Pod Save the World - Putin invades (but not where you thought)

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Ben and Tommy talk about protests and power struggles in Kazakhstan, Boris Johnson’s garden party problems, an update on the assassination of the Haitian president, how Novak Djokovic's vaccination status caused a diplomatic crisis in Australia, when North Korea invented the burrito (huh?) a heroic bomb sniffing rat and much more. Then Ben talks with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk about tensions with Russia and how Ukraine plans to maintain democracy despite Putin's efforts to destroy it. 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 Pots Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, the New England Patriots are in the playoffs. Yeah, but not exactly with a huge head of momentum, my friend. Losing the dolphins twice. Oh, you're going to lose the dolphins twice and then roll back into Buffalo where it's just kicked the shit out of us. And very cold. Yeah, we needed to be like either negative 50 in like, you know, driving wins or it's going to be tough.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the negative 50 in driving wins could play to your advantage. That we need. Last time you only ran the ball, right? Yes. Yes. I think Mack threw the ball three times. But anyway, the listeners hate the sports banter. Our global listeners would love our discussion of American football. We apologize. We have a great show today. It's a fun, ranging, interesting set of topics, in my opinion. We're going to start in Kazakhstan because there have been protests, which seemed like they turned into proxy fighting, and then there were more Russian troop movements.

Crazy story, yeah. Truly. Yeah. We'll also cover some more trouble for British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. It's worth it, this one. This one's worth it. How Canada is trying to ban bigotry. Some news out of Ethiopia.

Some COVID news. An interesting update out of Haiti about the assassination of the former president. How a tennis star is causing a major diplomatic incident in Australia. This is huge, yeah. And then we'll check in with Jaira Bolsonaro and Mike Pompeo. See how they're doing, learn about an amazing North Korean invention and celebrate a heroic rat. And then, Ben, you did our interview today. What are we going to learn about Ukraine? Yeah, listeners may be wondering why we're not leading with Ukraine, but we have a great guest,

Alexei Hunteruk, who was the prime minister of Ukraine. He's also 37 years old. Let's, come on. So if you thought you were accomplishing by being in the White House as a young guy. But Alexei gives us the view from Ukraine of these negotiations that are happening between the U.S. and Russia, how Ukrainians are looking at things, how they're looking at Kazakhstan, kind of ties these things together. So it's been interesting watching these negotiations, Tommy, play out. Yeah, I mean, they're happening right now, I think, right? The NATO-Russia ones, right?

So you had Wendy Sherman sit down with Riyarbka, her Russian counterpart, yesterday, for seven and a half hours. And you saw some great readouts, you know, like business-like, candid, you know, the, all the euphemisms. All the euphemisms for, we didn't really make any progress. we agreed to keep talking. But it's tense, you know. Wendy Sherman will grind you out. She did like weeks straight with the Iranians, right? Well, and actually, like, one of the things that was interesting to me is Riyarbkov was the Russian in those Iran talks.

Oh, interesting. So Wendy Sherman has spent like literally thousands of hours negotiating with Riyarbkov on Iran-related issues. So it's not like the first rodeo here, which is good, I think. hopefully they have a relationship you know yeah imagine like the must be like old friends who know each other for dumb reasons like nose breathing and you know slurping your soup stuff like that well i'll tell you what's super weird about the the none of the russian diplomats have changed right so when you and i went to the white house in 2009 sergey lavrov was the foreign minister ryeabkov was the deputy guy and we had a pretty good relationship with the russians and they were

like these pretty reasonable guys. I'd probably get hammered with reporters all the time at lunches and spin them and was seen as charming and it was on the scene in Washington at times. That's right. And so what's so interesting is when Putin came back in 2012 and then Russia took this increasingly dark turn, they reemerged as these fire breathing hardliners. Yeah. The performance in Act 2 is a little different.

Yeah, yeah. They'll do whatever they're told to do is what you learn. And so people like Wendy have this memory of these people being more constructive at a different time. And so I guess it's good to know them on that human level, right? At the end of the day, they're following the playbook given to them by Vladimir Putin. Fascinating. Well, hopefully it turns out well. When you are done with this episode, dear listener, check out the latest episode of hysteria, where Aaron Ryan is back from maternity leave.

And she's got a great new episode where they talk about January 6. And then they talk about all things, pregnancy and postpartum. super funny, interesting, amazing group of women on that show. And then check out TakeLine of Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery. They're talking about the return of Clay Thompson to the Warriors. Yes. Clay Day. And more fun tennis news about Djokovic.

Subscribe to Hysteria and Take Line wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. Let's go to Kazakhstan, Ben, because like we mentioned at the top, I mean, this week or so, it's about a week plus, basically. We've seen huge protests, deadly street fighting, security forces, shooting live, ammo at protesters, and then finally this Russian military intervention. Here's what we know. So on January 1st or 2nd, the government of Kazakhstan lifted price caps on liquefied petroleum gas. That is the fuel that most Kazakhs use in their cars. This set off a now familiar

set of protests over prices, economic inequality, corruption, like general anger of the government. Kazakhstan is the ninth biggest country in the world. It's got tons of oil and gas and mining resources and a small population, but it's been ruled by a bunch of corrupt autocrats, well, one in particular, since becoming an independent state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and people were just pissed about their, you know, economic lot in life. But here's where the story gets more complicated, seemingly. The protest had started in Western Kazakhstan, and then they spread around sort of the region organically. But analysts think that, you know, literally a thousand miles to the east, the fighting and the capital, Almaty, turned into something different. It was like a

proxy fight between the current and former president with gangs and armed groups sort of on both sides that were heavily, heavily armed. Norsultan Nazarbayov, who's the former president, he ruled Kazakhstan from 1991 until 2019 when he handed over the reins to the current leader, President Tokayev. But even after leaving the presidency, Nazarbayev retained a lot of power, influences the head of Kazakhstan's security council, which left him in control of the security services. So that was the case in the sort of political dynamic of, you know, the former leader is still kind of running the show to some extent until last week when in the middle of the protests, Tokayev made a power play, announced he'd be taking over Nazarbayev's position leading

the security council, then he fired and arrested the head of Kazakhstan's intelligence agency, who was also a former prime minister. So it was a big time power play. Tokayev then declared that the protesters in the streets were foreign-trained terrorists, and he asked this regional security organization led by Russia called the Collective Security and Treaty Organization for Assistance, fun name, and Putin rolled in the troops and tanks. So Almaty, the capital, was literally a war zone. Like there's all these videos of like constant machine gun fire, heavy fighting, the mayor's office, the presidential palace were attacked and burned.

I saw some reports of up to 8,000 arrests, thousands more people seeking medical help. It's hard to know the truth because the internet keeps getting cut off, but there's also reports that Nazarbaya fled the country. So then, you know, a lot of context there, but historically, Kazakhstan has tried to like straddle the West and the East, right? Like the Russians and the U.S. and China and Europe, in one fell swoop they went all in with Russia. What did you make of Secretary of State Tony Blinken's comment that, quote, one lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it's sometimes very difficult to get them to leave. So this is a fascinating story. And actually, I like that quote from Tony because, like, sometimes you don't see, Tony's actually like a really funny guy, you know, and it's good to see like the Tony.

That's what he would say if you're sitting here with us, you know. So that was good. Okay, where to start with this. So Nazarbayev has been, you know, the autocrat of Kazakhstan since its independence from the Soviet Union and kind of held Kazakhstan up as the success of like the stands. You know, they were like they were making all this money, but they were largely doing it in oil and gas, you know. And not stands like the kids say. Yeah, yeah. Stans like the regional.

Like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. And, you know, and so they had this kind of gloatheaval. gleaming capital city with these high-rise buildings, and they had the fold-out ads and the economists, you know, and they had like the international conferences. And it was to some extent, a higher standard of living success story. But Nazarbayev also just phenomenally corrupt. Yeah. Like billions. Because what happens is after the breakup of the Soviet Union, they kind of auction off these oil fields and these natural resources. And Nazarbayev got control. of them, he's probably as untold billions of dollars. His kids have billions of dollars. And so the deal

was essentially, things are going to be stable here. Standard of a living is going to go up a bit. But me and my family and my buddies are going to get phenomenally wealthy, right? And everyone else, you shut up. Yeah, you all shut up. He kind of got too old to run the place, handed it off to the new guy. But importantly, kept his kids. kind of in the mix too, right? So there's like a Nazarbayov clan that is still very influential in Cossack politics.

And then Tokayev, the new president, was kind of seen as like the guy who would do the bidding and keep the shop running, right? We'll probably have added this, but Ben and I were both kind of struggling to think of his name. This literally happened to Putin at a press conference last month with Takaya. They were talking and he couldn't remember the guy's name.

Right? So this guy's not exactly... And by the way, they were renamed in the capital city of Almaty after Nazarbayev, you know, they're trying to create a kind of cult of personality that would sustain itself. Then, clearly these protests were legit at the outset, right?

Like you had people who were just pissed, you know, nothing's going to piss people off more than raising fuel prices. And oh, by the way, an oil-rich country in which all the oligarchs become billioners off of oil and gas, but they still have to raise the price for me to, like,

you heat my house or drive my fucking car. So people were pissed and they were pissed about corruption, all the things that, you know, you detailed. It does feel like in the kind of chaos of these protests and people are like, you know, smashing up buildings and kind of going after government buildings, it feels like there then became this power play between Takayev, the new guy, seeing this as an opportunity to dislodge the influence of Nazarbayev. And to do that, though, he makes himself essentially Putin's stooge. So his play is to say, okay, I'm going to appeal to like the Russian version of NATO,

which is essentially a collection of former Soviet republics that don't mind having Russia be the shot caller in this kind of sphere of influence for Russia. We're going to ask these troops to roll in. we are going to crack down viciously. I mean, really, you know, just shooting people live fire in the streets. And on the back end of that, what's going to emerge? It's going to be this president who was kind of a technocratic type of autocrat suddenly is the strong man. But he's a strong man who's more beholden than to Putin than even before. Nazarbayev can maybe take his billions and just kind of get out of the picture and hope that things calm down. It feels like that's the place. That's the

play we just saw run. And it's not, unfortunately, that unfamiliar. Belarus, for instance, comes to mind. Yeah, it seemed like Takaya was trying to sell sort of a softer, gentler autocrat image. But then shit goes down, these protests start. He starts to think that Nazarbayev is sending, you know, sort of gang members and sort of militia forces to foment violence. So he calls him Putin. And you're right. Now he's a completely weakened autocrat. Yeah, what we don't know is what was going on behind the scenes between the Takayev and the Nazarbayev people. But it just does feel like Takayev took the opportunity to basically align himself with Putin and try to smash some of the influence of Nazarbayev in response to whatever play the Nazarbayev people might have been running. Yeah, fascinating.

So I read you that Tony Blinken, quote, the Russian foreign ministry's response was, quote, if Anthony Blinken loves history lessons so much, then he should take the following into account. When Americans are in your house, it can be difficult to stay alive and not be robbed or raped. Yikes. It sounds like Tony's comment got under their skin. So Ben, I think every analyst I've read seems to think that like Russia is coming away the winner here. They have more influence in Kazakhstan they did before. At least they have a leader who like owes Putin a pretty big favor. I guess the question I'm seeing a lot of people ask and argue both ways is do you think this will have any impact on Putin's calculus when it comes to Ukraine?

Like, is it more likely to make him want to invade? Is it less likely? Do you have a take on that? Well, I think if you step back from all this, and I do this later with Alexi a little bit, but, you know, it is very hard to look at the current situation generally and not feel like, oh, Putin has all this momentum, right? He's got 100,000 troops bearing down in Ukraine. He's got, you know, Lukashenko is kind of his toady in Belarus.

And now he's got Takayev in Kazakhstan inviting some Russian troops in to kill some people in his country. You can invert this, though. And wait a second. Like, in the places where Putin wants to have maximum influence, there's a lot of seething instability right underneath the hood of the car. That's true. So in Belarus, clearly the people don't like Lukashenko anymore,

and he's kind of lost whatever legitimacy he might have once had. Clearly in Kazakhstan, where there's not a lot of insight from the international community because it's fairly cut off. Underneath the hood, their people seem pretty pissed. I mean, that was pretty clear. And so, and overall, Russia is not, it's not like this super rich country. It's this kind of hollowed out place where young people are leaving. So there's, there's one narrative where Putin's on the march,

and he's got more influences these former Soviet republics, and he's demanding that the U.S. negotiate with him about NATO. But on the other hand, he's got fires popping up all along his borders in places where people are sick of kleptocracy and all. autocracy. He's got like a minuscule GDP compared to Europe in the United States. He's got young people even the country. And so the question is, in the short term, he can really drive events, right? Because he could just decide, say, to invade Ukraine in the same way he just decided to send some troops into Kazakhstan. But in the long run, he doesn't have like that good cards, both in

terms of just the relative strength of Russia economically, but also just in terms of like people wanting to live under Putinism, right? Yeah, and just being overextended. Yeah, just being overextended. I think people should be cautious about, I don't know that Russia has going to have to deploy mass amounts of troops away from Ukraine into Kazakhstan. No, I think it was like 2,500. It sounds like they're already coming out.

It feels like they're already coming out. So it feels like they did, they busted some heads, shot some people, and came back out. So, but if anything, I think it does heighten the stakes that like what is happening, and this we cover with Alexei later, but what's, happening in in in Ukraine and all these places is really Putin just trying to to push democracy out away from any bordering state you know and and I'm going to be the force that I'm this basically me the security force to bust heads in all these places and the question is is that going to prevail or can can people's aspirations to have a better deal going to ultimately cause the lid to blow

off all these places yeah yeah I mean I guess it's a good question We shouldn't necessarily assume it's one or the other. The thing that does suck is for, like, you know, activists, protesters, civil society members in Kazakhstan who had this legitimate moment that started and kind of get subsumed in this proxy fighting seemingly. And then the Russian intervention. Like that part's tough. Yeah. And Takayev had some insane, like I think he said something like there were 20,000 foreign terrorist. Yeah, he made up.

It's just total bullshit. Same bullshit. I mean, you watch the videos that's worth, and some of them are wild, right? There's people on horseback. because dudes walking around two-by-fours. But, like, it clearly there's popular unrest in this country. And, you know, they can say all they want about foreign. They don't care to even be credible anymore in their conspiracy theories.

No, no. They don't try it all. Okay, let's turn to the U.K. Because there's a different kind of political instability that Boris Johnson is dealing with that he created for himself. A leaked email shows that one of Boris Johnson's top aides invited more than one. 100 staffers to a B.YOB Garden Party at number 10 Downing Street in May of 2020. So during the height of the early pandemic in lockdowns. May of 2020.

May of 2020. A hundred person rager. It was like a wedding. Yeah. This news was broken by ITV News. They saw a copy of this email. It was from the prime minister's principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, fun title. Apparently about 30 to 40 staffers actually showed up, including the prime minister and

his wife, less than an hour before the party, Ben, Johnson's culture secretary was doing a daily COVID press briefing. And he told everyone the following quote, you can meet one person outside of your household in an outdoor public place, provided that you stay two meters apart. So those were the rules for the people not C-C'd on that email. And then the rest were at a garden party. This is not an isolated incident, as we know. We talked about similar reports of parties, gatherings by Johnson's staff, some of them at number 10 Downing Street, right? There was the holiday party during the lockdown and then the leaked video. Johnson's press staff, like joking about how to lie about it.

Johnson had initially asked a cabinet secretary to lead an investigation into these incidents because, yeah, he clearly wants to get the bottom of what happened. But the person he asked to lead the investigation had to step aside because he knew about the Garden Party, apparently. Now there's calls for Johnson himself to be questioned as part of this broader inquiry. The Metropolitan Police are looking into it. Ben, I'm going to ask you to predict the future, which is dumb, but why not, why not speculate. He's a political survivor, right, Boris Johnson. But like, I don't know, this one just

feels, this one feels so bad. Yeah. I mean, everyone can understand. Like, I don't know that labor is ready to capitalize. That's always the problem. The elections might not be for a while. But it's just such an easy story to understand. One set of rules for me, another set for you. Yeah. I mean, so the basic problem they have is that, is that they want to live by a different set of rules and have B-Y-O-B ragers at the height of COVID. The other is that they continue to about it. Lie. So they, and they keep getting caught, like, directly in the lie.

It's like, well, I didn't know anything about this. Oh, like, well, here's the email from your guy. Yeah. Like sending out the thing for the Rager. And part of the problem with their lying and covering up here, too, is it like, there were like hundreds of people like involved in the, you know, like, it's not hard for someone to be like, oh, wait a second. Actually, I have the email where you invited me to the B.Y.O.B.

Rager. Right. Number 10 down. And he fired and humiliated his top guy. This guy, Dominic Cummings, a while ago, who was clearly just leaking. everything he's gotten on a vendetta. Yeah, and so this is going to continue. I'm sure there's more parties.

I'm sure there are more emails. You just have that feeling that there's a very large iceberg across underneath the Boris Johnson Titanic here. Now, why might the case for Boris Johnson's survival? He is a politician whose central insight is, if you feel no shame about anything, you can survive anything. It's kind of like Trump's insight, that if you cannot be shamed, you know, you won't resign.

and you'll just weather it and people's attention spans will move on to the next thing. The problem is it's pretty clear that, like, this is really dragging down his approval ratings. You saw, we mentioned recent by-election, a local election where they lost like a serious Tory seat. And so there is the makings of a real electoral reckoning, not just in a general election, which doesn't need to happen until 2024. but in every election on the way to that. And so if Johnson himself doesn't resign, do the Tories just toss them overboard, because they're like,

we don't want to go into the next election, tethered to this guy who's kind of lost the public, right? I'm not going to predict the future because I don't see Boris Johnson as a resigning type. No, I don't know. So my suspicion is he'll try to weather this, and I don't know enough whether the Tories will make. a decision that, you know, ultimately they don't, they don't want this guy as a frontman anymore.

But it's, it's a very weird thing that he was so insistent on partying through COVID, though. It's just like, it's such an easy thing to not to. Yeah, yeah. So he got it. He nearly died. Yeah. He nearly died. You'd think that that would have had a sobering, pardon the pun, effect on the guy.

I mean, that might have been after this. I don't know, I don't know when that happens at the timeline here, but Jesus Christ, man. Yeah. And he had a baby during, like, there's so many reasons he shouldn't be at a garden party with 30 or 40 people in the high of COVID. What, what, why he felt so compelled to do this is kind of the, the part of the mystery here, you know, but like I just, um, I do think it, you know, he's in real political danger and there's a real opportunity for labor to make this a bigger case than just the COVID thing

itself. Totally. The disrespect that this demonstrates is manifest in a lot of the government's policies and choices that essentially if Boris Johnson's slogan, around Brexit was famously take back control, like it's time for the people of the United Kingdom to take back control from Boris Johnson because he has no fucking respect for them, right? So if I'm labor, I'm focused on, yes, demanding he stepped down, demanding inquiries, but building this into a larger argument about this conservative party has sold itself out

and sold out. Illegal lobbying by conservatives, et cetera. Another story is the Queen of England recently announced a list of, folks will be knighted. It included former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. That is a huge honor in the UK to become a knight. That's probably an obvious point. But people are a little shocked, a little angry, a little surprise that Blair was on there, given his role in the Iraq war. And some folks quickly organized a petition calling for the knighthood to be revoked and it received over a million signatures in less than a week. I would say clearly like the U.S., the UK,

none of us have the full reckoning for the Iraq war that we probably need, but like, not knighting a guy who helps precipitate it. It seems like an early step. But to the question about whether labor is ready to step in and, you know, fight the other side of these fights, Keir Starmer, the labor leader, was out there saying that, yes, Tony Blair does deserve to be knighted. So I'm not sure that's the position I would have taken here.

I think you have two problems here. One is like the Iraq piece, but the other piece is that Tony Blair has gotten a lot of negative press over there for his post-prime ministership life, which basically, has entailed him making a lot of money off the Nazarbayevs of the world, you know, like he's basically jumped into bed with a bunch of oligarchs and autocrats and his kind of blend of consulting and philanthropy and the rest of it. The problem for labor is you've got the Blair legacy that is

complicated by Iraq and these kind of whiff of corruption. And then you've got the Corbyn legacy of this kind of hard left turn that didn't work out with these anti-Semitism issues that had to be addressed. And so, what? What is the foundation you're standing upon? Yeah. You know, you almost have to kind of rebrand this entire endeavor in a way, you know. Feels familiar. But if I'm Kirstarmer, like, I'm sure what he's thinking is I need those Blair voters back.

That's true. Right sure. Those sort of moderate players. And he's also sort of making a technical case. Well, he was the prime minister. He did this for that for the UK, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know. I would sort of check out the million people signing petitions saying no neither for the guy and kind of read the room.

Okay, here's a good news story, Ben. So last week, a Canadian law banning conversion therapy went into effect. Conversion therapy is this snake oil treatment that is supposed to help convert gay people to stray it. It's nonsense. It's bullshit. It's usually abusive. The law will make it a crime to offer or promote services that are intended to change someone's sexual orientation. The law will also make it illegal for Canadians to take minors abroad to get conversion therapy.

So you can't, like, drive your kid to somewhere in the U.S. and do it. The bill passed Canada's House of Commons and Senate by unanimous consent back in early December. Some conservatives now say they were confused by that process and wouldn't have voted for, but whatever. Waited to do your job well, guys. But a dozen countries have passed laws to protect citizens from conversion therapy, including 20 states in the U.S. in Washington, D.C., so good for you, Canada. Hopefully the U.S. maybe we'll get our act together and pass a federal law, too.

But, you know, lead the way up north. Yeah, I mean, and there have been a bunch of these issues. where Canada's been, you know, a laboratory for, you know, more progressive policies. I mean, they've been very good on gender issues internationally. And look, I think on the LGBT issues, part of what we've seen is a lot of resistance in a lot of places. But what you also see is once you start making headway, like in this country, it changed very fast, you know.

So things that seem like impossible, like gay marriage, suddenly. or very normal now. So the hope is that if you have other countries kind of creating a template for what the right set of laws are, that you have a vehicle that can be expanded as the movement for LGBT rights. Totally. Globalizes. Yeah.

And you can measure the impact and do all sorts of good things. Some interesting news out of Ethiopia. So recently the government said it would release a handful of political prisoners in a step towards resolving the civil war in Ethiopia that's been raging for a year, like 15 months, actually. This seems hopeful, Ben, but I don't know, my hope is a little bit tempered by the fact that previously Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has ruled out talks with the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF who are the leaders of the rebel faction that the government has been fighting with over the last year. But, you know, the momentum in this fighting is sort of ebbed and flowed. The New York Times quoted

some diplomats and analysts who said that the government's recent military success is because they were supplied with armed drones from the UAE and Turkey. So again, wonderful. But again, it's really here because Ethiopia's security forces have cut off hundreds of thousands of people living in the Tigray province. They're starving to death. It's really an urgent matter. So I don't know what to make of this. I want to see some hopeful news. I want to think there's some sort of process for resolution. I also have a pretty strong, healthy distrust of anything the Ethiopian government says, but I don't know. I don't know how you read this news. I mean, I think, you know, you have a situation where what may be emerging on the ground is an awareness that neither side can just win this war, right?

So that you may have shifts in momentum back and forth, but the idea that the government is going to completely pacify and conquer essentially the Tigray region, that's not going to happen. But also the idea that the TPLF is going to come down and totally conquer Ethiopia, that's not going to happen either. So when you have a situation where both sides may come to that realization, you obviously want to get to a negotiation. These sides hate each other. And so the idea of getting right to the core issues of like how is power shared and

is there autonomy and Tigray and these kinds of things, it's hard to start with those kinds of conversations. So what you look for are there kind of confidence building steps like prisoner releases that can at least start a pathway into a negotiation about those bigger issues? And that's what you would hope. Is it there are these kind of underneath the hood, you know, we're probably urging them to do competence building steps like prison releases, right? And so you hope that that's a part of a process that leads somewhere rather than just like one-offs that disappear into quicksand.

Right. Prison releases, talks, ceasefires, like those are the recipe. Ben, quick global COVID update. So the World Health Organization says that half of Europe will have been infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 within six to eight weeks. So that's a sobering headline. It's a projection based off seven million new cases that were reported across Europe in the first week of 2022. So the Omicron is moving from west to east across the continent and kind of like a wave. How bad it will impact various European countries will be determined by, you know, the percentage of the populations in each place that are vaccinated and the strength of their individual health care systems. on Monday, Pfizer said they could launch a version of their vaccine tailored for Omicron.

Omicron, Omicron, what are we going with? I'm an Omicron guy. Okay, Amicron. We can't pronounce on this show. No, historically bad. So look, the Amacron-specific vaccine in March, good news, maybe a bit late, though, I don't know. The good news, though, is that there's now considerable evidence that this variant leads to less hospitalizations, fewer ICU admissions than the Delta variant. Obviously, the risk is that if so many people get sick, it could overwhelm European health infrastructure.

But, you know, Ben, stepping back, like, it's, we've talked about this most days the past month. Like, it's demoralizing, exhausting, frustrating to have COVID, like, still so front and center in our lives, 22. You are starting to see some health experts say there could be a best case scenario that is basically this Omicron variant, overwhelming Delta variant, other more deadly ones. It moves so quickly and infects people so quickly that we get to some level of herd natural immunity and cases go way down fast. I mean, that's easy for us to stay sitting here in the U.S. fully vaccinated. But, you know, it seems like the options are bad and worse.

And, you know, long term, maybe Amacron as composed of Delta is, there's a silver lining there. But we'll see. I mean, I guess a few, like, different takes on this. I mean, than what you might normally get, like, from epidemiologist Twitter. First is, like, it feels like that those numbers are higher just because Europe is better at testing than we are. Like, we're probably going to be, like, you know, half infected, too. I don't know. But I've been struck by the – there's just more testing and reporting in some of these European countries.

I don't know. That's just my impression of why would there be more of a percentage of cases, positive cases in Europe than here. I think the second thing is that this reinforces that they'll continue to be just these disruptions, so to things like travel and the resumption of tourism, things that are important to Europe's economy and the function of kind of certain international business and even diplomacy. Which is in the third thing, which is that what we're also seeing, everywhere is that incumbent governments are going to suffer from the reality that people are just fucking pissed on.

Being in charge right now is no good. And so you could be trying to do everything right. It doesn't matter. You're going to get blamed. And people are sick of the disruption more than they are, you know, wanting more lockdowns. And so I have to think that the trajectory of politics is going to be towards, yes, continuing to prioritize things like vaccination. but also like trying to figure out a way to live with COVID.

You're seeing this from Biden's former advisors, for example. Yeah, you're seeing it from Biden's former advisors. You saw it in the UK. It's had the Johnson government dealt with Omicron. You saw Macron say that his whole strategy was to try to piss off the vaccinated. That was a weird take. But I guess he's trying to redirect the rage, the rage towards the unvaccinated away from him, which is maybe a one bet. So I think you're going to see people trying to evolve.

towards a place where you kind of assume Omicron is the new variant and we're going to live with it. The other challenge, though, as we've talked about, is if we don't do more to vaccinate, more of the world, you just give the virus more time to mutate into a variant that might be more deadly than Omicron. And so, you know, there's no answer to this that doesn't involve more vaccination in the global south too.

Totally. We got to ramp up production of those vaccines. Update out of Haiti, Ben. So the New York Times reported that there is new evidence is new evidence that suggests that Ariel Henri, the current prime minister of Haiti, actually has ties with the prime suspect, a prime suspect, and the murder of the former president, Jovenaummois, back in July, and that Henri and the killer might remain in touch. That's not very good operational security if you're still calling the killer and you're in charge of the country.

So the New York Times saw phone records that show Henri spoke with a guy named Joseph Felix Badio, who's a former justice minister, who's now suspected of organized. the presidential assassination. It sounds like they spoke before and after the assassination happened, including twice the morning that Moise was killed. The Times also reported that this former Justice Minister, Badio, visited Henri's house when he was being hunted by the police. Obviously, the Prime Minister's office denies everything,

but the Times also interviewed a drug trafficker who says he helped finance and plan the assassination. That guy tells him that Badio, this former justice minister, was bragging that he controlled the prime minister's office. So a lot of different threads here showing that there's a connection. Henri has also fired prosecutors who are investigating his role in the case. Everyone should read the full story. It came out on Monday, the 10th. There's lots of details. It's worth reading it. I guess my takeaway, Ben, in question for you, is I guess I'm not really surprised by this that, you know, the server arrival would take out a rival. But I guess where

my brain went is I worry that if you have a current prime minister desperately trying to avoid prosecution, stay in power, that increases the risk of violence even more. It also reminded me of the conversation we had back in the day with Lord Marincoor, who's a journalist based out of Haiti, about how it's bad whenever the U.S. tries to sort of dictate Haitian politics and get back a guy like Henri, who now appears to be connected to the murder. But I don't know. What did you take away from this story? I mean, it felt like very plausible, right? basically an alliance of political actors and cartels and, you know, people that would have an interest in both offing the prime minister and just kind of getting their hands on the levers of whatever political power there is in Haiti. It also made me think that, like, it's a sign that, like, patient and relentless investigative work is important.

Because some of those early stories were, remember, there's like a doctor in Florida. Yeah, they're blaming a doctor in Florida. All over the place. This feels like more real. And it does speak to the need for kind of international investigative resources to continue to be put into this because the idea that the Haitian government is going to get to the bottom of this, you know, kind of doesn't seem to be the case. Yeah, it seems like there's like in parts of the Haitian government that are leaking things selectively to the times to other places.

Because they're being suppressed probably by the prime minister, right? And it leads all the way back to like where we started on this issue, which is that, The political elite in Haiti feels like completely compromised by, from various directions, you know, from gang activity, drug activity, participation, pretension, political violence. You could have the very awkward situation where a judgment is made that the current prime minister killed the previous one, right? And I think that all this kind of reinforces, like what you just alluded to, which is that the U.S. needs to be building relationships and taking the advice of Haitian citizens. civil society of people that are outside of this power game, that the idea of just having like another election that can be, you know, easily rigged by a bunch of gangs on behalf of

some corrupt frontman. Right. Is not the answer here. It's more long-term bottom-up building of civil society capacity to have a different kind of politics. Yeah, yeah. It's informed by Haitians, not, you know, not imposed by us. Not by us. Not by us. Okay, let's take a wild swerve and talk some tennis.

So Novak Djokovic, Serbian tennis star, has been locked in this like brutal, rhetorical and legal match with the Australian government. And it's a total mess at this point. The backstory is, Djokovic flew to Australia last week in advance of the Australian Open. That tournament starts on January 17th. But when he arrived, Australian authority detained him. They questioned him. And they pulled his visa. because Djokovic isn't vaccinated. Australia's COVID rules say that all non-citizens have to be vaccinated except in certain narrow cases. So Djokovic spent four nights quarantined in what they call an immigration hotel, I imagine just like a quarantine place in Melbourne, before finally getting released because the judge said, hey, this guy wasn't actually given enough time to respond to the legal proceedings before getting his visa revoked and tossed in this hotel.

Joevick's team says he recently recovered from COVID and that means he qualifies for an exemption under Australia's rules. Australian authorities say the exemption is only for travelers who had serious illness. I don't really get the distinction there. So anyway, this is a total mess. There's a chance that he could still get deported and miss the entire tournament. So, Ben, there's not like a good guy here. There's not really a lot of good guys in this story. Yeah, like Jokovic seems like he lied on his travel entry form because that requires you to not have traveled for 14 days before arriving in Australia, but like his Instagram shows him both in Spain and in Serbia. So clearly he got that wrong.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is jumped on this incident for political purposes. He wanted to show what a hard ass he is. But his critics now say like, hey, this is a mess because your approach to immigration is be an asshole first, throw people in prison first, and then ask questions and use your brain. Second, and also, by the way, Australia is dealing with like a big Omicron surge and a shortage of tests. So I don't know, like, this is so messy. Do you have a take on, you know, whether you should get to play, whether you should get deported, what could have been done differently? I don't know if you're a big tennis guy to begin with.

I'm a tennis guy. I should start by saying I'm a Nadal guy. I'm a Rafa guy. I'm team Rafa. I mean, Djokovic's a dick, right? Yeah. I mean, the impression has always been he's been kind of a dick in that you have, like, Federer, this really classy guy, Nadal is really fun, exciting guy. and then Jokovic is like, you know, almost like Drago style, like, you know.

He's literally hanging out with war criminals. Yeah, really good tennis player. I mean, probably the best tennis player of all time. But like, you know, yeah, unsavory type, right? But, you know, he had some constructive things to say about the recent China desktop, right? You know, people can surprise you. Right. So, so first of all, like, the fact that he's on.

vaccinated is annoying. Maybe he and Aaron Rogers and Kyrie Irving can do a couple shifts at an ICU and see what that's like. Or of like a three on three team that could just dominate. Yeah, because like I have people, my family who are nurses and, you know, they get all these anti-vax people overwhelming the ICU making their life hell. So why don't you go check that out? That would be my solution. Instead of a quarantine, you had to spend a couple days in an emergency room and see what the consequences is for human beings of people. people not getting vaccinated. Scrub up.

Then the Scott Morrison piece of this, because they've completely mishandled this too. Number one, what's kind of weird to me about this is Scott Morrison is a right-wing asshole, but he's picking a fight with the kind of right-wing asshole-adjacent anti-vax community, right? Yeah. So just from a matter of pure politics, like I get that he's flexing as kind of anti-immigrant bona fides, but he's also kind of weirdly picking a fight with his base, right? Right. Because I assume that the anti-vax movement in Australia is a right-wing thing, too.

So the politics are not as obvious to me as, like, you know, they might appear, right? It would be like Ronda Santis arresting Ted Nugent at the Miami airport. Yeah, exactly. No, it would literally be like Ron DeSantis preventing Aaron Rogers from playing a Dolphins game because he's not vaccine. Yeah. So that was weird. The other thing is it highlights the fact that they have an incredibly inhumane immigration policy where if you want to look into it, you know, people, thousands of people have been detained in very inhumane conditions because of their view that that's kind of this deterrent against migration. Scott Morrison used to be the immigration minister.

Yes. And he was proud of what a dick he was to immigrants, basically. and now they're treating Jokovic like that. And so now he's tied himself in this knot where the way they're treating Jokovic is actually highlighting this other problem that they have. If Jokovic gets the release and able to play, then there's a double standard. You know, how come this rich tennis player gets to be let out and gets exemptions from your laws, but all these other people don't.

And so that leads me to the very last point, which is why they allow. this to get in a situation where it feels like the prime minister of the country is making this decision that's the sketchy part that's what like the the the the the tennis tour like the men's tennis tour should have their own rules about whether you need to be vaccinated or not right presumably or the letter of the law should just be followed as to what exemptions he might or might not have and just take it out of politics and let the you know the machinery of the the the tour and the local authorities be the ultimate judgment here. Instead, it's kind of become this thing where it feels like it's a decision being made by the

prime minister. And that, to me, is bizarre. Yeah, what it seems like could have happened is like, I think Jacob could have landed at like 4.30 in the morning, 5 a.m. He gets interviewed right away. They tell him, okay, you have like 12 hours to make your case, get all your documents together. Some judge literally says, I think it's in a transcript. And the judge leaves a room for a minute, comes back in and is like, oh, no, no, no. Yeah. Now you only have until 630 a.m. or 8.30 a. It made Jukovic sympathetic.

Yes. Because it was like, wait, he didn't even get to make his case, you know. And that suggested a whiff of politics. Yep. You know, what else happened when that guy stepped out of the room, you know? Messy. Speaking of COVID, Ben, the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, says that he too has COVID, tested positive for the second time.

I don't know if he is a good tennis game. But I guess he looked bad enough at a press conference. So the reporter was like, dude, you okay? He said, I thought he had the flu. And then later that day, announced he had tested positive again. The first time was in January, 2021. So everyone's getting it. Yeah.

I mean, this is like the new normal, right? One of the questions I have is like, do we know whenever he gets it? Like, in other words, like there's this whole round of Santa thing, right, where he went off the grid for a couple weeks and came back and looked a little worse for where. But, like, you know, some of these leaders don't necessarily embrace transparency. So we may not know who gets it. Then the other question is what happens if, you know, some of these people are pretty old. What happens if, you know, you have like a death of a leader, you know, I mean, Amla is up there, you know.

I mean, I hope he pulls through for his sake. But, you know, there's a lot that hasn't happened yet. We got to protect our old leaders. Yeah, we do. Agreed. Yeah, we will be agreed on that point. Someone ahead of state who is seemingly kind of embraced transparent. around his health is

Brazilian president Jire Bolsonaro. Yeah. So he was hospitalized. We talked about this last week. Turns out the issue was he swallowed a shrimp without chewing it thoroughly enough.

Now, I want to laugh at this. I know the listeners want to laugh. But again, he has intestinal issues because he was stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign event in 2018. So shitty person,

but not funny to stab someone. My question for you, Ben, is, you know, has a shrimp or any of their crustacean ever tried to take you out? Um, no, I did have a terrible experience once, um, swallowing a really large pit at a, at the, at a state dinner in Bangkok. Oh my God. What kind of pit?

So we're in, uh, Thailand and they serve this like local fruit that's kind of like a, you felt like plum adjacent, right? but the pits are larger and it just went wrong I had the nurse I was like probably Ronnie Jackson like a congressman is involved like it's stuck in my throat

they gave me say yeah like it was it was Did you get hymlicht? No I didn't get hymlicht it had to kind of work it's let's just yeah sure sure sure but I yeah

that you just gave me that memory I reminds me the shrimp in apocalypse now if you eat that shrimp soldier you don't have to prove your courage in any way I had to

perform the heimlich on the press charter on the one of our Latin America trips remember that one of our colleagues I won't I won't say his name yeah sitting next to me I was dead asleep and all of a sudden I'm like getting shaken awake and the guy's next to me kind of like reaching over I tried to like reach over and do the hymlic and then I'd run around back and jump on the seat behind and like kind of do the hemelike that way yeah and I remember Ashley Tate Gilmore was like she started yelling for secret service like it was their job to like dislodge skittles from you know assistant press secretary Did that work? Yeah, it works.

It took a thing, good skill than that. It took a frighteningly long amount of time. Yeah, yeah. It was not cool. That's not good. But yeah. I, you know, fun on foreign trips. Yeah, the other foreign trip thing that occurred to me is Australia related, immigration related.

So, because it speaks to kind of like the, you know, the dickishness of some of their migratory policies. So we were flying into the G20 in Brisbane in 2014. And Ebola had happened, right? And they had like a questionnaire that had to be filled out whether you had traveled to the continent of Africa. And if you did, you needed to get all this extra screening, presumably. Now, the thing that, you know, caught the attention, I don't think she'd mind me saying, of our then National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, is that Africa is a very large continent. Yeah. of like U.S. plus Europe plus a whole bunch of other places combined. And Ebola was only in

very small number of West African countries. It was basically in, you know, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea. And this really pissed her off. And even Obama was kind of like, really? Not a good look. Yeah, that's not a good look. Yeah, all of Africa. So they need to, you know, they're such friendly people, the Australian. So like let's lighten up on the stringency of your immigration policies and visitor policies. My main memory from the time I went to Australia with Obama was going to that little airport in Darwin where we did that marine insulation. And then when we were in Brisbane, no, wait, where's the capital? Canberra.

Yeah. I remember walking into a glass table in the hotel lobby so hard that I thought I'd snap my shin in half. And the table slid off and hit the ground. It didn't shatter, but it made the loudest noise you could possibly make. And I looked like the biggest asshole. Like, people from behind the front desk were coming over to ask if I was okay. I kind of like tried to walk it off and limp. And then I looked under my suit and I was bleeding like a monster.

You had one suit on the trip. It was Brian Jackson help you out there? No, he didn't stitch me up. You probably knew I was an asshole by then. Okay. Well, that's good. Stay in the Asia-Pacific region. We got some updates out of North Korea, Ben.

So first, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the water off the East Coast last week. That is bad. Feels like it happens all the time. I don't know what to make it anymore. Not good. I mean, he gave some speech about it had they needed to improve their capabilities and they fired this thing off. It feels of a piece of Kim Jong-un, you know. Content.

Okay. So second, according to North Koreans state news, one outlet claimed that Kim Jong-il, the former Supreme Leader of North Korea, father of Kim Jong-un, the current guy, actually invented the burrito. So these propagandists said that Kim Jong-Yil came up with the idea for wheat wraps in 2011 right before he had a heart attack and died. So I guess, you know, some ideas are good enough to kill you. According to this other report I read Ben on this, the word burrito first appears in a Mexican dictionary in 1895.

I was going to say the... Yeah, so I'm not sure about this claim. I recall eating burritos before 2011. That does feel pretty recent to have invented the burrito. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the lengths to which you can invent a reality if you have total control of information. Yeah, this is a lie you could tell before the invention of the Internet and not after. It's clear with their perspective.

It's like, it would be really funny in like 1997 to just walk around and be like, I invented the pizza. I mean, the burrito is a very specific thing to claim. him to invent. It's also like, you can't just call a wheat wrap a burrito. Can we, but here's the thing. What was the meeting in which someone came up with this idea?

I don't know. Because that meeting happened. Like, there was a meeting where some people were like, you know what, we really got to strengthen the Kim Dynasty's, you know, whatever.

Yeah. Curating. What if we said that, that the previous weird guy who ran this place invented something? And someone's like, I got it.

What if we say invented the burrito? Or is it Kim Youngwin likes burritos? And I don't know what's going. I don't know. And there's also, I think during a period of like intense famine and there hadn't been harvest, like, of all the times to say you invented the fucking burrito, that's probably not the one. I don't know, man.

Whatever. Speaking of food choices, former failed secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has been in the subject of some talk lately about his health and was the subject of one of the strangest editorials I've ever read in my life ever. So Pompeo did this gauzy interview with the New York Post. And he said he lost 90 pounds in six months. months by exercising and eating right. It seems like maybe he did this little PR hit because people were speculating that he got surgery or whatever. Like, who cares?

You know, good for him. Good for you, Mike. For some reason, the Kansas City star editorial board wrote an entire piece calling him a liar. The headline was... I appreciate... What are you talking? For some reason. Because he's a fucking asshole.

He's fucking asshole. This is the headline. Dude just tell the truth. Mike Pompeo lost 90 LBs, but not the way he said he did. And it quoted a bunch of like bodybuilders, weight loss experts, air quotes, who said Pompeo's story was impossible. But none of them had actually talked to him. I guess the argument for writing it is what you said. He's an asshole.

He's a public official. He's a liar. He'll lie about any. Call him that his lies. He'll even lie about this. Yeah. Maybe claiming that you can just like magically lose 90 pounds in six months is a bad message, is unsafe. It's promoting something.

I don't know. Did you read this editorial? Do we need Dr. Oz to comment? very carefully as, uh, I mean, number one, Mike Pompeo may be the only human being on the face of the earth who can lose 90 pounds and look worse on the back end of that process. He's like he's kind of this haunting specter now, right? Like, um, he, he looked better as a fat dude than he looks right now. Let's just say that, first of all. Second of all, I, it, like, he's so clearly lying. Like there's not some diet of like, look, I like athletic greens, like, you know,

cricket sponsor, but like the idea that you're going to lose 90 pounds. It's a lot. By like eating a little bit less and working out is just, I don't think, backed by science, like a lot of things that Mike Pompeo doesn't believe in climate change, et cetera. So it just shows that this guy's just like a brazen liar, right? Then it's like, why is the Rupert Murdoch own New York Post even think it's of interest to their, Why is it Newark was doing a gauzy spread on his like in-house gym? They did a photo shoot in his basement. Well, this is, and this is the thing where you also see like the Hugh Hewitz of the world.

Like Mike Pompeo is some presidential, you know, caliber figure. Dude has never cracked 1% right in any poll that I've seen. Like, however much he weighs, right? I don't know what the reason is that like Rupert Murdoch feels like, well, we better give Mike the chance to like talk up his diet. in front of the burrito story and the New York Post is over here like doing the same kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, there's a weird thing on the right like like with these. It's always dudes too. Like they're their obsession with like it because if you look at Alex Jones and Seb Gorka, they're always hawking like weird supplements or weight loss things or things that make old men look like young and virile.

A lot of snake. There's a lot of like masculinity, you know, aspiration from these guys. My favorite are like the Alex Jones before and after shirtless pictures. He looked exactly the same, but like they tinted the photos. So he was a little more standard. So they were like sprayed on some ads. Anyway, last story for today, Ben. And it's a sad one. Previously on this show, we have talked about Magawa, who is this genius little rat who

was trained to sniff out landmines. This little hero was awarded a gold medal at one point for his heroism because he sniffed out over 100 mines or other explosives in Cambodia. probably saved countless lives, probably children's lives. Sadly, he passed away this weekend at the age of eight. So I just wanted to say, you know, thank you again, Magawa. Hopefully you are up in heaven, crushing cheese with, you know, the ratatooie guy, master splinter. Hopefully he's having the soup of the ratatooie guy.

Master splinter from the Ninja Turtles. I don't know, any other famous rats. Mrs. Bisby and the Rats of Nim, that was a great book. I mean, it goes to show that, like, you know, we do all these, like, medical experiments and rats, but the reality is, like, we should be putting them to work, you know? Yeah. They got skills. McGawa has had a greater positive impact on the world than Mike Pompeo. That's true.

It is amazing, though, like, sometimes there's so much money put into technology to find weapons or mines or radar or this or that. Yeah. And there's just, like, some amazing animal could just find it. Eight years must be a pretty good run for a rat. It's a good run for a rat. Yeah. Yeah, like I, you know, we'll pour one out. I mean, you grew up in New York City.

You probably have more experience. I mean, like, you look, you stick your head down a subway tunnel. Look, some of those guys look like they've been there for 80 years, you know, like they just, they got turf over there. We had a rat issue at my old place in L.A. I've had rental. And it was, uh. It's not pleasant. It was tough.

It was tough. Well, Magawa's, uh, special, you know, special. Magawa would make an exception for it. All the cheese to you. you, all the cheese in heaven. The ratatoui guy up there. To Magawa. Okay, we are going to take a quick break and we come back.

We'll have Ben's interview about Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's intentions and whether there's going to be an invasion and everything else. So stick around for that. Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome to Pots at the World Now, Alexei Hunteruk, who is currently a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council based in Ukraine. He's a former prime minister of Ukraine alongside President Zelensky, the youngest prime Minister in the history of Ukraine. And before that, you know, he's been in civil society. He helped be a part of the Maydan protest that led to the end of the Yanukovych government. So he's

been in the middle of things over there. Alexi, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much for your attention to our country. I believe that in our part of the world now we can see very important events for history, not all the origin, but democracy in the world in general. Well, the last time I saw you was in a coffee shop here in Los Angeles. I'm guessing it's a little colder there. Oh, yeah. So my first question, you know, we're all watching this situation play out and I want to get into obviously the negotiations with Russia. But what is the mood where you are in Ukraine? Are people concerned about war? Are people following these negotiations closely? Or are people there kind of accustomed to a state of war with Russia? Is it that unusual for you? So Ukrainians are not scared, for sure.

A huge part of our society realized that we are already in war with Russia. So for us, for Ukraine, we already seven years living in these circumstances. So it's not a new, something new, like, I don't know, events or something new circumstance now. And this buildup, recent buildup, we have seen the last couple of months from Russian side along our borders. It's one more evidence that Russia is playing complicated but very dangerous game. And Ukraine is only one battleground in this broader game. I believe that it's very important to understand that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not a regional conflict. It's a part of the war for democracy because Russia attacks not Ukraine.

Russia attacks democratic country. And seven years ago, Russian troops invaded Crimea and entered our eastern part of our country. because of our choice, because a revolution of dignity showed that people of Ukraine have chosen the democracy as a model. And for Russia is a main threat not to have a democratic, successful country as a neighbor because it could be a very dangerous example for Russians itself. So Kremlin afraid of people on the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg and other cities. So the Russian street is a main threat for a Russian government for Kremlin. And we understand that they are afraid not to have a democracy in Russia

because Putin relies that if they have democracy, he will lose his power. So my general description of this situation is that it's not a regional country. It's very important to understand that it's only part of the game. Russian place. If we look broader on this picture, we realize that all these military coups, like political murders, energy crisis, migration crisis, military invasions and attacks of Russian neighbors. It's all like picture, the whole picture, describe for us the real situation. The real situation is a war against democracy, Kremlin's claim. When you see, so when you see Russia alongside that military buildup, make all these demands that

the United States is unlikely to ever meet, you know, to not just the US, but to NATO generally, to pull back from eastern countries, to not have any NATO, forces to promise no further NATO enlargement, not just to Ukraine, but to any country. Do you see those as like a serious negotiating position from Putin? Or do you see that as him just trying to create some pretext to say that the United States and the West wouldn't do what he wanted? So now he has a reason to annex the Donbos or to move further into Ukraine? Look, all these arguments for Russian side is only in excuses, you know. So when Russia attacked Ukraine, invaded Crimea seven years ago, Ukraine wasn't a NATO member.

And for Russia, it was only like a reason, yes. It's like they used all possible arguments to hide their real intentions. And the real intention is to destroy all democratic countries around as a neighbor's. And to prove the concept that democracy is weak. Democracy couldn't be successful in the region, at least. And to show to Russian people, first of all. to the people in the region in general that democracy is very dangerous weekend. It's like an incorrect concept for the countries.

So Russia is trying to show it's so NATO is not a problem for Russia. Democracy is a problem for Russia. And this is very important to understand. So Putin don't afraid of military invasion from NATO countries. He realized, He realized he is a like clever man, yeah, and very experienced one. He realized that it's absolutely impossible to imagine the picture when NATO countries will just attack, military attack on Russia. But he realized at the same time that democracy in Russia is very dangerous for him, for his regime and for his, it's like, I don't know, for his criminal crowd, I believe. And that's why he attacked democracy and democratic countries and democracy as a concept. They invest a lot of resources to undermine democratic politicians in Europe, to destroy the trust through propaganda.

you may know that they're very active. Russian today is very active in Europe. For example, they support all these weird concepts of anti-vaxxers and so on and so forth. So they use every opportunity to undermine the trust between countries, between people in democratic countries, to remind the trust to the democratic governments in Europe and even in the United States. So they interrupted your elections, actually, to show your people in United States that elections unfair. So to create the situations when your people in the United States will doubt that your government is legitimate. And the same situation they use in European countries, in Ukraine, for sure, because Ukraine, and Ukraine is on the front line of this struggle.

But it's only one battlefield of this war for democracy, but the main battleground, I believe, now, because for Russia, for traveling, Ukraine is an absolutely key element of their concept. Well, so what would you advise the United States in these ongoing negotiations, right? I mean, what is the formula that you would like to see at the negotiating table? The Russians won all these promises, including a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO. The U.S. is trying to talk about transparency on military exercises, things like that. But it feels like, on the one hand, we're far apart. But on the other hand, if the negotiations collapse, that might give Putin the pretext to invade Ukraine again.

I mean, so what would you be saying to the American diplomats at that table? First of all, we should realize, and American diplomats better to realize that these negotiations is a tool to avoid a fort war, you know? So this is a tool. But these negotiations is only like a way how to win some time. But we should use this time to make Ukraine and other like fragile democracies, fragile countries to make them stronger, to support reforms, to support, to create, and to help them to create the military capabilities, to be capable, to, push back to Russia, if Russia will decide to invade some countries. Not only Ukraine, Ukraine, Georgia, Baltics, like Moldova, a lot of countries.

Indeed, in Kazakhstan, I don't know. Now you know perfectly that in Kazakhstan will have very interesting, like, events. And I will not be surprised if Russia will decide to invade to Kazakhstan, if they will have like, they will see that Kazakhstan could be a democracy. Yeah, they're more protests. Yeah. Absolutely. If only Russia will see that Kazakhstan will become a democracy, I haven't no any

doubts that Russia will act military to create the problems inside Kazakhstan. Because Russia attacks every single democratic country. a democratic neighbor. There is no democratic neighbor to Russia without some high, very high risk of military attack, or existing military conflict with Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, all these countries become more or less democratic. So not perfect, yeah, but still like, like electoral democracies.

And only authoritarian, the regimes, authoritarian neighbors don't have any problems, territorial and military problems with Russia, because Russia understand that they can use and they can influence on the dictators, on the strongmen, like politically, yeah, into their part of the Russian world. So when you talk about strengthening,

Ukraine, I mean, there's always, you know, obviously the question of military assistance, presumably you'd like to see that continue. But what are, for the audience that may not follow events that closely in Ukraine, how would you describe the state of reforms in Ukraine, the state of democracy in Ukraine? You know, you obviously were part of that in the Zelensky administration and then as prime minister. How would you describe the state of Ukrainian democracy today? Look, Ukraine is a democracy for sure. We had every single time, every next elections, we change the political elite. So we have elections. We have fair elections in Ukraine. And this is a main example how the country becomes successful in this very complicated circumstance. Because if you will see around Ukraine, even in Poland, even in Hungary, now we have like somehow backsliding of democracy. In Turkey, in Belarus, in Russia, they even don't have, they have some problems with elections.

So Ukraine doubtless is in democracy. And more than it, we have a positive democratic trend in Ukraine. Every year, our local governance become more and more capable. And the elections to the local governance become more and more interesting for people and important in Ukraine. So people, every single year, people, Ukrainian people, to Ukrainian citizens, become more and more involved into these governing the country. Yes. So, and we have free media because we have a lot of groups of influence and different, many different owners of our medias. Of course, we have a problem with our aligarchs because we may now media is controlled by different oligarchs, but still we have some variety. Competition at least.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it creates a good situation with our media. So we have free media of freedom of speech. We have freedom of like public protests, and so on and so forth. About reforms, 10 years ago, Ukraine was absolutely different countries. So we made a huge progress for this time. We already have some good examples in building institutions.

For example, our national bank is, I believe, one of the best in Eastern Europe now. And that's why we have stable and strong currency, even in this situation with a buildup. We still have problem with corruption, for sure. But this level of corruption is much lower than even five, seven, years ago. So we have a progress here. So with reforms, I would say that it's a lot of, it's a lot of reforms should be done, but in general, Ukraine is moving to the right direction, to the West, actually. And this is very important to support, because you perfectly know that the reforms depends on electoral demand.

So when people demand something, yeah, then people vote for something. Reforms can happen. And Russia is playing a very huge role, actually, in influencing our people, influencing Ukrainians, especially in our eastern and southern part of the countries, to undermine our reformatic past. sometimes, for example, if you want to build some strong institutions, it's absolutely obvious

that you should give to the people to civil servants and normal salary, you know, so because people can just work without a normal support. But Russia always trying to share the fakes rumors about the level of our salaries and support not only anti-vaccination companies, but the campaigns, informational campaigns against our government, against our civil servants, to destroy trust between our people and our government. to ensure that our civil servants will have a normal salaries. For example, it's only one small example. So Russia is trying to play inside Ukraine, influencing our electoral people

and supporting pro-Russian political forces to stop reforms. But despite that, I already mentioned, made a huge progress for the last 10 years, I believe. So when you step back and you look at all this, you know, on the one hand, it seems like people in Ukraine would prefer democracy and have made sacrifices for it. We've seen people in Belarus express the same preference and kind of obviously that those protests for the time being, you know, you have Lukashenko with Putin's support, keeping a lid there. We see protest in Kazakhstan against a corrupt government. And with Russia's support,

those have been put down for now. So on the one hand, though, you can look at this picture and see that all around Putin, people would prefer democracy. But on the other hand, you know, the perception, I think, internationally is that there's all this momentum with Putin, that his strong men are winning in Belarus and Kazakhstan, that he has this huge leverage on Ukraine with these troops, that he's driving this agenda and these talks with the United States. I mean, when you look forward, how do we have a more hopeful end of this story? What is the thing that you would like to see that could tip the balance in the direction of people in places like Ukraine and even Belarus who are pushing for democracy? You know, how do we make sure that the Putin's of this world don't win?

We should show good examples. So Ukraine is an example already when people choose freedom. And now it's very important to make sure that Ukraine will become successful economically. So when people in the region, like in Belarus, in Kazakhstan, in Russia, will see that democracy brings, like wealth, so brings a good level of good quality of life, not only freedom. People will choose democracy. Because Russia, as already mentioned, they invest a huge margin to show to the people that democracy is weak, is absolutely slight. It's about moral decay. It's about poverty. It's about instability and so on and so forth.

And this is a narrative. And they are selling these like fake rumors and fake narratives to make people scared even of democracy. So now democracy is not very popular and good concept in Russia, in Belarus, or even in like Kazakhstan. You know, democracy is something about moral decay. Yeah, so forth. So, first of all, we need a good example, and Ukraine should be this good example. That's why when we actually prepared the article with Ambassador Mark Fo, we wrote that the best answer, the best Western answer to Russian, all this aggressive behavior is to support Ukraine as a country example of a good democratic past. Because, of course, the situation in Belarus and Kazakhstan is different, of course.

And we shouldn't and we can't compare it with Ukraine because of many reasons. But to simplify this difference, I would say that democracy, we shouldn't take democracies granted. And democracy, you can achieve democracy only if you choose democracy only if you choose. choose a freedom and you're ready to death, to become dead, yeah, to fight to death for this freedom. So what's better is to like, I don't know, be alive or be free, you know. It's very, it's very complicated choice. And sometimes in Ukraine, and I remember this a moment in Ukraine very well, when we decided that there is no reason to be scared. There is no reason. So anyway, you will live in your country only if you are

free. Because if you are not free, you should just leave your country and, I don't know, become an immigrant. And when enough, like, percentage of people in society decided that freedom is valuable enough that people are ready to fight to death for this freedom. This moment become this, like, I don't know, key momentum, yeah, when democracy can prevail. And I believe that, of course, the concept of peaceful protest in Belarus and in Kazakhstan is very important. But I believe that we should create a good example, strong example, for the people, and to show, actually, on the practice that democracy can bring a nation to the better life,

not only to, I don't know, to be free, but to be wealthy, to be well-protected, to be capable to have a good governance and so on and so forth. I believe I'm an optimist, and I believe that it's absolutely inevitable to have democracy in the region. I am sort of sure that Ukraine is a stable democracy. I mean that we will not lose it because people in Ukraine really understand

that democracy is a huge value because a lot of people in Ukraine, died actually for the democracy. And that's why for us it's not an empty concept. It's not something, I don't know, from the books. It's very valuable stuff. And I believe that Ukraine could be not only be beacon, but I don't know, a shelter for all democratic power, for all democratic, I don't know, movements, forces, civil society,

and so forth, for all the business. region and Ukraine will be a country to export democracy to the east, actually, to Kyrgyzstan, to Kazakhstan, to Belarus, and someday maybe to Russia. Well, that's a good note to end on. I appreciate your optimism. We obviously are hoping that we don't see further violence in Russian intervention in Ukraine. These are difficult times, but really thank you for giving us the perspective from inside of Ukraine. Thank you very much, Ben, one more time for your attention to our country. I believe that this war for democracy is global.

It's not about Ukraine, about Russia. It's about Thailand. It's about Taiwan. It's about China, even Japan, Mongolia, and so on so forth. A lot of countries now under this threat. And we will not have a stable and peaceful situation. in the world globally, till we will solve this problem with this strongman's with this aggressive empires.

Yep. Well, that's the challenge for our times. So I agree with you. Thanks for coming on and keep in touch. Thank you very much. All right. That's it for us today. Thanks again to Alexei Hunter Rook.

Thanks to everyone who made it to the outro. Thanks to Magawa, the special rat. Thanks to Mike Pompeo. Thanks to burritos everywhere. Thanks to the person who actually invented the burrito. Yeah. That was a great, great, great, man or woman. That was a hell of a move.

Or yeah, or for a very special Secretary of State. Stay safe out there, everybody. I hope Joakovic, if you're listening, come on the show. Same thing with Ralph and Nadal. Yeah, Nadal. That would be a much cooler one. All right, well, you got anything else? It's all got.

All right. Talk to guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley News. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford,

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