Pod Save the World - One year of war in Ukraine

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Tommy and Ben look back on a year of war in Ukraine and discuss what people got wrong, lessons learned, and where things stand today. Then, Ben and Tommy talk to reporters and Ukrainians about the war including FT reporter and longtime Ukraine resident Christopher Miller, 18-year-old Ukrainian student and artist Assia Vlasenko who escaped Ukraine AFTER SIX MONTHS OF OCCUPATION, Research Director at the European Expert Association Maria Avdeeva who has been documenting Russian war crimes, and FT reporter and Putin expert Max Seddon.View Assia's art here  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Bitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, as promised, we are back this week for a special bonus episode where we are going to try to step back and make sense, if you can, of the year that has passed since Russia invaded Ukraine. We're going to talk about the military campaign and what's happening potentially going to happen in the spring, the political situation in Russia and how public opinion has or has not changed. And we'll hear from Ukrainian citizens about what this year has been like. for the millions and millions of innocent people who are thrust into a war zone by Vladimir Putin. So this is something we're excited to do and hopefully do some more of these. Yeah, no, it's good to be able to step back and look kind of deeper at a subject. And there's no subject on Earth that requires that more than this one. So glad we could do it. Yeah, well said. If you like this episode, let us know what you liked.

Let us know what you didn't like and let us know if there's other topics you want to hear from. But the way this is going to go is Ben and I are going to talk at the top about some of the the things that we and many others got wrong about this war. And then you're going to hear from four different guests. These interviews will cover different topics and they're going to be shorter than the usual interviews. But you're going to hear from Christopher Miller first, from the Financial Times, about the military campaign and what to expect as both Russia and Ukraine maybe launch offensive this spring. You'll hear from Asia Vlazenko, an 18-year-old Ukrainian student who spent six months living under Russian occupation in Kersone before escaping to Prague.

Maria Evdiva. She is one of the countless Ukrainian citizens documenting Russian military and war crimes. And then finally, Max Sedan, who's also from the Financial Times, he's going to talk about Putin's speech earlier this week and how the political dynamic in Russia has changed or not changed after a year of war. So, Ben, some amazing journalists, some really brave activists and civilians there, and one really talented artists, as you'll hear. Yeah, no, and it was interesting for me to talk to Chris and Max because The week that the war started, they were kind of the people that I turned to and they were on this podcast. Chris was in Ukraine and we revisit that in the conversation.

And then Max, as good as anybody, and kind of deciphering what's happening in the political situation in Russia. So it was really interesting a year later to talk to the same people. And I went back and listened to those interviews and to compare what they were saying at the time with what's happened now was quite interesting. So, a lot to learn, a lot to unpath. I saw Max has won the bylines on a big FTP. So it's looking back at a year of war that I highly recommends.

Absolutely fascinating. So all right, Ben, let's start with a little accountability for ourselves, some humility. And let's talk about all these things that we and others got wrong about the war. Maybe we can learn from those mistakes. What an idea that would be in Washington. So I think the kind of biggest, maybe most obvious bucket is everyone overestimated the Russian military and underestimated the Ukrainian resistance. It's a few examples.

there were intelligence estimates that thought Russia would take Kiev in the first few days of the war. Those were obviously wrong. But even months after the war started, Russia, which was, you know, people thought of them as what, the second best military in the world, they still struggled to operate in tactically sound ways. Their supposedly modernized equipment had fatal flaws like tanks that that seemed to explode very easily. There were reports that the invasion plan itself was done by Putin in a tight circle of non-military experts. and U.S. intelligence literally intercepted their invasion plan, released it publicly, and Putin didn't change a thing. The flip side of this is the Ukrainian military has been nimble and more

effective than a lot of people thought. I'm sure that's in no small part due to the rigorous training and fighting that they've done since Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. It's also worth pointing out that the Ukrainian military leadership, political leadership, I should say, and population showed unbelievable courage and resolve in the face of this invasion. So, Ben, one quick note I saw was the Washington Post found, or they reported that Russian intelligence did a covert poll in Ukraine before the war that found only 48% of the population was ready to defend Ukraine. That was off by about 50%, I'd say, very Dick Cheney of them, very 538, calling the Hillary race.

So stepping back, like, what do you think we should take away and learn from these mistakes of just massively overinflating the Russian capability in underestimating the folks in Ukraine. I think that if you look at the Russian military, you know, where they really failed was beyond just the lack of will to fight because they didn't know what they were fighting for and didn't know the plan. Or didn't know they're fighting at all, yeah. Exactly, right. But they've not been able to make their military work together, you know, and we've talked about this a bit, but like, you know, the air and ground components don't match. They're not synchronizing offenses across different geographies.

They have modernized or invested in pieces of their military, but it doesn't work together as one machine, you know, and that made it very hard for them to do kind of complex offenses, right? At the same time, I think the bigger point that we always fail to learn is that when one side of a war is highly motivated and is fighting for their survival and their land, the gap between, and you know, we've seen this in American history, right? In Vietnam and, and most recently Afghanistan. Not a knock on our troops, but more just the point that when someone has nowhere to go, except to fight for their land, that's its own kind of advantage, you know?

Yep. So those two things, the overestimation of Russian capability and just failing again to learn the lesson that, you know what? It may have been true that, by the way, if someone called me and asked me, like, do you want to fight, you know, to defend your country? I mean, you don't really want to have to do that. But once the bombs start falling on your country, that changes in a heartbeat too. And so, you know, I think, you know, once again, overestimate. I mean, if I want to throw one more thing into this, Tommy, it's something I personally overestimated, too, was the Russian cyber capacity, you know, I think we built up in our heads that they had this great cyber capacity that they could kind of cripple Ukraine and attack, you know, Western financial.

Because I got John Podessa to click some fishing link in 2015. Yeah, well, that's the thing, right? They thought they were to take down the Ukrainian government, right? Exactly. You know, I mean, just because they've had some hacks in the last two decades doesn't mean that they'd crack the code. And so this war that we thought was going to have this high-tech component and is actually like an artillery battle, you know.

So, you know, all that's to say, never underestimate motivation and never overestimate individual capabilities in a military that have not worked together before. Yeah, I think speaking of learning the wrong lessons, I think in the long FT article that Max worked on that I mentioned earlier, they reported that Putin only told a small group of AIDS that he was going to invade Crimea back in 2014. Some of them said, don't do it, don't do it. It went off easily. I think Putin probably learned the wrong lesson to only listen to himself when making

these decisions. But now you fast forward and the Russian military has suffered something like 200,000. dead or wounded in this war. It's also clear, I think, that corruption hollowed out the Russian military far more than we had realized. We always knew it was a problem in the Russian government and sort of endemic in society. But I think that failures to get rid of corruption is sort of born out on the battlefield. And it's just worth noting, though, as we look forward, the Russian military has adapted. They are, you know, getting more proficient at things like jamming communications. there was this really infamous moment when the Russian military tried to cross a river, which, you know,

like I'm saying things. I'm regurgitating things I read from military experts, but apparently that's like one of the hardest things you can do as a military leader. They got decimated in one instance a few months ago, but they successfully conducted a river crossing operation more recently. So they're learning. They're getting better and improving, and that's something we should all, I think, worry about. Yeah, I, this came up in both my interviews, Tommy, this idea of the Russian

military is learning and is kind of moving more towards what its strengths are, which are this kind of grinded out efforts that we see on the front line now. And there's things that, you know, we have to be careful about overlearning in the other direction. So the river made me think of this. Max talks about this a bit in our conversation. But when Russia retreated back in a manner that allowed Ukraine to take Kersone, that was actually the right thing for them to do militarily. Absolutely. And that they had a commander who was like, you know what, these guys are isolated,

they're getting pulverized, better to take the loss here and regroup. And so what appeared on the surface and was a real Ukrainian victory was also Russia kind of coming to terms of needing to kind of recalibrate its own strategy and not try to hold places before they were ready to do that. So, you know, militaries learn as these things go. And just because something worked in one phase of the war doesn't mean it's going to work in the other. And that's true for both Russia and Ukraine.

Yeah, a tactical retreat is often the right military strategy. And also, I think, maybe signals that, I don't know, maybe some hardheadedness by Putin where he wouldn't allow any sort of semblance of a retreat or anything that looked weak to happen. Maybe he changed his mind on that, too. We don't know. Okay. So the other thing that a lot of people got wrong then was the impact of Western sanctions.

They did not crater the Russian economy. Early on in the war, you know, the White House took a bit of a victory lap about the impact of sanctions. They talked about the ruble being almost, quote, reduced to rubble. But now Russia's currency is trading at about the same level as it was the weeks before the war. A lot of experts predicted that the Russian economy would contract about 15% or more. The actual level is about a 2.2% contraction in 2022.

I'm getting a lot of these numbers from a great analysis by the Associated Press by the way. Sanctions do appear to be impacting Russia's ability to manufacture stuff. So hopefully they're having a hard time making missiles and other military hardware that requires, you know, advanced electronics. The West is also sanctioned about 2,000 Russian companies and individuals. So there's undoubtedly some really pissed off oligarchs who lost their yachts, lost access to their, you know, fidelity account in New York or whatever. But that's not enough to change much so far. So Ben, do you think that this kind of underwhelming? results from sanctions is because they were designed specifically not to cut off oil and gas

flows from Russia to Europe? Or do you think it says something more about the limit of sanctions as a deterrent or in this case a stick? I think it says something more. I think it's the latter because this is my own experience. It's interesting that when this started, you know, there was a lot of like, well, we're doing all these sanctions and we should have done these more sanctions after Crimea. And the reality is at the time, we thought we were doing really dramatic sanctions after Crimea. It was the same kind of language.

Like, we've never done this before. You're talking about the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea. The 2014 sanctions, exactly. The Obama response, yeah. Yeah, and it was like, we've never sanctioned sectors of the Russian economy before. And you've done, and same thing. Out of the gate, it looked like it was working.

The rubles cratering. We had the same talking points. And then, you know, Russia is such a big economy with so much energy. they just kind of adjust like an organism and they can sell their oil and gas someplace else. These sanctions are clearly much bigger. But they didn't cripple the Russian economy. And I think we can take some lessons away

at the end of the year. Like, what do they hurt and what do they not hurt? They hurt the oligarchs, right, in the sense that if you're a Russian billionaire and you had a lot of money scattered around the world, the U.S. can kind of go and get freeze that money and put travel bands on you and kind of make your life worse. Yeah, we all love the yacht seizures early on.

Yeah, stuff like that, right? And these are still wealthy guys, but I talked to Max about this. They're all now trapped in Russia and they're a little less wealthy and they can't have the same international procedure. So the oligarchs have been kind of squeezed. And that's good. We always like to see that. To your point, the kind of export controls, this is the restriction on technologies and

inputs that can go into the Russian economy. That we can control pretty well, right, if it comes from. from the United States or Europe, countries that are working with us. And that's going to hurt Russia in the sense that, you know, they can't keep factories running without certain spare parts and stuff like that. And so it's interesting to see if that continues to have an impact. This idea, though, that you could kind of break their economy. When they, so much of their revenue, just that the government depends upon is just a sale

of oil and gas, well, they're going to find customers. And part of what we learned in this whole thing is that half the world doesn't care, you know, or at least maybe they care, but half the world is not going to want to get involved in this. Yeah, they're not going to take ahead. Yeah. And so, yeah. And one of the things I always, you know, correct myself or others in my head on is when people say, like, the whole world is united. And no, it's not. You know, like the, the democratic world, the U.S. and our allies in Europe and Asia are united. But China is by. buying plenty of Russian oil. India is too, there's a kind of quasi-democracy. So it's not even actually the old democratic world in Brazil. It's this indicator that I think in part of the fatigue in these countries with U.S. sanctions, you know, and it's like they're almost just kind of beginning to tune us out. And unless we really squeeze them and try to get them to enforce our

sanctions, it's not like they're just going to say, okay, we'll take the hit and stop, you know, importing this Russian oil. The U.S. rightly. was pointing out that the food shortages were not because of our sanctions there because of things Russia was doing. A lot of the world didn't buy that, you know, and because I, so I think we're seeing some of the price for sanctions fatigue, the overuse of sanctions, I think came into play here. So they've had an impact. They froze a lot of assets. They made life more difficult for oligarchs. They're making it harder for Russia to kind of sustain itself. But if you're Russia and all you really care about is, can I get the revenue from selling this oil? And even if

the Europeans and Americans cut us off, we'll just sell someplace else. And I'm just going to to totally prioritize the military kind of economy, they can stay above water. You can't defeat a country in a war with sanctions. Yeah. I think that the sort of bifurcation of the world observation is a good way into the next thing. I think a lot of people got wrong, which was, I think a lot of folks thought Europe would split quickly and not be as tough as they have been. I think if you look back a year after the invasion, that Europe has been far tougher and more united in its response to the Russian invasion than many people anticipated. They've put in place sanctions.

Countries have made large arms contributions, including countries like Germany, that had historically opposed such arms sales or transfers in the past. Many of them are talking about bumping up defense spending in general. Some of this, you know, look, was luck, right? Like Russia's attempt at extorting Europe or energy extortion, basically, and preventing that from getting natural gas, was made a lot more impact. full by unseasonably warm weather, and we're grateful for that. But, you know, even with those natural gas flows getting cut off, the economist had a really interesting piece recently about how Europe

has used the war to really turbocharge its investments in green energy and potentially has moved up their decarbonization timeline by a decade. So, like, they're moving. They're making changes that are significant and will be enduring. So, Ben, you know, Biden obviously deserves a lot of credit here for his ability to rally Europe and sort of bring everybody together. But what do you think we can learn from, I don't know, everyone underestimating Europe and I guess NATO's ability to do hard things, to do politically difficult things in the face of this invasion. I think that with the Europeans, part of what was interesting, particularly early in the war, was that public opinion was driving politicians to a harder line. Like European publics

wanted to support Ukraine, wanted to give Ukraine weapons. And you saw this all the way up through Germany providing those tanks. Like there was a public pressure component, which has been totally absent in foreign policy usually. Usually in Europe, it's, you know, the public doesn't want to, you know, join some crazy American military adventure or. And so that. Understandably, right? So that's notable. But that may be the lesson, right, which is that this is about Europe and European security. And it's a lot easier to get Europeans to focus on that than it is to, you know, is make troop commitments to Afghanistan in 2010 or something, you know. So that's one notable thing.

I think the other thing that has held to some extent, right, is leaders of different political persuasions in Europe have also been, you know, whether it's like Ola Schultz to the left, you know, Emmanuel Macron in the center, Boris Johnson on the right. It's not just a kind of one political faction in Europe that is supportive of Ukraine. with the creeping growth of the far right that is on Putin's side. You know, Victor Orban is kind of basically signaled as much. The AFD, the far right part in Germany, as we saw in that story we just talked about, fully co-opted by Russia.

But there has been like a center that is held in Europe thus far. To be clear, like, there are some cracks in public opinion. There's some fatigue. and it's not as if Europe is doing as much as the United States. I mean, I think per capita, the Eastern Europeans are in terms of defense support to Ukraine. But, you know, there's a lot more that you could be seeing out of Western Europe, too. But, yeah, I think it's a sign that when it's about Europe and European security, Europeans are willing to do things that they wouldn't otherwise be willing to do in other parts of the world.

Yeah, I mean, the one really, I think, the example that I think tells the story is Poland, where you have a very conservative, far-right government that is incredibly hawkish in its support of Ukraine, I think quite literally because they think, okay, when Russia rolls through Ukraine, we're next. Because we're literally, we're the next country up that could get invaded. And so there's like a very sort of existential feel to the need to respond strongly to Russia this time to prevent, you know, more countries from being invaded that maybe you didn't feel or hear about back in 2014. A final sort of a bucket of things that are sort of Russia related that people got wrong or haven't come to pass yet. So good news, Putin has not used a nuclear weapon.

He has not used chemical or biological weapons. I think there was a lot of concern that that might happen early on. It's good news that it didn't. Also, it's something you and I talked about a lot. There just is no evidence that I've seen that the Putin's decision to conscript young men into the army, to put in place a draft that has caused a political backlash. There was a very depressing report in New York Times last week, I think, about how far from moderating or feeling horrified by the cost of the war, Russian society has become more

nationalist, more militant, and more right wing, in part because so many Russian liberals left the country. They just got the hell out of there. The only dissent that is allowed in Russia comes from those to the right of Putin. It's like these military bloggers who want the invasion to be more brutal. they call for nuclear weapons use. And also, you know, you have officials who once were seen as moderate, like Dmitri Medvedev, who used to talk all the time to Barack Obama was like clearly, you and I both read those transcripts of those calls. This guy was like a lawyer who had a Western orientation,

who didn't have like KGB roots. Now he is a sociopath on Twitter. He threatens nuclear action all the time, right? So like people we thought could be moderating forces have gotten worse. And you mentioned this earlier. Like the only example of Putin seeming to bow a bit to political pressure came when Russia allowed grain shipments out of Ukraine via the Black Sea. But that was probably due to lobbying from Turkey and countries in Africa. They were like, hey, man, we are starving. We need this food. So Ben, like stepping back, the kind of McDonald's theory of, you know, economic ties preventing wars was totally wrong. Sanctions didn't deter Putin. Putin's inner circle seems to be shrinking and getting more hawkish.

A year into the war, there is not a lot of clarity, I would say, in terms of how this might end or I don't know, how we even get the talks at the moment. Yeah, I think to pick up on a couple of those things, any prediction,

and I think they were always, most people understood that they were long shots. But I think there was a hope, like right after the war began, would the Russian elite kind of do something to try to slow this down? then would there be an anti-war movement? Then the mobilization would people rise up?

Then how are they going to take 100,000 casualties without there being protests in provincial capitals and things like that? And pretty much none of that stuff has happened. I mean, there have been pockets of protest and I don't want to undermine the diminish the kind of bravery of people who have set up in Russia. But the reality is, which we have to really reckon with,

the reality is Russia is like more fascistic. today, if these reports are all true, right? Everything we hear out of Russia, the liberals have left, the hundreds of thousands of Russians who've left are not the people that, you know, support the words, the people that want nothing to do with it. And we just have to reckon with the idea that, like, you know, Putin's not going to be ousted unless something dramatic shifts inside of Russia. And you'll hear these kind of casual things like Putin's days are numbered

or Putin probably sleeps pretty well in bed. Like he just did a rally in front of like tens of thousands of people. Like I say that with zero degree of admiration for this. No, he seems to be high in his own supply. Exactly. He seems to like want to be compared to like Alexander the Great. Yeah. And so there could the psychology inside Russia could get worse, not better.

And this ties into, your point about how does this end? Because like, I hear that, you know, we're going to, it has to end in total victory for Ukraine. Well, I obviously believe that's right. But I also know that Putin's there. There's a country of 140 million people with nuclear weapons is not going away. And so that the, how this probably ends is in some kind of frozen stalemate type circumstance, that you hope is maximally to Ukraine's advantage. There's one other just not to be like the the war here. I haven't used that word in a while. Sometimes people assume better intentions in other countries. So, because it seems logical that the countries would think like that. And when it comes to

China, I remember a lot of people were like, oh, China's not going to want to see this war happen because, you know, it's, and I'm sure China didn't want to, but China hasn't really changed this relationship with Russia. You know, they're buying more energy from Russia. The farm minister was just in Russia. The Xi Jinping is likely to visit soon. And, So when I hear people say, well, like, Russia will never use a nuclear weapon because, well, China would stop them from doing that. Why? Like, I don't know. Like, sometimes we assume these, like, you know, I think China would prefer that Russia didn't do something like using a nuclear weapon.

But I also don't know that if Russia did use a nuclear weapon, China would totally flip its orientation either. We've seen, again, among these autocracies, like obviously a lot of tolerance for hypocrisy and lack of concern for. human life. And that's something we need to keep in front of mind here that we can't assume that Putin will ever realize it's in his interest or the world's interest and the war. I do think your point about grain is important. And what the lesson should be from that is that if we really want to put diplomatic pressure on Russia, we're going to have to mobilize people in the global south in Africa and Latin America. And so that's, I think, a lesson that I hope that can be put to use this year. You may not be able to bring China over to your side on this thing, but the other swing

votes on this thing matter. Yeah. Yeah, the China piece of this is interesting. I mean, yeah, sure on paper, they will say that they want countries to respect the territorial integrity of others, blah, blah, blah, until Taiwan is involved. But in practice, yeah, they might like cheap oil. They might like the U.S. expending lots and lots and lots of ammo and weaponry that couldn't be used in the future conflicts. We'll never know. I've seen that Fiona Hill, who was a national security staffer, worked for Trump and was a key witness in one of the impeachment hearings, has been suggesting that she thinks the ultimate outcome. of this war could be more like an Iran-Iraq war, where, you know, in that case, you had Iraq getting lots of weapons from the United States and Western countries, but Iran had a lot more

manpower and it just led to this sort of grinding stalemate over years and years and years. That would obviously be a horrible outcome for any human being in Ukraine. Yeah, and what that could lead to is a circumstance where this grinds on and, you know, hopefully Ukraine can take back some of this. particularly in the south, right, that land bridge to Crimea, we've talked about, so that Ukraine is a contiguous viable country. And then the fighting kind of slows itself down, exhaust itself into some kind of frozen conflict. I'm not, I would prefer a big, more decisive Ukrainian victory. But again, we have to be cautious against triumphalism here because this is very

hard and their human beings right in the middle of this, as we'll hear about in this episode. Absolutely. Okay, that is, I think, a great place to end it. And, stop the list of things that we and many others got wrong when they were sort of predicting out how this war would go when it began. Why don't we take a quick break? And when we come back, you'll hear the first interview. Okay, let's listen to our first interview. It's with the Financial Times Christopher Miller. Ben, you talk to him. What are we going to hear? Well, we're going to hear about his own experience, you know, starting covering this war in eastern Ukraine, former Peace Corps volunteer from Bakhmut, which is the town that is completely besieged right now.

And just how has this war evolved over the last year and where is it headed with these offenses in the spring? And I think as usual, Chris is a good lay of the land with also having like a kind of a deep connection to the experience of people in Ukraine over the last year. Wait, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bakhmud? In Bakhmud. I didn't realize that until this conversation. I had no idea.

Yeah. So he has very deep connections and feelings for the place. Wow. That's incredible background. Okay. Well, without any further ado, here's the interview with Chris. So I'm very pleased to welcome back, Christopher Miller, who is now a reporter with the Financial Times and finishing up a book, which everyone's going to have to buy. Chris, you're going to have to come on

and talk about it. But thanks so much for joining us from Keith. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be back. So you were really, I think, an important resource for a lot of us at the beginning of the war and even the days right before it. And given that we're looking back on the year here, I wanted to start by just kind of playing a clip from a conversation you and I had a few days before the full-scale invasion, because I think it sheds interesting light on kind of how the war has evolved. So Haley, you can play that clip. The main key focus in Doniask 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 its 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 Donetsk and Lugansk regions to the north,

but to make a very serious push south swinging west toward Crimea to create that land bridge. So what's interesting about that is obviously Russia, went further. And that is a scenario you and I discussed. They went for Kiev. They wanted to kind of decapitate the whole government and failed. But it's kind of interesting if you think about where the war has evolved. It didn't move down south to that line bridge. Murielbo obviously, horrifically, has been a centerpiece of Russian gains. And they've even relinquished a bit in the north, right, to Kharkiv, in the Ukrainian counter-offensive. I mean, how do you evaluate Did Russia kind of shift from plan A to plan B, the Land Bridge?

How should we think about the Russian aims one year in? Well, I think it tried both at the same time, right? So, I mean, Mariupil was besieged very, very quickly. So it did actually happen, as I said in that clip, Russia did come in from the occupied areas of Danyetsk and Russia and pushed west toward Mariupil. It also came up from Crimea and swung east and did besiege Maryupil at the same time as its Air Force and its ground forces were attacking Kiev. So, you know, I think at that point when we had spoken, you know, I think in hindsight, in hindsight, US intelligence and British intelligence were spot on about Russia being serious about attempting its blitzkrieg of Kiev. but I think a lot of us, including myself, may have been in a little bit of a state of denial

in thinking that that would happen. I think we were partly right in that something like that wouldn't be successful because they did try it, but they did move on Mariupil very quickly. So there were multiple fronts, right? This was a multi-pronged invasion. So there has been a lot of focus on the attempted blitzkrieg of Kiev in the Battle of Kiev. But, you know, it's important to remember that, as you mentioned, Harkiv and Mariupil were both attacked at that same time, right? The Russians came up from the south.

They came in from the east, down from the north, and they did try to encircle Kiev. I think, you know, we were chatting just before we began about how, you know, Putin had to try, right? And I think that the goal then, and ultimately, I think his goal or what he would like to see is the decapitation of Kiev, right? Or at least the capture of it so that he can put in place this puppet government that he can control. But there was always this plan to take those parts of eastern Ukraine and south eastern Ukraine that he first invaded back in 2014. You know, as the as the war, you know, went on last year after the retreat around Kiev, there was the the regrouping of ruffist forces and the refocused solely on the south and the east.

And, you know, that did, you know, see Russian forces gain a little bit of territory over there, but the Ukrainians are doing a really good job at keeping them at bay. And the Russians have ultimately lost a lot of the territory that they were able to immediately grab in those first days of the invasion. you know, the focus is what I think we thought, or a lot of us thought would be in the beginning. Russia trying to take all of Donetsk and Lugansk, those eastern regions that make up the area known as the Donbos. Plus, now holding on to what it is captured in the southern Zaborosia and Hirsson regions. And, you know, that's still very much the focus right now as we speak. And there's this new Russian offensive that maybe you want to talk about.

And we can get into that has already begun. But, you know, all signs pointing it to being almost dead on arrival. There have been very, very few gangs made in the last few weeks since they began. Yeah, one more question looking back. You had reported for so many years in the Donbos region. And I think, you know, when we were speaking in that conversation, I think you were there. What is your understanding of what life has been like in some of those regions that you covered, many of which I think Russia did take, although they subsequently lost Kharkiv.

But what do you hear from those parts of eastern Ukraine that you were so familiar with over the years? Well, I've been back. I've been to many of these places that I reported on for years and someone which I lived and worked in. So I, as a Peace Corps volunteer back in between 2010-2012, I lived and worked in Bachmout. Then it was known as Artil Mosque. Oh, I didn't know you were in Bakhmu. Wow. Yeah. I lived and worked in Bakhm for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer.

And then I moved to Kiev and started my career in foreign correspondence. So Bakhmud is a place that's very, very near and dear to my heart. It's not just a place that I cover as a journalist, but a place that I care very much about, including the people who live there. And I can tell you it's hell on earth. I mean, most of the city has been destroyed. There were 80,000 people that lived there before the war. Now there are fewer than 5,000. I can only say, luckily, all of my friends had the foresight to leave either before February 24th of last year or shortly after and made it out safely.

But they were forced to leave behind their homes, most of their possessions, almost all of them. Some of them had to leave back their pets. They've not been able to return. It's a ghost town. The last time I was there was in December, and it was hell on earth. Like I said, it was heavy shelling, air strikes. The two apartments that I had lived in when I was working there had both been struck by, one by an airstrike, one by heavy shelling.

There were artillery holes in the building. The roads were torn up. Both of the main highways going into town were under Russian fire. And it was really, really dangerous to get in and out. And in the last week or two, the Ukrainian military have now closed access to the city because the fighting there is so intense. And the story is similar all up and down that eastern front line in the Donbos. You know, you asked what life is like. Well, in most places along the front line, there is no life to be spoken.

of. I mean, the people who remain there are living in their basements. There's no water. There's no electricity. There's very little food. The only sustenance they're getting are the things that volunteers are able to bring in, but those volunteers are not able to get into these places as frequently as they were before because the fighting is so intense now. So there's very little life. And this region of Donbos, which is composed of both the Lugansk and Doniask Oblast, I think we're roughly around 6 million people, which is a large percentage of Ukraine's population of 40 to 42 million people before February 2014. There were a couple of, I mean, there were maybe a couple of million people who left

between, or, you know, when the war broke out in 2014, and by the time 2020, happened, but now there are, I mean, maybe tens of thousands of people. I mean, just a fraction of the number of people living in a region the size of the state of Massachusetts, you know, now. And so there really isn't much life there. And these people have all been forced away, and it's now quite literally a battlefield and not much more than that. So, you know, looking at the last year and then also just kind of talking to administration, officials, it feels like the Russians have been most comfortable and comfortable is a chilling word, but militarily, when this is a front line in the Dombas where they're just trying to

eke out territory by just throwing their people at the front and sometimes throwing convicts at the front, and trying to wear down the Ukrainians through their kind of sheer size and nihilism essentially, combined with obviously the bombardment of infrastructure. And that the U.S. and Ukraine have tried to, you know, have been more successful. Ukraine has been more successful when they've been able to kind of launch counteroffensives with an element of surprise and strategy behind it and the use of the combined arms capabilities that the U.S. and NATO can provide. Looking ahead, it does feel like there's this question that is going to,

lurking in the backdrop, right, of the U.S. probably seems focused on kind of urging the Ukrainians to move south or to try to take back some of that pre-February 24th status quo. But you hear some rumblings from the Ukrainians about Crimea, right, and about kind of more ambitious or perhaps aggressive operations that could go into Crimea. I mean, what do you think about the territorial focus of the Ukrainians? Obviously, they're not going to tell us in fence, but I mean, how do you sense the prioritization of geography on the Ukrainian side going forward? Well, the Ukrainians are very vocal about what they want and their ultimate goal here, which is to recapture all of its territory to the boundaries that existed as Ukraine after

the fall of the Soviet Union. So those 1991 boundaries, which include all of the Donetska and Ugansk Oblast in the east, all of your son in Zaporosia in the south, and Crimea, which was and has been a part of Ukraine. So, you know, that is the goal of Ukraine. Zelensky, the president, has been very vocal about what they want. The head of military intelligence here, Kibrila Bhutanov, has been very vocal in saying that that is what he believes, what he wants, but also what he believes could happen. if the West is willing to give Ukraine what it needs to do that.

Now, I think both Ukraine and, well, Kiev and Washington may not necessarily agree on what would, what a victory might look like, right? Kiev's ultimate victory is the recapture of all of its territory. Washington, I think, is a little bit more flexible, right? it is recapturing as much ground as possible going into negotiations with momentum, right, to cut a deal that favors Ukraine, that isn't a deal like the Minsk Two Accords from 2015, that favored Russia and allowed Russia really to just build up its forces, regroup, and then plan for its next attack, right? It's to, I think Washington would like to see a weakened Russian state, a weakened Russian military,

Ukraine with momentum and a significant recapture of territory. But where they both agree is that the window of opportunity to do that might be closing. There is a shortage, a serious shortage of weaponry and ammunition, ammunition in particular, here in Ukraine. The West has provided a lot to Ukraine. Its supplies are dwindling, and it's not able to rebuild what is. it's being, or what is what is being given to Kiev at the same rate. So there is a concern that the rate of assistance to Ukraine could slow. You know, we could also get into the political aspect of that, which is likely to come into play

in the next year or so. But at least right now, it's a supply issue, right? The demand is extremely high. Ukraine needs this ammunition to fight back a Russian offensive that includes, you know, waves of soldiers being thrown to the front and a deeper stockpile of ammunition and deeper human resources as well. And I mentioned Hurylullah Budanov, who's the head of intelligence. A moment ago, he gave an interview to Ukrainian media that was published today, which is

really interesting in that he said, you know, essentially what I mentioned before, which is there is this window of time that's really important for Ukraine, where they align with the West in that they see the Russians not being particularly strong right now, momentum on Ukraine's side. There's going to be this influx of tanks, armored vehicles, new ammunition and weaponry that's coming in. The weather is going to get better. And so this is a moment for Ukraine to show that it can make significant gains on the battlefield.

He was saying the end of March through April, and as we get later to spring, is really going to be a, in his words, a decisive moment that there will be decisive battles. I think he likened it also to a soccer match where the score right now is 1-1 and we're in the 70th minute. So he's saying that he actually sees possibly, if not an end to this war, you know, Ukraine and Russia really getting down to fighting these battles that are going to shape what an end might look like. And so I think the next several weeks and a couple of months as we get through spring are going to be really important. And a lot will hinge on what the West is

willing to give Ukraine and how quickly it can arrive. Yeah. No, I think that's right. And you will know by the end of the spring what theory is, you know, the Russian theory of attrition versus the Ukrainian theory of momentum and what new weaponry. I think we'll know a lot more then. I just want to ask you, I mean, you know, wrapping up and looking back, like what, I can't imagine how, you know, formative an experience it must be to have been there this year. Obviously, you've been in war zone there in the past in eastern Ukraine, but is there, is there an image or memory or a moment that stands out to you when you look back at the last year, you know, above the others? What, how do you process it? I mean, I think the thing that really stands out to me are just those first moments on February 24th, simply because even if you or I believed or some of us believed or didn't believe that Russia was going to fully invade in the way that it did,

to be in it when it was happening as it unfolded. And I was just a couple thousand feet away from the airfield in Krematorsk when the first four missiles struck there and shook our hotel and Jolta had us out of bed. I mean, it was unlike anything I've ever experienced before and I've been covering the war here since 2014. And I don't consider myself a war reporter. I'm very much a Ukraine reporter.

I cover all, you know, politics, culture, the war. You know, I never set out to be a war reporter, like many of my Ukrainian colleagues or people who were based here as foreign correspondents. We were just thrust into this. And I'd seen very heavy fighting. I thought I saw what was the worst of it in 2014. But I think just the sheer scale of what's happening has been shocking. I think those first moments were terrifying in a way that I'd never experienced fear and terror before just because there was so much uncertainty.

We really didn't know. And many of us thought that there was a good chance of Russians just storming down the streets in Krematoresk. Or that in rushing back to Kia, we would find the city occupied. I mean, all sorts of thoughts went through our head. At the same time, I think. it's important to say this which is after a year of the country being at war against an invading russia it's i find it i found it um strange uh to feel is i mean to to to find how um how used to it i can get and like how almost normal seeming, for example, today could feel.

The air rate alerts didn't sound this afternoon, right? We only had one air rate alert. That was, I mean, in the grand scheme of the last year, you know, I mean, it was a very quiet day here in Kiev. And I talked to a lot of my Ukrainian friends who've also, in a way, gotten used to living at war, which is weird because we, you know, it's, it's, there's this insidiousness to it, right? And, and I think that can, it's something that, obviously, I'm not articulating it very well, but it's something that can be difficult to sort of put your thumb on,

but when you take a breath and sort of, or for me, when I go back home to New York and I take a break for a couple of weeks. I realize how screwed up this situation is and how much it has impacted me, but I need to take that step away to sort of experience it and feel it. And I know that, you know, my Ukrainian friends here don't get that break. And so we talk about that. And that's something whenever this ends, however it ends, that I'll be really interested in seeing you know, just how life returns and what that looks like here. What normal is, yeah. I'm not suggesting you're this guy, but did you ever read dispatches by Michael Hur?

I did, yeah. There's that great scene when he's back from Vietnam in New York and he's in like some fancy bar, and he's like, I wouldn't just stand up on the table and shout at everybody. Don't you know there's a war over there, you know? I imagine that there's got to be a little bit of that, you know. there there there there has been i mean i think the difference is you know for me that was sort of the the moments or the years between the the outbreak of the war in 2014 and the full-on invasion in 2022 i was still here in ukraine covering a war that was still grinding away and the rest of

the world was focused on don't trump or something else and nobody was paying attention to this war that was simmering right and russia was in the background preparing for what it did in February 24 to 2022. Now I think a lot of the eyes of the world are on Ukraine, right? And so I'm now wondering, when are we going to get to the point that we were at in 2015 when the eyes shifted away and what it's going to be like after that? And we might be getting there, right? Like this phase of the war in the last few months has been very different than the

blitzkrieg in Kiev and the Ukrainian counter-offensive in September and autumn, you know, depending on what happens in the spring, if we get to the point where there's no military victory and we're sort of at this stalemate that is something that resembles 2015, it might be the situation where the conflict sort of freezes on the ground. It grinds away, but there's no real solution, right? And I think that for the Ukrainians is actually a big worry. Because time, I think both Washington and you might know better than myself, but I think Washington and here in Kiev, I know for sure, you know, they are concerned that time would favor Russia.

Yeah. No, I think that makes sense. Someone in the U.S. government said to me that their concern is not in the executive branch, but that the way they put it is the Ukrainians may have all the watches. but Putin may have all the time, you know, which is kind of an opaque phrase, but there's something to it. Well, look, it's really good to see you doing so well, and we really appreciate all your reporting, and we look forward to following you on the FT and also seeing your book when it comes out. So thanks so much for joining us again.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me. Anytime. Okay, so our second interview is with Asia Vlasunco. She is an 18-year-old student from Carisone. Ben, so what I sort of can't stop thinking about in this interview is when she said to me, the day the invasion started, I became an adult. She was 17 years old, and that instant felt like she and all her friends were adults. Tragically, I think that's true for, I think, every child in Ukraine. So you're going to hear about, you know, what her life was like before the invasion,

what it was like during the six months under occupation, how her art and her writing managed to sustain her during this absolute nightmare. and then how she eventually escaped to Prague. She's an accomplished artist. She's an accomplished writer. And we are also going to link to some of her work in the show notes. And Tommy, what's interesting, too, is that she came to us via Jan Anemsova. Yeah.

You know, whose father, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated by Putin, or most likely. And so it's interesting how these worlds come together, too. Yeah. You know, people who've been harmed by Putin. some of them, Russian, many of them Ukrainian, obviously. ASEA is her student now, I believe. Yes, exactly. Yeah, and her foundation that supports writing and journalism.

Yeah, well, two incredibly talented people. So here is the conversation with Asia. I am so excited to welcome to the show, Aesia of Lesong-Go. She is 18 years old from Kersone and Ukraine. And now you're in Prague now, right? Yeah, right. Thank you for having me, yeah. Oh, thank you for being here.

So let's just start, you know, sort of at the beginning. I mean, you were born in Carousone. Like, what was life like there before the war? Before that, before the war, I just ordinary child who just was to be successful in the academic, like, success. Yeah. And it was my main goal before that. So you were just in high school, you know, studying, doing art. Yeah, right.

And, and your, Carstone's pretty close to, you know, Crimea and the eastern part of Ukraine. Did you guys feel the conflict that had started in 2014? Was that sort of like present in your lives? Yeah, of course. But at that moment, it was 2014. And I just was a child. I just was 10 years old.

And yeah, my parents nervous about that, of course, because our like territory was occupied by Russian military. and everyone understood it at that moment. And yeah, it was horrible. I mean, I know you spent six months, I think, like living under Russian occupation. What was that like? You know, I want to start with the first day

because this day, like, I think will always remain in my memory. Because I was very scared. Just imagine it started early in the morning at 4.m. and my dream abruptly interrupted by terrible explosions and by my father's voice who reported that war had started. The Russians had attacked Ukraine. At that moment, I remember like exactly how an animal stance of fear over helmet me, yeah? And literally in the Thursdays, such bad things like medicine or food, yeah, disappeared. There were problems with water, interruption of light and communication. Imagine you cannot call your relatives whether they

are alive or not. To find out what has happened in the city, you hear like constant explosions, enemy aircraft flying, and it was very scary. I had been through a lot of stress at that moment. And I wanted you to understand that I was just a child, just teenager, hiding from explosions. And I felt scared for myself and for my loved ones, yeah, because at any moment, our lives could end. We didn't know, like, what would happen next, yeah. And I remember how we called at first days, yeah, and every day after that two, our relatives in fear all crying. Like, we realized that this could be the last phone call. Oh, my God, it's devastating.

I mean, were there sort of like troops in Russian troops in the streets? walking around, was the occupation that present? Yeah, right. Like, whole city was occupied and a lot of people died because a Russian soldier, like, open let all fire for, like, just for citizens, like, for a citizen who was an armate. And every hour, was a day at night, you hear, like, concert explosions. And Russian tanks and APCs drive, like, throw the streets. Residents are ordered not to go out.

The occupiers that, when I said previously, yeah, open lethal fire. They brutally and indiscriminately shoot Zeus who live their homes. For them, it's like, I don't know, like safari, a Russia sits in armoured car and shoot civilians. And, you know, when war started, the war that my city experienced in the first days of the occupation was at night of March 1st when trying to stop Russian troops. It just was the first day when Russian army occupied my city, occupied Kurson. Yeah, and 36 people were killed in Lelik Park. This is Schumann district of my city. With their bare hands, with only molot of cocktails,

they tried to stop an armed, like, armed convoy of Russia's occupant. They were, all killed. And after that, we saw a video on the internet that locals posted after shelling, and there were people's body torn apart. And after seeing, you know, the horrible footage of this shooting, people came out on the main square of the city and walked over the enemy tanks with their bare hands. The mussels of which were pointed at them peaceful and armed people. They stretch out the flag of Ukraine about a hundred matters long and carried it along the central street shooting in the soldier's face like Russian soldier is a fascist and occupant and to go home glory to Ukraine and other I just want to emphasize that civilians stood unarmed with Ukrainian flags against

an armed column of occupiers. I think that Russian military clearly didn't expect this resistance from their population. Yeah, they must have been absolutely shocked to see a bunch of civilians marching up the tanks armed only with a flag. That's an unbelievable act of bravery. So there were some reports from other areas that were under occupation,

like Boucha is the most horrifying example of Russian soldiers becoming more aggressive and more brutal over time. Was that something that you guys experienced? We call it like quite, terrorism because the occupiers like set up checkpoints around the city and people were arrested and beaten and a lot of people disappeared without a trace I think more than like 800 people disappeared without a trace and we learned that they had been brutally murdered and

left in the in in their basements and it's it's horrible and you know the mayor of Kurson was arrested by Russian military, and so far there has been no information about him. Wow, I did not know that. So, I mean, obviously, I mean, going outside sounds terrifying. Like, how did you spend your time for six months or living in this occupied zone? It was surreal, actually, because two weeks later, after the Russians attacked my country, my school continued the learning process just online. We were studying under the bombic rates, doing our homework, and the city was being sheltered, or like the airport near my house was hit for the 20th time.

And we had at that moment mass on Zoom. Like our teacher spent two months giving lessons from the shelter. And it was really scary. I think I spent all my time for studying. I had more than like every day. I do maybe more than 20 hours of lessons nonstop. And for me, just was a rescue. So you were doing Zoom school with teachers who were in air raid shelters.

Yeah. As bombs were raining down on the city, you guys were studying? Yeah, right. We do our work. Yeah. And we graduate from. our school and receive like this our documents after that. Man, that is some amazing focus.

So, you know, eventually I know you were able to get out of Kersen and out of the country. How did that journey happen? Where did you go? Oh, it was terrible, actually. And so hard. I remember that my tutor from Russia at that the last class told me she had join a charter organization that could help me and my mother to flee. And in that moment, we were hesitant because so many people had been forcibly moved from the occupied territories of

Ukraine to Russia. But we decided to take the risk. It was our only chance to get out and to escape from the shelling. At the same evening, I found the organization that takes people from Kurson to Kramer. And from Crimea, we promised held by my teacher. And, yeah, the first problem for us was the Kalenchuk border, which is between Kersen and Crimea. I will never forget the crossing and foot when my mother and I were walking with heavy bags and we were faced a huge convoy of Russian military equipment traveling toward Kerson.

Yeah, and at the border, a FASB officer questioned us for a long time. They asked me the same questions, such as my attitude towards the war, the purpose of my trip, who my father worked for, and so on. Fortunately, when they checked my laptop, they couldn't find my illustration, which were all about the war and support for Ukraine. And when we got to Crimea, we are already like helped by volunteers and go through like through Russia and Belarusia

yeah, like part of Russia and Belarusia. Just imagine more than 7,000 kilometers. And it's not at all because on Russian-Dla-Russia border, all passenger of our bus were checked and questioned by Russian border guards for 17 hours. But we were lucky to wait any specific answers, but it was terrible, actually. And then we got to Polish border, and then we made our way to Berlin. Wow. So to get out of Ukraine, you had to go through checkpoints, get interrogated by Russian soldiers.

watch Russian convoys of military equipment go past you the other direction towards your city and then just spend days and days and days sort of winding your way through to finally get to the Poland border. I mean, what did it feel like when you finally cross the border into Poland at Abel, Russia or out of Russia? I just feel freedom. I just feel like I just find this rescue for my family. And I think it is so. I know you've written about how your writing and your art, you sustained you during this period.

Can you tell us about that, like what you worked on and how that helped you sort of deal with this nightmare? I think it was a rescue for me because I just wrote all my thoughts at that moment, what I'm feeling. And for me, it was so important because before that, before Zabwe, I just worried about my like, and just only about my academic success and it is so, but there was number one goal for me at that moment. And but morning of February 24th changed me forever and I immediately became an adult. And yeah, I learned to live and learn in any condition. And I think my art, it's only about like what's happen in Ukraine and I need to share with world what it is.

Like, yeah. And it just rescue for me, first of all, because I created artwork about Ukraine, what's happens in our cities, yeah. And because all these terrible events in my country push me like to become interested. And all my artworks I just sent to charity auction. and how money sent for Ukrainian army and Ukrainian refugee for Ukrainian children, which need to help. I bet there's probably going to be a lot of sort of Americans, a lot of Westerners listening to this or to our conversation. What do you want them to know about Ukraine and about the war and sort of what your country needs?

Our country needs support. We need to help with emanation. We need to help for refugees and other things. And I think my government said about that a lot of times. And yeah, because I can't like imagine like another situation because my house was destroy a Russian missile. My school was destroy a Russian missile. And it is horrible. A lot of people died in Ukraine right now.

And I just want to help my country with how like ways how I can do it. Yeah, because it's genocide right now in my country. See, I really appreciate the time telling your story, letting us highlight it here. Is there anything else you want to say that I didn't ask you or that listeners should know? I just want to say everyone, it is a citizen of world. And we need to know, like, when somebody dies, died, it is a real matter for us and for everything. And in my country, right now, it is genocide. And we need to help everyone.

And glory to Ukraine, yeah, support Ukraine, Slavokov, Ukraine, and Ukraine will win. And I think it is all, yeah, thank you for having me. That's a great, that's a great message, great place. And ASEA, thank you so much for doing the show. And thanks for sharing your art with us. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Okay, so our third interview is with Maria of Diva.

So Maria is one of just the countless Ukrainian civilians who have become part of, of this sprawling resistance effort. A lot of that work started early on where you had civilians reporting in Russian troop movements. Now it includes documenting war crimes. So Marie and I talked about what life is like day to day, what Ukraine needs militarily, EU membership, President Biden's visit, and a lot more. She's like doing incredibly serious, I imagine, challenging work. Like she had been in the front lines hours before we spoke. It was really important, I think, to both of us that we heard from people in Ukraine, especially civilians, doing this work.

So listeners can understand what life is like for them. So here's Maria. I'm excited to be joined today by Maria Avdiva. She's the research director at the European Expert Association in Ukraine, focusing on international security, Ukraine, EU relations and emerging security challenges in the region. So thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you for having me for the second time since this crazy invasion started. You have been doing this amazing work. I mean, countless Ukrainian civilians have been doing this

amazing work of citizen activism, citizen resistance, relaying troop movements or documenting atrocities committed by the Russian military. What does that kind of effort look like now a year into the war? Well, for me, it's a huge surprise to see Ukrainians like that, because when the invasion started, I never thought it would last for so long. And everyone was talking throughout the year, asking if the Ukrainians are already exhausted. And yet in the year, they are not exhausted. They are more angry and more resilient, even than in the beginning. Because at the beginning, there was this period when there was like a little bit uncertainty, chaotic. People didn't know what to do, what will happen.

And now it's very clear what we have to do, what the goal is. And that is why people have the strengths to continue fighting. This is a tough question because I know, you know, Ukraine is a big country. You know, some cities are hundreds of miles away from the front. But I'm just trying to sort of get a lot. sense of what life is like for sort of the average Ukrainian citizen. Are people kind of going to work from nine to five every day? Is there sort of a bit of a return to normal routines, even if life isn't normal? How do you describe that? Well, it depends very much on where in Ukraine you live,

because the closer to the front lines, the more life has changed for everyone. And then throughout Ukraine, life has changed for many, many people because a lot of families live separated. A lot of men are now in the territorial defense or regular military units on the front lines, and their wives are volunteering or doing something else to help the army. So many, many people, including my friends now, and including myself as well, do now something completely different that they were doing before the war. So for some people who are doing their civilian duty, like working, for example, in the municipality or governmental bodies, for them, life has changed in a way that they have to adapt now to the power cutoffs, to the water cutoffs, to the air raids every two hours to hiding in the bunkers or in the shelters. for many others, life has changed completely because people are now living in a completely different

reality and do something completely different they did before the war started. I know early on a lot of Ukrainians understandably left the country. I know men of a certain age were not allowed to leave the country, but a lot of people left. Have many people come back? What's your sense of sort of the population flow? Well, if to speak about Kharkiv, just to have this, you know, to give you a little bit of sense of this scale, Harcif pre-war population was two million people. Then so many people have left the city in the first days and when the air bombardment started.

And at that period, approximately 300,000 people were still living in the city. Now, about a million people is now in the city, so it means like half of the population of the city is back. If we talk about the country level, many of the people of the women with children who left, they are still out of Ukraine because they are afraid for their children and because in Ukraine there is no safe place. You don't necessarily have to live near the front line to be hit by the missile. And we have seen it happening in every Ukrainian city because ballistic missiles, they can fly anywhere. And this is the feeling of constant threat. And many women do not want their children to live under this threat. And many have decided to live and stay.

until they can return for the sake of the safety of their children. President Biden was in Kiev recently. I was wondering what that meant to you and what you think it meant to people in Ukraine generally. This was a very great visit, and it was very much welcomed in Ukraine, just to give you a sense. I'm following one of the commanders

who is now on the battlefields near Bahmoud in Donner, bus and he refraised what President Biden said and said in his in his note that President Biden, you have captured my heart and the hearts of Ukrainians. And this is what people feel because this is a historical visit. And it was very brave to visit the country at war, take this 10 hour alone, Ukraine plans this for many months to come to the heart of Kiev and be outside on the streets with President Zelenskyi. And this means a lot. This shows Ukrainian the support of the whole world.

And you can see how the support is important everywhere in the trenches when you talk to normal people on the streets in every corner. of Ukraine, people tell you that the support they receive from the whole world and from the United States and other countries means so much because only together we can win in this fight. Without that support, Ukraine won't be able to make it. Yeah. This is a bit of like a speculative question. But, you know, sort of historically speaking, most wars don't end with dramatic victory or dramatic defeat, you know, in some ways World War II is really an anomaly. there's often a stalemate or negotiations after a long period of time.

How do you think about what an end to this war might look like and the reality that Russia will still be a neighbor? Well, Ukraine puts one very simple goal in this war is to liberate the territories that are occupied. Having Russia on the border, of course, will change. the life for people in Ukraine. I can say it for Harki of the second largest city in Ukraine, which has Russia 40 kilometers away from the city.

And this means that even now, this is living under the constant threat of the possible Russian attack. Well, some countries live like that, and there will be the period of adaptation to that but then we will manage. I mean, there is nothing you can do if the crazy imperial country which wants more territories is at your border.

You have to adapt to that and Ukrainians will adapt, but only until everything what is now illegally occupied will be liberated and then possibly there will be some possibility for the talks, after Russia pays for everything it had destroyed.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I have sort of naively hoped that Russian citizens would see the brutality of this war, that they would get stick of learning about their own loved ones coming home dead because Putin pushed them into the meat grinder and maybe create some sort of political dissent. Now, I know that's incredibly difficult in Russia, right? Putin locked down the free press, they jails critics, et cetera. But have you been surprised that there's not, I don't know, more discernible frustration among Russian citizens for the fact that not only are they decimating their neighbor's country, but they're destroying a generation of Russian citizens in the process?

This is a great question and also very important because this is what also makes people in Ukraine so angry. Herky was a Russian-speaking city. Many people had connections with Russia even after 2014. They never hated Russians as a nation. And then when the invasion started, a lot of people started to understand, like, to realize to which scale Russian citizens support this war. And they were so shocked by this because, like, when a... woman calls her mom from the Kharkiv metro and says, I am in the metro because our apartment

was destroyed by the Russian missile. And her mother tells her, no, it's your Ukrainian Nazis. They are shell in your own cities. And these are just one example. There are so many of them. when Russians, they refuse to accept the fact that this is a war, the crime of aggression, the war crime which Russian troops commit every day here, and that they support it. And we see the support is growing. And this is something that is very hard to realize. And the only way of how I can explain it to myself is that this shows us. us how propaganda and disinformation are effective when it's made on a state level for many years

and how people that are brainwashed so much, how actually you can manipulate them and make them support every step you make and how people in Russia, even among the youth, they support Putin and what he decide. This is something that in the free world, in a democratic world, it's just so difficult to realize how could this happen, but yet it's there. Yeah, that's a really good point. Well, listen, Maria, thank you so much. I mean, also, your Twitter feed and all the things you're documenting, it's just like invaluable and it's unbelievably courageous that you're out there at the front, you know, recording these things, sharing them with the world. So, I mean, you know, just thank you for the work you do for keeping people

informed and for talking to us. Thank you so much. It is my pleasure and thank you for your constant support. And, you know, I'm happy that all this things that people started to say since one month after the invasion that the Ukrainian fatigue and that Ukraine will, the topic of Ukraine won't be important is not true and that Ukraine is important. and Ukraine has this support, and it's also because of the work you do, thank you for that. That's very nice you to say. Well, thank you and stay safe and hope to talk to you again soon.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And then finally we hear from Max Seddon from the Financial Times. Ben, you talked to him yesterday, I believe. Yeah, and Max, he has a really good figure on the pulse of what's happening in Russian society. So you talk about Putin and how he's managed to stay so entrenched. Really interesting comments by Max about when things might be. get harder for Putin, basically when this group of hardliners is competing over a smaller pie. And we may have already seen that with the kind of rupture with Bricozan, the head of the Wagner group. And then, you know, talk about kind of Russian attitudes, generally speaking, the mood of the oligarchs.

So Max can really walk us through why Russia looks like it does a year after, which is, I think, very confusing to some outsiders, including many of us. Yeah, I think his article quoted background conversations with like six oligarchs. It's a pretty good roll-a-dex. He's got there, Max, yeah, Max is pretty clearly sourced in the oligarchs, which is probably for a good copy. I love that. I love that.

Okay, well, here's Max. I am really pleased to be joined by Max Seddon, the Moscow Bureau Chief for the Financial Times coming to us from Riga, which is the Moscow Bureau right now. Thanks so much for joining us, Max. Thanks for having me. So we're doing this one year on, and you were such an invaluable guide to us and many people in understanding the Russian view at the outset of the war. So obviously we want to look at this a year on. And one place I wanted to start is that if you said a year ago that Joe Biden would be

going to Kiev, that not only would Kiev hold, but that the Ukrainians would kind of mount offenses in places like Keroson and Kharkiv, and that the Russian military would be essentially kind of humiliated in many ways, that'd be a pretty bad outcome for Vladimir Putin. And yet, in looking at it today, what has not happened is the worst case scenario is for Putin in Russia, and that seems like he's found some ways to work around the sanctions. There's not like mass popular discontent. He seems pretty entrenched there. How do you evaluate that dynamic that basically the failure of the war doesn't seem to have weakened Putin's grip in Moscow? Is that true? And why do you think that is? No, and I think you saw it today. So we're reporting this after Putin made his long-delayed

the State of the Union address, which he hadn't done for almost two years. And the dynamic of that was having very much reinforced what we've been seeing from him over the last few months, which is he made an absolutely catastrophic decision to invade Ukraine based on terrible intelligence and false assumptions that Russia's army was much better than it was, that the Ukrainians weren't going to unite and fight back, and that the West wasn't going to support Ukraine to the extent it has and like sanctions on Russia, to the extent it has. I was speaking to one former senior from an official who was telling me of something that you hear a lot now from Putin and closed law meetings with his officials. He says, well, it turns out we were not ready. We're not

winning the war. We have these huge problems with reducing for the front and keeping the economy going under sanctions. But it's good that we found out and now we know because if we didn't know this and then NATO invaded us, then we really would have been screwed. And I think that really goes to show where his head is at right now, because even given how badly this is all gone, for him, he's shown absolutely no indication whatsoever that he has any interest in ending this before he achieves victory. I think in some ways he scaled some of those goals back. I think if he manages to capture the whole of the Dombas, which is the region of East Ukraine, the war was, you know, ostensibly launched over, then he might be quite happy to call the day and declare victory.

But if you look domestically, even though it's clear to just about everyone in the Russian elite, and you speak people in the Russian elite, almost all of them have no idea this was coming. They're horrified by what Putin's done. They realize that they're living in a country that's turned into next Iran or North Korea, which is not what they signed up for for the most part. But none of them have found the courage to do anything to speak out against a war. and they have either made their peace with their role, and they're just trying to keep their heads down and go about their lives,

or in many cases, they're actually actively conniving in the war effort. So with the military, at the elite level, you could see that they probably did not want this mission. They've had several commanders. But I think there's kind of a core question as an outsider looking at this, which is that you can see this as a rotted, corrupt institution that is just not up to this task can't really do anything but throw bodies at it. And in that reading, they should continue to get weaker. Or I think we all have in the back of our heads, like the Red Army sometimes loses out

of the gates, but precisely because they throw bodies at things, maybe they actually will prove resilient here in a kind of back and forth, brutal front line like this in history that has been something that Russians sometimes have worn down the opponent. I mean, how do you assess the health of the military in its investment in this mission one year on? And what do you look for to see whether this might be the regenerative Red Army that is very resilient or might just be a paper tiger that falls apart? I think there's a lot more resilience baked into the Russian system than we might necessarily assume, given how disastrous so much of this invasion has been for Russia.

But I'd say that you actually need to look beyond the military because for Putin is about more than just the military. For him, he made this very clear in his State of Union address today, this war isn't with Ukraine at the end of the day. Ukraine, he thinks, is basically the MacGuffin. It's, you know, the thing that they're fighting over, but really the war is with America. And he thinks America is using Ukraine to destroy Russia and would have done if he hadn't invaded first. And something that he did in October was he appointed this general who was commander of the Air Force beginning of the war, then the Southern Front, but later on, Sergei Sierrez-Rviken, he was placed in control of the overall.

invasion, and that was the first time they named an invasion commander. And this was seen as a bit of a shift in strategy. But this sort of Rican was someone, you know, depending on who you talk to, believed to have been advocating for a plan that is more realistic, takes into account of Russia's failings, uses its strengths more effectively. And downside to that is that if you're more realistic, it's harder for you to accomplish Putin's goals because they are inherently unrealistic because they're based on lies and conjecture. And that was fairly effective for a while. One thing that was quite key to that was they started the series of mass airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure just about every week. And they kept mounting out lots of power stations. And then other utilities you'd have the entire cities would be without electricity, without heat, without running water, four days of the time. And basically what this mounted to was they had to take some else. And Seravikin was basically, he set himself up as someone who took arguably the biggest L of the whole. war which was the only provincial capital that russia had managed to capture her son it was basically once ukraine's counterfeensive got going in the late summer it was basically you know untenable to hold it you know they they had to withdraw the other bank of the river everyone knew this and he he was set up publicly uh to go through this bizarre ceremony as the guy taking the out from that the other thing that

one of the most important weapons in in putin's arsenal uh that he's always been keenly aware of how they for geopolitical ends is Russia's energy. You know, Russia is the world's largest energy producer. They were supplying 40% of the European Union's gas before the war. It's now, at some point last year, the EU was very proud of getting it down to 9%, and they're hoping to get to zero. This is giving an idea, 9% is the Saudi share of the global oil supply. 9% is still really a lot from on supplier.

So what happened was there was this hubristic assumption that, so we're turning off the top, there's going to be this cold winter. The wars in the drag on for a long time. It's going to be cold, not just in Ukraine, but in Europe as well. We'll have these infrastructure attacks. We've got the second wave of refugees. Gradually, this will break the resolve of the Europeans. We'll peel them off, and this will lead to some sort of deal

where Ukraine gets divided, conquered, and thrown under the bus. And for various reasons, this didn't happen. You know, if you're Putin, you say, okay, so that's how it goes. But this for him is an existential. war because this is the finding moment of his entire reign. He really seems to have convinced himself that he's on historical mission to gather the Russian lands. And so it's basically this is a game of endurance. I did want to ask you about the oligarch piece of this. I guess Progosen is a particular flavor of oligarch. This is the mafia really. Yeah, exactly. The worst version. But you were,

you know, at the beginning of the war, I remember you walking us through that surreal meeting, when Putin called in all the oligarchs to that big room and basically told them to get with the program. And I just follow your reporting. You know, I can tell you, you know, you seem to be sourced in that world a little bit. And I'm just curious what the mood is among the kind of kleptocrats, you know, the oligarch class that kind of was less influential in Moscow, even by the launch of the invasion, seems even less so today. But they are, you know, billionaires and people with resources and people who, you know, some of them like Progozen directly involved in the work of the state, some of them more adjacent, you know, and some of them

Roman Abramovich types trying to be global figures. But how would you describe what life is like for the oligarchs today and how they see things going? This one giant pity party, basically, these people have, they've really turned out to be, you know, hostages to the fortunes that they built because what the war has done is it's taken away everything that they were able to achieve with their fortunes and left them only with, you know, the source of the fortunes and the very, you know, dubious, in many cases, moral compromises. And they have to say, you know, nothing of, you know, worse stuff that made them that they had to do to build those fortunes in the first place. But there's the whole point

of being an oligarch was, you know, you own the factory in Siberia that you privatized for a tenth of what it was worth. You got a loan from, you know, the state bank because of your political connections to buy the factory. Yeah. But, you know, you're, you're, You're living in the south of France. Your kids are at school in England. You're on your yacht half the year. You just got an MR-AID passport because you're friends with one of the Amirs, you're doing some winter yachting.

And that's all gone now. With a few exceptions, they're basically trapped in Russia, as they see it, with American sanctions. It's very difficult. You had a lot of people who have been trying to reroute a lot of their business or their personal finances through places like Dubai, Turkey to a lesser extent, Central Asia and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Treasury has been doing quite a lot to pressure those countries and crack down on that. We still need to see where that goes.

And so what these people are doing is they've, in, frankly, quite a cowardly fashion, they've sort of accepted their fate. And what you hear is a lot of ways to justify their inaction and to certain extent complicity to to themselves more than anything else. A number of times I heard people say, you know, sentences beginning with, you know, I'm against the war, but. But I'm against the war, but life has to go on. I'm against the war, but what about my friend, like this oligarch, his kids were kicked out of Harrow, private school in the UK.

You have at least half a dozen oligarchs who have given up their Russian citizenship. Yeah. And, you know, they've either, you know, they might be Jewish. they've got Israeli, they might have bought Cypriot or Maltese citizenship in the EU. When you could do that, they might have St. Gitts or some offshore jurisdiction in the Caribbean. And they pretend to have nothing whatsoever to do with Russia. But the majority of them are just stuck there. They're keeping their heads down.

And they are very worried about not just getting targeted by the state and the state expropriating their assets, which, you know, it's always been a risk. Yeah. But also that they start fighting each other. when you have this elite that is overwhelmingly opposed to the war, you know, almost none of them will even mention the fact that there is a war in public. What criticism there was, you know, was very guarded. If you are, you know, an enterprising oligarch, you can pitch yourself to the Kremlin as, you know, I am the most patriotic guy in the world of steel or fertilizer or whatever. And this is something that is a strategic national importance to the Russian Federation. And look at these guys, you know, they have all these, you know, foreign investors and

they're against the war and they're talking to this and that foreign person. This is very suspicious. And we can't have people like this running our strategic national assets. So you should just let me do some kind of, you know, 1990 style, you know, old school Russian corporate wildless takeover. And I will get the assets. And we aren't quite seeing that yet. But that's something last time I was in Moscow and the last year that I heard from a lot of people

that, you know, it's like with anything, right? You know, the less there is the fight over, the smaller the stakes are, the more vicious the fight is. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And that's something to watch, whether those internal divisions come above the surface. Last question for you. One other piece of this is journalism, right?

And when we were talking to a year ago, you were in Moscow, now you're in Riga. How does one cover Russia today if you're not a part of Putin's state media? How is life changed for you and journalists like you? who have to cover Russia from increasingly outside of Russia? We are not completely out of Russia. I've been back a few times. The number one reason I'm actually Melsen-Rigas for personal reasons because my wife is a Russian journalist

and faces much greater pressures than I ever would. It's been interesting because just in terms of how people will talk to you, there have been entire avenues that just completely close off to us. Almost no one will go on the record about anything. However, but if you're reporting on the Russian elite, in some ways, you know, there are some people I spoke to, you know, twice as or three times as much last year as I had in all the preceding years that I knew them. There were people who came out the woodwork that ever thought would come out the woodwork before that I've been chasing for years. I thought, ah, finally, I've always wanted to, you know, mail this story. But the problem is is that once you're there, there is increasing pressure on the foreign media.

And even that is just a drop in the ocean compared to what's been done to the Russian media. And my wife works, the BBC, Russian service, you know, they all left for safety reasons once Russia basically banned saying anything. Not just in journalism, a bit in public. Like, there are people who have said things against the war in bars. There are people who said things against the war at bus stations or in group chats. And they've been reported to police for discrediting the armed forces. You know, all forms of dissent have been effectively outlawed. And so you have these exile communities of Russian journalists, you know, without question, it's not safe for them.

to go back and do any reporting whatsoever. And I think, you know, especially given the circumstances where also, you know, Russian independent media, they've been cut off from financing, not just from advertisers, but also their own audience because, you know, even with the waves of migration, most publications say that, you know, well over half the audience is still in Russia. And unless they have Western bank accounts, they can't send money because Russian bank cards work outside Russia anymore. So you have this pretty much total reliance now on grants from, you know, the usual suspects in the West, you know, governments and, you know, big foundations to sustain the stuff. And it's very difficult to keep that going. So I think, you know,

the circumstances are extremely difficult that Russian journalists have to work in, that they do an absolutely amazing job, given all that. And it's something which I continue to, you know, throw really a lot of inspiration. Yeah. Well, that's a good note to end. on, it's worth remembering that Russia is a big, complicated country, and there are people like those journalists who are risking a lot. We really appreciate your analysis, Max. It's good to catch up with you one year on, and we'll continue to watch all the trends you pointed to. Thanks for having me. All right, well, thank you again to all our amazing guests today, and thanks to everybody who made it to the outro. We're not going to do our usual fuckery because

this is more of a serious set of topics. But again, if you like this bonus episode, We want to do more of them. We would like to hear what other topics you guys are interested in. I know Ben and I are very interested in the upcoming anniversary of the Iraq War, because I don't think we really talk enough about the damage that was done by the Iraq War, even 20 years later. But yeah, please let us know. Thanks for listening.

Pate of the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Segglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, B.B Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Potsave the World

YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.