Tangle - Two years of war in Ukraine.

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Two years of war in Ukraine. On Saturday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the second anniversary of Russia's full-fledged invasion by welcoming Western leaders to Kyiv and pleading for more support in the war.A link to our piece on a compromise solution to the border crisis here (no paywall).You can read today's podcast here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. Gallup results from Under the Radar here, and Monmouth results here. Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:41), Today’s story (3:40), Right’s take (9:44), Left’s take (7:05), International opinions (12:34), Isaac’s take (15:19), Listener question (20:00), Under the Radar (23:05), Numbers (23:49), Have a nice day (24:50)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul. Today's episode is edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the two-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Before we jump in, a quick heads up. A couple weeks ago, I published my solutions to the border crisis. This was a members-only piece in our newsletter. The piece was intended to lay out a plan for the border that this president, this Senate, and this House could agree on. In other words, it was a compromise solution. With border negotiations all but dead

once again, we have decided to lift the paywall on that piece and make it free and available to everyone. So if you're interested in reading it, you can read it with a link in today's episode description. You can also find it in our archive on our website. I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. That story is no longer paywalled. If you like it, if you think we're onto something, which I think we are, you can share it.

That would be really helpful. Pass it along to friends, tell them that if they like it, they can subscribe to Tangle, check out the podcast, etc. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in with some quick hits. First up, former President Donald Trump won the Michigan GOP primary with 68% of the vote to Nikki Haley's 26%. Meanwhile, President Biden won his primary with 81% of the vote, though 15% of voters, roughly 100,000 people, cast uncommitted ballots as part of a protest movement against Biden's support for Israel's actions in Gaza. Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020. Number two, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested a federal funding deal could be coming into focus after he met with the

White House and Senate leaders on Tuesday. Number three, Hamas and Israeli leadership downplayed ceasefire talks after comments from President Biden that a deal could come as soon as this weekend. Number four, oral arguments over a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a modification that allows semi-automatic rifles to fire continuously, will happen before the Supreme Court today. Separately, the Supreme Court seems skeptical of a pair of laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how social media companies control content posted on their platforms. And number five, both President Biden and former President Trump are expected to visit the southern border today.

Well, this Saturday marks two years since the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. Before the full-scale invasion, Russia occupied 7% of Ukraine. On March 22, 2022, Moscow expanded control to 27%. Ukraine has won back about half that newly captured territory, but Russia still occupies 18%. President Zelensky told reporters tonight delays of weapons and ammunition from allies, including the United States, are costing Ukrainian lives, saying 31,000 of his troops have been killed so far in the war, his first update of the death toll in a year. On Saturday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the second anniversary of

Russia's full-fledged invasion by welcoming Western leaders to Kiev and pleading for more support in the war. Allies from the European Union and the Group of Seven democracies expressed solidarity with Ukraine over the weekend. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York, visited Ukraine on Friday and used the visit to urge Republicans in Congress to move forward on a bill that would provide billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine. On Saturday, Italian Premier Giorgio Maloney, Belgian and Canadian prime ministers, and European Commission presidents all arrived in Kiev as an act of solidarity. Two years ago here, we met the enemy landing forces with fire.

Two years later, we must meet our friends and our partners here, Zelensky said. As the war enters its third year, Ukraine's position has become increasingly desperate. A summer counteroffensive by Ukraine failed, and the country is now running low on soldiers, ammunition, and international support, all while questions abound whether they can sustain their fight against Russia. Amid battlefield losses, President Zelensky recently replaced his popular top general with a new military commander. Meanwhile, Russia has momentum, gaining advantages along the front lines and recently taking control of the eastern city of Avdiivka after months of fighting. Ukraine's forces have now taken up a defensive position in hopes of preventing further losses, and Russia controls roughly one-quarter of Ukrainian territory. At the same time,

Ukraine has had some success fighting in the Black Sea, where it has sunk Russian warships and landed strikes against military installations in Crimea. As things stand, neither side has won. General Richard Behrens, a British military officer who is the co-chair of a defense consultancy, told the Associated Press, neither side has lost. Neither side is anywhere near giving up, and both sides have pretty much exhausted the manpower and equipment that they started the war with. Both sides have done their best to keep the number of soldiers killed hidden from the public to maintain morale and protect battlefield strategies. However, the first independent statistical analysis of Russia's soldiers found that roughly 50,000 Russian men have died in the war so far,

though Russia has only acknowledged around 6,000 casualties. Last week, President Zelensky said roughly 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the fighting, though U.S. analysts have estimated the number is closer to 70,000. Close to 20,000 civilians have been injured and 10,000 civilians have been killed. While the fighting continues, members of Congress are debating whether to advance a standalone bill for $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine after a bipartisan compromise to tie the funding to immigration reform was rejected by Republicans in the House and the Senate. The U.S. has already directed about $75 billion of military, humanitarian, and financial support to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. That number does not include all war-related U.S.-approved

funding like money directed toward allies. Today, we're going to examine some arguments from the left and the right in the U.S., as well as some international perspectives about the war in Ukraine and the path forward. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left urges commitment to Ukraine, saying Putin is weaker than he says and the West is stronger than we think. Some criticize Biden's foreign policy approach for being too militaristic and outdated. The Bloomberg editorial board said not to buy Putin's bluff because the West can outspend him. Putin has celebrated a boost in production and GDP

as proof his economy is thriving. But the limits to such military kinesium are already evident, the board said. The war's consumption of able-bodied workers has driven the unemployment rate to an extreme low of 2.9%, forcing civilian industries to pay more for scarce labor. The central bank has had to hike its benchmark interest rates to 16%, further squeezing the private sector. Military spending won't keep adding to GDP growth. Just maintaining it at the current level would require big sacrifices in other important areas, such as social spending and much-needed infrastructure maintenance, it added. Worse for Putin, he's rapidly eroding the defenses he constructed to protect the economy and himself from unexpected shocks. Much of the central bank's

reserves are frozen in the West. The National Well-Being Fund's liquid assets have declined by nearly half since the beginning of the war to about $55 billion. The government is running an annual budget deficit of about $17 billion, and its borrowing capacity is of limited use if domestic banks are the only available lenders. In The Nation, Jeet Heer said Biden's coal world nostalgia is dooming his presidency. The killing fields of Gaza are only making visible the horrific and ongoing human cost of Biden's longstanding commitment to an obsolete Cold War liberalism that is completely inadequate to the challenges of the 21st century, he said. Joe Biden is an overeager and uncritical enthusiast

for military Keynesianism, the use of arms spending to fuel economic growth. The ideal of Cold War liberalism was to fuse foreign and domestic policy, creating an integrated warfare welfare state. Underlying this project is the brute political reality that it is easier to get bipartisan consensus and elite comedy, which Biden, still a man of the Senate in his worldview, always seeks if you push for defense spending rather than social spending, he said. Unfortunately, Biden's pursuit of this illusory agenda is leading to a disaster-prone foreign policy, where an aversion to diplomacy combines with a commitment to increases in arms spending and assertions of hegemony.

Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right mostly supported bolstering Ukraine's defenses, with some criticizing Biden for not doing more sooner. Others on the right are more skeptical of additional funding to support another international quagmire. The New York Post editorial board wrote that Ukraine needs America's full support more than ever. From the start, the Post has called on President Biden to offer more weapons and visibly beefed up commitment to helping Ukraine's own military effort, the board wrote. In other words, give Kiev whatever it needs to beat back Moscow's forces. Heed the pleas of President Volodymyr Zelensky, ignore Putin's blustering bluffs. Time after time

after time, Biden has blinked, refusing to deliver at all or not until long months after Ukraine requested particular help, and even then, not enough to meet the need. Our president's other critical shortfall has been his failure to make the case for helping Ukraine to the American people, the board said. He's far more obsessed with the threat to democracy posed by his domestic political opposition than the one posed by the butcher in the Kremlin. Yes, Republicans share blame too. A good chunk of the party pretends Putin could become America's friend if we just appeased him enough. But how will abandoning Ukraine help our standing in the world, safeguard our interests, and do anything but embolden China? It also ignores a lesson

taught over and over in history. Madmen cannot be appeased. In American Greatness, Thaddeus G. McCotter argued that American elites caused problems with past militarism and now push a domino theory 2.0 for more. In sum, today, policymakers and elites have now stuck the rest of us with the butcher's bill for their arrogance and avarice. A revanchist, authoritarian Russia and an invalidly hostile, implacably aggressive communist China, McCotter said. For some abstruse reason, they expect the public to forget or ignore that these policymakers and their corporate cronies have been culpable for causing this crisis. These policymakers have forgotten the

hard lessons of Vietnam and in refusing to explain in detail the strategic stakes in defending Ukraine from Russia's invasion. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has made the point that Putin must face accountability in Ukraine for us to defend Taiwan. His admission that there needs to be some accountability underscores the absence of accountability to the American public regarding military aid to Ukraine. of accountability to the American public regarding military aid to Ukraine's. Expecting the rote invocation of the Taiwan must be defended mantra, it also unwittingly reveals policymakers almost zero discourse with the American people as to why a free Taiwan is imperative in protecting our nation's vital strategic interests. Instead, the public gets the domino theory 2.0. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. We're going to do something a little different today as we usually do when we cover some of this international stuff. We're going to share a couple opinions from abroad.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. First up, we'll start with the Kiev Independent Editorial Board, which is a newspaper in Ukraine who said it is time to wake up or fall. Some things have remained unchanged. Ukrainians still want to fight till the end, the board said. The accumulated exhaustion, loss, and pain haven't

converted into the desire to surrender. Russia's goal of exterminating the Ukrainian nation has also gone unchanged. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin continues to say that Russia's goal of exterminating the Ukrainian nation has also gone unchanged. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin continues to say that Ukraine's existence is a mistake. This leaves Ukrainians with no other choice than to fight for their survival in a war they never wanted. But there are some things that, two years in, aren't so certain anymore. The most important of them is this. How serious the West is in its support of Ukraine. Aid for Ukraine has become politically weaponized in Europe and North America, where critically needed aid for Kiev, to the tune of $61 billion, is still tied up in the U.S. Congress.

All of this leads to the painful question, but one we must ask. Could the West let Ukraine fall, if not on purpose, but due to sheer neglect and breakdown of their resolve, and face the consequences of the world order collapsing? In the United Kingdom, the socialist site Morningstar argued that it's time for a Ukraine ceasefire. Given Russia's undoubted superiority in manpower reserves over Ukraine, it may therefore be a better place to profit from protracted deadlock. However, most of the NATO leadership continues to insist on war until victory for Ukraine, despite the absence of any plan for achieving that objective,

beyond wishing without discernible foundation for a more pliant regime in Moscow to emerge, the editorial staff wrote. This, then, is surely the time for a peace initiative, based on the mutual recognition that maximum demands are unachievable. Yet no one is yet coming forward with such a proposal. Earlier Chinese efforts in a NATO-sponsored conference this year did not lead anywhere, they said. Russian language rights in Ukraine should be guaranteed, and Russia should unambiguously acknowledge Ukraine's right to sovereignty and independence. The first step is a ceasefire, which, like all ceasefires, starts with the

contesting armies in more or less their present positions. Such a plan would mean both Putin's neo-Sarist chauvinism on the one hand and Ukrainian nationalism and NATO expansionists on the other, accepting less than full victory. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, as well as some voices from abroad. So we're going to jump into my take. First of all, I can't believe that it has been two years. It feels like just a few months ago that I was writing pieces about the war beginning and the need not to lose the plot. My biggest fears that Kiev would fall in a matter of weeks did not come true. We underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the will of the West. But many of my fears have been borne out. A long, expensive, protracted battle with a total of hundreds of thousands dead, division in the U.S.

about how to proceed, waves of economic disruption across the globe, and an authoritarian leader in Vladimir Putin who is being valorized by useful idiots. Many of my readers believe that the U.S. should pause its funding or condition it entirely on peace talks. Some have suggested the U.S. should pressure Ukraine to accept territorial defeats, give up the land at loss, and end the war. These inclinations come from genuine and rational places. Americans are tired of seeing tens of billions of dollars go to far-off places they've never been, funding conflicts that don't feel relevant, all while so many issues here at home go unresolved. And I get it, and big parts of me are sympathetic to those positions.

But I still believe there are better reasons to stay in the fight parts of me are sympathetic to those positions. But I still believe there are better reasons to stay in the fight with Ukraine than there are to abandon it. For starters, it is a just position. Military adventurism and recent failures in the Middle East have scarred many Americans, including me. It's been a long time since the US was unambiguously on the right side of a war. But this is the right side. Putin has made it clear that he did not invade Ukraine because of NATO expansion or US aggression or because there are neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian army. He invaded because he does not believe Ukrainians are a separate people from Russians or that their country should have sovereignty. He believes

Ukraine belongs to him. He believes the Soviet Union falling is the greatest tragedy of his lifetime. He feels this way about other former Soviet states too, some of whom are NATO members or are rushing to become one. If you have doubts about this, just go watch his interview with Tucker Carlson. Talk to people from Bulgaria or Moldova or Belarus who are watching warily and dumping their own GDP into defending Ukraine with prayers of stopping Putin. If Russia had toppled Ukraine in a matter of weeks, I believe wholly that Putin would have moved on. That Russia didn't, hopefully, has given him second thoughts. But if he wins this war, that threat will remain. And then there's the Ukrainian people. Again, read their stories or

look at what life is like for them, and this war does not feel complicated. Perhaps I am too close to this issue, having family and friends who are Ukrainian, some of them living or operating in Ukraine right this minute, or perhaps that makes me more clear-eyed about it. In 1994, our government promised Ukraine we'd protect them from incursions like this. Our government has broken many promises. We have the opportunity to fulfill

one now. Finally, there's the practical argument that supporting Ukraine is a smart and cost-effective foreign policy. If being on the right side of history countering Putin's ambitions or sympathy for the plight of Ukrainians is not enough to outweigh concerns about our involvement or our spending in this war, then maybe this does. Pouring money into Ukraine's coffers now is a better financial decision than letting it fall. The latter would mean giving Ukraine with its vital natural resources, trade routes, and supply chains over to an adversary. It would mean risking a future all-out war between Russia and a NATO ally, one we are legally bound to protect that in all likelihood would result in our own soldiers on the ground and far more money being spent.

It would mean destabilizing the European Union, our third largest trading partner. As Romina Bandura and Ilya Tunchenko have argued, funding Ukraine is closer to an investment than a cost. I find their argument persuasive. Again, I know many of my readers and listeners disagree, and I understand where that hesitation comes from. I feel hesitant too. But when I listen closely to Putin, when I read the arguments about the position we are in and what to do next, I genuinely think supporting Ukraine

is morally right, strategically sound, and surprisingly economical. This does not preclude pushing for peace talks or ceasefires or negotiations. All of that should happen. But Ukraine, a sovereign and free country, gets to set the terms. Ultimately, it is not our decision whether to prolong this war or not. It is Ukraine's. So far, they are choosing to stay in the fight for their country. Our decision is only whether we want to stand by them or let them fight alone. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Joel in South Carolina. Joel said, Aaron Bushnell sacrificed his life to raise awareness about what is happening in Gaza.

Do you think it will have an impact on the politics of this issue in the U.S.? Okay, so briefly, for anyone who is unaware, Aaron Bushnell was a 25-year-old active duty member of the U.S. Air Force who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. He died of his injuries. In a video Bushnell posted online, he said he would, quote, no longer be complicit in genocide, end quote, and screamed free Palestine as he burned. The self-immolation was meant as an act of protest and has been celebrated as such. Bushnell's name and images from the video are all over social media. Anecdotally, I personally counted about 30

friends who posted his story approvingly on Instagram between Monday and Tuesday alone. My short answer to your question is yes, it may have a meaningful impact on awareness about Gaza, but I don't think it's going to meaningfully change the politics of it, nor do I think it will change what happens in Gaza. Simply put, if people weren't already moved by the images coming from Gaza, I'm not sure why they'd be any more moved by his suicide. If any readers or listeners felt especially changed or moved by it, I'd be curious to hear from you and hear about why. Finally, I also want to say that I object to the framing of him as sacrificing his life for this cause. In 2022, after a climate activist set themselves on fire in Washington,

D.C., I wrote a very long piece about the very dangerous ways I thought the story was being framed by journalists and the media, namely that they were framing the activist, just like Bushnell, as committing some kind of fearless act for the greater good. I want to say clearly that Bushnell committed suicide. In debating the language use around what he did, a friend floated the term revolutionary suicide to me, which I have not heard before. I would not call his act revolutionary, but so long as we call it a suicide, then I'm fine with that language. We have to be really cautious about celebrating or honoring suicide. Just like celebrating or giving notoriety to mass shooters,

doing so is one way to make it spread. However noble or pure his intentions, however clear-minded he was about what he was doing, I urge people to try to communicate his message about Gaza without writing about him as a martyr or a hero or sharing images of his burning alive to make the point. It's important not to compound that harm by encouraging copycats or others with suicidal thoughts who may see an opportunity to attach their pain to a political movement and give themselves permission to take their own life. If you are having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. That's 1-800-273-8255. Or go to speakingofsuicide.com

for a list of additional resources. All right, that is it for your questions answered today. Next up is our under the radar section. For the first time since 2019, the southern border is now the number one issue for Americans, according to Gallup. 28% of Americans name immigration as the most important problem, up from 20% last month. Voters now rank the issue higher than the government and the economy in general as the most important problem facing the country today. Separately, a Monmouth poll found that the majority of Americans support building a border wall for the first time since Monmouth started asking the question in 2015. We have links to those polling results in today's episode description. today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The total amount of aid in U.S. dollars that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine since Russia's invasion is now $74.3 billion.

The amount of military aid in U.S. dollars the U.S. has sent to Ukraine is $46.3 billion. The amount of aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine as a share of our GDP is 0.32%, the 32nd most of any nation. The amount of aid that Estonia has sent to Ukraine as a share of their GDP is 4.1%, the most of any nation. The number of bullets and grenades the U.S. has sent to Ukraine since Russia's invasion is now 400 million. The total number of deaths in the war as of August, according to an estimate from the New York Times, is 190,000. The total number of civilian deaths in Ukraine since Russia's invasion, according to the UN, is 10,378. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers currently, according to Ukrainian defense

officials, is 40 to 45 years old. currently, according to Ukrainian defense officials, is 40 to 45 years old. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. At the age of 55, Deepak Swaroop left his position as a senior partner at an accounting firm in England to find the next chapter of his life. He'd read about Lucy Helloway, the Financial Times editor who left journalism and founded NowTeach, an organization that editor who left journalism and founded Now Teach, an organization that helps people change careers and become teachers and got inspired. Swaroop is now one of the 850 people who have left careers in fields like finance, medicine, and engineering to retrain as teachers through Now Teach. I was keen to do something which had a purpose so I could contribute back to society in a way,

Swaroop said. Reasons to be cheerful has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As I mentioned at the top, we've got our Peace on the Border solutions up and live and free for all on our website if you want to go check it out. As always, don't forget to give this podcast a share or rate us with five stars if you get a minute. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.littletangle.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.