Pod Save the World - The rising cost of Putin’s war

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Tommy and Ben talk about Biden’s decision to ban Russian oil and gas imports, Congress’s proposed $12 billion package for Ukraine, the latest military movements, diplomatic efforts to end the war and Russia’s detention of WNBA star Brittany Griner, the treatment of refugees, Donald Trump’s creative plans for Ukraine and how Republicans are annoying President Zelensky. Then Tommy talks with State Department Counselor about how the US is getting arms to the Ukrainian military, how sanctions work, and what the US government thinks will come next.How to Help in Ukraine Ukrainian Congress Committee of America: donate to humanitarian efforts United Help Ukraine: donate to the life-saving medical supplies to Ukraine’s front lines Revived Soldiers Ukraine: donate to treatment of the wounded and the provision of hospitals Razom for Ukraine: donate to tactical medical training and emergency response in Ukraine Nova Ukraine: donate to humanitarian aid for Ukraine Vox: How you can help Ukrainians For more reporting:Tanya Kozyreva - @TanyaKozyrevaAnastasiia Lapatina - @lapatina_For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to POTSave the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, Ben, thank you for not getting sick on me and bailing on the show like Favre and Lovett did yesterday. Yeah, but kind of bullshit there. You know, play hurt. Yeah. There's something called Zoom that we discovered in this pandemic. Never heard of it.

Before we get to the news, check out the latest episode of Offline. Ben, Offline moved to a new feed. I'm sure you know this. I subscribed. I smashed the subscribe button. The patented. Dan Pfeiffer phrase. So this week, John speaks with Kara Swisher talking about a lot of stuff that we actually

care about a lot, how this is the sort of first internet age conflict in some ways, or at least the most online war that's ever occurred. Yeah, Ukraine is just so wired up still. How Putin is losing the misinformation battle. What makes Zelensky so compelling? Kara is one of the most fun people to listen to in the business of podcasting. So I highly recommend folks check this out. And John's pretty good too.

Sometimes. When he shows up. When he shows up. When he shows up. Also, Positive America is going out on tour. Starting next month, we'll be visiting cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, and more. You can find dates and everything else at crooked.com slash events. I'm wearing my Zelensky-shek t-shirt today.

I'm surprised those haven't taken off. They will soon enough, I guess. I guess that's a business opportunity. Well, today, obviously, we're going to focus on Ukraine again. So Ben and I were just talking about, like, this story moves so fast in just a day or two. It's unbelievable. We're going to update you guys on Western sanctions on Russian oil and gas, U.S. financial and military support, the Ukrainian military, the status of the Russian military invasion, the sporadic efforts of diplomacy, refugees. Donald Trump's had a creative plan, Ben, to help Ukraine and then Republicans and general.

or annoying the hell out of President Zelensky. And then our guest today is a guy named Derek Chalet, who is, we worked with him when he was at the State Department. No, I'm sorry, he was at the NSC, and then he went to the Defense Department. Yeah. And now he's a counselor at State. Yeah, he was there for like the first six years of the Obama administration.

He was at the NSC doing strategic planning, kind of the internal kind of think tank of the NSC. And then I think he worked on getting rid of Syrian chemical weapons. And he worked on Libya, and then he went to the past. Pentagon and had like one of the key jobs there actually during Crimea too. So Derek is, you may not know his name, but you should. He's like one of these guys who kind of, he's kind of the guy they call in out of the, you know in baseball, the, the long reliever, you have to pull in like the third inning to fill, eat up four innings. Right. Yeah, yeah.

Like that's a real crisis. Yeah. I mean that in the best possible sense. Like you need him. You throw Derek at like a whole bunch of crises. Smart guy. Good guy. Yeah. We talked about just sort of like how on earth the U.S. government moved so quickly and got these arms to the Ukrainian military. We talked about how sanctions work to sort of his assessment of how things are going. Very honest, very candid conversation with Derek. So I really appreciated that. So Ben, the big news out of Washington this morning on Ukraine is that President Biden announced a ban on the importation of Russian oil, gas, and coal. Let's hear a clip. Today I'm announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia's economy. We're banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy. That means

Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S. ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin's war machine. Since Putin began his military buildup on Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of the gas of the pump in America went up 75 cents. And with this action, it's going to go up further. I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home. So President Biden also banned U.S. investment in Russia's energy sector, investment companies, I think, abroad doing work with Russia's energy sector. Ben, we talked last week about how there was clearly momentum building for this step. I'm still shocked by how fast it moved. But again, it's also, it's an easier decision for the U.S. than for Europe because

Russian oil makes up a relatively small percentage of U.S. imports. But, you know, gas prices are likely to go up. It's obvious Biden knows this will be a huge political. fight. Republicans are demanding these energy sanctions and then they're attacking Biden in the next breath for high gas prices. Mike Pence announced a $10 million ad campaign against members of Congress. Who's given Mike Pence money? I don't know. You're stake in that guy of all your options out there, Mike Pence. The Leo gave $10 million to the Ukrainian military. That's probably better. That's a better move. Yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio. But yeah, so Pence is running these ads that ties Democrats to Russia and then says, you know, like they're not reducing our dependence on Russian

oil because they didn't vote for Keystone, whatever, the Keystone pipeline. It's cynical, it's stupid. It will likely be effective. So to try and increase global oil supply, there are also these reports that President Biden is considering a trip to Saudi Arabia. And over the weekend, Biden sent a delegation to Venezuela to try to figure out a process there to lift oil sanctions on the Maduro government and get their gas flowing. So let's sort of break these into pieces. It's a lot. First thoughts, Ben. this decision to sanction oil and gas. Inevitable, needed, important.

Where do you come down? I think all three inevitable, needed, important. And look, things have moved fast. They were reticent to do the swift cutoff at the outset, and they got there in two days. They were reticent to do this a couple weeks ago, but they got there. I think what's happening is the gravity of a major war in Europe

is really sunk into the politics and public opinion of democracies. And the reason I think it's important and necessary is not just to respond to that public opinion, but, you know, we pay the Russians for this oil. And it's just untenable to see the human suffering and carnage in Ukraine and cut a check, you know, for barrels of oil coming into U.S. ports. I think the same thing is going to happen to Europe. They don't want to do it. They may hold out for longer.

but they're cutting significant checks to Russia to bring in these imports, particularly of natural gas. And if we are moving into a situation where Russia is going to have to be, in a context of sanction, sustaining a quagmire, right, you know, paying for its military machine, paying for the supply chains into Ukraine to carry out an occupation, you just can't be subsidizing that. You know, you just can't be paying money that will go to that purpose, you know. So there's like a moral point, but there's also kind of a strategic point, which is, you know, you want to make it impossible for Putin to sustain a multi-year occupation of Ukraine. And this is a part of that. Now, he will, as we've talked about in the past, he'll find other buyers for some of this oil, but it'll be at a discounted price.

The Chinese are not going to want to pay the full price for that oil. he can't find as the same reason the keystone point is dumb for Mike Pence. Let's just deal with that really quickly. Like, beginning to build a pipeline is not going to immediately make up for oil barrels not coming in from Russia. It's apples and oranges in the same way that there's not pipelines flowing from Russia to China to bring that amount of gas into China. So Putin will take a hit, even if he finds some ways to cushion that hit.

And I think it establishes a kind of clear moral line. We're just not going to subsidize a dollar of this. And by the way, the investment part is important too. Like Exxon and some other oil companies have helped the Russian companies develop fields and drill for oil. Technology. And so this is just going to further punish and disable the Russian economy. To your UK point, I mean, Britain said it would phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of the year. The European Commission presented a plan to cut Russian gas imports by two thirds this year.

That'll be debated, I think, in Paris later this week. Germany is pushed back on these demands to cut off Russian oil and gas. Russia is also threatening to cut off gas exports. Putin's out there warning that, you know, oil will go to $300 a barrel. So we'll see how that plays out. So there's the reports that, you know, Biden's looking to backfill this Russian oil by either going to Saudi Arabia and getting the Saudis to pump more. There's, you know, some people point out that if you got the Iran deal done and you lift

sanctions on Iran's oil and gas sector, that could free up a lot of oil. Then there's its delegation going to Venezuela to get them to increase supply. Look, you know, there's some brass tax here that oil prices are going to potentially determine whether Biden's reelected. Biden was also elected to help American consumers who are going to be hurt by paying more at the pump. It's also the case that if you think, Russia is an odious regime that's bombing civilians.

So is Saudi Arabia. They're just bombing civilians in Yemen. What do you think about all this talk? Like, if you were in government, how do you think you'd be advising the various powers that be to either backfill this oil or not or like to draw a moral line in the sand? So first of all, I think we're in like this whole new world of post-Russian invasion of Ukraine and post-reckoning, as we talked about. about last time with the sense that we've been building towards this in a lot of ways. And I do think

generally, and this, I want to be very clear because I don't want to make the same Mike Pence mistake. Pin in it, reckoning, your next book title. That's good. You said it. Yeah, but I, you know, good title, as I say. So I don't want to suggest this as an immediate fix, but I would like to see political leaders making the argument that this is why, one more reason why we had to be shifting and clean energy. You know, and actually, Biden could have done more of that in the State of the Union. Like the, if you ever needed evidence beyond climate change, about why being dependent on fossil fuels from basically a league of creeps is a bad policy.

A lot of authoritarians have a lot of oil somehow. Funny how that works. Yeah, funny how, you know, funny how, you know, giving people trillions of dollars of cash is, you know, reinforces their authoritarian tendencies. I do think, you know, you look, if you're in government, you're trying to figure out every way you can mitigate the effect of this. increasing supply. All of the regimes that you mentioned are odious to take each one of them. The Iran deal is a no-brainer for reasons that have nothing to do with oil. We're very clear about that before people at me, you know, we should be doing that anyway. Also clear that nuke's are bad if we don't want others to have news. Well, that's the point, right? If you want to deal with an Iranian

nuclear crisis this summer on top of a war in Ukraine, then you need Iran deal. And if it has the ancillary benefit of adding to the world's energy supply? Great. Great. That's that one. Venezuela. Have those oil sanctions worked? I don't think so.

I mean, we haven't talked about this in a while, but like, remember the heyday, right around the time I came out and joined this podcast full time when, you know, Mike Pompeo is saying that, you know, their planes are going to take Maduro away and John Bolton's taping videos in the Roosevelt room. That didn't work. Yeah. It didn't work. No invasion happened.

General Rubio did not lead the invasion. So we should absolutely be looking. lifting those sanctions around a strategy, by the way, of trying to revitalize diplomacy in Venezuela. So I think that what I'd be focused on above all, because I worked on that account in government, is using this moment of potential relaxation of sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector to try to revitalize some dialogue inside of that country where everybody has to kind of reset where they are. We're starting a new clock on diplomacy between Maduro and the opposition. MBS.

First of all, just from a purely pragmatic standpoint, you know, I said this to you, like, I don't know that he wants to bail us out here. Crown Prince Bahamu, Osama, yeah. I don't know that, you know, higher oil prices are good for them, and he doesn't. And so are Republicans. Yeah, and so are Republicans, right? So I just wouldn't want to put, I wouldn't be one to put my chips all in on that. And if the price of that, because it could be very transactional, is Biden going and essentially literally giving him a get out of jail free card, I don't know that that's worth it for whatever

you know, you squeeze out of the ground because part of what we have right now is a real sense of moral high ground on this conflict in Ukraine, you know, that there's an aggressor who's wrong Vladimir Putin. The world's democracies have kind of found their voice in actually caring about values. and sure they have interest behind it, but I really truly believe that the motivation for the Western action has been around the defensive democratic values. And if we go to literally our biggest autocratic partner to give us some more oil, I think it undercuts said. So I would not, no, I would not trade. And just so people will be clear that I'm not putting the Saudis in a lesser position

than Iran or Venezuela. I don't think Joe Biden should go to Iran or Venezuela either. You know, like sometimes like like you know the iran deals equated with like friendship it's not right um i just think that that the saudi play comes with a lot of strings attached and all of those strings diminish our moral standing on an issue that is entirely about right and wrong in ukraine right now and not entirely but largely about it and i also don't know how much really you're going to get in return for that anyway yeah this is tough tough politics for biden i don't envy this position but i i hear you on the, you know, trying to keep some moral clarity where there is some. The other thing that jumped out of me, Ben, just from the U.S. perspective, again, is the speed with which Congress has proposed

or already moved a massive amount of money to Ukraine. The latest I saw this morning was that Congress is preparing to spend $12 billion for Ukraine and they want it done by Friday. That money would go to support refugees, medical and food supplies, weapons to the Ukrainian military, and then aid to NATO allies in the region that's from eastern flank of NATO. President Zelensky has been asking for fighter jets from his neighbors, specifically MIG, Russian-made MIG jets that his pilots are trained to fly on. The U.S. is reportedly willing to provide Poland with replacement planes if they supply MIG fighters or other air assets to Ukraine. As I started typing up this part of the show, Poland had refused by the time I was done. It looks like Poland is cool with giving the Migs to Ukraine. So I, I

I don't know, just stepping back here, like, I want to see the U.S. do everything possible to assist refugees. It is wild that once again, all the concerns about deficits and debt and spending and fiscal responsibility, go out the window. And foreign aid. Foreign aid, yeah. Yeah, go out the window when you're talking about funding a war. There's also, you know, on the congressional front, some even slightly increasing calls to implement a no-fly zone or potentially a partial no-fly zone over Ukraine, some foreign policy graybeard sent a letter. this morning. They got some traction. But interestingly, as long as we're talking about Congress, you pointed this out, there is no one talking about the fact that Congress would have to

authorize a no-fly zone because it's a military action. Only Chris Murphy, I think, has been tweeting about it. So, I mean, look, it's natural that you take advantage if you're the administration of intense congressional interest to give as many resources you can. Because people should be aware, like, these may be the only resources we have for a while. And the cost of the cost of of this war are going to be enormous and growing. So on the refugee side, for instance, the humanitarian side, you want to get as much as you possibly can because the costs end up usually being larger and you think, by the way, I would like to see that influx of assistance for Ukrainian refugees, if not be transferable to at least make it easier to free up resources for Afghan refugees.

Truly, I mean, like, the fact that's falling off the radar screen is really, shame on moral shame. And so that, you know, get all the resources you can and hopefully lift the refugee cap to here in the United States, not just for Ukrainians, but obviously to take in more Afghans. That's one point. I think we also have to be looking at what kind of assistance Ukraine can get beyond this. And, you know, one point that has been made to me by some of my friends in Europe, kind of progressives in Europe, is debt cancellation. Ukraine is burdened by a lot of debt. the idea that, you know, when these people are really, like, fighting and dying for the front line of democracy, that, you know, we're going to roll over their debt, you know, like,

today would be a good day to cancel Ukrainian debt, to borrow a phrase. Increase their APR to 30 percent or the, yeah. Yeah. You know, on the, and on the military side here, I think that, again, we're still in a place where this is like a sovereign military requesting our assistance. And, you know, I think that these anti-aircrafts, weapons, anti-tubeausen troops, and anti-te tank weapons, you know, the things can help them defend their cities are obviously a priority. I don't know on these planes, you know, the question is just can they fly them, can they sustain

them, can they get in? I think I haven't seen that. I asked Derek about this. Yeah, like, it has to be unpacked. Now, you raise an important point. Like, a partial no-fly zone, whatever. That may be phrased to sound less dramatic. Let's just say once again, to set up a no-fly zone, the U.S. military will not put a single plane in the air before we destroy things like service to air missiles and air defense systems on the ground, which are manned by Russians. So if it's partial, you are still going to kill Russians with U.S. military force to set that up. If Congress wants to call for that, they have to vote to authorize the use of military force. It's insane to think, you know, it's been stretched enough that the 2001 AUMF authorization to use of military force passed. passed after 9-11 has been used to have this roving war on terror. The idea that the United States

would go to war with Russia, you know, without Congress taking a vote, is absurd in the extreme. And I make that point knowing that members of Congress will not want to take that vote. And I think people have to, you know, if some member of Congress wants to go off and pop off about a no-fly zone, the first question they should be asked is, are you ready to vote tomorrow to authorize this? Because this is a democracy. as much as we want to do something, going to war with the largest nuclear weapons power in the world, and killing their soldiers, you know, let's have a debate about that before we do it. Let's see if the American people are on board with that.

Even if you think it's right, you know, gray beard, it's a democracy, unlike Russia. It's not a unilateral. Russia is the kind of place where you can take country to war without asking questions first. Or telling the troops what they're doing. Yeah, so like let's just, let's put it all on the table. What it would entail, what it would cost, what the risks are, and if people can look squarely at all those things and then decide in the majorities in both houses of Congress to do it, then we're in a different place, but we're not there, obviously.

And also, like, the efficacy of a no-fly zone. I want to talk about the military effort in one second, but like all the things I'm hearing is that the use of Russian air assets, whether they're helicopters or planes to bomb targets, is still limited as compared to their use of long-distance mortars and missiles, which is all just a way of saying, like, a no-fly zone could help on the margins, but it seems like a lot of the shelling of civilian areas is still going to happen from these other means.

But real quick on Congress, Ben, Politico had a story about how all the people who lobby for Russia or Russian state enemies finally. So over the past eight years, a bunch of legal lobbying and PR firms reported, payments of roughly $18 million to do work for six Russian entities, Gazprom Bank, Nord Stream 2, a bunch of names, I can't say, VTB Bank, some luminaries like David Vitter. So David Vitter was a Republican Congressman from Louisiana. Wasn't there a sex scandal there? It was a sex scandal. He enjoyed hiring prostitutes. And then I think the report was that he asked him to make him wear a diaper.

Yeah. There was some of a diaper involved. Yeah, didn't I'm well. He signed up, I think, through Mercury lobbying to lobby for a bank called Sovcom Bank. There was a letter, like they started the contract in January of 2022. The contract was 90 grand a month. So, you know, these guys knew what they were getting into. It's super gross. End of rant. It's super gross.

And, you know, the only other thing I just want to put a point on on the no-fly zone is like if I are Ukrainian, I get why Zelensky's calling for it. Me too. Like, I do think what they have to bear in mind is, not only the point you made, but like, we don't know the world we're in if the United States and Russia go to war and whether it's a world in which their tactical nuclear weapons used in Ukraine. So to me, I get the impulse to just stop the Russian war machine, but, man, it could get worse for everybody, including the Ukrainian people.

Also, you know, all the stories we're hearing about hesitation among Russian fighters when it comes to attacking, killing their Ukrainian names. neighbors, that could change if it's a fight against the U.S. or a fight against NATO. That might be, you know, motivation. So we should just think about that. We all just like try to have a little empathy and put ourselves in the shoes of the other guy when we're thinking through these things. So let's talk about what we know about the war effort itself as of Tuesday, March 8th, the 252 p.m. Pacifics is sort of cobbled together from different reports. So it now looks like all these Russian military units that were staged on the border

are in Ukraine. Doesn't mean they're in the fight yet, but they're all sort of in Ukraine. The Russians have made considerable gains since the war started, especially in eastern and southern Ukraine. The gains were slower than they'd hoped, especially around Kiev, but they're slowly encircling major cities. The U.S. intelligence community this morning estimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 Russian troops have been killed. I think that came from the DIA or maybe Bill Burns from the CIA at a congressional hearing. Russians are increasing air attacks.

There's more long-range artillery. There's more rockets. So the odds of civilians being killed are going up. The UN estimates that over 400 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. That seems like very low. I think that's probably like what you can confirm. That's all they can confirm. Yeah.

So, you know, the Ukrainians are still able to contest the air over Ukraine. They're shooting down Russian planes and helicopters. Again, in a no-fly zone scenario, you would have to be able to find a way to make sure that everyone who has a stinger missile or shoulder, it no longer uses it because you wouldn't want a friendly fire incident. There are these logistical problems, Ben, that we've been talking about with the Russian army. They don't seem insurmountable. There is, though, an increasing body of evidence from, like, interviews with captured Russian soldiers that show that these guys really had no idea what they were doing. They were told that they were going to just go drive in and

liberate innocent Ukrainians from their evil government, and they were shocked by the fight. Maybe that's why we're also hearing that Russia is recruiting Syrian fighters for urban combat, But interestingly, there were reports that Bella Russian troops were going to go into Ukraine. That seems like it hasn't happened. So that's kind of what we know. Again, like amazing military performance by the Ukrainian troops, but still, I think, you know, a grim trajectory. Yeah, I, you know, I want to focus on kind of what I think I understand from my experience on these issues, which is not like obviously being out in the military operation.

but in looking at a lot of U.S. military operations over the years and the Russian operations in Ukraine. And frankly, we in 2014 and 15, we also kind of played out what might Putin do. I mean, there were concerns to you make a move on Kiev back then. A couple of things I noticed in the Russian military operation. I mean, one is there is this concerted effort in the south and east, which seems like an effort to kind of connect down. if you look at eastern Ukraine, as we've talked about before on this podcast, but from the Donbos region where Russia's been operating down through Moriopol, a city that people have heard a lot about,

that connects down to Crimea. So then that gives you the opportunity as the Russian military to connect these two chunks of Ukraine that you already are in, the Donbos and Crimea, with Moriopol being the key population center between those. Then Odessa, right, Odessa moves further west from there. that's another city on the Black Sea that if they took that, they could essentially completely cut Ukraine off from the sea, right? Yes, big deal.

And that's a big deal because then Russia essentially controls the southeastern part of Ukraine, and they also cut it off from the sea. And, you know, that's one less place that, you know, you can resupply or get people out, among other things. Then actually, from there, if you're looking at a map, there's this breakaway, you know, one of these Russian separatist areas of Moldova, the one in Moldova called Transnistria, where there are actually Russian peacekeepers. That's not too far from Odessa. So if they basically cut off the entire south, they could connect Transnistria all the way to Donbos,

essentially, right? That's one thing Putin could do is essentially try to take and hold that territory. and that's what he's basically carved up Ukraine. Then this bombardment of Kiev, though, is it just feels like it's about nothing more than trying to punish, destroy Ukrainians, Ukrainian government, civilians. Yeah. In his capacity to hold that, I just don't understand the military thinking behind it. And again, one thing I remember from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to maintain an occupation of a major urban center like that,

you have really long, like, supply lines for everything from gas to food, all the stuff that you need to sustain having tens and tens of thousands of troops in a foreign hostile country. And the Ukrainians, part of what they're doing is they're just hitting those supply lines, they're hitting those supply chains. And that's going to be a big problem for the Russians. You know, again, I'm not a general here, but, like, you can tell that, like, if the people are hostile to you and you're not going to submit to your rule and they're going to be

fighting with everything from Maltaf cocktails to javelin and tank weapons, and then your supply lines are exposed, and your troops have no idea what the fuck they're doing there. Yes, Russia has far more military superiority. It's grim. It's going to get worse. And part of what they're doing

is indiscriminally shelling civilians. But I also really don't see the strategy, I see the strategy that I just described in the south and east where Russia can use its border and that water to resupply. I don't get what they're going to do around Kiev, you know, without a lot of risk. Yeah, I mean, the,

The Russian version of Don Rumsfeld seems to have really messed up their chance to have a sort of large political and strategic victory in this conflict given the way it started. I mean, you're right. It's very hard for a Ukrainian civilian to attack and take out a tank. It's not that hard to attack and take out like a truck that's varying gasoline back and forth. And that's a lot of think of what we're seeing. So it all remains to be seen. Ben, so on the diplomatic front, there's some churn, but I'm curious if you think any of it is significant. So there have been three rounds of, I think, largely unsuccessful talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine amend its constitution reject claims to enter NATO or the EU and then recognize Crimea, Donetsk, and Lugansk as Russian, those eastern areas that they've been occupying.

That's not going to happen. The People's Republics. Yes, sorry, sorry, by that. Russia has bullshit. Yeah, totally. Russia has proposed various like ceasefires and the creation of humanitarian corridors. Then they immediately break those commitments.

There's a just horrifying clip that a New York Times videographer captured of a family trying to go through one of those humanitarian corridors and just being blown up by anirstrike. It's horrifying. Russia has also said that Ukrainian refugees can only escape into Belarus or Russia, not to Western Ukraine. obviously that's ridiculous. So one weird sidebar, one of the members of the Ukrainian negotiating team with the Russians is reportedly dead after being killed by security forces, Ukrainian security forces trying to arrest him.

He was accused of treason. We don't know what happened, though obviously if there was some sort of extrajudicial killing that is troubling news. Although not doesn't justify it, but not beyond the Russians to have a Ukrainian asset. Oh, no. I'm sure they have a bunch of them. Yeah. The Russians also released a list of like a couple dozen countries that they have deemed unfriendly to Russia. So Putin doing kind of like an autocratic anti-Sanaclaus.

Switzerland on the list too. Oh. The neutral country is unfriendly now. So that's what you get. So President Macron continues to have extremely long conversations with Putin. And then he releases sort of anguished photos of himself making the calls. I don't know why. And then Israeli Prime Minister Nftali Bennett flew to Russia for meetings with. Putin. I think he then went to Germany for meetings there. I'm not sure what else. So, Ben, any of those, like, diplomatic avenues sound promising to you? Anything you think we shouldn't bank on here? No, not at all. I mean, it feels like Russian obfuscation. They obviously violated the ceasefires. Humanitarian quarters into Russia are kind of a joke. Look, the demands around NATO, Crimea, and Lahansk and Dynetsk, you know, the problem with it

is essentially Ukraine's kind of core baseline position is you have to respect our sovereignty. And, you know, if the, and I think that the Ukrainian commitment to its own sovereignty has probably gone up since they were

raided. And Flintki, you ran on that, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, yeah. And so the idea that they would basically have to submit to Lahanskin, Denez, these other two pieces of their country being like chewed off. Right. Never mind the NATO point and the capacity to make their own decisions about what alliances they join.

It just in this environment, with Russia doing what they're doing, that doesn't feel like a credible demand to make. I think it would be like a tenth of their territory. Yeah, it's a significant amount of land, right? Crimea is a little more complicated just because there's been this kind of de facto situation and it is this kind of majority, I think, Russian area. But the bottom line is it doesn't feel like Russia is making these like as good faith efforts. It feels like they're making proposals.

They know the Ukrainians won't answer affirmatively and using the time to just decimate Ukraine in the hopes that at some point the Ukrainians will bend and say, okay, okay, okay, we promise all the things you want. And nothing we see suggests that that's what the Ukrainians are due or that's what the Russians are really interested in in the near term. You keep talking and at some point, I mean, you know, things can change. You know, I think we've been talking about the fact that, like, a week feels like a year in this war. So I think you do want those Emmanuel Macron phone calls to continue as anguished as he is.

Yeah. Because somebody needs to be talking to Putin. You do want the Ukrainians and Russians still be talking, but you have to, obviously, take with a grain of salt any promises Russian made about things of humanitarian quarters. I have no idea what Nftali Bennett was up to by visiting Moscow. I you know the Ukrainian government's been mixed on that you know I saw the foreign minister really critical of Israel for kind of being a potential place where the Russians can evade sanctions because there's still transactions down there a lot of the oligarchs have money down there but then I also saw Zelensky say talk to Bennett and if you want to mediate that's great you

know so hey look you know I as with the cro and if Bennett can play a constructive role that's fine I just hope it's about that and not about some separate Israeli interest with the Russian government because they've had a lot going on. But it's a bleak picture right now as much as you like it to be otherwise. Yeah, it is bleak. And, you know, more and more private companies are suspending or shutting down operations in Russia. The Russian economy keeps cratering. The rubles crashing.

I saw Putin today scrambled to announce some sort of economic relief package. I think he's going to increase basically pension. So that's his base. It's a bunch of old people who are getting their personal. pensions, he's going to increase pensions to try to blunt the impact of sanctions. But, you know, again, like now Russians are getting even less information because all the independent media is getting pulled out of their journalists we've had on this show, who are some of the final, you know, independent news outlets in Russia have had to leave the country. And so, you know,

again, we just don't know what these folks are going to hear. And we also don't know at what point Vladimir Putin might decide, okay, the way I do well politically is to lash out. out, so now I'm going to respond to the West, or I'm going to take some sort of action, maybe cyber, maybe, I don't know what it would be. Yeah, we keep waiting for that. I think the economic damage is going to be worse than people even anticipated given the scale of these sanctions. I talked to some Russians who told me that, you know, basically the conversation among a lot of younger people is how do we get out, you know, how do we leave, although someone to stay. Part of what worries me is that, you know, it's been a repressive authoritarian state.

there is a veneer of cosmopolitan life in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg because, you know, they're expats there and Putin wants it to look a certain way and feel a certain way. With sanctions, his incentive to even tolerate that, you know, goes away, if you see what I mean. Like, you know, the idea that there's some modicum of civil society or there's some more liberal-minded young people in the cities. I mean, you could see really severe crackdowns there. As much as I, on, I'm not. I'm not. I'm understand and, you know, would love to see some, you know, significant popular uprising. Let's, you know, put ourselves in the shoes of, as you said, you know, that's the decision everybody has to make for their own. It's not a decision for us to make for them to protest.

I also want to say, and I get why the Ukrainians wouldn't feel this way, but you've seen, like, incidents against Russians in other parts of the world. I don't think that's particularly constructive. No. In fact, a lot of the Russians who are not in Russia have left, because they don't like Vladimir Putin and they don't want to be a part of it. So, like, yeah, there's reason to be really angry at Putin and, frankly, a lot of Russians who support Putin. So I'm not letting everybody out the hook here. But I also think that, like, these are incredibly difficult choices that individual Russians are making right now. And the people that are like-minded with us, you know, are the ones who are in the most danger. Yeah. And there's some

reports that Russians who have left Russia are getting hurt by some of the sanctions like Visa or some of the economic sanctions on banks might be cutting off their access to money they have. So yeah, there's a lot of collateral damage here. Ben, just to harken back to our conversation about oil, I just saw a Wall Street Journal story that says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the UAE's Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed both declined U.S. request to speak to President Biden in recent weeks. So that just shows you with friends like these. Fuck off. I mean, I just like, I'm so tired of this act, you know. It's so terrible. One last thing on sort of this Russia piece. One troubling story that's gotten

a lot of attention is apparently a WNBA star named Brittany Griner was arrested in Moscow in February. Russian authorities claim they arrested her for possession of vape cartridges with hash oil. I'm skeptical of that claim. I'm skeptical of all Russian claims. Just so listeners know, the reason she was in Russia is because WMBA stars can make like literally 10 times what they are paid in the U.S. by playing for teams in Russia. So that's what she was doing. But you really wouldn't put it past the Russians to take a hostage. I wouldn't at all. And in fact, it's something that I think people anticipated to some extent. And the Russians respond in weird ways to things. So, you know, some of the initial Crimea-related sanctions, you know, they responded by canceling

adoptions of Russian children by American families. She spent years going through that process, like literally hurting kids who are in orphanages. And so I would expect, you know, whether it's Britney Griner or other Americans literally being taken hostage, target, you know, if I would not want to, you know, for an American in Russia, I think it's quite dangerous right now. They could respond in weird ways in different places. And again, the most likely is what we've talked about, cyber and things like that.

but that's an example of like Putin doesn't really respect any boundary. And we should all just keep her in mind because I'm sure she's in a very difficult circumstance. Very scary. So let's talk about refugees. So the United Nations said that more than 2 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24th. We wanted to play you guys two clips from Ukrainians describing what the experience is like. Both these women spoke with our producer Haley earlier. today. The first is a clip from Anastasia Lapitina, who is currently in Poland, but she's

been shuttling back and forth to the border. Here's her sense of what that's like. When you walk through the city, you see Ukrainian flags everywhere. You see restaurants advertising that Ukrainians can eat there for free if they want to or that a percentage of their income revenue is going to go to help refugees or the Ukrainian military. So as a Ukrainian myself, I felt extremely welcomed and it's it's truly great to see so many people helping. When I was at the border, I didn't only see people from Poland. I saw people who drove all the way from Italy or all the way from Denmark who just stood with science saying that they're ready to pick families like women and children up and drive them back to their countries and help them resettle there, right?

because Europe is being so welcoming with the Ukrainian refugees that it's totally doable from a legal standpoint to just move anywhere in Europe. So it's been very eye-opening, and I expected to see an extremely sad situation. I expected to see truly humanitarian catastrophe, which, of course, in some sense it is, because that's just what's going to happen

when over a million people flee their homes. But I've talked to a lot of people, And I've heard a lot of psych conversations and people have cried when talking to me about how grateful they are that Poland is being so nice to them and so welcoming. This second voice you'll hear is, Ben, someone you spoke with in late February, Tanya Koseveh, who's in a Ukrainian investigative reporter. She too has describing conditions to the border, sort of a different perspective on what she's seen. There are evacuation trains from all over Ukraine and coming to leave. And people on this trains, they're like lying on the floors. They're like, you know, it's a horrible situation.

And it's a nightmare, to be honest, to see all those kids and all those women's, you know, like stuck. Like, I don't even have the words to explain, like, what are the conditions in those evacuation trains, you know? Because it's like people are desperately trying to get out in their back. you know it's it's just horrible and um and we saw near the border we saw this long lines of cars where people also like sometimes they are spending there like three days uh and so it's it's kind of a you know yeah it's like it's horrible i like i don't have any words to describe like I think Leviv is, you know, one of the cities that doesn't really see the war. You know, like there is no bombshell and there is no explosions in Viv.

But at the same time, you can see this impact of the war. You can see this human cost of the war when, you know, when you see all this migrants, you know, who are trying to get out from the country. So, you know, I think what you heard there was how awful the process is, how tough the situation is, but also the incredible gratitude that Ukrainian people feel towards Poland in other places. The good news now is we're seeing a lot of states and people be welcoming to Ukrainians. You know, you have to wonder how long that goodwill will extend because it's going to create stress on these neighboring countries as they try to support these huge inflows of people. And we just, we just, you know, over time, I think history suggests that, you know, countries get less welcoming to refugees over time. And it's something I'm mindful of and worried about. Yeah, I'm suddenly watching. I mean, thus far, there's been this overwhelming welcome.

I talked to even a Romanian today who was actually over the border in Ukraine, and he's part of the effort to welcome people into Romania. And so it's clear that the countries in Europe have stepped up and opened the door and individuals have. And I think if there's anything important and hopeful to take from this whole situation, is that this seems to have awoken some sense of, solidarity in people and some sense of common humanity in people that's been missing too much recently. And, you know, these numbers are going to keep going up. So hopefully that continues

to be the case. And hopefully there's a place for people and there's policies and resources that are not just for the first few weeks, but that they endure. I think to Tanya's point, Tanya Koseva, who's just, you know, amazing journalist, we're seeing like the happy end of the Exodus, you know, the people, you're being welcomed and given supplies. In the same way that on social media, we see often, you know, we see horrible things. We also see kind of hopeful videos. The conditions are getting worse from where these people are coming from. What do you think it's like? The first day in the metro in the subway is one thing. What's it like now? What is the sewage? What is the sanitation? What is the food? What is it like at a train station

under shelling versus it was already about a week ago. And so I think Tanya's point is really important to just keep in mind, like the war, it gets worse and worse, the closer you get into these cities. And it's just a horrific scene. And so we're two million refugees now. Like this could be five million people within a few weeks, you know, and that's going to, that is going to create stresses. And the question is you have to take that generosity of spirit among the population and use it to get governments to put a lot of resources into the picture for everything from temporary housing to integrating into workforces. Like there needs to be some serious work done here.

One other point I make, I talk to someone who's in the refugee space who pointed out to me that there's something like 170,000 unaccompanied children in Ukraine, either in orphanages. So we have a clip from Tanya about this. Because you're right. I mean, like, I think a lot of the people we've heard from are like young, able-bodied, people have access to cars or could walk for five hours, right? Here's a clip of Tani describing an orphanage for disabled children in Odessa, Ukraine, which has been one of those cities that is just like holding its breath waiting for a Russian attack.

So the mayor and the city council is claiming that they evacuated all the orphagens from Odessa, but at the same time we managed to find one where all the disabled kids are. from Modessa and they're not even trying to evacuate just because all these kids, they're in the horrible, you know, they desperately need a lot of care and you just cannot evacuate them like normal kids. They, they are, you know, they're, they need special support and every kid need like a special equipment to be carry on. And some of them, it's a baby's like, who was seven days old. So in the head of this facility, the director, she was like, she's saying, like, I was told to

evacuate, but I cannot evacuate. Like, I need special conditions. I need, like, a plan, very detailed plan to evacuate because, like, it's not easy for us. And we saw this kids and they're really, you know, they really desperately need. this help and they are really desperately need this step by step very detailed plan how to evacuate how to cross the border they cannot stay on the border for 30 hours like you know like all these cars and all the migrants who are like all the people who are trying to cross the border and need the country right now they cannot stay on the border for such a long time so it's a you know it's also

heartbreaking story. So that's obviously devastating. We're going to put a bunch of places you can donate money, relief, time supplies in the show notes. Vox Media has an article you can Google called How You Can Help Ukrainians. They link to a lot of resources. But there's a huge need, as you said. Yeah. And I mean, just try to imagine being like a disabled kid in the middle of this terror. I mean, human beings deserve better leaders. I mean, it reinforces what a fucking monster, you know, Vladimir Putin is. I mean, can you imagine being the, woman running the disabled orphanage. You know, I mean, and you're just trying to keep these kids alive.

It's just, it's horrendous. There was a CNN report on, you know, a train full of, you know, like, extremely ill children that spent like 30 hours trying to get out. There were some reports on Nick, Nick Hughes and maternity wards being moved underground. I mean, it's just, it's too much. Okay. So check out the show notes if you want to donate help. We're going to close with some creative things.

thinking. Former President Donald Trump has been talking out loud about how to deal with Putin. Interestingly, some of his ideas sound a lot like Sean Hannity's ideas that he's been saying on his dumb show. But according to Washington Post, Donald Trump told Republican donors that the U.S. should label its F-22 fighter jets with Chinese flags. You just slap a flag on maybe, I don't know if they have, you know, those like little holders on the side. You stick a flag in, right? Like a Patriots flag or whatever. But you slap a Chinese flag on the side. of your F-22, then you bomb the shit out of Russia. And then here's a quote. Then we say, China did it. We didn't do it. China did it. And then they start fighting with each other,

and we just sit back and watch, end quote. This comes a couple weeks after Trump called Putin savvy and brilliant for invading. Ben, I did not, you know, look, I'm no military strategies. I did not know that that is how radar works. That is just like little dudes with telescopes kind of looking for the flag on the side of the plane. That is actually interesting. Yeah, it's out of the box thinking. I mean, I, either he truly

believes that's a good idea, in which case he's totally insane. Or he is like kind of joking about like a war and, yeah, like,

several wars. Whatever the circumstances, it's like insane. I want to say like, because I know the reason it's necessary to occasionally revisit

Trump in this context is not because we love to talk about Trump, believe me, we don't. One, you know, Obama said something to be interesting after the 2016 election when we were trying to figure out what happening, which is that the American people never would have elected Trump in a real financial crisis or a war, you know. And I do hope that this pushes Trump out. I hope so, too. Because like, nuclear war is something that we actually are thinking about now, you know. and how to avoid it. So one, get him out. And two, the massive effort to rewrite history.

You know, Steve Scalese, I saw today, Republican creep in Congress, was asked about the Zelensky call where Trump tried to leverage military assistance to get some dirt on Joe Biden via his buddy Rudy Giuliani. And he's like, oh, no, Zelensky was calling to thank Trump for all the support. There is going to be such a massive effort. There are going to be so many lies. and our listeners may, you know, be immune to those lies. They listen to POTS of the world.

But like, it's going to happen. And, you know, this, no, it's over. Like, just go away. Like, in this whole strain of ethno-nationalism, like, we have to stamp it out here. If the Ukrainians can fight and risk everything to try to defeat, like, the ethno-nationalist authoritarian who's destroying their country, we can, like, deal with Donald Trump in our democracy here. Yeah. The other serious part of this is that John Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor, said he believed that Trump would have pulled out of NATO if he'd been

elected to a second term. Imagine this fight, this, this, this, everything we're going through right now with a, a NATO without the United States. Yeah. And I, it doesn't look, it doesn't take like a, you know, armchair Trump psychologist to think that, or Putin's psychologist, to think that, that that's what Putin was waiting for, you know. And I've, I've always, I always wondered, do you remember when, like, Trump and Putin would meet with that translators? Like, this is probably what they're talking about, you know, like, not the war itself, but, like, you know, leaving NATO. And if Putin could have done this without the U.S. and NATO, that would have obviously been his preference. Not only would have that had made it a lot easier in Ukraine, but it would have, you know, the Baltics or something on the table, right?

And so this is real stuff. This isn't like a game of risk or like a political playbook piece. This is like war, you know. The other Republicans who are really helping out the Ukrainian people are in Congress. So there was a Zoom call over the weekend between President Zelensky, where he was requesting military aid. And in the middle of it, Zelensky had to ask Senator Rick Scott to mute his Zoom. So that's very cool.

And then Senators Marco Rubio and Steve Danes tweeted out photos of Zelensky doing the Zoom with them despite being asked not to. I don't know. I guess I want to be fair. Like obviously these bozos should just like ask first if they could have done this. Well, it's not about you. I know. General,

General Rubio. Like, it's a bad Zelensky. Like nobody gives us shit that you're talking to him. Yeah, I agree. And he was a child. Rubio was a child when asked about it. He was like, well, they asked after I already sent the tweet.

Well, I don't know, man. You're the vice chairman of the intelligence committee. Like, you should know better. But also, it is still wild to me that Zelensky is tweeting videos of himself being like, look out my window.

I'm in my office. And he walks around. He's showing Russia. He's showing the Wagner group. He's showing Chechen rebels. He's showing bombers where he is at all times. I'm amazed by that courage. I wonder if it's a good idea. And I'm kind of surprised that the Russians aren't just targeting him directly. Well, I think, look, he's made a decision that he's going all in in resistance. And I'm sure that is having a catalyzing and positive effect on the morale of the Ukrainian people and military. I also think he's fascinating.

People will look back and he is broken down every wall between a leader and his people. Like the fact that he's wearing a T-shirt and not a suit and tie, the fact that he's holding his own phone. He is remaking what it means to be a leader. And this is not just like fan flick stuff. Like it's interesting to me that he is, you know, you couldn't imagine McCronin in a T-shirt like, you know, walking around holding out his own phone.

Like, there's something really powerful about that. I do wonder about his risk calculus. And I wonder about the Russian risk, you know, assessment because, you know, they, and it's a ghoulish conversation to have, but like, if they were to target him, take him out, I wonder what the, they may actually calculate that Zelensky's become such an enormous figure that that would trigger some reaction that they might not want to trigger. You know, so Zelensky's, you know, this is, again, not just Fanflick, he may have calculated that he's become such a large figure that the cost of Russia harming him is, you know, going to be really, really high. Yeah, it's just a risky.

It's risky. There's also been some reporting. Look, man, I don't want to talk about, you know, the risk of him either. But there has been reporting of, you know, Western countries are pushing the Ukrainian government to figure out a secession strategy into possible. like, positioned some parts of their government in places that are safer than Kiev or maybe outside of the country. And there's some resistance because, you know, I do worry, like, he is, Zelensky in the span of a couple of weeks has made himself sort of a singular figure in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you're right. It could cut either way. Him getting assassinated by some Russian goons could. It could light rush on fire. Could light rush on fire? you know like that that's the thing that's the thing that could turn out hundreds and hundreds of

thousands of people in russia because he's famous in russia yeah he is famous in russia that's the thing that could have um Ukrainians just you know that's the thing that could trigger no fly zone right and that's the thing that could trigger um just kind of like mass violent uprising amongst ukrainians um it it has become this variable in this conflict that everybody it's in everybody's head. And it's hard to talk about. It is what it is. But like it's, I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I really haven't. It's just, yeah. Remarkable guy. It's remarkable. Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to hear my conversation with Derek Chalet. We're going to talk about, he's a senior counselor of the State Department. We're going to

talk about how it works, this process of, you know, getting arms into the hands of the Ukrainian military, the sanctions process, sort of his assessment on how things are going. So really smart, thoughtful guy is in government, but manages to talk in a way that is clear and understandable and really interesting. So stick around for that. My guest today is Derek Chalet. He's a counselor at the U.S. State Department. He's a friend of mine. He's a friend of Benz. He is one of the smartest people I know, and I'm thrilled to welcome him back to Pod Save the World. Derek, great to see you. It's great to be back on the pod, Tommy. I was reflecting, I think it was probably five years ago. Yeah, 2017.

My first visit. And like many things I've done, I got in early, you know, and now it's like blown up. And so I'm honored to be back. We are. I appreciate it. I was listening to a clip that was on the Facebook page and you and I were talking about meetings you would not take as a campaign advisor to a candidate in the context of Donald Trump's goons talking to a bunch of Russians. So time's a flat circle here, buddy. You know, same set of problems. Yeah.

So Derek, we were just sort of chatting before, you know, we started the conversation. It is astounding for me to see how quickly the White House, State Department, Congress is moving to approve funding or the transfer of military support and weapons systems from the U.S. or stockpiles in Europe, wherever they are, to Ukraine. Can you just help listeners, like, kind of understand how this process works, right? I mean, there's like an approval process in Washington, Congress votes for something or the White House announces something. Then what happens? How does a, how does a, you know, javelin missile system get into the hands of a Ukrainian soldier? Yeah, great question. I mean, I think, let me just take a step back, please, if I can. Because this is one of the reasons why the intelligence we had about, Russia's intentions and this buildup that we've been watching over the last several months

unfold and we've been making public over time was so important because first I think it did getting Putin's head a bit and it slowed them down, which a little bit, which was helpful because it helped us prepare the sanctions packages, which we've been unveiling with European partners. It's helped us get military capability into NATO's. eastern flank, so countries like the Baltz and Poland and Romania and Bulgaria to try to shore them up, but it's also then helped us get time to organize ourselves and get stuff into Ukraine. And so that really started late last year, but it's accelerated quite a bit in the last several weeks. I mean, just this year alone, in the last 365 days, we've given Ukraine a billion dollars

in security assistance. And that's, that, you know, by order of magnitude, is way more than we've ever given Ukraine ever before. Right. In terms of security assistance. So look, a lot of this is coming from stocks that we, the United States or other European partners already have. So this is equipment that we have in abundance. And one of the ways we're able to get it in quickly is some of these materials that we're providing, for example, is our pre-positioned already somewhere in Europe. And so we're able to just take them off our shelves and provide them to the Ukrainians. Also, as you know, Tommy, in moments like this, the administration, the president, but also the Congress, will make quick decisions, which is somewhat unusual for Washington, and in terms of providing certain authority, which is a fancy way of saying the permission to use money in the budget for purposes, emergency purposes like this. So the president's made some emergency announcements in the last couple weeks to provide millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance to,

the Ukrainians, but the Congress right now is considering a multi-billion-dollar package. Up to 12 as of this morning. Up to 12, right, that would be, you know, humanitarian assistance, further support for security assistance for Ukraine, economic support, that kind of stuff. Yeah. There's a different conversation to be had about how easy it is to get $12 billion for wars and not for other things. But I digress. That is not your problem. So, I mean, what does sound like, you know, one of the reason, the answer to why you guys have been able to get, you know, arms in the hands of these Ukrainian soldiers so quickly is because you've been working on it for months and months. Well, yeah, and also working on it, by the way, going back years. I mean, eight years ago,

when we were in the Obama administration together, and at the time I was in the Pentagon, during the first Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we had a big debate, as you remember well, about what kind of assistance we'd be providing the Ukrainian military. At that point, in 2013, 2014, we didn't have a very good relationship with the Ukrainian military. Those are the early days of what now is a quite robust relationship we have with the Ukrainians. And among the things that we started doing back then was training the Ukrainian military to make it more professional, capable, modern, less corrupt. And that is kind of in some ways the least sexy thing you can do in terms of security assistance because everyone likes to talk about, you know, javelin anti-tank missiles.

And we're seeing how important those are right now. But also, it's the training and the professionalization of the Ukrainian military that we started to do back in 2014 that over time has worked. And I think it's paying dividends today. Yeah. Well, so I'm really glad you made that point because, you know, it's hard to for me, I mean, look, I know what I read the newspaper. But it's hard for me to understand what would actually be useful for the Ukrainian military. Right. Because you see these reports that, you know, the Ukrainian Air Force is pretty much intact.

But there's President Zelensky's out there asking for more MIG fighter jets, which is just, you know, stepping back for a second. It's amazing to imagine a Russian-made MIG fighter jet flown by a Ukrainian attacking a Russian-made fighter jet flown by a Russian. But, you know, apparently now Poland has agreed to give them these Migs. But then I read other experts who suggest that, like, the impact. of those big, splashy weapon systems may be less than, you know, anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles, or just like basic ammunition or basic communications tools. How are you guys thinking about the best way to arm and assist the Ukrainians? So right now, almost all of our assistance is going to those meat and potatoes weapon systems,

but really important, anti-armor, anti-tank, ammunition, air defense systems. one of the realities we have to face when it comes to some of these high-end systems. Now, migs are the exception because they know how to fly makes, but other systems that, for example, more sophisticated air defense that we could provide them, they don't know how to use. So it's not something you can just like purchase off, you know, global Amazon and get and then just figure out how to use it. It's like a sono speaker, just kind of like plugs in.

Right, it plugs in, it sets itself up. It's take, you have to be trained on how to use it. So that does limit in what we can provide. But so far, I think what we're seeing on the ground is how effective some of these basic tools. I say basic because javelin anti-tank missiles are not basic tools, but they are the things that are really making a difference on the ground.

And the United States, other European countries have provided Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. And we've seen those in use as well. I just think stepping back is just quite remarkable how fast all this has moved, not just with the United States is doing, but there's now 14 countries involved in helping to support the Ukrainians. And, you know, they need every bit of that support. And what they're doing every day and the fight that they're putting up is just completely

inspiring to us. And so, you know, they need our help and we're committed to give it to them. It's amazing. similar sort of, you know, sanctions 101 type question, which is we talk a lot about sanctions. I imagine a lot of folks don't really know how they work in practice. I don't think that there's a giant lever that says like sanctions on Russia that Tony Blinken gets to pull in the right moment. But, you know, can you help us walk through like, okay, you guys decide to sanction Russian oil and gas? How does that work?

How does the State Department sort of implement a decision like that? Sure. Well, first, before we get to implement, It's the organizing that goes into the decision to do this takes a lot of work. And I would I would assert that the effort that the Secretary of State Tony Blinken has led over the last several months is the closest I can think of it in recent history is 30 years ago when James Baker was putting together the coalition to fight the Gulf War in August of, you know, from August of 1990 until January of 19. 91 while simultaneously trying to find a diplomatic solution. So running on two tracks, preparing for the worst, but also hoping and aiming to try to find some diplomatic way forward. And Secretary Plank was doing the same thing. So the time that we had, when we started to talk

to allies about the intelligence we were getting and sharing with them the intelligence, part of the purpose to share all this with them was to make the case why we were so, why this was so urgent and really to help them make the tough decisions to impose some of these sanctions because President Biden's talked about how this is going to have an impact on the United States, it's going to have more of an impact on Europe, all these sanctions because Europe's economic relationship with Russia is just so much deeper. So obviously the implementation is pretty straightforward in many instances, right, because it makes it illegal for, you know, a Russian bank to do business in the United States or Europe. I mean, just like when you close down the airspace, your airspace

to Russian planes, it makes it prohibited for Russian planes to fly over the United States or fly over European countries. And you've seen now how Russian airlines have to circumnavigate Europe to get from, you know, Russia to, you know, where else, wherever they're trying to get to, because Cyprus or wherever, because they've got to fly all around places they can't fly over. So, you know, we've, we have been working quite hard at making sure that we're, A, we're all on side. Because I think one of the other principles here is that we are more powerful when we're together and more influential when we're together. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of times where the U.S. could just ride off on its own. But if no one's behind you, then you're not really leading.

Right. So, you know, taking the time to get our European partners in particular on board, but also Asian partners. This has been a global response in many ways to Russia, which I think I'd like to think is surprised people. Yeah. Oh, I imagine, you know, Japan sort of jumping on board. A lot of these countries are Sweden. Korea. Yeah, it's remarkable.

Australia. Unity is remarkable. Here's the harder question that I don't know how to think about, which is, you know, you read these articles about the children of Russians who are now living in Ukraine, who are being shelled and trying to explain to their parents back home what the Russian military. is doing to them. And what they hear back is Russian propaganda. And I think that just sort of speaks to the power of propaganda in state-owned media. And so my question is, clearly these sanctions are hurting, you know, the Russian people in a real way, right? The rubles crashing. The economy is crashing.

They can't travel. They can't use Visa or MasterCard or Apple Pay. There's like a lot of things about life. We're going to get harder. Practical things in life. Yeah, little things. How do we, How do you think that you help the Russian people understand that Vladimir Putin is the reason, or blame him versus blaming the evil United States or the evil West? How do we connect those dots? Yeah. Well, as you're right, it's very hard and it's getting harder as the space within Russia is growing tighter. I mean, one of the things that's interesting about Putin's authoritarian rule is up until a few weeks ago, you could still watch CNN in Russia and you could surf the Internet, freely, unlike China, for example. But that's being restricted. We are trying to do a lot in

Russian language. And so to the extent that there are spaces within Russia that will still be willing to interview Americans or European officials, we have made a concerted effort to really get into those Russian language media spaces. We're watching a lot of this play out as we have all been living on social media. And so I think there's a lot there that we're working on, well along with the Europeans. I mean, what's been striking to me, Tommy, about this is this war of choice by Putin was not something that he prepared the Russian people for. This wasn't a some kind of, you didn't see a long build up to this and trying to make the case. I think he, this is perhaps part of his misperception that he thought maybe the case was so self-evident he didn't need to make

it. But you're seeing a lot of Russians, Russian, Russian writ, really, really rich Russians. You're also seeing a lot of regular folks wake up and say, wait a second, how does this make sense for us? I mean, how is this making our lives better? How is this making our children's lives better? As you said, you're seeing many Russians being harmed by what's happening inside Ukraine. I mean, one of Putin's pretexts for this invasion is they need to do this to defend the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Well, Kharkiv, which is one of the cities that's being brutalized every day by Russian forces, is, the largest Russian-speaking city in Europe. It's kind of a funny way to show that you're trying

to protect Russian speakers by bombing, using your military to bomb Russian speakers. So, look, I think, I don't, it's hard for me to see how this ends well for Russia. I think this will be a strategic body blow for Russia. This is going to be an expensive war on its own. The sanctions make it even more expensive and they're going to be spending a lot of their bandwidth and energy trying to deal with what is going to be a long struggle. This is a catastrophe for the people of Ukraine. No question about it. Largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. But when I think of Russia's future, which in my view was always a dim one, it's gotten a lot dimmer because of this, what he's done. Yeah. I know you're busy. There's two quick final questions. One, I think the

conventional wisdom about Vladimir Putin is, you know, he just has a tendency to always escalate to any perceived attack in response. But in this instance, I mean, it's been interesting to see that the U.S., NATO, European countries have sanctioned his economy in crippling ways. They have immediately fed arms into the Ukrainian opposition. But we haven't seen a Russian response against the West, or at least nothing over, or I haven't seen any reports of the big cyber attack or anything. Is that surprising to you, that that sort of relative laidback posture? It has been a bit surprising. I mean, we obviously have been prepared for the worst and remain prepared for that kind of response. Look, I think in some instances, he understands the areas

where we have escalation dominance, which is kind of a term of art, but where, you know, he knows that there's certain capabilities we have and also the collective power of the U.S. and Europe and NATO together, that if he keeps upping the ante, ultimately this is going to be a loser for him. But, you know, I don't think Putin's suicidal, but I don't know that he's, there's been a lot of talk about, is he crazy or is he irrational? I think he is very isolated. I don't think he's getting great information from the very few people that he seems to talk to. I think he, you know, we've all been living in COVID isolation. He especially has been living in

COVID isolation. I mean, this is a guy who barely left Sochi for almost two years. This kind of what we've seen with the long table shots are just kind of great visualizations of what I think the reality's been for him and very separate from certainly everyday Russians, but most of his government. So, you know, I don't, that doesn't mean he's lost his mind. It just means he doesn't, you add in kind of his, his sense of grievance and sense of injustice and the sense of victimhood with his ambition. And that's a combustible mix. Yeah. Yeah. If you add into that lack of good information. Don't shoot the messenger used to be a literal concern. I imagine it, it remains one in Russia. I mean, I think he's created an environment. There's not a lot of people. It's not, it's not.

career enhancing to deliver bad news. Honestly, it's not in the US government either, so I feel it's pain there. Final question. There's some reports that the U.S. is considering bolstering the air defenses of eastern NATO allies or Eastern European allies, like maybe a Patriot missile battery, maybe a fad defense system. I guess my question is sort of like, you might not want to get that specific, but just stepping back, how concerned would you say?

you know, NATO allies or others in Eastern Europe are that the Russian invasion won't stop in Ukraine. I certainly have friends from Georgia who are very nervous for very good reasons looking back to 2008. Absolutely, very nervous. I mean, the short answer is I just, just a few hours ago, I was with an old friend who's the deputy defense minister of Latvia who for years we have I've been talking about the concerns they have about Russia's threats to the Baltics. And of course, this crisis is making those threats seem very, very real and apparent. I was in Romania a few weeks ago and Bulgaria. And both of those countries, one by sea, one by land, borders Ukraine.

And so very nervous about where this goes. And that's why we have worked very hard to put more military of our military, but also other European countries' military capability along those that's so-called NATO's eastern flank, Baltics, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria to reassure them that we got their back, but also to deter Russia from doing anything. Let's hope it all works. Derek, thank you so much for the work you're doing for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.

It's great to see you in general. It's great to see you. Truly impressive to see what you all have put together and how, quickly you put it together. So, congratulations on that work. Thanks, Tommy. It's great to be back with the pod. Thanks for having me on them. Thanks for your listeners for listening in. Thanks again to Derek for doing the show. Thank you, Ben, for not having a mysterious, you know, injury that kept you out of the game. Yeah, I know. I mean, I rule number one in life, show up. You would have like this. I told Aaron Ryan that. I love Aaron Ryan, by the way.

She's so funny and so smart. And I, you know, I told her that what this was was week two of the NFL season in 2001 when one Mo Lewis hit Drew Bledsoe so hard that he was out. Yeah. And then, you know, came in. Tom Brady. So that was, that was Aaron. So she'll show up on the Thursday pot and, uh, with, they're out. They're out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, whenever I talk about the Patriots, it immediately turns off 25% of listeners. So. Yeah. Well, you're doing at the end of the show this time.

This time, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's it for us. And we either, I don't know, maybe we'll talk to you Friday. Maybe we'll talk to you next week. God knows anymore.

Yeah, who knows. Pod Save 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 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.