Pod Save the World - Russia attacks civilians & a nuclear plant

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

In this bonus episode, Tommy and Ben talk about the escalating attacks by Russian forces on Ukrainian civilians, the shocking Russian attack on a nuclear power plant, Russian military progress in southern Ukraine, the latest on western energy sanctions, intelligence sharing and how the war could lead to a global food shortage. You will also hear from a 29-year-old mother of two on the ground in Odessa, Ukraine, as the city is preparing for an attack, and from Buzzfeed’s Christopher Miller who is reporting from the ground in Kyiv. 

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And we wanted to do a second episode this week to focus on the ongoing events in Ukraine. I think mostly Ben, because we're both just so horrified, especially last night watching the Russian assaults on Ukrainian civilians escalate. And this show is really the only way that we have left to deal with the fear. That anxiety. So we're going to work through it with you guys in real time. I hope. I hope listeners don't mind. Yeah, sometimes just got to talk about it, you know? Yeah, yeah, I've been learning that a lot lately. This is part of my therapy. So we're going to talk through a few of the big updates since we recorded on Tuesday and then later in the show. You're going to hear Ben's interview with Christopher Miller from BuzzFeed News, who's been

reporting on the ground in Ukraine for a long time. It's just an exceptionally good reporter. Ben, you want to preview that at all? Yeah, and you guys who've heard him in the past know he's just incredibly thoughtful and dogged reporter. he walks us through what the situation is like in and around Kyiv where he's been, what the Ukrainian people are going through and what the Russian military escalation is felt like. And I think it gives you a sense of not just the violence, but things like food shortages

and energy access and lack of communication. He really kind of takes you into that experience. And we talk about some of his recent reporting on some other issues, including one that's caught my attention, which is he wrote a piece about former American military guys, special forces guys, along with some Europeans, going into Ukraine to fight, which could become a significant variable here if there's potentially thousands or tens of thousands of highly trained Americans fighting Russians inside of Ukraine. And, you know, interestingly, he noted during our conversation that some governments,

including the UK, had actually kind of encouraged this, that the U.S. hadn't spoken about it or issued a statement about it. Just literally hours after our conversation about this, I do want to say the government put out a statement discouraging Americans from going to Ukraine to fight. So clearly, this is going to get more and more attention. Yeah, I got to say, that is incredibly brave. But boy, it's scary. There's a lot of ways this could go bad. So, you know, the utter recklessness and nihilism of this Russian invasion was really driven home last night by this terrifying attack on the Saprugia nuclear plant. This was a military assault on a nuclear power plant in a country where the Chernobyl meltdown happened in 1986.

Like you couldn't think of a worse idea. Several Ukrainian soldiers were killed. One of the buildings at the plant caught fire, we were all supposed to take solace at the fact that it was a training facility and not near a reactor. But this whole incident was dangerous enough that Biden jumped on the phone with President Zelensky to discuss what was going on. There was reportedly damaged to the, quote, structure of the reactor compartment at one of the reactors. We've been assured that there's no risk or sign of radiation leaks so far. I mean, the good news is radiation leaks you can kind of measure in real time, but you never know if there's risk of meltdown. And I think we should probably give it a few days, if not a few months to be

relieved because the longer term problem is the Russians now control a 6,000 megawatt plant. And we shouldn't believe anything they say about safety ever in the nuclear staff. are reportedly being forced to work at gunpoint. So Ben, you know, these guys are clearly trying to control key infrastructure so they can lay siege to the civilian population. And, you know,

this facility needs constant power and water that remains cool and under control. So Ben, you and I were texting last night. Like, I was telling Hannah, I think the scariest meetings I've ever been to in my life were during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan to 2011. Like,

I remember sitting in a conversation where we were monitoring the scene with some like a drone, like a global hawk. And the military guys talking us through what we were watching, we're like, we're a little worried it could fall out of the sky because of the radiation. I mean, that's how serious this was. And it's brought me back to that moment. Yeah. I mean, you know, we should say that unlike some people on Twitter,

neither you or I are nuclear physicists or experts. Far from it. But I do have that experience. And part of what that experience, you know, reminded me. of yesterday is that, you know, it doesn't take necessarily an explosion in the reactor as what happened in Chernobyl to, to cause a real catastrophe, that if you have damage caused by fire and water and in incapacity to kind of maintain the plant, these leaks can be incredibly dangerous. And, you know, we were sitting in meetings where the evacuation of Tokyo was

discussed, you know? And those were some of the wildest meetings, you know, I remember. remember being in government because you just the scale of danger if this thing had gone worse. And it already, you know, took a lot of lives, obviously, and caused a lot of devastation. It just continued to go up exponentially. And here we're talking about the single largest nuclear power plant in Europe. You know, this is a big, big effing deal. One of the things, you know, Christopher Mill and I talk about is the energy picture generally. And the sense if the Russian objective appears to be to really terrorize Ukrainians into giving up, essentially. And that was Miller's view of his experience of life in Kiev and how it's going. You know, controlling one

quarter of the country's energy from this, you know, power plant is certainly a way to be able to terrorize people. If they can start shutting off energy, it's cold there right now. People don't have a lot of food to begin with, the weaponization of energy infrastructure could only just further ratchet this up, too. So this is troubling in multiple regards, you know, both the safety, obviously, of the nuclear reactor, but also just what leverage this gives the Russians over kind of just the ability for people to survive in Ukraine, parts of Ukraine. Yeah. And again, like, there were reports last night that the Russians wouldn't let firefighters get to this facility to put it out or, you know, like you mentioned, if water gets cut off to the cooling

mechanism, that can lead to a meltdown. If power gets cut off to these mechanisms, that can lead to a meltdown. There's just so many ways this could go badly on purpose or with a mistake. And then, you know, you and I were talking last night, it's like, if Putin wanted to pull NATO into the fight, it could be something like this, like an exist, not that I think he's doing it on purpose, but this is an existential threat to Europe if they think there could be a nuclear meltdown. and suddenly like the idea of boots on the ground or no-fly zone, like that seems a lot less crazy than letting a nuclear power plane burn to the ground. Yeah, yeah, no, that's, I mean, there's a, there's a nihilism to what Putin is doing

and a kind of escalation that is obviously deeply disturbing. And one of the things that I noticed, and I mentioned this to you in the, and the Zelensky statement, right, Zelensky, who's repeatedly appealed to NATO for no-fly zone, he pretty particularly calls out Europe. You know, now is the time for Europe to act. And I thought that was interesting because Europe is, you know, in the, in the territory that could be affected, for instance, by a massive nuclear problem. Europe has had public opinion, I think, even more mobilized in the U.S. I don't overread into just this one statement, but you could see what he's getting at is this is collective defense, right? And the argument he was making.

in the past is the collective defense is because Putin's going to come for you next. This is like, no, like you guys could be in severe fucking danger from this lunatic if he's doing things like causing leaks at large nuclear plants. And I, Tommy, like, one of the things that was so, again, troubling about experiencing just the last way for hours is both the Russian escalation, but I intended to not think about the possibility, you know, I did not I think it was likely, you know, that the NATO is going to end up in a direct conflict with Russia here. You're starting to feel like I'm not so sure about that anymore, you know, just because I don't know what Putin's going to do. And I just don't know how far he can push this without inviting something in response.

So I still don't think that's the right thing to seek out. I don't think that means, you know, let's do into a fly zone. But I think it does mean that we've seen in just like over a week how much this thing can escalate. And I don't think we can rule it out, you know. Yeah, I'm with you. So a couple of buckets of things we're going to dig into later in the show. We're going to talk about the challenges the Russian Army has had in the South and what that means for Kerasan and the city of Odessa.

And we're going to hear from a young mother of two. We have some audio clips from a great interview. Our producer Haley did earlier today. We'll talk adept about some energy sanctions and calls on Biden to do more to pressure Putin on energy. We'll talk about intelligence sharing. and we'll talk about what this could do to global food supplies. Before we get to those, just some quick updates. So since we talked on Tuesday, Biden announced expanded sanctions on oligarchs.

Vice President Kamal Harris is reportedly traveling to Poland for talks about this ongoing crisis. NATO rejected Ukraine's call for no-fly zone and says there will be no NATO troops on Ukrainian soil. So that is pretty definitive. But at the same time, President Macron of France called Putin. And then they briefed the media afterwards saying he came away feeling like the worst is yet to come. and frankly, that seems borne out. So there was this nuclear attack last night. We got fucking Lindsey Graham, Senator Lindsey Graham, firing off tweets calling on Putin to be assassinated.

James Bond over here, yeah. Yeah. And then media outlets in Russia may have to get shut down because of new laws that were passed in Russia's parliament that criminalized dissent. I mean, spreading false information about armed forces can get you 15 years in prison. And that law takes in effect Saturday. And Russia is now blocking Facebook in the country. I'm tempted to make a joke and say, lucky them. But in this case, it's probably a pretty important source of news for people.

So a lot, like you said, man, like so much is moving. I don't know if there was a piece of that you wanted to focus on. But, you know, I know the media part in Russia is particularly unnerving. Yeah, I mean, we talked about Ukraine on the ground and how bad that is these steps by Putin to, you know, Russia's obviously been essentially, you know, it's been an autocratic system, essentially a dictatorship. But this is like police state level. He's taking a giant European country and just turning it into a complete and utter dictatorial police state.

I mean, he's trying to hermetically seal out information for ordinary Russians. He's trying to completely criminalize any form of dissent whatsoever. And I think, you know, he'll have some success, but Russia's not China. They haven't spent, like, you know, a couple decades building their own parallel Internet media system, like there's still, there's still going to be information that gets into Russian. So I think the gap between what Putin may be trying to tell his people and what they're actually hearing if they can get outside information or what they're experiencing with casualties coming home or in the economy could become a problem for him, actually.

Yeah. There's an interesting story in the BBC where there was a young woman in Ukraine who was being shelled, who was trying to tell her older mother back in Russia was happening and the mother wouldn't believe her and was sort of repeating the propaganda. And you can imagine a world where like a young, sort of more urban online class of Russian citizens knows what's going on and is horrified. Putin's base, older, you know, kind of listening to state run radio, watching state run TV is buying the party line because like that's what they grew up with.

Yeah. I mean, the Russians I know, you know, admittedly tend to be the urban types in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And those I've been in contact with are like, they're just utterly fucking horrified. Like, you know, I mean, and I think it's indicative probably if you're like a, you know, you don't even have to be some super liberal. If you're a person that is able to get information and understand how false the stories are that have been forced down your throat and then understand what is happening in Ukraine in your name, there's almost no way to sell that whatsoever unless you're just a complete far-right nationalist lunatic. I have to think that that demographic in Russia is just completely horrified by if they access information. The competition then becomes out in other demographics in other areas, whether that can shift

too, you know? Yeah. And like, you know, we're seeing, I think, yesterday, Thursday, the Russian government said that 498 Russian troops have been killed. 1,597 were wounded. That is almost certainly a massive undercount. There's estimates of 5,000 killed, 6,000 killed, 7,000 troops. Russian troops dead potentially. I don't know what the answer is. And I don't say any of this to

gloat. But like we're starting to talk about more casualties than the U.S. had in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And that's going to mean a lot of upset moms, dads, brothers, sisters back home that are going to like get the reality of this war the hard way. And I guess the question is still like, who do they blame? I don't, I don't know. Yeah, you can't, and you can't, you can't hide that. I mean, and the scale of this death, because we saw the Russians try to hide casualties in eastern Ukraine because they claim they weren't even there. But those were, you know, much, much lower. If you're talking potentially tens of thousands of Russian casualties here, because, you know, if you're talking about killed but also wounded, which is something that people are going to find

out about. And, you know, that's the kind of thing that can make audiences that might otherwise defer to Putin and his nationalism and his narrative. You know, that can start to crack your support. and, you know, among moms, families, communities that have a large, you know, military presence. Right. So this is where it gets even more dangerous for Putin. Yeah, real dicey. So we've talked about the challenges the Russian army has had in the north, especially this 40-some-odd-mile caravan of military vehicles that has been stuck for several days.

But the reality is that Russia has made considerable progress taking territory in cities in the south. They captured the city of Kersan and many fear there will soon. be an attack on the port city of Odessa. Again, we're taping Friday at like 1 p.m. California time. Our producer Haley talked to a woman named Olina Dunira, a 29-year-old mother of a three-month-old and a five-year-old who were born and raised in Odessa. Here's a clip. I think the waiting is the worst because it's been for three days.

We heard of these ships around the city. my feeling is for them to finally take a step forward so we could just deal with this problem. I think people in Odessa are absolutely ready to respond the military forces and also the volunteers. The preparation they did throughout these last several days are great. So I think that Odessa people also feel a little bit maybe guilty because most of the cities in Ukraine under attack their suffering in the moment. And in Odessa, it is quite safe and quiet. So I think that Odessa people want to join this glorious fighting of Ukrainians. and to show the aggressor where he should be and that he is not welcome here.

So, Ben, I mean, I think that clip speaks to where Putin has had success, but also what he and his military goons fundamentally underestimated, which is that's not a Ukrainian soldier we're talking to. That's a 29-year-old mother of two who's like, we're going to show the aggressor what's up. That's clearly the mood, right? I mean, and Miller talked about this. And this is a guy who reported on the war in the Dombas. He seemed even surprised at just the depth and ferocity of the Ukrainian resistance here psychologically.

And the problem, right, as we've discussed for Putin, is, okay, you know, maybe you can lay siege to these cities. Maybe you can even kind of technically conquer these cities, right? Roll in a bunch of tanks and material and just maybe level of big chunks of these cities. cities, how is he going to hold them? You know, I mean, these people are not going to just say, okay, you know, there was a report that the Russians were going to send back Viktor Yanukovych, the corrupt, you know, Ukrainian pro-Russian politician that they had two revolutions to get rid of. Yeah, good luck with that. 2005 and 2014, before all this. And does anybody think that the Russians can just hand the keys over to some corrupt lackeys of theirs and not have people,

and Odessa and Kiev and everywhere else, you know, in kind of a permanent state of insurgency. So, yeah, it's interesting how this current moment highlights both the ultimate Russian superiority. You know, they can terrorize a city like that. They can have a mix of military resources that Ukraine doesn't have from the land to the sea to the ground. But they can't erase these people's sense of defiance. And, you know, we've learned as a country in the United States, in Iraq and Afghanistan that conventional military superiority in the long run cannot eliminate

the opposition's will to fight, you know, and I think in Ukraine, the depth of, and I'm not saying this to, to anyway, sugar, the U.S. military interventions, the depth and breadth of the resistance that we're seeing in Ukraine is much, much broader than even in Iraq, where, you know, there were there are a variety of views about whether or not the U.S. should be there. You know, generally, obviously, anti-occupation, but this is something even more pronounced. So, yeah, it's this dilemma for Putin. You know, whatever you're kind of quote-unquote winning by destroying these cities in the short-term, what are you getting in the medium and long term?

Yeah, and look, we're listening to interviews with young people, but the history here is deep. I mean, you could go back to, you know, the early 30s when Stalin caused a famine because of collectivization, the policy of collectivization that killed millions of people. And you could go back to the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in the 40s. I mean, there is a history of these brave people standing up and fighting and pushing occupiers out to the bitter, bitter end. Let's hear one more clip from Olina Dunera before we move on to the next topic. I have no idea what to do with two little kids abroad. I know that all people around the world are very kind to Ukrainians now and they take refugees as close relatives and help whether it is possible.

But still, I can't imagine live abroad. I can't imagine that. I still hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst. I think we have some food supplies, some basic things to survive maybe for a month or something. It is terrible because my five-year-old child already knows what is shelter, what is bombing, how tanks work. He also asked me why these bad people try to assault us. And this is a very existential, a very existential question,

not all the adult ones know the answer to it. So I hope that Ukrainian children who are now in the shelters, that they will manage to overcome this traumatic, this traumatic experience somewhere in the future, but I think it is a very, very long and difficult way to recover from such an experience. Just devastating. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we'll keep talking about the Biden response here. So, you know, in addition to calls to enact a no-fly zone from President Zelensky and from a few Republicans, although really not that many in the U.S., there is increasing pressure on President Biden to stop importing Russian oil and to work with Europe to fully sanction Russia's oil and gas sector. As of this morning, I've seen Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin, Senator Lisa Mikowski, Republican. A lot of lawmakers have either proposed or voiced support for cutting off

Russian oil imports to the U.S. The White House has opposed it so far. I think Jen's hockey to her credit was quite honest that the White House opposes the idea because they don't want gas prices to go up for consumers. And if you look at those imports like Russian oil was 1.4 percent of total crude imports in December, the last most recent numbers we have. But they make up a bigger percentage of what's called unfinished oil products. The TLDR answer here is that like oil is not a totally fungible commodity. There's different grades and types and resignment facilities. So it gets complicated. But odds are it would create some price increases and pain at the pump for consumers in the U.S. and a lot of pain for natural gas buyers in Europe who are far more

dependent on Russian energy. Ben, right before we started recording, there was a lot of pain. was some polling that showed 80% of Americans want the U.S. to stop buying Russian oil. And 74% say the U.S. and its allies should impose a no-fly zone. My guess is that 100% of those respondents don't really know what the impact of those steps would be. But it does speak to the gigantic political trap that is now set for President Biden. What do you make of this? I think Ron Clayne had a really good and straight answer on POTS of America in that, you know, he mentioned two things, blowback on our economy, but also unity, right, maintaining unity. And I would imagine that thus far, not only is the U.S. ambivalent about this, but there's probably big splits in Europe

between countries that really want to do this and some countries that, you know, just really worry about a massive hit to their economy. When you talk about the scale of gas imports, And so then the question becomes, is the harm the sanction is doing to the target, Russia, that much bigger than the harm it might end up doing to Europe and the U.S. and the global economy? All that said, I don't see how we don't end up there. You know, I just, the images, we're over a week into this, and precisely actually because they don't want to do no-fly zone, which I totally understand for the reasons we've discussed, there's going to be this impulse to be doing more

and to be punishing Russia more. And look, it makes a difference because part of it is also the cost of sustaining a military operation for Russia. Oil and gas is obviously a biggest source of revenue. And so you're trying to kind of affect that as well, although they will be able to sell oil presumably to some other places and continue to get revenue. But I think there's just going to be such public outcry to do everything we can. And just think, Tommy, if we get to a situation like a week or two from now where the violence has gotten even worse in places like Keeb and Odessa, you've got tens of thousands of people have been killed and Europe is still buying these huge amounts of natural gas from Russia every day and sending them a check. I just don't

think that's sustainable. So I think it's going to happen, or I'd be surprised if it didn't happen I guess politicians might just really not want to deal with their fallout. And if it does, I mean, yeah, no question. Gas prices go up for people at the pump here in the U.S., but, you know, much more significant challenges in Europe. And you're right. I don't know that people will, you know, necessarily be able to draw the connections between why all these things, you know, why is the gas price up for me, the American consumer,

is that, you know, is that Joe Biden's fault? or is, you know, so, but I think it's coming. Yeah, I mean, I think odds are maybe these issues get split up. And I saw some reporting yesterday that, um, uh, Russian oil is already selling at a discount, presumably because no one wants to buy it because of the stigma around it. So you can see that getting split off from, uh, Russian natural gas. And in that instance, like, I think Nord Stream one. I mean, there's two of those pipelines. One of them's done and it's been working for a while. It's flowing, I think, at 100% capacity. I mean, I think the argument against this would be

if you step back and said the core U.S. interest in this conflict is to avoid a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Yeah. And at some point, Putin might feel that this economic warfare is tantamount to engaging them in battle like a no-fly zone would. But, like, again, I don't know what his calculus is. Yeah, that's like a, I mean, thus far, if you look at the way that the administration is both use sanctions and frankly the Europeans too obviously but also provided as many weapons as possible

to the Ukrainians we're basically doing everything other than direct military conflict you know the gray space of what is war here is basically everything on the other line of NATO troops engaged in acts of violence against Russian forces you know Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this. So Congressman Adam Smith said on some TV show that the U.S. is not sharing the most sensitive intelligence they have on the Russian military because they don't want to be seen as a direct participant in the war. So the line is basically being drawn at like real time targeting information that could be used

to enable a Ukrainian military strike. And it does, I think, again, ask this question of like, there's this bright line at the no-fly zone because that's direct, I blow you up. Yeah. But we're supplying all these arms. We're supplying different kinds of intelligence. It seems like people are sitting in the situation room correctly, trying to understand where a red line might be for Putin.

But the only answer that matters is whatever his opinion is. I don't know what to make of this distinction or how to even begin to draw that line. Like, do you have thoughts on that? I've been thinking a lot about this because, you know, on this intelligence question, to me, it's like, well, if we're already giving the Ukrainians weapons, right, javelin, anti-tank weapons to destroy Russian tanks and kill Russian soldiers in those tanks and, you know, reports of things like Stinger missiles, surfaced air missiles to try to shoot down Russian helicopters, what's really the difference, you know, between giving the weapon to fire and giving them the intelligence that

indicates where the people are that you're firing at. I mean, obviously it's a turn of the the knob, I guess, in the direction of participation. But it does feel like we're already kind of there. And again, it feels like we're in this space where anything up to the line of NATO either setting foot in Ukraine or taking direct shots with NATO assets at Russian forces, most of that stuff feels like it's already being done. I guess there's a There's other things too, though, like, and this is where it gets even grayer, which is like, we're probably not, I assume, using cyber resources to jam Russian communications, right? Command and control.

Do people start calling for that? And you're right. I don't want us to get into World War III. Like, by the way, and I think people should be clear here. Like, that would be bad for the Ukrainian people, too. Like, you know, so this is complicated here because if, you know, there's. tactile nuclear weapons that get used at some point. Like, that's going to be even worse for the people of Ukraine. So it's in everybody's interest, not at World War III. I think some people like to think that

somehow you're going to stop Putin on his tracks or the, you know, no-fly zone or something, but that's the danger. But I also, if I was in the sit room or anywhere, you'd be like, what can we do to help these people? And how can we, on what grounds can we say, well, we know where the Russian military is positioning itself, but we're not going to tell you, you know? And that's the kind of dilemma of this whole thing. And I just, I think that the scale of what Russia is doing and the stakes of it are going to drive the U.S. and Europe, you know, further and further towards that, that line, you know, and I don't see how else it's going to play out. Yeah, I'm totally with you. And frankly, the lack of sort of cyber warfare that has at least been visible to us is

kind of surprising. I mean, how many, like, super alarmist New York Times stories have you read over the last decade about Russia implanting some sort of code in critical infrastructure, like, potentially turn off the power grid, et cetera, et cetera. So far, I mean, none of that has been apparent at least. Yeah. And I think one big uncertainty is whether that's coming, you know, both, you know, internal to Ukraine as part of Russia's tactical plan, but maybe that was the thing Putin was holding in reserve to respond to our sanctions, you know? And then the way this thing goes is if there are those kinds of more disruptive Russian cyber acts, and maybe they're not. Maybe there's a boy who cried wolf thing here to those Russian capabilities. But, you know,

we do know they have some because they've cost of nevince of the past. Maybe that's when the pressure's on the U.S. to say, well, why don't we use our offensive cyber capabilities to disrupt the Russian military? And you can see there are different spaces where things could escalate here. Even though this one is the one the dog that hasn't barked yet. So one thing that folks might not be front of line, it's not like the first

page of the New York Times website is just what this might do to food prices. So the price of wheat has already gone up. Russia and Ukraine account for 29% of global wheat exports. And the price of wheat currently is at a 14-year high. Many countries that are wealthy have stockpiles of wheat like the U.S., but there's not nearly enough to

to feed the world for any significant amount of time, especially if this drags on and Ukrainian farmers can't plant crops this spring. Per usual, those who will get hurt the most will be grain importers in places like the Middle East and North Africa that have climates that aren't conducive to growing grain but are still, you know, sort of heavily dependent on bread as for food. It's just a great example of how like, okay, this war may seem kind of geographically constrained at the moment. But in reality, it's just a great example. It's just a great example of how like, okay, this war may seem kind of geographically constrained at the moment, but in reality, it's already global. And, you know, poor people and poor communities are going to be the ones who will likely starve that could lead to more conflicts. Climate change is

exacerbating all of this. It's just every part of this thing is terrible. Yeah. I mean, it's a pain in the ass when you go to the, you know, grocery store in L.A. and food prices are up a bit. That's not what this is about. The most vulnerable people to things like wheat disruptions are the people on like the nice edge of famine, you know, who can just get completely priced out of the capacity to get food. And we're basically also talking about places where there's risk of not just famine, but where there may be conflict, right? In parts of North Africa, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa. So you could really see this ripple effect. And, you know, this is a part of that, that UN vote where Russia got so overwhelmingly,

you know, isolated. I bet that this is part of the calculation. Like, some of it for these countries is, is genuine a revulsion at seeing, you know, a big country invade, a neighboring small one that's a democracy. But some of these countries, you're looking at this, I mean, including, by the way, China, the world doesn't need this right now. You know, we're coming at COVID. Like, there's a lot of shit going on. And this is going to make everything worse, basically. Yeah. Speaking of China, there were some reports, I don't think we mentioned these Tuesday, that the Chinese had actually gotten notice from the Russians that this invasion was going to occur and ask them to wait until after the Olympics. So thanks for that.

Thanks for, yeah, yeah, really prioritizing your fucking dumbass Olympics, you know. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this, like the meeting between Putin and Xi was like, of course he was going to tell him, you know, in advance and give him a heads up. And the idea that the Chinese response. And it was also pretty glaringly obvious. I mean, this is one of these things where, like, there are these debates on Twitter and stuff, like, there's no way that Putin's decision making will be affected by the Olympics. It was pretty glaringly obvious that the Russian ramp up directly into this invasion, like literally began, like, right after the Olympics, you know? And the fact that that was kind of a window

into Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership, the fact that that was their consideration, you know, like, well, invade and devastate this country and make a mockery of the entire international system, just do it after, like, the closing ceremonies, you know? I mean, nobody cares that much about your Olympics, except you. It's another, yeah, that's a great example of an area where the Twitter debate, the political debate,

around this nightmare was really mocking of what came to pass. Another, another debate that's kind of worn out its welcome is, is NATO expansion responsible for this catastrophe debate? It's like, look, again, you and I did a whole episode where we talked about how NATO expansion might have been a bad idea. It was too aggressive, specifically Georgia and Ukraine. We're part of this last batch of countries nominated in 2008 by the Bush administration. But it doesn't justify what this psychopath is doing. And if he's this shrewd actor on the world stage, it is his worst nightmare. Yeah.

Right. Finland might join NATO. The Germans are doubling their military spending. It is going to drive people into NATO. And are you going to tell me that Ukraine was irrational to want to join NATO with the benefit of hindsight? No. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there have been too much of people kind of trying to win other debates off of what's happening here, you know. Yes. Which is, I think that like we have to continue to try to and we try to do this. on this show obviously. Like, okay, there's like a central focus on like the people of Ukraine and what they're

experiencing, which is more important than how how you feel about that. You know, like that that's the most important thing. And then there are enormous economic and geostrategic and military questions that are going to flow out and have huge consequences for the rest of us. But at core, this is happening because there is a, ethno-nationalist authoritarian sociopath running a country with nuclear weapons that has decided to essentially risk his entire standing in Russia on this bet that he can do this in Ukraine and his basic premises that Ukraine doesn't even exist as a nation. And we're seeing some of the

most inspiring nationalism out of the Ukrainian people in response. Like that's what's going on, not your theory about what the thing is that, you know, the dunk you want to get done on Twitter. Yeah. And I do think sort of like the context of like, all right, who is this guy of Vladimir Putin? And like, what's his worldview? I mean, I was reading a biography of him. And I didn't realize that his father fought in the Russian army and was wounded at the siege of Leningrad, which was like a two and a half year Nazi siege of either the biggest or the second biggest. city in in Russia at the time that led to the death of millions of people like yeah yeah a half a million soldiers on each side and then like over a million civilian so like if you want to you know if you're worried about okay what tactics will he employ like what what's his threshold when he thinks about okay creating pain for a population or a city like if it's that that is daunting yeah

and and i think you know it it can be forgotten because there's a sense of Putin um starting and 2000 as a kind of more, you know, an ominous figure, but at least like a much more reason. Saying the right things at times. Yeah. And, you know, he Bush looked into his soul and, you know, Obama had a reset. But bear in mind that the thing that propelled him to greater prominence in Russia in the late 90s as prime minister was this Chechen operation, right? Where, first of all, like, has long been theorized with proof, not just conspiracy theories, that, that, that the FSB may have actually created a pretext for escalation in Chechnya by literally doing false flag attacks on Moscow apartment buildings, right? So potentially harming Russians to create a

pretext escalate in Chechnya. There's a lot of journalism around that. And then when they caught, yeah, they caught guys planting bombs and they said, oh, it's an exercise. Exactly. Yeah. So that's what I mean by not just conspiracy theory. Yeah, thank you for that detail. And then goes down to Chechnya and, you know, look at the reporters and books that have been written about this, just levels the place entirely. And again, because, you know, that was under the, it was in the, this kind of bled into obviously the war on terror years. And so it was kind of in categorized, I think, in our collective minds as just the Russian slightly more brutal version of the war on terror down there, which again, I think, you know, that there's another U.S. policy that, you know, people talk about NATO expansion.

And they don't talk about like whether not the war on, they should talk more about whether the war on terror was a pretty useful framework for Putin, but some of the stuff he was doing. But you're right. There's been everything about his biography, um, suggests someone who actually believes the things he's saying about history, that deeply feels grievance and that has very little ceiling, uh,

when it comes to, to violence, you know, whether it's mass violence and things in places like Grosnia, you're like literally like poisoning his, opponents, right? If you are that kind of sadistic, I don't know that there's

anything that's going to shock you out of the kinds of images we're seeing in Ukraine. Yeah, so much for, you know, global economic trade, preventing wars. And the, was it the Tom Friedman, no two countries with McDonald's franchises have ever gone to war? Yeah, well,

theory of the case. That's, that didn't bear out, unfortunately. Fortunately, that one is out the window. Okay, I think that's it for us, but When we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview with Christopher Miller for BuzzFeed. Stick around for that. Like, truly one of the people doing the best reporting from the ground. One of the best Twitter follows, just like super impressive.

So stick around for that. Okay, we are very pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Ukraine expert and correspondent for BuzzFeed News, Christopher Miller, who is currently reporting from an area around, Keev. Hey, thanks so much for joining us again. Thanks for having me back. So why don't we just start by asking, you know, what? have you been up to the last 24, 48 hours? What have you seen? What's going on around you? Yeah. I mean, a lot has changed since the last time we spoke. It's been a really, really rough week,

you know, not only in Kiev, but around Ukraine. There's been massive bombardments of missiles. There have been air strikes, indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas. And, you know, every single day, sometimes, you know, multiple times a day, it's, you know, the news comes in about another civilian building hit, a school hit, a hospital, an ambulance. It's been, it's been really, really tough. You know, the Russian forces are really, really bearing down on a lot of Ukraine's strategic locations. military installations are getting hit really, really hard. And there also is really this, I think, terror campaign that is intensifying. You know, Vladimir Putin has said that he's not attacking civilians, which is a blatant lie.

What we've seen in the last week in Kiev in areas around are, you know, entire, entire towns, villages on the edge of Kiev that are being fought, fought over. destroyed. You know, more than a million people now have left the country and many more are on their way west and trying to get to the EU to seek safety. And there are even more people who aren't able to leave, who are stuck still living in their basements. You know, I think the last time we spoke was just a few days or a couple of days into this new Russian invasion. And things have really gotten much, much worse since then. And a lot of people have been. been this entire time living underground, you know, without basic amenities. In many cases, without heat, without electricity or those things, very limited. Food we noticed in Kiev and around

Kiev is in really short supply. There's quite a bit of rationing happening. And, you know, things like gasoline to get around is getting much, much harder to find. You know, we're having some trouble with that ourselves, which has limited the extent to which we're able to do our reporting. So a lot of what we are trying to do as journalists is, you know, ration our supplies so we can be here longer, really trying to, you know, hone in on a certain place or or a certain element of the story in order to conserve things like gasoline and also not to spend too much time on the roads, which are becoming more dangerous. You know, it's, it's, it's become a lot, a lot more challenging to do the work here, but it's become a lot harder to just simply survive

for millions of Ukrainians, you know, not only those in Kiev, which really does feel like a city under siege, but, but across the country. I would say, you know, a couple of major developments, One that happened overnight that is at the forefront of everyone's mind right now is this attack on the Zaporosia nuclear power plant, which is in southeastern Ukraine. And it's the biggest nuclear power plant in all of Europe. Ukraine has, I believe, 15 reactors that are currently operating around the country. And the Zaporosa plant is, like I said, not only Ukraine's biggest, but the biggest in Europe. And last night, a fire broke out, at least one fire broke out. There was close combat and shelling around the reactor.

And, you know, we saw President Zelensky make an urgent address to Europe, you know, for any assistance and any support, anything they might be able to do to press Russia in order to, you know, urgently stop what could potentially be. a really major disaster. And certainly, you know, Chernobyl is something that, you know, every Ukrainian remembers whether they lived through it or not. And any sort of fighting outside of a power plant is going to worry a lot of people and cause panic. And there certainly was a lot of that overnight. And, you know, this morning we woke up and found out that the staff at the plant is still working, but it's Russian forces who now control the area around the planet, which is, of course, really, really of great concern. And that, you know, just to give people a sense of it, too, doesn't that plant supply like

a quarter of energy in Ukraine? I imagine that one thing, if this becomes a kind of siege situation, one thing the Russians would want to do is be able to shut off and control energy, which really is a weapon of terror against a civilian population, right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, Russia has used energy as a weapon. There's really no facet of life that Russia hasn't tried to weaponize or successfully weaponized against Ukraine.

Energy is certainly something that has weaponized. You know, we obviously, obviously a lot of, you know, the people who listen to this program will be, you know, well versed in Nord Stream 2. And, you know, Russia trying to bypass Ukraine. And nuclear power plants here do supply much of Ukraine's energy. Obviously, controlling that plant, you know, puts power to large swathes of the country at risk. And it's just another lever that Russia can use to apply pressure on the Ukrainian government, which it wants to overthrow and in order to impose its own puppet government here.

So I think we're going to start seeing a lot of that. There's a really great concern that energy, things like communications are going to be some of the next targets. One of the other things that happened this week was a strike on the Kiev TV Tower, which interrupted some mobile communications, but city authorities were able to get everything pretty much back up and running fairly quickly. but I would expect that, you know, those types of attacks partnered with cyber attacks are probably going to be happening with greater frequency and probably in conjunction with, you know,

greater military strikes as well. So you've been in and around Keeve this last few days. What is, you talk about food shortages, you talk about obviously the uncertainty of when the next bomb is going to fall. We're talking about energy. How are people there who are staying, kind of preparing for and thinking about what may be a pretty incredibly difficult period of weeks here under some form of seizure bombardment? I mean, what's both the mood and what types of preparations are people making? Yeah, the mood is pretty grim. You know, people are trying to get out. there's been a rush to try to flee by train.

I was at the train station earlier this week with my other reporter and photographer and the scenes that we saw were just really, really difficult to see. It was a mad scramble for not the last seat, but really like the last square inches on a train to try to get out west. And I think there are still some trains. running and I mean, you know, the people who are keeping these trains running are, you know, heroes for doing so under shelling and, you know, trying to evacuate a population that's, you know, upwards of three, three and a half million people. But people are, you know, if they can't get out,

or in some cases, they don't want to get out. There are definitely a lot of people who see, you know, Kiev or the place where they live as their home. They don't want to leave under any circumstances, you know, they also are taking this, you know, they're sort of defiantly, you know, deciding to stay. And that's kind of their own personal protest or middle finger to Russia. And they are hunkering down. They're, you know, certainly gathering food, water, any other supplies. If they can find a gun, they're going to do so. You know, we, we tried to get some to buy some gas off a guy who rents cars earlier this week. And he said the only thing that they're trading gasoline for are guns.

And obviously, as journalists, we don't carry anything like that. You know, and he said, you know, pretty much what everybody around town wants is a gun. You know, to defend their homes, to defend their homeland. And, you know, I would say, you know, one of the most... surreal things is to see I mean everyone like mothers, grandmothers you know, dads,

kids, you know, 18, 17 year old boys you know, with firearms. You know, everywhere you go, you see men coming out of a grocery store or a gas station or, I mean, just literally anywhere. You know, walking with a shopping bag, down the street and they're armed. And they're building an arsenal of weapons.

They're building Molotov cocktails by the thousands. And they've sort of industrialized this manufacturing of homemade and makeshift weapons to a really large extent. And they're erecting block posts. You know, there are checkpoints on every road around here. The entire, I mean, the entire region of Kiev from my personal experience has become a battleground. Yeah. You know, or a staging ground for a defense.

You know, I think from what I've gathered in speaking with people all over the country, in speaking with some of my journalist colleagues who are based on other places, it's very much the same. You know, it's, I would say, you know, having covered the conflict, in eastern Ukraine since 2014, it's a bit like what it felt when the war broke out in 2014, 2015, when things were so fluid that the front line was changing every day. You could wake up and be on the opposite side of the front line or under the control, or in a city that was under the control of somebody else a day prior. and, you know, then and find out that, you know, an hour later that it's all been kind of flipped on its head.

It's a really uncertain moment. But I would say, like, the mood is one of defiance. There's plenty of concern. I think the Ukrainians feel as though they've hit Russia pretty hard. squarely in the nose. You know, they don't have them on the run. We know that Russia still very much has the upper hand. But, you know, the way in which Ukrainians have come together and united is something

that I think is remarkable. And unlike even in 2014-2015, when there were, you know, still, I would say factions of society that were uneasy with the... Euro-Maidon revolution. You know, we saw, I think, in parliament today, even the, you know, what people would consider the pro-Russian opposition bloc coming together with Zelensky's party, with the party of Petro-Portoshenko, which is seen as a much more nationalistic, patriotic party. And, you know, Russia's war and Putin's war in that way has really backfired.

You know, they thought that they would be greeted as liberators, at least in some areas. And that has not been the case at all. And the opposite has occurred. You know, Ukrainians are galvanized against Russia in a way, I think, that they never happen. I mean, so this, you know, raises the question of where is this leading? Because, you know, you walked us through well, you know, where this could be leaving in the east of the last of Iran, which is essentially connecting the Dombos down through Mariupo and into Crimea, and then watching the assault on Addessa, maybe cutting Ukraine off from the water from the sea. But in Kiev, if the objective here clearly seemed to be to install a puppet government of

sorts, a pro-Russian government, how is that even possible in the environment you're describing? I'm just trying to imagine what the endgame for the Russian operation in Kiev is. If there's a population that just would not accept a Russian-imposed government, it feels like that's a recipe for just a long-term conflict there. Absolutely. I mean, Ukrainians are gearing up for partisan guerrilla warfare on the streets. They're not going down without a fight. They're not going to accept any puppet government that Russia installs should they take over

Kiev. You know, there really is nobody, including the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, who may or may not be, according to reports, staging in Minsk waiting for Kiev the fall so he could be, you know, reinstalled. You know, there have been some other names from pro-Russian parties that have been floated by British and U.S. intelligence, who may be among a group of political elites that Russia would try to install. And, you know, these are not people who are seriously considered, let alone respected by the Ukrainian public. So there's no way that Ukrainians would accept this. I mean, the only way in which Russia is able to do that is really to shove it down Ukrainians' throats to create this atmosphere of terror, in which case, you know, Ukrainians, in which the

costs would be so great that perhaps Ukrainians wouldn't fight back or they or those who say they will stay no matter what end up deciding that you know what now is the time to leave you know and and to get to that point it might be that i mean russia would have to carpet bomb Kiev or I mean just decimate it in the way that the Red Army did when they you know pushed out Nazi Germany and World War II and you know there they're starting to be some talk of that around here which is just absolutely surreal like it's it's so hard to fathom that you know that this is this is where we are that like people are considering something like this and and worrying about something like this when two weeks ago we were having

cocktails and eating at, you know, some of the best restaurants in Europe. And, and yet, you know, that's, that's today's reality. And, you know, one of the, one of the rumors that's going around and I guess it's, I mean, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's more than rumor because it's, it's been reported by, by several media outlets as well, citing sources from the U.S. and European security officials, that there are these kill lists that Russia has put, you know, has compiled targeting, you know, predominantly Ukrainian politicians, journalists, public figures of great influence. And, you know, whether or not they're doing this, just putting this out there is enough to really, you know, so terror and fear and, you know, potentially panic.

And, you know, right now, I still see a lot of Ukrainians behaving very defiantly. You know, there's this attitude of bring it on. They're very confident in their military. They're very confident in their territorial defense forces. And even in their volunteer civilian fighters. And, you know, right down to, like, the local taxi driver who's manning a checkpoint. You know, they believe they are putting up a really good fight. They're weakening Russia's forces.

But at the same time, they do realize that there is a lot in reserve. And they still are going to have to fight in the long term. They don't think that this is a fight that's going to be days. And I think if you look at the call that Vladimir Putin had with Emmanuel Macron of France this week, I think Macron walked away from that saying the worst is yet to come. And that's starting to sink in. that's starting to sink in here. So you wrote a story recently that caught my attention,

and people should, in addition to following you on Twitter, check out all your reporting on BuzzFeed. This was about kind of U.S. Special Forces types, foreigners moving into Ukraine. And it really got my attention because it made me think, well, first of all, it's interesting. It's like a Spanish Civil War kind of situation. But that there's a lot of U.S. special forces who, you know, I could see, I could see that number going up significantly from not

just the U.S., but the U.K. and other countries, and which raises the question of, you know, direct contact, right, between Russian forces and American-trained special forces. I feel like this hasn't gotten a lot of attention. And also, these are special forces that fought against insurgency. in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years, so they know something about insurgency and the idea of them being on the other side of that is fascinating to consider.

I mean, to tell us a little bit about your reporting and also how do you see that trend potentially developing? Yeah, well, I mean, since I wrote that story, which was about 10 men that had gathered in Poland and were planning on crossing the border, and I believe it was three from the UK, one from Germany and six from the U.S., I've gotten hundreds of emails from predominantly men, but not only men, saying that they, you know, are trying to join this new international legion in Ukraine that President Zelensky announced himself.

And, you know, there are reports in foreign media of dozens of other European veterans that are interested in coming over to Kiev or have already entered Ukraine. I think there was a, if I can remember correctly, one of the ones. of the Scandinavian countries, I believe it was Sweden, said there was a report that said something like 30 former soldiers were planning on coming to Ukraine to join the Legion. And then I believe Zelensky himself said something to the effect of maybe upwards of 16,000 people have expressed interest in joining the foreign, this Ukrainian Foreign Legion. You know, there's a group called the Georgian National Legion here that has typically been an entry point for foreigners who have wanted to join the Ukrainian military. And foreigners have been allowed to join the Ukrainian

military for several years now, but there have been so many obstacles in place that there haven't been very many. It's a very bureaucratic process to do so. But now, Zelensky has essentially opened the floodgates and said explicitly, if you want to fight for freedom, if you want to fight for a European democracy, if you want to fight for Ukraine against evil, come to us, we'll give you arms, we'll give you a contract, we'll make it a legitimate thing. And from what I can tell anecdotally, you know, people are you know, racing over to try to join this Legion. The team that I was in contact with when I published that story has now grown to more than 30 people.

Not all of them are yet in Ukraine, but more than a dozen of them have made it across the border. The rest of them are looking for ways in. They're looking for the supplies they think they need to be here for a long haul. There are a couple of recruiters on this side of the border who are helping facilitate contracts. for them or help them with the process of joining. Obviously, there are some logistical issues, language barriers that they'll need to get through. But, you know, this really could end up being, you know, quite a, quite a story. And certainly something that I think is worth watching closely.

Because as you mentioned, all of these people, well, not all of, but, you know, many of them are NATO-trained Western soldiers who, you know, may be retired. but we know how Russia is going to see them. You know, Russia is not going to care whether or not they're retired. They're going to see them as American Special Forces or British Special Forces, and they're going to say, you know, this is a sign that it is the West that wants to destroy Russia, that, you know, they're sending these people in. Like, we already know what the narrative is going to be.

It's just a matter of time before, you know, Russian propaganda starts really pushing that out. But I think the CIA, they'll say the CIA is behind it or something too, you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think we've already seen some, you know, of those state media reports of, you know, CIA being, you know, on the front line in Donbos and controlling the government in Kiev, you know, things that, of course, are not true. But, you know, this is something I think is definitely worth watching. There has not, to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't seen any statement

from the U.S. on Zelensky's call for American fighters to come over. I think only Liz Trust, the foreign secretary in the UK, has said, you know, she welcomes the idea of British citizens who want to defend democracy and help defend Ukraine going over there, which to me was surprising. There have been no other, you know, senior diplomats in the Western world who have come out and said something similar. But also her comments followed. a story written by a guardian colleague of mine that said that UK authorities were stopping people at the airport who were looking to come over to Ukraine because they were concerned of people of far-right persuasions and connected to far-right groups coming over to link up with

some of the more marginalized far-right volunteer paramilitary forces here in Ukraine. yeah anyway you know definitely something to watch it's something to watch there um one last question before we let you go is just what is it like to be a journalist like what um uh how are you able to report um you gave us a little call earlier about you know the difficulty of having things like gas but you're you're obviously moving around or and are you seeing other uh foreign journalists there i mean how has that changed for you over the course the last few days and and what are your plans going forward? Yeah.

There are a lot of foreign journalists in the country right now. I think the Ukrainian government said something like 1,300 foreign correspondence have been accredited. And you could also assume that there are probably several here who aren't accredited that the government doesn't really know about because you can move around relatively freely with just a foreign passport a lot of times. It just does help to have these accreditation cards that we get. so that you're not interrogated at every checkpoint. But, you know, what it's like the report here, I mean, you can see on my camera that it's dark.

The light in my room is not very good. And that's because there have been airstrikes across the country, particularly in the area of Kiev region that I'm currently in. And we have been told to keep our lights low, to close all of the curtains, so that the towns and cities around this area aren't illuminated from the sky and essentially not to make ourselves targets for bombing runs. You know, on the roads, it's getting harder and harder to move around. And it takes longer and longer every day to get to and from the places we need to be.

There are checkpoints set up on every road. you know, the roads are littered with tank traps. For the first time in the past week today, we saw landmines set up on the side of one of the roads near a checkpoint, which is pretty jarring, and nobody had warned us that they were there. And, you know, we came very close to the edge of this road before the reporter sitting next to me pointed them out. You know, it's things are developing in a very, you know, challenging, sometimes scary way. And, you know, that's going to be a challenge for us in getting this story out. I will say the Ukrainian government has, you know, has really lifted a lot of the

barriers for us and made things a lot easier in terms of, you know, moving around to the extent that they can. But people here are really on edge. You know, we have not run into any Russian soldiers. but the Ukrainians, not Ukrainian soldiers, but regular Ukrainians who have been given arms and are controlling checkpoints outside of their towns and, you know, defending their homes, they're really nervous, they're not trained. You know, I mean, nobody ever thought that they would have to do this. Yeah. And so you can forgive them for being a little bit jumpy. But, you know, they are certainly scrutinizing every person that passes them, including foreigners. And it's, you know, I don't suspect that it's going to get easier as this conflict intensifies. Yeah. Well, look, we

really appreciate all this information, this update, and we hope you stay safe in the days ahead. And people should follow you on Twitter and check out your stuff on BuzzFeed. But thanks so much. hope you have as good a night as you can over there. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Take care. Thanks again to Christopher Miller for doing the show. Thank you to Olina Dunira for calling us in from Odessa, Ukraine at a time that must be terrifying.

I'm not sure that I would, I don't know. Maybe I would want to do interviews. I don't know. It's just horrifying. I can't imagine. Yeah. Yeah. It's, well, I think you just, maybe you want to communicate what's happening there.

I mean, the Ukrainians have clearly wanted the way. world to pay attention, right? Because it's their hope for support. Yeah. Well, so we should listen to her and then delete Lindsey Graham's Twitter account because that guy's an asshole. Yeah. Okay, well, we will, thanks for listening to this special episode and we'll talk to you guys on Wednesday. See it. Potsave the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. thanks to our digital team Elijah Cohn, Yale-Fried, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.