Pod Save the World - Special Report: On the Ground in Ukraine and Russia

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

As the worst case scenario unfolds in Ukraine, Ben runs through the latest on Russia’s invasion, how this attack marks a new phase of history, and what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Then Ben is joined by Ukrainian investigative reporter Tanya Kozyreva from Kyiv as it is under siege. During the interview, Tanya describes the dire situation in Kyiv, the Ukrainian peoples’ commitment to resist, and has to seek shelter after hearing explosions. Ben is also joined again by Max Seddon, Bureau Chief of the Financial Times in Moscow who shares how Russians feel about the invasion, and if sanctions could actually cause President Putin to stand down.

Welcome back to POTSA of the World. I'm Ben Rhodes, and this is another special episode of POTSave the World, responding to the events in Ukraine that we've all been following. Really, quite extraordinary couple of interviews, actually. So I really encourage folks to stay with us here. We have Tanya Kuzreva, who is a Ukrainian journalist. We spoke to her on the ground in Kiev, and she gives you an incredibly vivid sense of what's going on there. So I really encourage you to listen to Tanya. And then we have Max Sedenback on from Moscow who really gives us a good understanding of the current dynamic in Moscow and in and around the Kremlin as well.

It's been a very dramatic few days. Early Thursday morning, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine with Putin calling it a, quote, special military operation intended to, among other things, denazify the Ukrainian government. And so I think from the outset, it seemed quite clear that this was the worst-case scenario of a large-scale invasion and really an effort to decapitate the Ukrainian government and install an alternative Russian-controlled, essentially, government. There have been explosions across Ukraine, including in the capital of Kiv, which we must remember. And as you'll hear from Tanya, is a city of 2.8 million people. Enormous human suffering already underway, and tragically, the risk of much more. Right now, there's really a battle underway for control of Kiev, and they've been blasted throughout the night.

You'll hear a blast on our interview with Tanya, and the U.S. has been warning that Kiev could potentially be captured by Russian forces in a matter of days. Putin continues to claim that it is fighting Ukrainian, quote, nationalist. He's called on Ukraine's armed forces to surrender. He said ominously today, take power into your own hands. It looks like it'll be easier for us to make a deal with you. then this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis referring apparently to the Ukrainian government in an address he made. Despite that ongoing battle in those comments, Putin claimed, although

nothing he said can be trusted, claimed that he was ready for talks with Ukraine's President Zelensky. And President Zelensky indicated he was willing to discuss a, quote, neutral status for Ukraine that's with respect to NATO membership. But I wouldn't be too hopeful. about this, given that the Russian position on this has continued to shift, and you'll hear Max talk about that in his comments. For his part, President Zelensky, of course, has made clear his determination to resist in a very powerful statement. He indicated that he had intelligence that he's number one on the potential Russian kill list for people to eliminate as Russia moves into Ukraine, but he made clear that he's not going anywhere. He's staying for the time,

at least in Kiev, and really leading not just the military operations for Ukraine, but what could become the Ukrainian resistance to an ongoing Russian presence in the country. Ukraine has declared martial law. It's also distributed 18,000 assault rifles to citizens in Kiev to mount a continued armed defense against a Russian invasion. Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are barred from leaving the country. They're being called up into that resistance. Ukraine's foreign minister has accused Russian forces of attacking, among other things, a kindergarten and an orphanage, calling the attacks, quote, war crimes and violations of the Rome statute. And Ukraine has said that it's gathering information to send to the Hague, the international tribunal for war crimes.

The Ukrainian defense ministry said that its forces have taken down Russian aircraft and helicopters and more than 30 tanks since the beginning of the invasion, and it killed roughly 800, quote, enemy personnel, as you'll hear me talk about. Max, you know, the figures we're going to be seeing on both sides, particularly on the Russian side, in terms of casualty numbers are obviously unverified, and we'll have to monitor this as close as we can in the days ahead. Zelensky, for his part, said that in his first comments on casualties, that 137 Ukrainians had died. Ukraine's military has called on residents to resist in other parts of the country too, not just Kiev, urging people to make Molotov cocktails to take on the occupier. Russia, though, has surrounded Ukraine from three sides. It's firing missiles from the land and the

sea. And we've had the initial response from the rest of the world. The European Union has issued sanctions and the reports that it's preparing to sanction Putin himself, freezing his assets, and the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. However, of course, these are going to be difficult assets to get after. The United States announced sanctions on several Russian banks, as well as sanctions on additional Russian oligarchs, as well as export controls, which restrict Russia's capacity to get access to certain technologies, which are important for its economy, particularly in its tech sector. And we talked to Max about this, and we've talked about this before on Pazzi of the world. Putin is one of grave consequences for anyone considering interfering with Russian plans,

making allusion to his nuclear deterrent. NATO has called the invasion a brutal act of war, and President Biden is convening an emergency session of NATO in their discussion of additional deployments to support the eastern allies within NATO. Biden also said that he is going to make Vladimir Putin, quote, a pariah on the international stage in a Thursday speech, reiterating that Putin is aggressor, Putin chose this war, now he and his country will bear the consequences. So what does all this mean? We're going to unpack that with our guest.

I'll just say my takeaways thus far. First, again, I think this is the worst case scenario that we've been discussing for the last several weeks, a full-scale invasion that is going to unleash extraordinary human suffering in all manner of unintended consequences. And we don't know what those unintended consequences might end up being. Obviously, inside of Ukraine, that country is never going to be quite the same again. For Russia, though, invading a country is one thing. Occupying a country is another. And you've already

seen, I think, another main takeaway from me. The Ukrainian determination to resist feels very real here. Its politicians are not leaving the country. President Zelensky has made clear he wants to be a part of an effort to resist. The mayor of Kiev, Mayor Klichko, has made clear. that he wants to be part of an effort to resist. You've seen other politicians making clear that that's their intention. And you've seen, in some extraordinary videos, ordinary citizens, arming themselves and preparing to fight in the kind of insurgency that we've seen in other places. Frankly, even in, obviously, the recent U.S. experience in Iraq.

And so we just don't know where that might lead. We've seen nascent protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and it should be said that these are extraordinarily courageous Russians are taking extraordinary personal risks to get in the streets in the numbers of hundreds, if not thousands, in both of those cities. And, you know, it's an indication that there's probably more opposition to the war inside of Russia. I talk about this a bit with Max. We don't have a read on Russian public opinion that's incredibly hard.

but again invading the entire country of Ukraine is very different than annexing a very distinct piece of territory like Crimea that is majority ethnic Russian here and I think the Russian people have some sense of that and so we don't know how broad the opposition is but it's quite possible that it could grow with time and that again is something I took to max about We also have seen the beginning of sanctions. I'm curious about where that ends. Clearly, there's a reticence in Europe and in the United States to do things like sanction Russian energy exports, oil and gas, as well as the more dramatic efforts to cut rush off from the

global financial system. However, if we start to see mass civilian casualties and we start to see potentially the assassination of leaders like President Zelensky, I would think that there's a lot of be growing pressure for much more dramatic action from U.S. and European leaders. And you hear Tanya in my interview, I think, very eloquently and powerfully appealing to Western leaders to do more. We've seen efforts to begin to kind of isolate Russia from the rest of the world, you know, efforts to deny Russian planes, capacity to land at airports, the suspension of Russian participation in certain sporting competitions or capacity to host those, those are,

may seem small at the beginning, but again, that could continue to expand. I think the bottom line is that we're in a new phase of history. We do not live in the same world that we lived in a couple of days ago. In many ways, the period of history since the end of the Cold War, which was already kind of beginning to come to an end, definitively ended with this full-skill invasion. You guys who've listened to this for a while, no, you know, this is this thing we talked about, I wrote a whole book about it that centered on Putin and his role in trying to disrupt that post-Cold War period. And here we are.

I think I'd just say as we head into this interview with Tanya, I think we all feel a sense of a profound solidarity with the Ukrainian people and what they're going through. You know, I've thought of this podcast. I've tried to think of it as something of a community of people around the world who care about things, who care about what's happening. the world, who care about rising authoritarianism in the world. I'm sure we've had Ukrainian listeners as well as people in other countries. And I hope we all feel a connection with the human story that's happening in Ukraine. You can talk about the geopolitics. You can talk about sanctions policy.

You can talk about Putin's intentions. These are human beings. Ukraine is a country of over 44 million people. They're going through unimaginable hardship now, and it's going to get worse. There are going to be refugee flows. There are going to be casualties. There's going to be Russian responses that we're not even anticipating right now. And there's going to be Ukrainian resistance, clearly, as I said. And as this plays out, we want to continue to try to bring you voices from Ukraine and from Russia in addition to trying to offer some analysis here. And I would caution people. We're not going to know on any given day precisely what's happening,

nor should we anticipate that this is a story that is going to have an end anytime soon. I think this is something that's going to play out in years, not months or weeks. But we'll continue to try to make sense of it as we can. And I think the best way that we can do that is to bring you the voices from on the ground. And so coming up after the break, we are going to hear from Tanya Kuzreva, who is, as you'll see, an extraordinarily courageous Ukrainian journalist on the ground in Kiev covering this story. So coming up after the break, we'll have Tanya. Okay, right now we are very pleased to be joined by Tanya Kuzreva, who is an investigative journalist based in Kiev. She's written for BuzzFeed.

She was nominated for Pulitzer in 2021. Tanya, thanks so much for joining us. No problem. Thank you for inviting me and for giving me the opportunity to speak. So let's just start. Why don't you tell us kind of where you are and what the situation is around you right now? I'm in Kiev. And now I'm based in the hotel, which is in the city center. And we were trying to report from the streets today. but the problem is that every two hours, since 2 a.m., we are woke up. So I'm sorry in advance if I will say something wrong

or my English is not perfect because everything is blurry, to be honest, I haven't had to sleep for a long time. The first serene, the warning for us, for people who are in Kiev right now, was at 2 a.m. today. So we went to the bomb shelter

and I think we spent there the whole day and we couldn't get a chance to go and report from the streets because like every two hours there is a warning to go to the bomb shelter. So it's literally barely possible to report right now for journalists

you know and it's very complicated situation so now we're discussing with with our colleagues the possibility to live the city because we went to the grocery shops today it's literally across the street from our hotel and there was there was no food like the shells were empty and the hotel today warned us that they will probably stop operating in a few days and and they're short for food. They said there will be no dinner today and possibly there will be no breakfast tomorrow. So I think it's getting worse. Like it was pretty normal yesterday. You know, we went on the streets were reported. We went to the train station. We went to the shelters, to the bomb shelters. We speak with the people on the streets. So it was the situation changed completely.

over the 24 hours, you know, it's such a, it's like, I mean, it's really bad right now, to be honest, like, and I have no idea how bad it's going to be in next 24 hours. So now we're thinking, like, if it's possible to go somewhere, which, which is out of the city just to have the possibility to buy gas and, um, and, uh, have access. to food basically supplies and to not be in situation where the hotel will kick us out, you know, and we will be like without any good, and we will be on the street, you know, at some point. So for the, do you have any sense of kind of how much of the population remains in Kiev and what their capacity is to access basic goods like food and, you know,

and water and the things that you need to survive? It's the same situation for everybody. It's like the same network of grocery shops all over Kiev. So I think the problem is that because of the shillings probably, the grocery shops is not getting any food, you know. Yeah. Like, just, it's that they're just short for food. And probably because of that, also many workers can cannot get to their working place.

So it's barely possible to, you know, to operate. Basically normal life, people going to work, people having access to things like food, today is the day that that kind of stopped being a possibility. I think nobody, like, none of my friends are going to the office right now. They're home and like every two hours they're going to the bomb shelter. So it's the same situation for everybody. It's not just like we are in the hotel and that's why we're trapped in the bomb shelter. No, it's like it's it's like that for everybody.

Like people are, you know, afraid of going out and like they're doing. like, you know, they're doing everything possible to get food, basically, and water and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's, it was, like, it was nearly impossible to get gas, like, yesterday. Today's, the situation is a little bit better, but now I see the problem with the food, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, it's, it's different every day and, um, how are people getting information? Are they, you know, we, obviously, here in the, you know, you know, we, obviously, you know, U.S. you know, see when President Zelensky or Mayor Klitschko post messages online. But obviously, you know, that's incomplete information in terms of the picture of everything that's happening militarily around Kiv. Are people able to get information about warnings of

what's happening? Are they receiving the messages that are being posted by political leaders in Ukraine? is there any sense of Russian efforts to disrupt information to the people of Kyiv? How is that being experienced? So one thing is we have TV, which is operating, right? Everyone can live stream a news channel and watch, like, what is going on. And reporters are reporting from the streets. So it's okay. Like, news are delivered.

So in Ukraine, the social media is super popular and the telegram channel. We have basically the social media, which called Telegram. It's founded in Russia, which is funny, to be honest, in the situation. But the Telegram channel are super popular. So many Ukrainian politicians, including Zelensky, President Zelensky, has his own telegram channel where he's like delivering all his speeches. And latest news. So the other option is, again, Twitter, Facebook.

Everyone is sharing their own news, you know, and their own information. And also, I mean, in the telegram, like, all the NGOs has their own channels. So it's like the news are spread, to be honest. Like, it's not the problem to deliver the news right now. And it's not the problem to get the news. The TV channel is not blocked and social media is also operating. So news-wise, it's a lot of news. The other problem is disinformation, you know.

So right now, there are a lot of, you know, a lot of facts which are spreaded through the social media and spread it through all the media. media, they're fakes, you know, and many, many media are spreading fakes because they cannot verify this information or because they, you know, tend to believe or because it's very likely truth, you know, like, for example, there was news regarding the President Zelensky and his closest ally. left Ukraine already. So the president and his closest allies has to make a video and next to the presidential administration saying, no, we are still here, we're still in Ukraine. And this is like, you can see us all at the same place. So we are still here, you know.

So the misinformation is a big problem right now because it's hard to tell what is true and what is polls. And it's barely possible to verify this information if you're in the bomb shelter. Yeah. And you can go and verify this information on the ground. And the other problem that everything is happening in the different parts of Ukraine, and Ukraine is a huge country, you know.

Yeah. So it's other problem. So it's many challenges for the reporters right now in Ukraine. And besides, like, you know, besides the physical threat to be, you know, to be, to get into the, like, to get under the fire or between the fire of two basically for armies, it's many other challenges do not, you know, spread the misinformation. Yeah, no, I imagine. And so we've seen, you know, obviously amidst all of the lies from President Putin in Russia, the latest messaging from the Kremlin is a set of demands for diplomacy that would basically require the Ukrainian government to surrender and surrender essentially its sovereignty.

It feels like, obviously, in the message from President Zelensky, and that's a message. and what we're hearing from Ukrainians, it feels like that there is a determination inside of Ukraine to resist for the military to continue to fight and even for the citizens of Ukraine potentially to mobilize to fight. Is that an accurate read that the people of Ukraine are ready to resist Russian efforts to invade and really take out their government? And, and, and, and, and, to literally mobilize not just the army, but the citizens as well, if need be? Yeah, I have this feeling and I can tell you that, you know, right now, the parliament issue, the law according to which any citizens,

any citizen who will show the passport can get a weapon, a gun in Kiev or in any other part of Ukraine. So the guns are spreading all over the country. And everybody is like, you know, there are huge lines to get to the territorial defense units. And like the reservists are coming to the military offices. So I think Ukrainians are ready to fight. And, you know, there will be no situation. like it happened in Crimea eight years ago when you know Russians took over the military bases and they basically forced like they had like they offered Ukrainian military to choose other you are joining Russian army or you have to leave you know so most of most of military military

Most of the people in Crimea, they decided to join the military. And the option to choose, you know. But here in Ukraine, it's completely different situation, eight years after this events in Crimea. And Ukraine changed, you know, it's a different country, I would say, that it was eight years ago. it changed in the way it gets it I mean now it's more democratic country now

it's like there is a freedom of speech media are covering amazing stories and they're doing investigations about the president like about the top criminals, top politicians you know it's like nobody arrested or killed here

you know it's not like in Russia You can easily to make an investigation, and there's so much corruption in Ukraine. So I'm usually saying, like, Ukrainian investigative journalists, they're one of the best in the world because they have so much experience of digging into someone's dirt that, you know, none of the other country can, you know, challenge this. Yeah. Yeah. this experience. And people don't want to give that up. People don't want to lose that.

Yeah, people don't want to live in Russia, you know? Generally speaking, the feeling is like, people don't want to give up the democracy. People get used to live in the free and democratic capital and in free and democratic country. And, you know, we had a talk today with the few American journalists who spent here like more than 10 years. You probably know them. And we had a talk like the city will never be like it was before. It's already different, you know. Yeah.

Our hotel is like in the city center and it's usually so busy that there are so many people in this cafes and restaurants. run and it's overpopulating it's like very hip area and people are getting like having coffee and discussing politics here you know and now it's like empty and there is like nobody you know literally nobody and it feels like a desert right now you know yeah and i i think many people are devastating by the events which is happening because um you know i mean to be honest we have so much so much We have a lot of history common with Russia. We have 70 years of common history. It was a lot different events, but still, you know, many Ukrainians have relatives in Russia or in Belarus.

So it's very complicated situation where it was hard to believe all this way that it might happen, you know. And finally, it happened. It was even a bigger surprise. Like everybody have heard about this possibility, but nobody really believed that it could happen. Yeah. And now it's like very traumatic experience for many Ukrainians just because, you know, the countries, which are neighboring countries, which has a lot of common history and relatives and friends, they're over a sudden realized that it's an enemy, you know, and it. And it's an enemy country and people in Russia, they tend to, you know, to send the messages like, we are very sorry.

We cannot do anything. But, you know, this is not something that we would like to hear from them. You know, like I would say many Ukrainians are like posting right now in the social media, the request to Russians to go out to the streets and to protest against President Putin because something that he is doing is not. It's like correlating with something that they feel about Ukrainians, you know. So it's a very difficult situation right now. And yesterday we witnessed many, like, heartbreaking stories, you know,

like one of them were like a couple who were standing in the subway, who were like hiding from the bombs because they woke up at 5 a.m. from the, from the sound of explosions and they live next to the secret service office so it's like

FBI Ukraine and they realized that this is a strategic you know this is a strategic place that can be bombarded any time you know so they left they hide it into the subway

at 5 a.m and there it's a couple who have a six months old child. So you can imagine they went to the bomb shelter at 5 a.m. holding their baby. And they had with them only like a couple of slices of bread and some water and two diapers or something. And they spent their eight hours when we met them already. So it's like and then they didn't have any backup plan. They never thought it could happen, you know.

So and when I was asking, start asking them, like, so what is your plan? Where are you going? Are you evacuating or like, what are you doing? Like, what is like, what will be your next moves? And they were like, we don't know what to do. Like, we have no idea going to be next. And we have no idea what to do. And, you know, the other stories would be like, we went.

to the tram station, you know, and it was packed of people who were trying to, desperately trying to get a ticket anywhere, anywhere from Kiev because, you know, they, again, they woke up at 5 a.m. hearing the explosion, they turned on the TV and, you know, they realized that it's a, that Putin overnight declared that he just declared the war, you know, no, seriously, For many Ukrainians, it's such a big surprise. And if you would take a look on this huge traffic gym, it's like already two days in a row, huge traffic gym, western direction. So people are trying to get as far as possible.

They're going west. They're going to Lviv, to Poland, anywhere, you know, anywhere get out. They're trying to get out from Kiev. But the problem is that if you look on the map of Ukraine, Russians targeted almost all the cities in the, like, all the big cities and small cities in Ukraine, they are targeting specifically the military bases and the military facilities. So the explosion happened all over the Ukraine. And I cannot say that there is any safe place in Ukraine left, you know. What do you? Yeah, no, and that unfortunately may be exactly what Russia intended to do is to make it feel like the whole country is not safe.

Yeah. What you've got, I mean, you know, I just say, I think, you know, people listen to this podcast who work in the U.S. government and in European governments. What would you say to them, to our government? to the US government and European governments. What are the people of you... The explosion, sorry, I think I have to hide in... At least in the bathroom,

where there is no window. You just tell me when you're okay or if you need to go. It was one explosion. I don't know if it... And there is no sense... There is no sound of wording to go to the bomb shelter. Okay, I think I can continue here for a while, whereas there is no window here, at least. What were you saying?

Well, it's a good, what do you want, what would the people of Ukraine want the U.S. and Europe to do that they're not doing? I mean, we saw some sanctions announced. What is your message to the people, to the governments of Europe and the United States from the perspective of the people of Ukraine? So as you can see, the sanctions that was imposed by US government or by the government of UK and any other government, like, those sanctions doesn't work. So it means it has to be something else. I know that, you know, that cutting off the sweet. Swift sounds very rush and probably very hard sanctions to impose. But I think the sanctions has to be really painful for Russia, you know.

For Russia, for President Putin himself and for his closest allies and Russian oligors, who are, you know, who are Putin's wallet, basically. They're holding money for him. And I think blocking all the foreign accounts for them, it can be something that is painful. I know that many Russian oligarchs already listed in the sanction list, but not all of them and not the main one. And we all know that Putin himself, he had a lot of relatives, right? Yeah. He has, he have like former wife.

He has mistress. And all those people, they are also not in the sanction list. So I think politicians has to, you know, has to think about this. And they have to make this. decisions very quickly because as I told you at the beginning the situation is changing very quickly you know and it's changing um and it's changing in the bad way and there are many casualties already all over Ukraine and I don't think Ukraine will be you know Ukraine will be not not as it was before So I think we are now going through our 9-11.

You know, this is something that can be, I think, compared to something that you experienced. Or worse, worse than 9-11. Yeah. What are the last question? What are your personal plans? What are you plan to do in the coming days? Well, I'm a journalist. So I'm trying to cover this events and I'm trying to, you know, to be on the streets.

And sadly, I cannot do my regular work as an investigative reporter just because I'm like, seriously, like, I cannot think anything besides the war, you know. It's hard. It's hard to think about anything else. And when people are start asking me something about different topics, like it's hard. to even focus and think about anything else when you're getting this notification about this news. So as a journalist, I have this, you know, like I covered the revolution in 2013, 14, and I covered the war. And later I covered the occupation of Crimea and later we covered the war. So, yeah, this is something that, you know, that any reporter, good reporter in Ukraine,

are doing right now. It's basically covering the war and fighting disinformation and to report as many stories as you can from the streets from like making calls and meeting people. And I want to stay in Ukraine as long as it takes, but also I know that the good reporter is a live reporter. So I have to take about my own health and now probably I have to think about my relatives in the situation. So it's a lot of things to think about, you know. And also I'm thinking about my friends who are calling me and asking what to do and where to go. So it's a lot of challenges right now for me and for any, I think, investigative or any

Ukrainian journalist or any foreign reporter who is here to cover. to cover the war. Well, look, thanks so much for talking to us. And we, you know, everybody is watching this with horror and, you know, offering solidarity to the Ukrainian people, even though that's obviously not enough in this moment. But we hope you stay safe and we really appreciate you talking to us. Yeah, no problem. Please, if you, instead of, you know, I'm saying to.

all my foreign friends or all my friends abroad, instead of showing me the solidarity, please ask your politicians or your leaders of your own country to impose as many sanctions as you can on the president, Putin and his closest allies. And just make this war stop because we are in Ukraine, a very peaceful country. We want peace and we want peace.

live in our own country. We don't want to live under the occupation or we don't want to be a part of Russia. Yeah. No, thanks. The powerful and important message that I hope everybody is hearing. So thanks and have a good rest of your night and I hope you stay safe and keep in touch and we'll direct people to your work. I see, you know, they can follow you on Twitter and so we'll continue to do that as well. Yeah, I'll try to. Okay, I think I have to go to the bumshoulders, sorry. Okay, no, no, get down there and be well. Yeah, bye-bye.

Bye. When we come back, we'll move from the perspective in Kiev to the perspective in Moscow with Max Seddon, the Financial Times reporter in Moscow. Okay, we are very pleased to welcome back. Max Seddon of the Financial Times in Moscow. Max, thanks for joining us again. So I wanted to have you back on, obviously. we talked a few days ago that now feels like a few years ago before Putin had given his speech

but had not launched obviously the full-scale invasion. So I just wanted to start by asking, you know, what is the mood there in Moscow? I've been struck, you know, we saw these protests that were small but, you know, notable for Russia. And in, and in, Putin's own comments, you kind of sense a, I don't know, a little defensiveness about what's been unfolding. But what is your kind of summary of where things stand in terms of the mood politically and in the streets in Moscow these days? I think I wouldn't necessarily read that much quite yet into the protests because it's just such a difficult parameter of public opinion here when Russia has done so much in last few years, especially last year, to really, really

crushed dissent. And after what happened to the Volney, you know, the political opposition basically gave up on, on protests as a strategy at all because it just wasn't worth people getting, getting in themselves in harm's way. So it's obviously, it's the upbraith of anyone who goes to, who goes to do, do that. But I think it's, you can't really use that to make a point about wider sentiment. And something that you see there's this kind of split between Russians and Ukrainian. both as President Zelensky and also some Ukrainians I know have been appealing to Russians to, you know, really actively protest the war. And as Zelensky was talking, you know, he said that this is the only thing that can stop the war is if you make Putin make a deal with you. And I think one of the sad consequences of everything that's happened since 2014 is that Russian, you know,

Rush politically and a lot of the rest society, they really don't understand how Ukraine has changed. And I think for Ukrainians who have a very strong tradition of political dissent because they're the imperial for free, they're the colonial subject. and Russia, Russia is, you know, the center of the, of the empire. They don't necessarily understand that, you know, Russia doesn't have, you know, a big protest tradition in the way that they do. You know, the most famous anti-war protest in Russian history was, it was how many, I think, six people protested the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. So what I do think, though, that you are seeing that's quite significant is the influencers

and the celebrities are starting to, if not revolt, like there are certainly, you know, some cracks in the matrix. You have to remember that celebrity politics is really important. Like Putin in quite a lot of ways, like Putin has been doctors. They were the first people to really realize that, it's I guess like they would say, trap-o-trap house that being a celebrity is better than being a politician. And celebrities make better politicians and politicians.

And that was, you know, Trump, you know, turned out to be really brilliant. that in the in the in the in the in the west but if you look at uh the early years of putin um since putin was kind of this blank slate no one really knew him when he when he came in they they made him this uh sort of celebrity like james bond figure they put a bunch celebrities in the parliament when they uh started started defanging it and uh so um celebrities are important barometers partly for that reason, also because celebrities face bigger risks than quite a lot of people for speaking out because the culture industry is pretty much totally dominated by the state and it's heavily censored. So if you're an actor and you say, you know, I love Navalny,

like you're not getting on TV. If you're a senior, you know, not just that you won't be able to be on the Channel 1 cheesy New Year show, it might be hard for you to make money from concerts even that happened to some anti-putin rappers. And so you would see a lot of a lot of the best, just like really, really cheesy Russian singers. They post some anti-war messages on social media. You saw a few athletes like, I know American listeners might know you've gained him and Medvediva, the former figure skater who's, I think is a good example because, you know, she's a former athlete and now, now they have her, you know, comment on figure skating on on state TV. So she's been doubly dependent in her young life.

And today, even Putin spokesman's daughter, who's a sort of minor social media influencer, published an anti-war message. I think it's important to say that, you know, this is not, none of these people are mentioning Putin by name. It's mostly they post some sort of black square and say, oh, no, the war or, you know, the Ukraine. or our brothers or some kind of both sidesy type message. But that in the current Russian political environment is significant in itself. Because firstly, you know, you can really be punished. The Russian media sensor said that any outlet that doesn't quote official,

it quotes anything other than official information can be blocked. and the official information coming from Russia, they're not even officially doing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They're trying to portray this as a limited special operation to liberate just the Dombas in the East. And yeah, these people, they do face consequences. There are one of the Russian celebrities who spoke out was this guy Yvonne Oregon, who's kind of the Jimmy Fallon of Russia.

Stephen Colbert was on his show when he came here. He has a show like that. And his show is unusually not airing tonight. And there are some reports. I don't know if it's been confirmed yet, but there are reports in Russian media that I saw this afternoon that his show has been canceled. And he's one of the most popular TV hosts,

but that would obviously be very damaging for the Kremlin to have some sort of moment where, you know, you have a popular host speaking out against the war live on air. So it's obviously, you know, too early. to tell it's a long way from, you know, the kind of thing that Zelensky was talking about Russians rising up on mass to stop the war. But I think a lot of people, and including in the elite, you know, who I've spoken to, various people who work for state companies and things like that, they, everyone I've spoken to feels kind of disgusted by it. Well, I was going to ask you,

you know, because there are such deep ties, right? There are a lot of people in Russia with family in Ukraine. They're obviously our ethnic Russians and Ukraine. They're fellow Slavs. This could be really bad in terms of civilian loss of life. The Ukrainians are resisting in the cities. And, you know, you start to see the kinds of tactics that Russia employed in Syria, the combination of air power and street fighting and kind of indiscriminate violence.

and there have already been some reports that obviously have to be verified of apartment buildings or even schools or hospitals that have been hit. What is your sense of how like a months long, you know, recognizing that information is somewhat controlled by the Kremlin there, but if there are months of pretty large-scale civilian death and suffering in Ukraine where people have failed. family and people know people and people feel an ethnic connection, what is the possibility of that really beginning to affect Russian moods in your sense? In talking to any of your contacts, some of whom I'm sure have family or friends in Ukraine,

do you feel like that's a possibility that that starts to erode public support? I mean, we were talking about at the Security Council meeting last time, you know, some of the people speaking there, you know, they grew up in Ukraine, Dimitri Kozhak, Valentino Medvedenko, you have two very senior people in the Russian system. I'm sure that more people that security council, they have relatives in Ukraine. One of, one of the biggest state TV anti-Ukraine propaganda guys, his dad lives in East Ukraine in the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine. And, you know, he's out there every day going, oh, you know, the Ukrainian Nazis are coming to kill the Russian speakers. And it's this amazing cognitive dissonance that's really required to keep it up.

Obviously, you have that in any war. You know, every government does that. But I think here, you know, even even the premise is so, so different from what they're actually doing. And to the point where it's, I think, I think, I mean, it's something that Russia is not being honest with the Ukrainian people. about you look at some of the things that they've said it's like this real double think like the foreign ministry said you know this this is not the beginning of a war we we are ending the war because we are forcing the Ukrainian Nazis to conclude peace but this is also not the end of the war if you know that means you're smarter than me and um you you get there is this uh today uh there is this amazing

little series, I think it was very illustrative, both in how twisted the Russian narratives are and also how even the people who should be in charge of the narratives, they don't really know what the narrative is supposed to be, because it's just Putin deciding all the stuff, you know, laterally on his own. So one of the Russian demands for Ukraine is that Ukraine declare neutrality, presumably in some sort of Finland or Austria-type type way. And Zelensky said today that he was prepared to put neutrality on the table and have talks with Russia about it. And then Russia really seized on this on the one hand. First, you had Peskov Putin's spokesman saying, oh, yeah, this is a step in the right direction.

We're going to have a think about this. But then around the same time, Lavrov, the foreign minister is speaking. And this is totally uncoordinated. Obviously, they're speaking at the same time in different places. And He says, no, we will not have any negotiations with them about neutrality. Zelensky is lying. And you think, what is the line? Maybe there is no line because neither of these guys know what it is. They just, it's possible, you know, either they're just trying to create confusion to demoralize

Ukrainians or, you know, they just don't know. And then Putin comes out a few hours later. He says that he does support the idea of negotiations. He talks about it with Xi Jinping from China, who also endorses it. they say, let's have it in Belarus. Lukashenko comes out and says, oh, yeah, I'm perfectly happy to have you in Belarus. And then Russia started complaining that, you know, the Kremlin said they started haggling with Ukraine over the venue. Because Belarus, because it's a launching pad for all these Russian attacks now, kind of, you know, lost his credibility as neutral venue.

And, you know, why would Ukraine ever do that? and and then Ukraine, you know, they stopped, you know, picking up the phone when Russia was calling the way, the way that Russia had it. And the cognitive distance is just amazing because he's like, well, you were bombing them at the time. Like, according to Zelensky, you were literally trying to assassinate him. And like, and you're mad that he's not, you know, picking, picking up the phone. And so that's not something that's something you really keep up. And it could go a number of ways.

I think the two most likely ones, there's relatively optimistic scenario, which is that either Russia always wanted to go for the kind of Georgia 2008 option, which is you do it quickly. The casualties are relatively limited to compare to what they could be. And you achieve your geopolitical objectives in a matter of days. And if you look at Georgia, Russia's kind of accepted that the population of Georgia is never going to love it again. But it's also never going to join the EU and NATO while there's Russian troops and 20% of his territory. And they have this kind of Russia acceptable oligarch who's the sort of shadow power behind the throne. There are any number of oligarchs who, you know, could theoretically be that guy in Ukraine. The problem is the Ukrainian people don't want that anymore.

That's why they liked Zelensky in the landslide because he was someone from outside, so he was going to smash that. And so maybe there are reports that Russians are not doing as well as they seem to have thought that they would. Maybe they wanted to get us over with because they can't sell the number of civilian casualties and all the destruction that would require. But the pessimistic way to look at it is Putin was saying, you know, we need to have these talks because the Ukrainian Nazis and the Russian messaging is trying to say, oh, you know,

we're not against the Ukrainian soldiers. Putin encouraged the Ukrainian army to do a coup against Zelensky, which is just really amazing because he asked Putin. The whole reason this is all happening is because in 2014, you had the Maidan revolution, which because Putin doesn't believe that you can have a democratic revolution, he thinks, you know, someone's always behind it. He says it was a foreign-backed armed coup. And here he is leader of a foreign power saying, I want you to do a foreign-backed armed coup.

It was unbelievable cognitive dissonance. But the sort of, the pessimistic way to think about it, and this, you know, going back to the Syria comparison, is that they didn't do so well in the beginning. And maybe that will, they've only used about 30% of their forces so far in the operation, what I understand. So it's possible that, you know, they have all sorts of firepower, equipment, the manpower that they haven't used yet. And they can make things much worse for Ukrainians. and that would cause a lot more destruction. And it may just be that Putin, by saying these things, was trying to prepare its own population

for turning Kiev-Her-Harkath into Aleppo and Homs, these horrible images of destruction because he's prepared to go that far, and we just don't know yet. One thing that I've been wondering is, you know, I remember in the Donbos, you know, Russia going to great... lengths to kind of conceal any Russian casualties. Obviously, the numbers are likely to be higher on the Russian side in terms of casualties. What is your anticipation of the reliability of

the reporting around Russian loss of life or casualties in this operation? Well, the official Russian poll at the moment is zero. It seems impossible, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and, And Ukraine, Ukrainian deputy defense minister posted, I think it was 20, 200 a couple hours ago as of Friday evening and wrote, Welcome to Hell. And of course, you know, A, any side of the war and, you know, Ukraine, this was a thing in 2014 that, you know, one that made the war difficult to cover when I first started in the Dombas was obviously Russia. it was lying just about completely fundamental things like the fact that they were fighting the war, but it didn't mean that Ukraine was telling the truth about everything either. Far from it is what happens in the war.

Every government does this. Yeah. You know back for me. So, you know, I think the true answer is somewhere between zero and 3,000. I think it's way too early to tell, and this kind of intense fighting is very different. to tell. What I think this is, I think this is less about the Russian casualties. I think this is that's, that's going to be in Russia's calculations. I think what's going to influence Russia more is the Ukrainian cost benefit analysis, because one thing that I think we can say for sure

about Russia is that they've massively underestimated the resolve of Ukrainian people. I think Putin genuinely doesn't believe that that Ukraine is, you know, that this united, uh, Ukrainian civic identity that, you know, he really created by invaded it in 2014. Yeah. And he's reinforced even, even more now. And, you know, I was, I was just watching CNN. And there was a, uh, young, uh, woman member of parliament, you know, talking about how, you know, she had a AK-47 that she was going to use if, uh, the Russians were close enough to her.

And, uh, you know, all, yeah, there's something that there's, uh, there's, uh, however, it's a 500,000 or a million reservists in the territorial defense forces, the kind of dad's army, you would call it in the UK. And I think, I think it's, if Ukrainians are going to put up, you know, really sustained fight, it's, you know, how long can you, can you sustain that without the optics really getting bad enough to defeat the purpose of you doing it in, in the first place, and it becomes some kind of, you know, equivalent of the Soviet version of Afghanistan, because then that creates problems for you domestically, and it just starts

to spiral. Yeah. One more question for you is just, we saw, obviously, the U.S. and some European countries begin to announce, you know, sanctions. I saw your good reporting on this kind of pretty extraordinary meeting that Putin convened with the oligarchs. what is your sense of the, you know, the reaction to the initial tranche of sanctions? And I also wanted to ask, you know, there's a kind of growing movement towards, in addition to sanctions,

just kind of kicking Russia out of stuff, for a lack of better way of putting it, everything from like not letting flights land to potentially, you know, canceling, you know, sports membership in federations or, to, you know, more severe things like trying to evict them from certain international organizations. What do you think matters? Obviously, there's Putin, but then there's those oligarchs in the meeting and people around them. I mean, of what you've seen so far, what do you think is the most consequential?

Well, I think we have to think, you know, what is the point of the sanctions? Is it, you know, some sort of moral support to Ukraine? Are you actually trying to stop Putin somehow? or are there pernicious elements of some sort of Russian influence in Western, Western business, Western society that you're using this as an opportunity to go after? In terms of what sanctions are going to cause the most pain, what I'm interested in see because I am the first of a minute I don't really understand this myself, is the technology sanctions because Russia doesn't produce any real tech components of its own.

and that Taiwan is joining these sanctions. Taiwan is, of course, semiconductor central. So Russia is going to be just basically completely dependent on China technologically. And that's the decision that Russia's made consciously. The Kremlin was asked about this a month ago when this idea was first floated. And Peskov, Putin, spoke to me, said, you know, the happiness of the Russian people is not in dishwashers. So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they could weather it.

And there's a lot of uneasiness in the Russian elite about China. But it's the sort of devil's bargain that they've made. So like, do we feel great about Huawei being possibly the only operator for Russian 5G? Like maybe we don't. But like, would we rather Huawei have all of our data or America have all of our data, like better the Chinese than the Americans. So that's how they look at it. In terms of the pain that that would deliver to Russian companies and Russian people,

I don't know enough. I think it's too early to tell so far what the effect of these sanctions is going to be. We're kind of a new territory because this is done against, you know, Huawei, which is a big company, but this is Russia, which is a country. What also we have yet to see is what is the effect going to be of the Russian retaliation? Because Russia is quite fond of what they like to call the asymmetrical response. Because when they first started doing sanctions, you know, you ban Russians who used to go, the West Salot had assets there from going to the West, and then they would ban, you know,

John McCain from Russia. Me. Me. I was in the first tranche, man. I was, I was, I was with McCain. Yeah. Everyone just makes the same joke. I know Rubell's, though, so it doesn't really matter. Well, and everyone makes, you know, the same joke, which is, oh, damn, my, my Siberian, there goes my Siberian summer vacation, which is an awfully ignorant thing to say, because if you like hiking, the Siberian summer vacation is absolutely awesome. It's beautiful there. But anyway, I'll never find out. I'll never find out.

Well, you know, well, sanctions are war by by other means. You know, there's this new book out about the history of sanctions called the economic weapon. That's what they are. And it's, you know, like in a, you know, in the fighting war, you've got to use your cost-benefit analysis, which is, you know, how much pain am I willing to inflict on myself for the sake of inflicting pain on my. my adversary. I mean, we are in the uncharted territory here. We really don't know how this is going to go. Yeah. This is a new era in the world as of yesterday. We are, you know, it's all new. It feels very much like that. It feels very much like that. And it feels like, I mean, energy would be the place that might actually make a difference, but it would make the biggest

difference to us, too. And there's not a sense of people wanting to do that yet. But if the images in Ukraine continue to escalate, you know, this all could. Yeah. Yeah, but I think main takeaway is like this. Like this is over. That's over. Yeah, that error. There's a 32-year error that just ended yesterday. Frank, you had a good run.

You had a good run. Yeah, yeah. All right, man. Well, look, I really appreciate Max. You're coming on. Our listeners, I know really, really appreciate getting your insight. And I know you probably working around the clock there. So I'm sure you need a little sleep at some point.

All right, we'll take care and we'll come back to you, but a little bit later. But we really hope you hang in there. All right, thanks so much. Take care. Thanks very much to Tanya Kuzreva. We hope she is well and really appreciate her perspective in that incredibly powerful 30 minutes that we shared with her. Thanks to Max Seddon, as always, for his very cogent and wide-ranging analysis. Max has just been invaluable the last week.

And thanks to you for listening to us here. We hope you continue to tune in. If you've got friends who are trying to figure out what's happening in Ukraine, feel free to refer them to this podcast because we're going to continue to devote a lot of time and attention to this guys. But take care of yourselves for now. See you next week. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mewis. It's mixed in excellent. edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale-Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.