see that there was a report that the queen liked to play Wii bowling and had a gold-plated Wii? I didn't see that.

You're deeper in the content. I'm just cataloging all the dumb things. I also saw that Prince William inherited a village called Poundberry and since become the biggest private landowner in Britain for some reason. Axios reported this out, uh, I assume because it was funny. There was way too much corgi content too. And I say that as a dog lover, you know. That's a corgi stand. Okay, let's take a quick break when we come back, more show.

Okay, we talked briefly last week about how fighting had again flared up between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Many experts believe that Azerbaijan attacked Armenian forces near the disputed Nukorno-Karabakh region because Russia usually keeps the peace there. And Azerbaijan assumed the Russians were too distracted with the war in Ukraine to step in. The good news is that a ceasefire has at least temporarily stopped the fighting, although that came after several hundred soldiers were killed. But then over the weekend then, Speaker Pelosi visited Armenia with a congressional delegation and delivered remarks where she blamed Azerbaijan for initiating the attacks. I assume she's right. Pelosi's visit was planned before this latest fighting started. But she is the highest ranking official, U.S. official, to visit Armenia since its independence in 1991. I'm just curious what you make of Pelosi's kind of recent High Wire Act diplomatic activities, right? Like Taiwan, Armenia. She's not going to like, I don't know. the Bahamian embassy to hang out. No, she's got a bucket list.

I mean, look, you have to presume Nancy Pelosi thinks this could be her last few months in Congress. And these are issues she's worked on for a long time. Taiwan, we've talked about, but Armenia, like she has been a part, you know, of the California delegation and part of the effort to recognize formerly the Armenian Genocide, which they finally got done legislatively in this Congress. And yeah, she's going out, like, leaving it all in the field. like she's flying right in the eye of the storm and and the views she's expressing are not a surprise of kind of solidarity with Armenia again it's a very complicated circumstances geopolitically in some

respects because Russia's more the the support of Armenia then obviously Turkey of Azerbaijan but I'm glad that things calmed down it seemed like the U.S. you know was pretty intensively some quiet Tony made some calls some blanking in the state quite intense diplomacy happened there was an envoy for this Phil Rieker, who we worked with, who's a good dude. But this could blow again at any time. I'd keep an eye on this. For sure, for sure. So the UN General Assembly is happening this week.

The focus is on Ukraine, but I imagine a lot of Iran-related topics will also come up, so we want to turn there. There have been major protests across Iran this week, started on Monday, I think, in the response to the brutal, brutal murder of a young woman named Masa Amini while she was being held in police custody. Amini, I think she's 22, 24, it's very young. She'd been accused of breaking Iran's female dress code and was beaten by the so-called morality police. The law requires that women wear a headscarf over their hair and generally dress modestly.

They accused her of breaking these codes. It seems like they're full of shit. Yeah, it seemed like a bunch of fucking creepy. Total goons. But in response, we're seeing just massive protests in Iran, the biggest I think we've seen in years. and security forces, you know, per usual or firing live rounds in some places in response. This all comes, as I mentioned at the top, as Iranian president, Ibrahim Reisi, is traveling to New York for the UN General Assembly. There's news reports that the Supreme Leader of Iran might be having health problems.

There are, you know, widespread calls now in Iran then to shut down the morality police. This is all reminding me of 2009 when a young woman named NADA was shot by security forces at an anti-government protest or to demonstration. Obama at the time was pressed a comment. He was criticized loudly for not saying more. The concern that we had that Obama had in the White House was we didn't want to make what was an Iranian-led protest movement about Obama or about the U.S. I imagine Biden is in kind of a similar situation right now. Anything you think we learned from that 2009 experience that could apply today? Well, yeah, I mean, I think we got that wrong at the time. I well and I I rarely say this but it was something I didn't agree with at the time

as you remember Tom I I tended to get kind of stirred up by the passions by the passions but I I think I to I will say this and I say this not is not a negative comment about Joe Biden in any way shape or form it really is not like with Obama it always kind of was a bigger deal if he spoke out about something you know I just think globally like there was just a bit of a bigger megaphone. And some of the protesters were holding signs like Obama, where are you? Yeah, I remember that. And so I think it's less of a choice for Biden.

I think you've seen pretty forceful statements. I mean, here's the issue. This is a banner fucking week for the Iranians, right? You've got these absolute, you know, fascistic extremist creeps like, you know, beating this woman. you've got the president of Iran saying yes to research the Holocaust. Oh my God, I saw that for two seconds on the way. Whenever you get an Iranian talking about researching the Holocaust. He did 60 minutes too, right?

And you got that press on this. Just the worst kind of bullshit imaginable. And then this the Supreme Leader's health, like, which could spark a succession. You know, this is very complicated because on the one hand, yeah, people in Iran are absolutely fed up with this kind of morality police bullshit. Their lives are not getting better. There's clearly going to be pressure from within from like the middle class and younger generation. But at the same time, the scenario you're concerned about is this could lead to a place where Iran just goes all in on basically being a creepy autocracy that gets a nuclear weapon, you know, to be its insurance policy.

So I think if you're the Biden people, you want to speak out on anything. You want to a savage president. You're going to lay down markers on everything you see. You're going to call out human rights and Holocaust denial. And but you also want to kind of be very attuned to like where does this go? What direction does this tip if you start to see fractures in running society? Because what you don't want is the worst case outcome is like in two years, yeah, there have been protests and uprisings and the Supreme Leader's dead. But somehow on the back end of that, you've got the most revanchist, creepiest version of the regime with the nuclear weapon.

Which is hardens more, yeah. Staying in sort of the creep bucket, two updates out of Hungary, which listeners of the show know is governed by a right-wing authoritarian government led by Victor Orban. So last week, the Hungarian government decreed that women seeking abortion services will now be forced to listen to a fetal heartbeat before receiving them. This is very similar to bills passed in states like Georgia and Texas, by the way. I should note that it is whether or not what you hear when you get an ultrasound at like six weeks, whether that's an actual fetal heartbeat is very much in dispute. Some think it's just electrical activity produced by the embryo that sort of reads as a heartbeat sound through the machine. Just sort of worth noting that.

But the second update out of Hungary is that on Sunday, the European Commission proposed suspending billions of dollars in funding to Hungary over concerns about corruption. And last week, the European Parliament declared that Hungary had become, quote, a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy. So, Ben, I want to put these stories together because I don't think it's a coincidence that Hungary's passing. these super draconian abortion laws as it slides into autocracy. I think that's part of a pattern we're all seeing. But I'm curious what you think should happen next. Like is Hungary now finally on the glide path to getting punished or actually kicked out of the EU? Yeah, I think so.

And I think it's overdue. And we've been talking in some of these previous stories about like when do you put pressure, when you move to some form of sanction. And to be clear here, these aren't sanctions. These are like the EU makes these billions and billions and billions of euro payments over the years to Hungary because. as a poor member of the European Union, they get money for things like infrastructure projects that Orban has flagrantly used for his own, just siphoned off and rich as buddies, right?

And I think one of the rationales for not punishing him, for not withholding this money, imposing conditions has been, well, if we do that, you know, he might go all autocratic on us. Well, he has. You know, like, that train left the station a while ago. He brags about it. Yeah, exactly. So, like, I think they should be bringing the hammer down. You know, it's not not kicking them out of the U, though.

it is saying we're going to use the leverage we have as EU to to to essentially sanction your autocracy you can't get a spigot of EU money if you're using it to corruptly fund your authoritarian politics and you can't expect the European parliament and European institutions kind of look the other way and not call out behavior that is profoundly undemocratic and against the values of Europe yeah hopefully they will actually do something this time They've been talking about doing something since 2018. They've been talking about, yeah, they've been talking for a while. A few quick ones to close.

So quickly on Saudi Arabia, Ben, I don't know if you saw the Saudi-owned live golf tour hired a lobbying shop to work over members of Congress, hopefully not with the bone saw. It's a shop led by former Congressman Benjamin Quayle, former Vice President Dan Quill's son, as we've discussed previously, former Bush administration Fleck, Ari Fleischer, is now doing their PR, which we do have to thank the Saudis because that meant that Ari stopped doing his annual 9-11, like, tweet. Remember, it's all about meeting. Yeah, he shifted from remembering every minute of 9-11 to go and work for the Saudis. Yeah.

Whose money may have had something to do with it. That check clear. So the point is the Saudis are not hiring the best and brightest year. And I'm just curious how many knows you think you get from better firms before you end up hiring Dan Quail's son. I mean, that's just someone who screams out, like, I will work for anybody for any price, you know? And I think the Saudis kind of like having that. They also have this kind of weird royal family view of politics where they work with people's kids, right? So whether it's Jared Kushner or Ben Quayle, it's not a good good for Ben's.

I will say on this live tour thing I've been reading about this. And I have to say, like, I'm going to call out Phil Mickelson as a particularly annoying guy. Because he talks about what he's doing with the Saudis as like he's Mahatma Gandhi taking on the people. They hate the PG-Tor. The P-J tour probably does suck. They also hire their own lobbyists, by the way. Like him and a bunch of multi-million, if not billionaire golfers going to take big checks in the Saudis being framed as some kind of like social justice crusade.

It's a bit much for me. Greg Norman's going to D.C. also to advocate for the live tour. I will say what the Saudis always do is they reveal the worst of ourselves. It's like the Russians coming in behind the internet content. No, they see the corruption in American society and they just glom onto it. Right. So, again, to let them off the hook a little bit, like, we are very willing. participants in the Saudi corruption of our own culture and bolotons. Yeah, we're ready to take the

checks. I know I'm broken record on this, but I also just saw there's a report that the Times reported that right as the Russians were about to invade Ukraine, Saudi Arabia's kingdom holding company invested more than $600 million into three Russian energy companies. And then over the summer, the Saudis have doubled the amount of oil they were buying from the Russians. So no more fist bumps, is my point. And I want you to keep doing this because all those people who wrote those takes in like Politico magazine or in the op-ed pages before that Biden trip were like the smart real politic people you know you idyllogs over here you young crazy idealists who care about silly things like journalists getting chopped up you don't understand how the world

really works in the real world where us hardened op-ed writers reside and you know sit over a load you know we understand that you have to get into the room with the Saudis to deal with the oil crisis. Well, in fact, these people have done nothing but fuck us on the oil crisis, like from before, during and after the Biden visit. And like the real politic, the Saudis are laughing at your columns. Like, you people who are writing columns to be friendly to the Saudis, like, the Saudis are the ones laughing at you because you're such an easy mark. Do you think they got pitched by Ben Quayle to write those? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure that the foundation for the defense of democracy is probably like spilled a lot of ink on this on behalf of

Ben Quail, you know, earning that monstrous retainer. Incredible. Speaking of Russia, Ben, I know you're covering the hard news about Russia and Ukraine in the interview today, but there was one report I did want to flag for us, which was an article by Medusa News, which is an excellent Russian investigative news outlet, which said that President Putin is increasingly concerned about Kremlin officials and other elites drinking too much, boozing too hard. Putin reportedly demanded that officials put out healthy lifestyle propaganda and wants Russia to

build out exercised infrastructure. So big opportunity here for SoulCycle, I guess. Sources told Medusa that top ministers, they're dealing with stress from the war by hitting the bottle. Some are missing events. Some are slurring their speech in official settings. I wonder. Some are falling up balconies.

Yeah. Like, this is a weird one. I wonder if it, I mean, I believe they're reporting. But I wonder how real problem this is. Like if Putin tells you to chill with the drinking, I feel like you do. Yeah, except I think that I think it's true that when they started to try to pull back the vodka consumption late in the Soviet Union, it didn't go down to it. Oh, no. It was incredibly unpopular.

Exactly, right? So, like, telling a bunch of Russians that they can't drink vodka, like, has ended, like, regimes before in the past, you know? So I don't know. Like, one other way to look at it is that if Putin starts really trying to withhold the booze, it could erode some of that. support that he counts on from his inner circle. I don't know. I mean, Dmitri Medvedev, to me, there's no way, just look at a picture

of that guy every five years for the last 25 years. His face just looks like he drinks like Nick Cage levels of vodka and leaving Las Vegas, you know? Like, and it would account for the insane rants about like nuclear annihilation. It's true. So there are people like Medvedev that

jump out to me is like, I'd like to know their daily intake. And again, you know, we've mentioned the story before, but when we were both at the G8 at Camp David in like 2012 maybe when Putin sent Medvedev in his stead. It was well known that the Russian delegation got shitfaced and tried to order like 47 cheeseburgers of three in the morning from the Navy mess. Yeah, they cleaned out the vodka. I also remember going to some of these summits.

I remember being at a G8, maybe in the last G8 that Russia was at. and there was like a bunch of rush, like you go in at like 10 in the morning, you're like, there's always a bar, and I'd always wonder like, who's hitting the bar at like 10 in the morning? And then you'd look over and be like, oh, the Russians are the ones doing that.

Yeah. There was like a, you know, culturally a little bit more intake. Them and people at airports. Me at the airport. I'm more than willing to be that guy. Really? Like 10 a a a man. Well, because to me, it's part of a sleep strategy, right? So when I was flying back from Taiwan, I hit that like the lounge.

I got lounge access. And I was that guy with like the open bottle of red wine at like, you know, throwing back glasses. Bring it back to your table. And people are looking at you like you are true degenerate. If you get an international flight, that's a different thing. Then like flying from like Toledo to, you know, somewhere in Michigan. My strategy is to like get on the plane, eat the meal and pass out. And that that is definitely aided by some of that bad, like, cabernet they have at the airport.

No doubt, no doubt. Final story before we get to Ben's interview. So we have to talk about the scandal rocking the world of international chess. Here's the backstory. So a world chess champion named Magnus Carlson. That's a perfect chess name. He lost in the third round of the biggest chess tournament in North America to a 19-year-old Twitch streamer named Hans Moke Nyman. Nyman was the lowest ranked player at the tournament.

Carlson was a world champion. The improbable outcome that upset victory led. to allegations that Nyman must have cheated, including one theory that he used electronic anal beads to receive vibrating messages signaling the right move. This theory was spread on Twitter by Elon Musk, no surprise there, given he's a well-known pain in the ass.

Our producer, Saul, insisted that we called this segment the Queen's Gambut. That's good. So marinate on that. Leave that in. Leave that in. Ben, do you want to poke or plug any holes in this story? I just think someone needs to get to the bottom of it I was almost regretful that you brought this to my attention because

apologies then I no I spent some time Oh you went down rabbit hole not that rabbit hole I mean I went down the rabbit hole speculation around this Yeah like we kept I was on the right side of the internet here I don't know man like can you imagine wanting to win a chess match that bad Like, I just, that's my main takeaways. Like, sudden things are just not worth it. It's one thing when the Astros were like banging garbage cans in center field.

Like, it's a different thing when, you know, you go the bead route. I mean, these games last a long time, right? Yeah. I mean, I saw searching for Bobby Fisher. Also, like, yeah, you also probably need someone helping you out, signaling the right moves. I'm not sure how that works. What is the meeting like where one comes up with this strategy? You know, like, who is in that meeting? How many people, like, how do you get from

decision to implementation? I don't know. I don't know. Sounds like a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. And when you come back, you will hear Ben's interview about all the latest in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So stick around for that. I'm really pleased to be joined by Ilya Panamarenko, who is a defense reporter with the Kiev Independent, someone who's been an essential resource for the view from Ukraine news from the front throughout this war. So, Ilya, thanks so much for joining us from Warsaw. Sure. Thanks. And I should say you're in Warsaw. You're usually, obviously in Ukraine. I wanted to just start. We're going to go into some of the recent events, but just

stepping back, we've been talking about the impact of the Ukrainian offensive. How would you describe the importance of that offensive, both in military terms, but also. also in terms of the morale and the political mood in Ukraine generally. What's been the impact of the last two or three weeks? You know, people love looking at maps showing, you know, territorial gains, which are impressive, especially given our very low expectations that we had before the whole thing started. But the most important thing about this is about this offensive operation

is the fact that Ukrainian military managed to do something, absolutely no one expected it to do, which is to derail one of the most important Russian supply lines coming from Russia and going south across the city of Kupansk, we are to the city of Zuzum. And this supply line is one of the most important, and it keeps reinforcements, flow into northern Donbass. So thanks to this supply line, Russia was able to sustain

the northern axis. Yeah. Trying to cover up the whole of Donbass, the whole of region. And that's about the city of Isium. And that was the point from which

it was rendering pressure on cities of Slaviansk and Kramatorsk, trying to encircle them, isolate them from the rest of Ukraine, and cut them off supplies with the whole Russian military force group in it. So without this, access, without this access,

it effectively may go in case goodbye to all chances to take Donbass, the whole Dunbass, which was one of the key goals behind this new phase of the Russian war. So basically that's the most important thing. But morally, yes, morally. the effect demonstrates to the Ukrainian audience, to Ukrainian military, to global community, to global governments, saying that with help of a good strategy, of good operational security, surveillance, command control, Western weapons, Ukraine can win and can win.

only, you know, token symbolic territorial gains, but also achieve operational successes, just like what we have seen. So it simply says that Ukraine has a very realistic chance to win this war. Yeah. Well, you see Russia, you know, making moves in the last 24 hours or so in the direction of a fuller mobilization. and we were supposed to hear, or the report was we're going to hear from Vladimir Putin today, but that seemed to have moved to tomorrow. But there's been, you know, obviously reports of both them mobilizing more people within Russia and then moving to formally annex some of the so-called, you know, totally bogus Russian created, you know, People's Republics, you know,

to have referenda that could lead to annexation as it was the case in Crimea. What do you make of that Russian response? It feels to me like, as you said, initially they wanted to conquer Kiev. They downgraded from that. Then they wanted to conquer the whole Dombos. Now they're downgrading to chunks of the Donbos, but also seem to recognize that they need more reinforcements through mobilization. How do you look at the Russian reaction to their losses on the battlefield? Well, I'm not insistent on such an opinion, but from my perspective, what we have seen throughout the

the last several hours in terms of, you know, the referendos and all this mobilization. It's just is basically the Kremlin admitting that the war cannot be won by the means that it is used in right now and by the, and with the resources that it has right now. It's, it's over. It's just impossible. It's something, you know, this, it's, it's, it looks very realistic. you know, such a perspective, just because, you know, Russia has this situation as if you had something that costs, let's say, $1,000 to buy and you want, you really need to buy

this, but what you have is just like, 50 bucks. And you do not have a realistic chance to raise as much money as you need within, you know, foreseeable future. So that's failure. You can't do that. You can't do that because you have been stripped of such an ability to do this. And up to this day, it's been seven months of war, close to that. But up to this day, we know it for sure that Russia is falling short of manpower for such a long front line, such an intense front line.

Ukraine is basically the country this size of France, and it's long. And this is, by the way, one of the reasons why Russia failed so miserably in Kharkyfoblus, because it simply had not enough troops to keep the whole of the front line, you know, strong enough. So it has to redeploy, it has to make choices. And meanwhile, Ukrainians are cushion here and there. So it falls short of manpower. It's just at this point with the Ukrainian mobilization, because Ukraine has been spending months to mobilize more manpower and get more weapons from the West and, you know, create a big,

greater military, a bigger military than what Russia have, carrying Ukraine. So all in all, it has a situation where it needs to mobilize, it needs to bring more power. But at the same time, it's been very weak in terms of generating more high-quality force. We have been seeing those Wagner mergers, have been seen prisoners being recruited. been seeing, you know, the so-called Third Army Corps that they have been trying to form close to Moscow. And realistically, it's not a capable force, especially when it comes to the Third Army Corps, which is basically a collection of 50-year-old man who have a lot of banking loans to pay, and they simply go out there and sign contracts just for money. And that's it. This is

the way you create a couple capable motivated and effective military force absolutely not you know it is one of the things that are very common for the kremlin regime it's it's like being being impressive but on the paper yeah it's the very essence of it it's impressive but just on the paper it it is out there to create an impression intimidate you but what stands behind is basically a shit show yeah in many ways in many regards so the world well we're what was special about the Soviet military. But, yeah, you have a problem. You do not have enough manpower.

You do not have enough resources. And you have to mobilize to bring more manpower. Yeah, you have to do this. The problem is that Russia does not have infrastructure for a full-fledged mobilization effort. It does not have training grounds. It does not have enough vehicles and hardware to, you know, form, you know, actual combat

combat formations. It's not enough to just mobilize, you know, a crowd of million people. You have to organize, train these people, giving them specialities, give them officers, surgeons, and so you have to organize, you create an organization. And they fall short of officers, instructors, and surgeons to get ahead of those people, to lead them in combat, to train them. So because the whole of Russia's military capacity is involved, already involved, here in Ukraine and there have been severe losses in income when it comes to commissioned officers

and ncos russian ncos they have always had this problem in this regard so yeah now with all the casualties that's a problem so simply saying they need more manpower and they cannot generate enough forces for to go on so in this situation they have to stick to to what they basically do when they have it hard, to go on emotions, to go on political sides, to go on nuclear intimidation, to do something disastrous and, you know, desperate, pretty desperate, because all other realistic and, you know, rational options are not available anymore. So here they go again with mobilization threats, with the, you know, the referent. and recognition and annexation, they need to intimidate.

You know, the same thing was nuclear intimidations. They're not actually doing anything about the nuclear plants, you know, the Parisian nuclear plants. But they have to create, they have to use this as the, you know, source of fear intimidation to force Western governments, Ukrainian society, you know, the world opinion into saying that, you know, to hell with all those guys, you know, it's easier to just make an agreement. from Russians. Yeah. Well, so if they're from this position of weakness, and you talk about Ukraine, obviously, having an advantage in terms of the will to fight, the society has clearly been mobilized. You mentioned weapons from the U.S. and from the West. What are the most important

systems for Ukraine to be getting right now? And as you look to future offenses, potentially, you know, you obviously have ongoing operations in the south around Kerasan, but, you know, There's a lot of territory. I'm sure that Ukraine would like to take back. What are the most important systems for Ukraine to be getting that it's already getting? And are there things that Ukraine would like to get that it hasn't gotten yet? You know, we're facing the situation in which pretty much any weaponry of the substantial types and classes would be of great use. It's not even about, you know, advanced weapons.

It's something, you know, super sophisticated like high-mar systems or something. Sometimes it's just what you need is probably not super duper, most advanced howitzers for his artillery. It might be something from the Vietnam War age. But when you have a lot of those things, it also involves. The problem behind the Ukrainian military right now is that we have mobilized a lot of people. We have a lot of manpower. It's close to 700,000 people. but the problem is that we do not have enough vehicles, weapons to fully arm all those formations,

brigades and battalions. So that's the problem. The biggest problem is the most general problem, let's say, is armored vehicles, tanks, armored personal carriers. So that's why we've been spending months, you know, saying the artillery as well, we've been spending months saying that, you know, there's no need to, you know, to waste weeks and months trying to send Ukraine like M777s sophisticated, super important. So yeah, they're fine.

They're nice. But, you know, it's better to have, let's say, 100 but old howitzers from Vietnam. Instead of just five, but something new. So we need to form new battalions because, you know, when you go on offensive, not in defense, you got to have a lot of, you have a lot of power. So, but those are very general things. But, you know, what would be a great use is communication equipment, all those various things. We have problems with our class of drones, the niche of drones, of cheap, small, simple, and expendable drones, surveillance drones.

And we need thousands of them. And they need to be wasted like expendables. So we have problems in this niche. So basically, you know, I used to have the conversation with one of the biggest Ukrainian charities that do assistance. They actually buy military, like military-grade equipment from abroad for the Ukrainian military. So what they told me is that, you know, we need everything you can get. But specifically, it's all about the communications, communications and communications.

Well, I imagine that's a really interesting answer. You should need volume and speed. And I'm sure there's an urgency to liberate territory so that Putin doesn't obviously try to wear down the West and some war of attrition. But also because, you know, I think like you said, people look at the map, but there are people living under occupation, right? And you did some powerful reporting. I wanted to ask you what you'd heard from people that were recently liberated in some of these regions around Kharkiv. and how does that impact the kind of urgency of trying to liberate other territories where you know people are probably living under similar circumstances?

Well, yeah, the sooner Russians get out, the less innocent victims, you know, victims of Rundooin, Russian Rund doing Russian disorder, Russian low discipline there will be on the civil end side. because one of the things that I keep seeing after I enter recently occupied territories that was in Boucher, for instance, close to Kiev, now it's in Kharkiv, is that, you know, Russian military in general has a very low standard of, you know, humanitarian law, obeys, obedience to humanitarian law. They vary, you know, low standards of communications, of cooperation with the civilian population

In general, you know, the Russian military is not formed by the most educated, most trained, most disciplined people. And, you know, the level of attitudes is understandable. So, you know, it's about torture, it's about cruelty. It's about marauding. So there are lots of things that, you know, no one wants to see behind those lines. And in many cases, we do not. even see what's what's happening behind those things so yeah people you know I just to give you an impression of what's happening you know when when you go there to

a recently liberated village you meet elderly people mostly elderly women because men they either have flats but they have been imprisoned or they are doing something somewhere so when they're they're not around because it's not a good idea when you're young strong male and to live under Russian occupation because you have a potential yeah you could be conscripted into the yeah not necessarily gets conscripted you can be suspected of being part of resistance fighting you know fighting okay okay

and also um or former Ukrainian military serviceman from Dunbass Fetrand so it's not a good idea to be a young male under Russian occupation so there would be a lot of questions to you yeah and you know people are even in those locations where Russians

did not have like I'll try mass war crimes such as butcher or Zoom for instance but you know in those occasions people are wary of you know of this constant fear anything could happen to you because they can come to anyone for anything to do anything to you and there is nothing that stops them yeah people were always afraid so just to kind of you know wrap this up because You have the picture of the success that Ukraine has demonstrated, Russia, the problems that they have, the urgency, obviously, of trying to liberate populations that are under grave danger, some of whom have been depopulated. What is Ukraine's definition of success? Is it about reclaiming?

a certain amount of territory? Is it about destroying the Russian forces there? Like, how should we think about what the ultimate objective is here, recognizing that that's not going to be achieved in the next few months, but this is probably a matter of years? But how should people in the U.S. and the West think about, you know, what are we supporting Ukraine to do here? no of course following this offensive and even before that the popular morale is very high it was very high it was never low and in general society and the political leadership they say they expect getting back to the borders in 1991 is the the victory that we want we want all our territory is occupied and got back and giving us back

yeah but realistically um realistically i'm always trying to be as as realistic and conservative as possible i think realistically and optimistically for us this war is about um stripping russia of its immediate ability to go on war to go on with this war either defensively or offensively So this can be done by stripping its military group in Ukraine of its supplies by derailings logistics, ultimately, derailants logistics. Ardenbine, its morale.

So we have to go to the situation in which Russia just can't go on anymore immediately, immediately, in this moment and in the foreseeable future. So that's why we, as Ukraine, I'm almost sure about this, is that the Korean military will go on making strikes upon certain locations, certain points that are absolutely necessary for, you know, for keeping the Russian war machine running here in Ukraine. It's about cities like Militopol, for instance, in Ukraine-South. If you take the city, if you take it under foreign control, you basically divide the Russian-occupied side. out by halves.

Yeah. Then you get a chance to cut the Crimea off another strike. So it's not really about, you know, killing all the Russian soldiers here in Ukraine, all of them or retaking, you know, all the territories of Ukraine step by step one by one. It's about, you know, delivering very precise and very effective strike that effectively stop the, this organism from going on. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. What would be a result of this and what would be what would the frontline map look like as a result of such protests? I'm not sure. I believe that from our point of view, the optimistic, realistic scenario for the next months would be the autumn campaign, the fall campaign, which is ongoing. And as a result of this campaign by raining season, by wintertime, the Ukrainian military will be trying to to face wintertime in the best shape possible, in the best situation possible, from the point of view of control of this crucial points or territories, possibly retaking her son by wintertime. That would be a huge victory.

Then it's wintertime. The wintertime would be about surviving as a nation because civilian infrastructure would be in great danger. Power plants, thermal stations, water stations, water, supplies, communications. Russians would be doing a lot of harm to those, you know, because they grow and the closer they get to the actual defeat, the more desperate they become. Yeah. That's what's happening.

So we expect harsh and complicated winter that we will have to survive as a nation behind the lines, but also that would be a huge challenge to the Ukraine and the military and Russian military alike from the point of view of winter war. that would be an exceptional challenge on the infrastructure. But I don't think that we will be having this, the winter campaign would be full of results in terms of oil gains. Then we go with a spin campaign, which would be something crucial. And as a result of this, you know, key crucial campaign by summertime next year,

we're going to be having something possibly, something that could be possibly declared as the Ukrainian victory in this war. So I think that's the realistic, optimistic situation for us. We'll see what happens next. You know, this war has been so chaotic, so full of surprise, it's so hard to predict that, you know, anything can happen. But so far we have the situation moving in this direction. Yeah.

No, I think that's a really useful answer because I think people here, okay, we take all the territory and it seems so difficult, you know, obviously Crimea would be a very hard military target, for instance, in parts of the Dombos. But what you're describing is the kind of methodical effort to destroy Russia's ability to wage war in Ukraine, which doesn't require taking every inch. It requires taking the key areas that cut off supply chains and isolate Russian forces. That's exactly what happens. That's exactly what happens with this Kharkiv Oblast offense. Yeah. The military, they did not storm cities and wide them all. of the earth face they would bypass them isolate their garrisons make them believe that

they are surrounded and make them surrender or flee leaving those cities intact and leaving a lot of hardware and munitions behind them then moving in also bypassing and surrounding cities you know taking road junctions under control railways under control destroying supplies uh wreaking havoc you know, deep in deep behind lines. And in the result, we have the basically the whole region liberated without, you know, major fighting and without, you know, destroying cities. But what Russia does about this is they go foot by foot,

destroying everything it has in front of it with artillery, be it's Ukrainian defensive or cities, you know, they play the dumb war. Yeah, yeah. And like you said, that's going to be, you know, that's only going to get worse, the more they lose and you guys have a wealth to weather a tough winter, but I think what everybody's seen is that Ukrainian society is about as resilient as any on earth. So thank you so much, Ilya, for joining us. People should read your stuff. You're on Twitter. People should check

out the Keeve Independent. I think people can donate to support the journalism that you guys are doing, which is important. You've been a resource to people around the world in this. So I want to encourage people to provide support to Ukrainian journalists like Ilya who are bringing us the story. But get some sleep and keep in touch. Yeah, thanks. Thanks again to Ilya Puna Marenko for joining the show. Thanks to all you chess fans out there. Thanks to New England Patriots and the New York Jets. I'd like to learn chess. It's like it's something, I'm learning. I know how to play it, but like I've got my kid, like, I feel like, I don't know. I've always wanted to actually like be good at chess and I'm not. I don't have the patience. I feel like it's

like a lot of memorization, which I suck at. Yeah, and I suck at math too. So I'll probably just Watch NBA. Should try Go. That's even harder. Yeah, Checkers guy over here. There we go. We'll play checkers next time. Talk to you guys next week.

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