The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Putin's War -- and His Reasoning For It.

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

For weeks the world has waited to hear Vladimir Putin give his detailed reasoning for the war in Ukraine.  Yesterday they finally heard it when the Russian leader spoke on the May 9th anniversary of his country's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1845.  Brian Stewart gives his take on Putin's speech.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Putin's war. After weeks of expectation, just what did the Russian leader have to say yesterday? And hello again, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. It's Tuesday. Welcome to the broadcast. Glad to have you with us. If you may recall, in the opening weeks of the Ukraine conflict. I used to suggest that the key to the coverage of this story was going to be how the media would keep people interested in the story. In our 24-7 world, things move very fast. Issues move fast. Topics move fast. And the fear, of course, in a situation like this

where there was huge interest in the Ukraine story at the beginning, was that that would slow down and the media would slow down in its coverage. Well, actually, that hasn't happened. And it's been partly due to the great reporting by a number of journalists, many journalists, from different news organizations around the world. You know, I think in particular, you know, Susan Armiston's work, she's been in and out of Ukraine a couple of times. Cal Perry from NBC News has been fantastic in his, not only his basic reporting, but his commentaries

about what's going on inside Ukraine. And Clarissa Ward, who has become a star, well deservedly so, in the last couple of years. She works for CNN. She was one of the first people telling the story on Afghanistan last summer. And she's been one of the first people telling the Ukraine story ever since it started, being there the whole time. She gave an interesting interview over the last couple of days on an American podcast about the danger of news consumers becoming desensitized to the atrocities of war. And that's exactly what we were talking about when we suggested the challenge that the media faced in trying to tell this story to an audience who would stay interested. And Ward said over the weekend, you have to try to keep it on the front page.

You have to keep it forefront in people's conscience. And you don't do that by preaching at people or kind of wagging your finger and telling them how important it is. You do that, says Clarissa Ward, by finding characters who they can connect with, the audience, and stories that they can relate to, whereby they continue to feel engaged and like they have a vested interest and they care. And I agree with that. Absolutely.

I think most journalists would agree to that. But even then, it's still a challenge because you can only get upset so many times about some of these stories. But nevertheless, the challenge is there for journalists, and great journalists like Clarissa Ward are doing exactly that. A little hard from our little podcast in Stratford, Ontario,

to tell you those kind of stories, but we try. That's why we talked to Professor Haran from Kiev, like we did yesterday. He's just, at the face of it, an ordinary guy with a family living in Kiev, under bombardment, and just trying to deal with the situation on a day-to-day basis, getting food for his family, ensuring that one of his daughters who's suffering from PTSD gets the kind of treatment and where she gets that treatment that she's had as a result of being under constant threat and under attack. So those are the stories we tell. Clarissa Ward, of course, and the Susan Armistons and the Cal Parrys and others are telling stories

of much, well, in many ways, kind of a richer content in terms of being there on the ground visually with their cameras showing and telling the stories in the subway stations, bomb shelters. But it's worth noting that these are things that the best journalists concern themselves with. How do we keep this story at the forefront of people's attention? Because it is important. All right, our focus on this day, our primary focus, is on Vladimir Putin's speech yesterday in Moscow. The May 9th speech, the much-anticipated speech.

For weeks, the world has been waiting to see what he was going to say, how he was going to justify Russia's attack on Ukraine, and whether there would be any hints as to what was to come. Any acknowledgement of how poorly the Russian military has done on this special operation, as he calls it. So that's our focus today, and our focus is aided by the expert analysis of someone who's become a regular for us during this conflict and a regular for you, and that of course is Brian Stewart,

foreign correspondent, war correspondent. He's seen situations like this in different parts of the world over his lengthy and distinguished career. And so I knew he was up and watching Putin early in the morning, North American time. And so I wanted his analysis of what to make from Putin, what that tells us about the man, the country, and the situation. So here's my conversation. Well, no, first, we're going to take a quick break so we don't have to interrupt the conversation. Let's take that quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk with Brian Stewart.

And we're back. You're listening to The Bridge on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us. As promised now, Brian Stewart, the former foreign correspondent, and his analysis of that speech just yesterday by Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. So Brian, before we actually start on Putin's speech, you and I are old enough to remember what these days in May used to mean in terms of sort of watching Moscow, watching the Soviets in those days, May 1st, May 9th, you'd watch the parade in Red Square, you'd look at the lineup of Soviet officials on Lenin's tomb,

and that would sort of tell you who was where, not only who was leading, but who might be leading in the future. These were big days in the past. Yes, they were. They were indeed. They were big days. They're bigger now, though, in the display. In comparison with the military rollout. I think they're larger.

And they become more inculcated with a national spirit than they were under the Soviets, who, after all, were not just talking about Russia, but the whole Soviet Union, the broader world. This is a different kind of message. This is a message of, you know, here we are, Russia, this vast country that we are. We stand alone in the world. We have to stand up to values and the rest of it.

And I think there's a significant difference between the Soviet parades and these and they really feel that they have a status higher than any others when considering the second world war that the the allies and everything they contributed or everything they did their losses their dead are mentioned in perhaps one passing sentence but really the war and the glory of the war is really all about Russia defeating Nazism. And they've taken that now to, and Putin has, in just really the last seven or eight years, I believe, he's taken it to be a message that he hammers home to the Russians continually that we defeated Nazis in the Second World War, but Nazism continues.

It's continually confronting Russia as are all the other foreign threats to the Russian soil and Mother Russia itself. And the battles we rage today are essentially a continuum of the Second World War battle against Nazism. In fact, one of the senior aides said that just last week in Mariupol and Ukraine itself, that the Russian status today, the Russian struggle is a continuum of the past and that his giant mission in life is to defeat uh nazism uh through the better uh for the better glory of holy russia and uh and show the the real um mission that russia

has in the world and this is quite eerie to watch this because it is sort of a kind of Orwellian moment where statements are made that really aren't true. They're kind of in standing with the period of history we're going through of weaponized lies and conspiracy theories. But a lot of untrue statements are made, and the public in Russia seems to be at the, lapping it up. The latest polls show over 81% support for the regime. How deep that support is is a very different question. And many analysts believe it's not very deep, but it is what Putin is really working with. You know, when you talk about the basic lies that are being told about the situation today, I get it. When they're talking about the past, though, they're pretty accurate.

There are British and American historians who will side with the Russian argument that what they accomplished in the Second World War against the Nazis, to bring that war to an end was perhaps more important not to not to take away anything from the heroism on the the british and canadian american sides but that what the russians had to put up with and the battle they held the soviets against the nazis was may well have been the turning point in the war. And I believe that myself. I think that is a solid historical case. Most Russian soldiers, most Russian armies, divisions, units, soldiers, you name it,

were destroyed on the Eastern Front, not the Western Front. It was the battle that just drained the lifeblood out of Russia on the Russian front, that was a nightmare for Russian soldiery and the military generally, that was really decisive in allowing Germany defeated on the continent without the use of atomic weapons, which would have been brought in probably had it not been for the Russian drive to Berlin. I think that's very true. And I think it's to take nothing away from the incredible courage of the Russian soldiery, their military in Odessa, which was then part of the Soviet Union,

you know, Stalingrad, Leningrad, examples of courage that just one reads today with a kind of disbelief and humility. But just not to take away from that dimension, part of their great losses, up to 27 million dead, were in some extent self-inflicted by extremely poor management of the war, poor preparation for the war. They would, Stalin, when in control, would do things like refuse to allow whole armies up to 500,000 when appearing to be able to be trapped

by the Nazis to even retreat. They would stand their ground and die as one. The losses were higher than they need to be and that makes their memory of the war today so much more nightmarish and permanent and fixed, but

it doesn't take away from the fact that they had the guts and the talent. Some of their generals were absolutely first class, like Zhukov for instance, was an outstanding general, perhaps the best of the whole Second World War. It doesn't take away from their glory. However, the reality is, too, they had a lot of help from the West. Before the Germans invaded Russia, the British and others were warning them with their own intelligence that it was coming. I mean, Stalin wouldn't believe it and didn't act to sort of position his troops accordingly.

And the number of weaponry and transport of vehicles and the rest of it sent into Russia by the West was very considerable. You know, Stalin once said that the D-Day landing was one of the greatest military operations in history. The chances of hearing that come out of Russia today are not very strong. I mean, that's kind of all downplayed right now. So it's not so much that they take onto themselves a gigantic glory. It's the fact that they are not willing pretty much to share that glory with others and going beyond that point. Now, present the West, which once helped them, were in the same struggle with actually being a kind of neo-Nazi culture growing up as we speak, so to speak. I mean, which is really phenomenal mental Orwellian doublespeak. Now, you got up in the middle of the night to watch Putin this time around. So aside from what you mentioned earlier, what struck you about Putin's speech?

I mean, there's a lot. It turns out that the way Moscow was trying to celebrate the Russian government, the Putin government was trying to celebrate May 9th, kind of backfired on them. Some of their stuff was hacked and their television programming was made a bit of a farce. They even had at one point a picture trying to show a couple of young Soviets during the war against Nazi Germany. They had a slide up of a couple. It turns out it was Bonnie and Clyde. Now, you can imagine how the Americans are having fun with that. It's clear there were people trying to get involved in making Putin look bad on the big day. But in terms of his actual speech, what struck you most about what he said and how he said it?

What struck me most was really what he didn't say, which a lot of people were expecting. He would have a declaration of war, which would allow him to mobilize giant numbers of reserves. He clearly is not in a position yet, does not want to do that because he does fear that the support for the war might be skin deep, so to speak, up to a point. They're prepared to watch it on television and applaud it, but they're not prepared to go off and fight for it or send their sons and daughters off. But I think beyond that point, they clearly didn't have a victory to announce, didn't escalate the war any further. He left a kind of miasma or cloud hanging over the war that it was going to continue. It seemed that Russia had before it this gigantic task. And more and more I was struck by the spirituality of his approach to Russia, its military status today, and its combat against Ukraine.

The state orthodox religion has gotten very close to the state, supports it to the hilt on this war, at least on television broadcasts and the rest of it. And he portrays the Russian soul as being a combination of a deep religious sense and historical sense, running back hundreds of years, united with a military that is forever ready to defend Russia and never has attacked anybody else, of course, is part of that. The rest of the world doesn't have these values anymore. They've lost them, and Russia stands up for them. And it seemed to me the glorification of the dead took on a kind of note that glorification, you know, almost a victory of the dead, the victorious dead of the past have this legacy for us.

Our dying today will have an even greater legacy for the future. We are all part of the same duty, Russian duty, mothered Russian duty, and we are all part of the same kind of spiritual essence to defend mother Russia and fight against Nazism. And it struck me that he was preparing the Russians for a long period of war, if that was necessary, and for a lot of deaths. And you should see death tolls coming out of Ukraine, not as a horrifying misfortune,

but as possibly even a positive aspect of the cultural ethos. Now, I don't know how firmly he believes that, but it's certainly the way he's now talking. And it doesn't by any means rule out the fact that some weeks from now or months from now, he may declare war and may call up reserves and go for hire. But at the moment he seemed to be doubling down on the war we're in the war we're continuing the war we have to

fight the war they're coming for us but we won't let them get to us and we're going to destroy nazism just as our grandfathers did in 1945 that's what really struck me about him that that's that's who he is now he's a walking talking proponent of the nets of a kind of militarized nationalism russian ethos that is almost in perpetual struggle against the rest of the world well all that is so it's ironic in a way because it's so different than what putin had planned just a couple of months ago when he ordered the invasion, which at that time the plan supposedly was to have the big May 9th parade in Kiev, to have the Russian troops parading through Kiev. And of course, that didn't happen and he's had to pivot not only where the where the parade would be but what he would say at the parade at the event

and as you say a very different and kind of chilling in in a way uh speech as it turns out that he made um i want to bring up another topic while we get while we've got a moment last week you talked about spy wars and it was all very uh intriguing and uh in terms of the information that the um russia's enemies have managed to to gather on russia everything from troop movements to political uh plays um in this period. But since you talked about it, there seems to be a pivot going on in the United States as well, that they're outwardly bragging too much about what they're finding out about Russian plans. Yes, this is true. It's been an amazing turnaround,

because what we were talking about before was American and the British predictions that the Russians are going to do this. The Russians are going to invade Ukraine. The Russians are coming for Ukraine. So the Western world has to get ready. about the Russian planning, which was absolutely viable and valuable and expected, really super intelligence that was played out there in this kind of situation. But what they started to do in the last week and a half, two weeks, was certain officials in the intelligence community of the United States started bragging that they were behind the killing of Russian generals. They were giving the information, the intelligence to the Ukrainians who were bumping them off, one, two, three, four, one after the other.

And more than that, they were actually very much involved in the sinking of the Moskva missile cruiser of the Russians, the flagship of their Black Sea fleet. And apparently, Biden has begun just going ape in the White House. See, this is outrageous. This is monstrous. We're handing to Putin all he could want, with evidence that, in fact are behind this and this whole war and they're they have a puppet war proxy war going on using Ukraine to get at us how it is possible that somebody could be making such stupid comments to the media not to mention the media

actually running these comments but going to the officials officials, I mean, I must say, I do think it was a bit rich coming from Biden, you know, who has been kind of stumbling all over his own tongue, saying things that his staff had to later clear up. Now his staff are having to clear up other statements by other officials. And it does make the Americans look ill-disciplined and kind of juvenile.

I mean, I know Western allies are just appalled by this. I mean, the last thing you want to be getting out there into the stream of Russian propaganda is solid evidence that the Americans are behind the killing of Russian soldiers, Russian generals, and sinking of Russian ships and killing of Russian sailors. I mean, we're talking about a country that has the largest number of nuclear weapons on Earth, not to mention also chemical weapons, led by somebody who is mental proceeds now. We're having a great deal of trouble trying to divine what they actually are from one month to the next. To be making statements like this would never have been made during the Cold War, for instance, when people knew how risky these kind of leaks would be. So I think the allies in NATO have come down very hard on the Americans about this and saying, for God's sakes, you have to get some discipline in the kind of things you're saying

you don't seem to even give a second thought to what you come up with before you say them and i i was yeah it's funny as we've mentioned before the irony of all reporters like ourselves we used to want to get all the secrets we could possibly get out of government now in retirement i'm shocked i'm shocked that government could be giving up sensitive information. That's the way of the world, I guess. But it really is quite amazing to me that they do that. I do think the White House is trying to crack down very strongly on these kinds of statements because they are not helping, not helping at all. Let me ask you one final question, and it's related in a way, because I've had trouble with this from the beginning of this conflict.

I'm trying to understand what the historical precedent is, I guess, really, of a country saying they're not in the war, like the Americans are saying, and the Canadians and the British, we're not in the war because we don't have boots on the ground and yet at the same time they're supplying the ukrainians with everything they can supply them with um military equipment ground equipment air equipment you name it money financing uh all kinds of different things, sanctions against the Russians. They're doing everything but standing in Ukraine firing weapons. So, like, at what point are you in or are you not in? Because it would seem to me that Putin can make the argument,

you know, the world is against us. And forget about the, you know, the small points. The fact is the Americans are in this war against us. They may not be firing the weapons, but they're supplying the weapons. Where do you draw the line in terms of that? I mean, it would seem to most of us that you're in if you're supporting one side in more than just words. It seems so long ago now, but when we go back to the beginning of the war, that was a very big worry throughout the whole Western world. That sending in lethal weapons, actually, you know, it was a shock to even think about, for instance, Canada sending lethal weapons in.

Now it's sending in major howitzers. But that was the risk that was being taken from the very beginning, that to supply the Ukraine with arms that would kill Russians would eventually get to Russia to the point where they would say, you are in a proxy war, you are effectively attacking us. And the idea of the West has been basically only to go into when there was no other option, but also to try and do it carefully and in a very united form. But it is a risk.

I mean, there are some analysts that came out in the last week, said we are getting in perhaps deeper than we thought we should get in, especially with these kind of statements that we're also taking part in isolating targets from the Ukrainians to actually attack and kill Russians. That is getting quite deep into the war now. But it seems to the Western world they're stuck in a dilemma. They can't do nothing because that would lead to a Russian victory perhaps, perhaps. I don't think so now. But it would lead to

condemnation that we deserted the real cause of democracy against authoritarianism and tyranny. And we turned our back on it. I think they have to continue to support Ukraine, but they should be doing it in a way that, to every way they can,

minimize the actual conflict between the West and Russia. I mean, there was some example you could use in the First World, Second World War, sorry, when the Americans were sending lend-lease to Britain in 1940, destroyers. They were also helping to guard convoys to a certain extent. But you could use that argument, too, to say, yes, that's one of the reasons that Hitler declared war on America immediately after Pearl Harbor, because he felt the Americans were in the war anyways. So he might as well go in full tilt.

So it's a risk. I think we're living in very, very risky times. And we shouldn't be lulled into a sort of quiet every time a quiet, so-called quiet week passes and nothing major happens. And remember, Putin still has reserves of fear and power that he can escalate with. And to stumble too far into something that we can't foresee where it's going to go is a very unwise thing to do in a nuclear age. All right. Brian, we're going to leave it there for this week. Good information and good for us to hear,

especially on those last couple of points because i think it is uh it is a risk as you say and you've got to manage risk very carefully at a time like this so thank you brian we'll talk to you again thank you brian stewart with his uh weekly commentary for the bridge on kind of where we're at, the story behind the story in Ukraine and the conflict with Russia. And as always, we appreciate Brian spending the time dropping in to see us. That's usually on Tuesdays on The Bridge. Kind of wrap it up for the day, but I wanted to bring in something, a very different topic. In some ways, it relates back to that first one, the Clarissa Ward story about journalism in Ukraine telling that story. The way it relates is it's about journalists at home telling the story and some of the challenges they're facing right now.

We witnessed during the protests in Ottawa at the beginning of this year the harassment that was placed upon any number of Canadian journalists by the protesters. And some of it was quite daunting and challenging and dangerous. there's a new study out in the states taken by the rtdna which is the radio television digital and use directors association it's kind of one of the core units of of radio and television and digital uh in terms of uh journalism in the U.S. And there's a Canadian arm to that as well. But the Americans did a study of their newsrooms across the United States. And the results are not encouraging. Here's the headline from the news release that the RTDNA put out

just a couple of days ago. More than one in five TV news directors reported there had been an attack on their newsroom employees in 2021. The continuation of a troubling trend of increased danger to journalists. This is at home we're talking about, not in a war zone. At home in the U.S. That is one of the key findings in the latest RTDNA News House School at Syracuse University survey, the first report of which is being released.

Now, the second consecutive year reporting these physical attacks and verbal threats. So what kind of things are we talking about? Let me run down a partial list. One photographer was attacked while covering an out-of-hand frat party. One reporter was approached on the street and hit unprovoked. One reporter had a drink thrown at them from a car. Police detained a news crew covering a protest. Not the protesters, the news crew. One crew had its car surrounded by a

group of people who shook and pounded on it. Multiple reporters were spit on. That happened a lot in Ottawa during the so-called Truckers Freedom Convoy. Multiple reporters were spit on, and one was spit on several times. One photographer was hit in the face by a rock. One photographer was punched at a crime scene.

Several reporters were the victims of racist verbal harassment. One anchor received a death threat. Several crews had their gear damaged or broken. Several TV news directors reported their staff receives constant harassment, whether via phone calls or emails. Those are the TV ones. There are radio examples as well, where 77% of radio news directors and managers thought

the level of danger for journalists was actually about the same in 2021 as it was in 2020. 14% said it was more dangerous. But here's some of the radio examples. And remember, I keep underlining, this is certainly acute, more acute. We've had quite a few journalists killed covering the story in Ukraine. But at home, this kind of harassment, radio, a couple of journalists targeted by local and federal police while covering a protest were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets directed at them, at the journalists.

One journalist was stopped on the road while trying to cover a wildfire and told to leave because of his ethnicity. Those who stopped him said they'd beat him up if he didn't comply. One reporter had hot coffee thrown on him and his microphone stolen while covering a protest. It goes on and on. Now, these sound, I guess, in some ways minor compared with being shot at, like is happening in Ukraine. But this is not the way we think we like to operate in our own country with freedom of the press. There are challenges for the media right now,

and there are challenges the media has to respond to about the way it does its work. But this, in response from the general public, or at least elements of the public? Not good. Not a good situation. All right. I'm going to leave it at that on that note for this day.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce will join us. Thursday, an opportunity for your comments. And you may want to make some on this media question. I know whenever the kind of media landscape story comes up, you often have things you want to say. Love to hear from you. Love to hear from new listeners all the time. And lately we've been getting a lot from that group.

But keep it coming. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. If you have comments, send them in. Send them in today. Or send them in tomorrow. But that's Thursday's show. Friday, of course, is Good Talk.

Chantel and Bruce will be by. Okay, that's it for this day. This has been The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.