The Daily - How Ukrainians View This Perilous Moment

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Officials in the United States say that Russia could invade Ukraine as early as this week, which raises the question: Should an attack come, how will the Ukrainian people respond? The answer may be complicated. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been a real push and pull between Russia and the West inside Ukraine. We hear about how Ukrainians are viewing the threat. Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter with The New York Times.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: A trip along the Dnieper River explores what it means to be Ukrainian at a moment of extreme peril, as the country debates Russia’s place in its past, and its future.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Today, U.S. officials say that Russia could invade Ukraine as early as this week. My colleague, Michael Schwartz, traveled through Ukraine to understand how Ukrainians are making sense of this perilous moment. It's Tuesday, February 15th. So Mike, you've been in Ukraine for a couple of weeks now. Tell me what it looks like. What does it feel like there right now? I arrived in Kiev at the beginning of January,

and there's all this noise about military buildup and they're planning for war. And you get there and nothing is happening. The streets were quiet. There was no military vehicles on the street, no soldiers. People weren't lined up at ATMs taking out money or stocking up on groceries. And as I do when I arrive in a new place for a story, I went out and took a walk around town. The one place you go when you arrive in Kiev and you want to take the pulse of what is going on in the city

is Independence Square, where everybody gathers anytime something big is going on in the city is Independence Square, where everybody gathers anytime something big is going on in the country. And when I got there, it was fairly empty, but I took a walk up the hill behind the square, and I happened upon a small wooden chapel, and there is this black steel and granite monument with these kind of spectral faces taken from real-life photos of individuals with their names, their ages, and the cities where they came from. And this is the monument to what Ukrainians call the Heavenly Hundred. These were individuals who were killed in a heavy shootout over several days in Kiev in 2014

during an uprising that the Ukrainians have come to refer as the Revolution of Dignity. And what is the Revolution of Dignity? The Revolution of Dignity started actually in the fall of 2013. Ukraine was set to sign an association agreement with the European Union, a trade agreement that would have locked the country in to a kind of Western course. But under pressure from Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, the president of Ukraine at the time backed out of the deal. And on its face, it seemed like a pretty minor thing. But Ukrainians took this to be a major betrayal by Ukraine's Kremlin-backed government and

poured into the streets to express their displeasure in what became a months-long occupation of this square, Independence Square in central Kiev. And so, after months of protests in which these protests refused to leave the square, in which the government is slowly losing its grip on the situation, the government ordered its riot police forces to open fire on the crowd in an effort to disperse them, killing 100 plus people. And this was really an inflection point in Ukraine's history. Because shortly after this, the protesters were able to drive the Kremlin-backed government out of Kiev and install a new government.

And this is a point that Ukrainians look back on with a great deal of pride that they were able to, through the force of numbers, through the force of their own will, overturn what seemed to be an inevitability, that Moscow would continue to have a say over the affairs of the country. They were able to stand up and put a stop to it would continue to have a say over the affairs of the country, they were able to stand up and put a stop to it

at the cost of these 100 lives. Oh, wow. So this memorial's become a pilgrimage site for people all around Ukraine. And as I came up to inspect this memorial, there were two elderly women there in headscarves cleaning up the site. And I approached them and asked them to describe what it is that the memorial stood for.

And one of them turned to me and said, well, this is a memorial for the heroes of Ukraine. What she's saying is that every time one of the individuals who died during the uprising in 2014 has a birthday, she hangs their photos on a little holder here and rings a bell. So, Mike, it sounds like this is very much a wound that's still alive, that this was a real moment in Ukrainian society, like it changed something. I think it changed everything. It was such a shock for people to witness their own government firing on children and elderly people and their own citizens, these people who came out to express their dissatisfaction.

It was such a shock to them that Russia could be behind this, that Russia would be supportive of this action. And it is really, as you said, it has really scarred people and it has changed the way they think about their country. It has changed the way they think about themselves. I had an encounter with a young woman on Independence Square where I started speaking to her in Russian and she looked at me quizzically, even, and started speaking to me in Ukrainian,

and when I conveyed to her that I couldn't understand what she's saying, I'm Ukrainian, a language is Ukrainian, so how am I supposed to speak Russian? And said, you know, I'm a Ukrainian citizen, I'm in my own country, I'm going to speak Ukrainian, not Russian. Especially now, it's a war between two countries, and at least what I can do is to show that I respect my country through language. So, Mike, you're describing this real kind of turn away from Russian language

and kind of Russian-ness. Did that surprise you? It didn't surprise me. And that's because this is Kiev. Kiev is a cosmopolitan place, and you'd expect people to be more Western-oriented. People are wealthier, they travel more, and so they feel the pull of Western culture. But, you know, I've covered this part of the world for 20-some years now, and everybody knows that Ukraine is more complicated than that, that there's a push and a pull in Ukraine between Russia on one side and the West and the other. There are those who consider themselves Western, those who consider themselves strongly Russian. And this is a defining feature of the country, and it has been a defining feature of the country since the Soviet collapse in 1991. So this is weighing on my mind as I think about the possible scenarios for a Russian attack on Ukraine. We know what Putin is after. He wants

to return Ukraine to what he considers Russia's sphere of influence. We know that the West is not willing to come to Ukraine's rescue in this case. They're not willing to send troops. But the big mystery at this moment is how the Ukrainians are going to respond and what they're going to do should an attack come. Are they going to rise up and mount some kind of resistance? Are they going to throw up their hands and accept that they will never leave Russia's orbit? And so in order to get a better sense of where Ukrainians are at, I set out from Kiev into a part of the country that typically leans more Russian to get a better sense of how they're feeling about this current moment in which some are saying that Ukraine is

facing perhaps its greatest peril in decades. And where did you go? I rented a car in Kiev with the photographer Brendan Hoffman, and we decided to drive south. And once you get outside Kiev, the land quickly opens up into these fallow, brown-green sunflower fields that stretch along for miles and miles. And one of the towns we stopped in was called Dnipro, and this is an important city. In 2014, after these protests toppled the government in Kiev, Vladimir Putin struck back.

-♪ Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Very strong. He annexed the Crimean Peninsula, In Kiev, Vladimir Putin struck back. He annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and he also instigated a separatist war in a region in eastern Ukraine called the Donbass. This basically cleaved a small chunk of eastern Ukraine off. It was occupied by these Russian-backed separatists. And the town of Dnipro, it's about 150 miles away from the epicenter of the fighting. And it is a place where injured soldiers are brought to receive treatment when they suffer wounds on the front.

to receive treatment when they suffer wounds on the front. And so the city plays an important role and very likely stands to be affected in a major way by any military action that might occur. And so who did you meet in Dnipro? I visited a hospital for the rehabilitation of military veterans. for the rehabilitation of military veterans. And there I met a retired sergeant named Alexander. And he told me the story about how he began the fight in the war in 2014 in the East and how traumatic that was for him.

But as we talked, he made a very interesting revelation. That he was born in Russia. Okay, so Alexander's born in Russia, becomes a Ukrainian soldier, and then fights against Russian-backed separatists in 2014. That's right. And all the while, he has family members in Russia. And he describes this moment in 2014 when he called an aunt that's still living in Russia

to check in how she's doing. And almost immediately, he said, she starts to curse at him, asking him who he thought he was, some kind of Ukrainian rebel. And she yells at him, tells him not to call her anymore, accuses him of killing Russians in the street. He tried to convince her that this wasn't true, but she wouldn't change her mind, and that was a break in their relationship.

He said that after that, they stopped talking to one another. And this was painful for him, because at the time that she was accusing him of killing Russians in the street, these accusations sort of mirrored the Kremlin propaganda at the time that she was accusing him of killing Russians in the street, these accusations sort of mirrored the Kremlin propaganda at the time. But what was in his head, he said, was the memory of Ukrainians who were being killed. And he sort of drifted into this reverie. And he told a story of a 22-year-old soldier.

It's 2014, the war is going on. And he describes seeing this soldier at breakfast and saying hello to him. And by lunchtime, he learns that this 22-year-old soldier, who has a young wife who's's pregnant, and a small child, had been killed in the battle that morning. And he says it's something that he could never forget, but more importantly, he says it's something he can never forgive. How did he describe the emotion of that journey? Born in Russia, then fighting Russians, then fighting his own family, and then losing a friend. He described it as incredibly painful,

but what he said is that it forced him to make a decision about his identity. And what he chose, he chose Ukraine. This is our territory, this is our land, this is our people, united. And we will stand for them until the end. And when I asked him, with all of these troops on the border and the threat of war looming, whether he would fight again, he said yes. We are doing it right. We are trying to separate ourselves from the Russian world? What do you think if a huge neighbor comes to your apartment and dictates your rights,

and you kick him out? Did you do the right thing? Yes. That's what I think. I think the same about Russia. He had this metaphor to describe it. He said, if you had some giant neighbor who was constantly coming into your apartment and ordering you around, wouldn't you try to throw him out? We'll be right back. So where did you go next?

I traveled across the Dnieper River to a steel mill that was built across the Dnieper River from downtown Dnieper. And the interesting thing about this steel mill is that all the signs are in Russian. I want to see all that stuff get melted down. I know! And this is one of the larger steel factories in Ukraine, and sort of the pride of Dnipro.

Huh. And Mike, what's the story of this factory? So the factory was opened in 2012. And at that time, not just the factory, but all of Ukraine was hugely dependent on Russia as a market for Ukrainian goods. And the opening of this factory was not just a Ukrainian success story, it was a Russian success story. So much so that the director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg,

a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin, gave a concert at the opening. Oh, wow. So this kind of iconic Russian ballet director gave a piping that the factory produced also went to Russia. And this was just emblematic of how close the ties were between Ukraine and Russia. In 2014, the war begins. And again, this town, this factory, is less than 150 miles away from the front. And the border is sealed and the business dries up. All of the business that this factory had with Russia comes to an end.

In 2014, the company sold nothing to Russia. So it sounds like this is an example of another break. I mean, another change inside Ukraine. This one is economic, not emotional or familial. But, you know, nevertheless, it's like 2014 just flipped a switch for this factory. And now its business is really Europe-facing and no longer Russian-facing. Right. They had to completely change their business model. They had to enhance the quality of their goods and make colossal investments in the factory in order to raise their standards to sell in European markets and North American markets.

I spoke to the presswoman who described 2014 as a trauma, but one that nudged Ukrainian businesses to find other ways to develop and improve themselves. Mike, where else did you go? I'm here in Cherkassy, walking out onto what I hope is a mostly frozen Dnieper River to talk to some ice fishermen. So far the ice appears to be holding, but it is certainly mushy. I went to a town in central Ukraine called Cherkasy, to a frozen part of the Dnieper River where a number of men were out on the ice fishing. I mean there are definitely cracks in it. Here for example. Yeah, yeah. And there for example.

And I walked out and tried to talk to some of them. I walked out and tried to talk to some of them. Journalists from the New York Times newspaper, what if we shoot? Most of them dismissed my presence, and one of them cursed me out. Oh, no! Telling me that he's a fisherman and he doesn't discuss politics.

But further out on the ice, I met another man who was more talkative, and his name was Victor Berkut. And he's out there with his fishing rod dressed head to toe in camouflage. An elderly man of 71 who comes alone and spends his days when he can out on the ice fishing. And we get to talking and I find out that in fact he was in the Red Army for 28 years and served all over the Soviet Union, from the far, far east of Russia to Siberia, up north in Belarus. So this is a man that was very much a Soviet born and Soviet by tradition. So I'm thinking this is going to be a guy who thinks that Ukraine, which had been joined to Russia in the Soviet Union for decades, that this is going to be a guy who wants Ukraine to remain within Russia's orbit, even though it's independent.

Like you'd very much expect that he would have a pro-Russian view. Right, right. And these are the type of people that do have pro-Russian views, the nostalgia for their Soviet youth. And so I asked him about the current situation, about the troops amassed on the border. And I nearly fell through the ice when he responded. Why? What did he say? He said that Ukraine should join NATO, a Western military alliance that was set up for the purpose of countering the Soviet military

that he was a part of for 30 years. And he said that Ukraine has chosen not a Russian direction, but a European direction. And he starts bad-mouthing Russia. He says that Russia believes itself to be a country chosen by God and almost talks about as if Russia needs to be put in its place. And that if Russia were to be put in its place. And that if Russia were to attack Ukraine, he said,

he was almost certain of the Ukrainian response, which would be to stand and fight. And what did you make of all of this? I mean, what Viktor Berkut was telling you. It's astonishing. The fact that this man could, late in his life, become Ukrainianized, to see himself as a Ukrainian patriot as opposed to a Soviet man, a man who grew up in the Soviet Union and served in the military, which was such a source of pride for millions of people. It's really, really jarring.

And to me, what this showed was that Putin was perhaps making a very real miscalculation. What do you mean? Well, no one really knows what Putin believes in his heart. But he, over the summer, published an essay in which he explained his thoughts on Ukraine. And it was a very long history of the ties linking Ukrainians and Russians. And the essence was essentially that Ukrainians and Russians. And the essence was essentially that Ukrainians and Russians were one people. They were of the same cultural, religious,

and linguistic background, and that they belonged together. And he went even further to say that an independent Ukraine without Russia couldn't exist, and accused the current government somehow being poisoned by Western interlopers who had come in and lured them away from what was right and true in their country. And after all of these interviews that I've conducted on this trip through Ukraine,

the one thing that is clear to me is that Ukrainians have changed. And I don't know that Putin has sensed this. And in many ways, the start of that miscalculation by Putin goes back to 2014. And it forced them to think differently about themselves, to think of themselves as Ukrainian, not as part of this broader, Slavic, rucified world that Putin likes to think exists, or says he thinks exists. They started to think of themselves as something different. So in some ways, unwittingly, in trying to grasp Ukraine closer to Russia, Putin has, in fact, forged a national identity where before there was some ambivalence.

He's accomplished precisely the thing that he set out not to. Right. The exact opposite of what he set out to do. He had hoped to wrench Ukraine back into the Russian world, into Russia's orbit. And in fact, he's pushed it further away than it's ever been. You know, I keep thinking about all these towns that I visited over the years. And when you used to drive around Ukraine, every town had its Lenin statue and its hammer and sickles engraved into government buildings.

And when you travel around Ukraine now, you don't see that anymore. All of that has been toppled. The Lenins are gone. The hammers and sickles are gone. The Lenins are gone. The Hammers and Sickles are gone. And what they've been replaced by are these memorials to the Heavenly Hundred protesters who were killed in 2014 and war memorials to soldiers who were killed in the battles against Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country. And in many ways, this war, this conflict that Putin began in 2014, has allowed them to make their final break with their Soviet past. And when I'm thinking about the troops on the border,

the threat of war that is now hanging over this country, I've been asking people what they'd be willing to give up in order to save themselves from the war, to spare perhaps tens of thousands of lives. What are they willing to give up in order to save themselves from the war, to spare perhaps tens of thousands of lives? What are they willing to give up for Ukraine? Would they give up half of Ukraine? Would they give up additional territory? Would they give up the lands in the south, the border on the Black Sea?

And I get the same answer all the time. Do you think that Putin is going to stop at the Dnieper River? Do you think he's going to stop with central Ukraine? And I asked this question of Viktor, the ice fisherman, and he responded with a metaphor. He said that if you stretch out your hand to Russia, they will take the whole arm. Like this? Yes, like this.

And then there is a path. I see. It's a little bit better now. It was very nice. Thank you very much, Victor. очень приятно спасибо So, Mike, this stronger Ukrainian identity you're talking about, what does it mean for the current situation? Does it mean that if Russia invades, Ukrainians will definitely fight? I mean, the people you spoke to are saying that they will, right? But I guess I'm thinking of the situation in Afghanistan in which, you know, suddenly you had the government fleeing the country and the army giving up and a whole other power just occupied the place really without a fight.

the place really without a fight. And Ukraine in some ways has some similarities, right? Exhausted by wars over decades and really generations, and also kind of practical and sandwiched in between a giant power to the east and the west that really opposes that power. So what do you expect to happen? And what does this real shift in attitudes tell us about what might happen? I think that's fundamentally what the question is now. And it's really hard to know because, you know, as soon as tanks start rolling through the streets and rockets start falling, people's brains get scrambled. brains get scrambled. One thing that we do know, though, is that in 2014, when Ukraine came under attack the first time by a separatist movement provoked by the Kremlin, the Ukrainian military fell apart. It was non-existent. And the only reason Ukraine didn't lose more territory is that you had these college students and history professors

and people all over the country who joined up in these volunteer brigades that were equipped by companies like this steel factory I visited in Dnipro and really rose up to fight against these separatists and forced Russia to send in regular troops and equipment to push them back. Half the country could have been lost if these volunteer brigades didn't appear almost overnight. And as I traveled around the country, you know, everybody that I talked to said they would fight. The veterans who were in rehabilitation in the hospital said they would pick up arms again and fight. Students that I talked to said they would fight. People who had lives and children and futures said they would pick up their arms and fight.

And Putin does not fully understand who the Ukrainian people have become. So if Putin decides to invade Ukraine under this assumption that Ukrainians are just like Russians and will just accept it and capitulate, he could be sorely mistaken. Mike, thank you. You're welcome.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced it would relocate its remaining embassy staff in Ukraine from the capital, Kiev, to Lviv, a city in the western part of the country. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited the, quote, dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. After discussing with Cabinet and Caucus, after consultation with premiers from all provinces and territories, With premiers from all provinces and territories, after speaking with opposition leaders, the federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations.

Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, declared a national public emergency on Monday, a rare step that was part of an effort to end protests that have paralyzed Canada's capital. The move was the most aggressive by authorities since the crisis began more than two weeks ago and would allow the federal government to expand measures to reopen blocked border crossings and clear the blockade of about 400 trucks in Ottawa. I want to be very clear. The scope of these measures will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate

to the threats they are meant to address. On Sunday, authorities managed to reopen a critical bridge between Ontario and Detroit by arresting demonstrators and towing trucks. And Donald Trump's longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and his family business, saying that it could no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared for Trump.

The firm told the Trump organization to essentially retract statements from 2011 to 2020 and to notify anyone who had received the statements that they should no longer rely on them. Trump used the statements to secure loans, which are at the center of two investigations into whether Trump exaggerated the values of his properties. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison and Muj Zaydi, with help from Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by Lisa Chow, contains original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Dimitri Hovind. Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.