The Daily - Ukrainians’ Choice: Fight or Flee?

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest in Europe since World War II.With the full-scale assault entering its second day on Friday, Ukrainians are coming to terms with the reality that the unthinkable has actually happened.We explore the significance of this moment and speak to Ukrainians on the ground. Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Russia continued its attack on Ukraine early Friday, one day after it invaded the country by land, sea and air, killing more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.Europe faces a new refugee crisis, and harsh economic penalties meant to punish Russia are expected to reverberate worldwide. Here’s what might happen next in the Ukraine crisis.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.

This is Sabrina Tavern. You see it's 915 and we just got to the railway station and there's a huge crowd of people standing outside. Oh my god. Hundreds of people standing outside the railway station. It's a young man in the morning in central Kyiv. I'm at the bus station and it's actually packed. Long lines of people trying to pack onto buses. Just overheard a young man saying, there are no tickets, there are no tickets, I don't know what to do.

Walking up to the bus station, just overheard a young man saying, there are no tickets, there are no tickets, I don't know what to do. Walking up to a large white bus, two large white buses, people are arguing over who gets to get on. The driver's saying, let's do it without chaos, let's do it without chaos. Calm down, calm down. People are scrambling to leave and are in shock. Hi, guys. I'm a journalist from the New York Times. Can I ask you a question? Yes, of course.

Are you trying to leave Kyiv? Yes, we are trying to reach Lviv and then Poland. And then Poland. Yes. How are you feeling right now? Maybe a little bit. Afraid of Russian. It was too much and expected to hear the explosions near the houses.

So yes, we are afraid. What time did you guys wake up this morning to hear it? We didn't sleep. All night, we didn't sleep. Do you guys have a plan for Poland? Do you have a plan for the other side? We expect to buy tickets to Turkey, to Antalya and live here there in villa. So wait for the end of war and then come back.

Just wait it out? Yes. I want to stay here but my friends want to leave so I think that it's correct to go together. Thanks for talking to me, guys. Yes. Good luck. Thank you. What's your name? Dmitry.

Dmitry, this is Sabrina. I'm a reporter for New York Times. I'm doing a podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I'm happy to be here. This is Dmitry. He's looking at a bus going to Lvov that is absolutely packed. His bus was supposed to leave at 9.

Tell us again the name of the city. We took it to Stryi. I called my friends all around Ukraine yesterday and everybody was intending on fighting. I will also take my friends to the military base. I myself am taking my family to the village outside Lvov and coming back and signing up immediately for military service. Thank you. I think if there's one sound of Kiev this morning so far, just after 10 o'clock in the

morning, it's the sound of wheelie bags being dragged over cobblestones and pavement. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. As Russia's full-scale assault on Ukraine enters its second day, the people of Ukraine are starting to come to terms with the reality that the unthinkable has actually happened. Today, my colleague Anton Troianovsky explains the significance of this moment, and Sabrina Tavernisi, Lindsay Garrison, and Michael Schwartz

speak to Ukrainians about the agonizing decisions that they now must make. It's Friday, February 25th. Anton, we are talking to you on Thursday night in Moscow. We are coming to the end of day one of this invasion. Help us wrap our heads around what's happening and the significance of what we're all witnessing. Because even if we've been hearing warnings about this for weeks, it's hard to believe that we're now experiencing a full-scale

attack on Ukraine by Russia. Yeah, it is really hard to believe. It's the biggest attack of one nation on another nation in Europe since World War II. It is really kind of the worst case scenario of all those scenarios of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine that have been discussed. It's something that, you know, I've spent just about every day writing about this crisis for the last two months or so. And honestly, even until yesterday, I didn't think that this could actually happen. You know, it's Europe's most powerful military bearing basically its entire firepower, much of its firepower, against a neighboring country. So since about 5 a.m., we have seen cruise missile, ballistic missile strikes against infrastructure targets, military targets in Ukraine. Then during the day-to-day, we started seeing footage coming in of helicopter assaults, of paratroopers landing, of tanks rolling across the border.

And this is happening from three sides, from the north, Belarus, from the east, Russia, from the south, from the Black Sea and Crimea. You know, it started, what, like 18 hours ago or so, and it's still very hard to just wrap our heads around the magnitude of what's happening. And what do we understand to be the end goal here at this point? Well, Putin laid it out quite clearly in his early morning speech. He said, our goal is to demilitarize and denazify, in his words, Ukraine. And just explain that, because denazification is not a familiar phrase in 2022. Exactly. And I mean, I would say until recently, it hasn't been a familiar phrase in Russia either. But, you know, the Kremlin and in their propaganda, they consider the democratically elected government of Ukraine a Nazi regime. They claim falsely that it has perpetrated a genocide on Russian speakers

in eastern Ukraine. And so Putin is trying to claim the moral high ground here. He is saying he's going in to remove this evil regime. And what that means is this is a full-scale military assault to topple the government, most likely, of another country. This is just a massive undertaking that we're only seeing the beginnings of. So we're talking about a sovereign nation in Europe being attacked by another European nation and its democratically elected leadership being, by what you just described, deposed. And these are developments that are unheard of in modern Europe. So how should we think about that? Yeah, I think it's really the end of a certain post-Cold War order in Europe. It's the end of 30 years of Russia trying to use diplomacy as well as his kind of hybrid warfare tactics to try to large land war in Europe to achieve what it describes to be its aims. It's just a totally different world that we're in now. Well, so let's talk

about the consequences of that for all involved. Yeah, I mean, I would break it up into a few different parts, you know, the consequences for Ukraine, for Russia, for Europe and the US and the rest of the world. So starting with Ukraine, this is just the beginning, I fear. If this continues, if this continues the way we think it's going to, to Putin pursuing regime change, it could get much more bloody. So we don't know yet what happens to the cities. There is a fight for territory going on in eastern Ukraine, where those separatist regions are. But, you know, the big question is, will they go into Kiev? Very scarily, it looks like they may well. Okay, So what about Russia, where you are based? What are the consequences you are seeing and expecting there?

Well, so people are expecting a new crackdown on civil liberties, on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, even on business. The reason being that whenever we've had crackdowns here in Russia, the justification has always been that the Kremlin is hunting down internal enemies who are serving some kind of foreign agenda to destabilize the country. So that's certainly one thing to watch over the coming days and weeks is how much of an additional crackdown is there. Tonight we had pretty significant anti-war protests. In Moscow and St. Petersburg and in a number of cities in Siberia,

all told several thousand people were in the streets and there were more than 1,500 arrests. So one thing that's very important to point out is there has been next to no outpouring of support for this. of anger, disbelief, fear. To see your country inflicting so much suffering on a neighboring country is awful. And this narrative for why it was necessary to do it, it really does fall apart quite quickly upon inspection. You know, how does Ukraine actually threaten Russia? Can it really be true that the Ukrainians were planning an invasion of these pro-Russian separatist areas in the east, just as 150,000 plus troops were surrounding Ukraine on three sides? There's just so much in the Kremlin propaganda narrative that doesn't hold up that I think a lot of people aren't buying that story.

Okay, finally, let's talk about the consequences for the United States and for the rest of the world. So President Biden and the EU announced major sanctions today against Russia. And Russia has promised to respond, potentially asymmetrically. So we might not see sanctions by Russia against the US, but we might see Russia take other actions that could cause harm and pain in the US. And we can really only speculate what that would be. Some folks are talking about the potential for cyber attacks. Here in Moscow, there's been a lot of talk that Russia could base missiles or other military assets in Latin America to more directly threaten the United States. Russia obviously is one of the world's biggest energy suppliers, especially to Europe.

obviously is one of the world's biggest energy suppliers, especially to Europe. If it were to turn that spigot, that could cause incredible problems for Europeans. So there is so much uncertainty here still, not just in Ukraine, not just in Russia, but really about how this crisis plays out and what it means for the rest of the world. And Anton, as you're preparing to sign off for the night,

I want to return to Ukraine and where this situation leaves its people at this moment. I mean, it's a horrible situation. These are people who I think there was so little expectation that Russia could actually go ahead with this kind of invasion. And now they are making choices they never thought they would have to make. Do they stay in Kiev? Do they try to flee west? Do they try to get out of the country? Do you sleep in the basement?

It's really an unimaginable situation for millions and millions of people right now. Well, Anton, thank you. We'll talk again soon. Stay safe. Thank you. We'll be right back. All day yesterday, my colleagues in Ukraine and back in the U.S. were speaking with Ukrainians around the country about their experiences of the past 24 hours. Hello. Hi, how are you?

Hi, Lindsay. Not good. Not good. Not good. Lindsay Garrison got on the phone with Denis Sorkov, who lives in a city called Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. I am doctor, chief of Dnipro Regional Children's Hospital. You're a doctor at Dnipro Regional Children's Hospital. Yep. And I'm chief of NICU, N-I-C-U. Chief of NICU.

Exactly. Got it. Can you just tell me a little bit about what the past 24 hours have been like for you? So, in the morning, we wake up and we have heard first rocket explosions near Dnipro airport. So, I was in my hospital. We were nervous.

We were confused. my hospital. We were nervous, we were confused. Everybody was near laptops or iPhones and checked the news and the news

were and are dramatic. Dramatic. How were you understanding this did you think that this would happen honestly no we were expected

for the beginning of the attack but we didn't know that it could be so fast so fast, so, so, so right now. So now the borders between Ukrainian regions are closed. We had some possibilities and some efforts to go last week.

I can't explain but something stopped us. We hoped that finally everything will resolve

but now honestly I don't know exactly what to do. What do you think stopped you? My family didn't want to leave Ukraine. Because we love Ukraine and we wanted to live here happy and in peace and so on. So I said, okay, maybe everything will be not so bad. Let's wait. So my main question for myself is if I made the very, very big mistake not to move from Ukraine when I have an opportunity to do this. That's a heavy question. Yes.

Either there was a big mistake or not so big and I have no answer. or not so big? And I have no answer. I can ask you, do you want to wake up in the morning and understand you should go forever? Not for one day, not for two days, forever.

Can you make such a decision in, I don't know, in 10 minutes? My question to you. Yeah. To bring just a bit of water, just a bit of food, single clothes, documents, money, and go outside your home forever. Can you make such a decision? Just imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

So, this was my family feeling last week. Even yesterday in the evening, I told to my wife that this is the last calm day we can evacuate. In the morning, we realized that war came to Ukraine. Not conflict. Not disturbs. War. Conventional war. What are your children asking you?

How are you talking about this with them? I say to my children, everything will be okay. Your father will care about you. How old are they? My elder daughter is 30 and she lives abroad. And my younger daughter, she is 14. She is with me. How is she doing?

She believes me. That you'll protect her and how does that make you feel that she believes you I will do all I can to protect her I don't know exactly what but I will do everything. Everything I can.

Are you worried it won't be enough? I'm worried. Everything could be changed. I don't know next few hours even next few maybe minutes Thank you. It's 3 o'clock and we're getting out of the gas station. So I'm looking at this line. I'd say it's maybe... 30, 40 cars long.

20? Everybody's limited now. You can only get 20 liters of gas. Walking up to an ambulance that's waiting in line for gas. The ambulance is being ushered ahead. The man who's managing here says he's too busy. He's running, trying to usher the ambulance to the front of the line. I'm going to talk to another person.

My name is Sabrina. I'm a journalist from the New York Times. Can you talk to me? What's your name? Valery. This is Valery. Valery, are you going to leave Kyiv? No. I live in Bralor. I'm listening to the bombings there. I live there. Это Валерий. Валерий, вы собираетесь уехать из Киева? Нет. Я в Броварах живу, вот слушаю, там бомбят нас, я там живу. Я слышу, я слышу на радио, что они нас бомбят. Я живу в этой области, что они нас бомбят.

Не верится, никто в это не верил, никто не думал, что так с нами поступят. Соседние страны, которые называли нас братьями, вот так поступили с нами. Никто не верил, что они будут действовать по нашему пути. Мы братья. Мы родные страны, мы братья. Никто не верил. Вот так поступили с нами. В принципе, нормально, но чувствуется тревога. Созваниваюсь со своими родными, мамами. Они интересуются нашими... У нее все нормально. Она пожилой человек, плохо слышит и плохо видит. И поэтому она не понимает, что происходит. They are interested in our... She is fine. She is an elderly person. She hears and sees badly. And that's why she doesn't understand what's going on.

He said she's an elderly person. She doesn't see very well and she does not hear very well. So it's very difficult for her. She's not understanding what's happening. Where to next? We'll stay here for now. We'll try to fill the tank with gas. Maybe we'll have to go to my mom. So, so far I'm going to hunker it down in place, but I'm getting as much gas as I can because I might need to make it to my mom's.

I bought some food. Got all my phones, passports, documents. I bought... Milk. Vermicelli, bread. Um... Milk. Milk and dill and sour cream. I'm gonna talk to another person.

What's your name? Yura. Yura. Nice to meet you, Yura. I'm talking to Yura, who's getting some gas. Says he does not plan to leave. I'm a little shocked. I'm a little shocked. Russia attacked Ukraine, and it's very bad.

Russia attacked Ukraine, it's so bad. We will defend our country. We're going to defend our country to the last drop of blood. defend our country to the last drop of blood. Tomorrow I'm going to sign up for a territorial defense force and I'm going to defend my country. It's 3.30 and we're driving in central Kiev and this is just a closed town right now. The day is still very grey. The sky is very low.

It feels sort of raw and cold and wet. The air has a kind of bitter smell of ordnance. It's the smell of the air after an airstrike. smell of the air after an airstrike. Someone carrying a gun and some body armor down the street. A very sweet little bakery. I'm going to come in. Я журналист из газеты New York Times. А меня зовут Сабрина.

Я очень хочу кондитерское. Я сейчас куплю. Но тоже интересно ваше мнение, если не против. I'm a journalist from the New York Times and I would like sweets but also her opinion. Today there's panic. People are panicking very strongly. You can see that they've bought me out of bread. So I'm doing a bit of panic buying myself two large bags of cookies, three candy bars, 10 quiches, and a bunch of almond croissants. It's three, one, two.

Uh-huh, excellent. Thank you. Are you going to leave? No. I'm asking her if she plans to leave. No, I don't plan to leave. So you're going to leave to somewhere else? I really don't have a place to leave to.

You're here. I'm here. You're already home. I have my home here. I think everything will be okay. I think everything will be okay. I have my home here. I think everything will be okay. Today is the hardest day. I think tomorrow might be easier.

Okay. Back to the hotel. Everything's closed now. It's almost as if it was nighttime. A few cars still going by, but... Almost no pedestrians. This very central street is just completely deserted. It does feel ominous. Day one of the war.

It's been a very long day. The town I'm in, Slavyansk, kind of continued on as normal. There were bits of panic that could be evident. There were lines at the ATMs and people were stocking up on medications. But overall, the mood was pretty calm and collected, probably because these people have been through this before. The town came under heavy attack in 2014 when Ukrainian forces clashed with Russian-backed rebels who had come in from the east. And so when I'm walking around town, people are telling me that this is just part of their lives. Very few people I met around town today said that they had any intention of leaving, even though rocket attacks hit an airport nearby and Russian forces were fighting with the Ukrainian military just a few dozen kilometers away.

I met a woman named Lera Alexeevna who was in the courtyard near my hotel. And she had stuffed her pet hairless cat in her jacket. And it was shivering. And she was telling me how she was planning on going to work at a company that sells cash registers and bringing her animals with her so that they wouldn't have to be alone. So if she had to make a quick dash for it, she could be with her animals. But she said she had no intention of leaving, mostly out of fear that she would be forced to leave behind her pets. Outside a blood bank in Slavyansk, I met a young man named Bohdan Kravchenko, who was just sitting in his car listening to the Ukrainian national

anthem cranked up on high volume. He had just gone and donated blood. And he said he wasn't panicked, but he said that he was acting according to the situation and that things had only just begun. I walked up to a base of the National Guard unit here in Slavyansk. And out front there were a few couples, men dressed in drab green uniforms and women. All of them were being sent off, the men. They were all being sent off somewhere.

Some of them said they couldn't tell me where they were being sent. Some of them admitted that they didn't even know. I met one couple, Yelena and Yevheny. Yelena had brought Yevheny, her husband, some clothes that he was going to take with him on his deployment wherever he was headed. Another couple just held each other headed. Another couple just held each other for what seemed like 15, 20, 30 minutes, just held each other on the street in the sun ahead of whatever deployment this young man was being sent on. My name is Lyubov Vasilyevna. Lyubov Vasilyevna. And what is your last name?

I don't need a last name. And then I met Lyubov Vasilyevna, a 75-year-old pensioner. She was carrying a bag filled with newly purchased loaves of bread. And she said she had spent her last bit of cash on and was waiting in line at an ATM. It would appear that there was no cash left. All she wanted, she said, was to live in peace in her native Donbass, which is what this eastern region is called. And then she paused and recited a poem that she said she wrote two years ago that was supposed to be evocative of the peace that she was looking for.

And I'll read that poem that I translated from the Russian into English. I'm so looking forward to peace, but it is coming to us so slowly. We still have a little patience. Peace is close at hand, and we're waiting for it to arrive. Without gunfire, without blood, enough has been spilled in Donbass. Let the sun smile and the sky brighten And the children smile Let it go in a black moment There will be peace for all And people will say God heard us

Let all stormy skies leave us And hail Donbass and the city of Slavyansk. Thank you. It's 11.30 a.m. on Friday in Kiev. Last night in the city there were a lot of airstrikes, and it seems like they're getting closer. Excuse me, excuse me. Do you want to come in too?

No, no. Come on. The airstrikes are beginning again. You can hear the siren. We're trying to decide whether to leave. Our colleagues, a few of them drove out this morning because it's really unclear what's going to happen. Will there be a big fight with the Ukrainian military or will the Russians just come in?

What will happen if they take the city? And it seems like that is imminent. So we're trying to make arrangements. Our hotel doesn't have a generator, which means we would be out of power if the power gets cut off in the city, which is a pretty good chance. Yeah, we're trying to figure it out.

I guess, like a lot of people here, we're trying to make that decision. Should we leave or should we stay? As of Friday afternoon in Kiev, Ukrainian officials were bracing for an attack on the capital city, as Russia's military offensive pressed closer to the heart of the government. Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, boys and girls, our defenders. In a televised address, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that at least 137 Ukrainians, military and civilians, had already been killed. And he called on Ukrainians to defend themselves against Russian forces, saying that nobody

else would come to their rescue. Zelensky, who was unshaven and in a T-shirt, said that he himself was now Russia's number one target, followed, he said, by his own family. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, three former Minneapolis police officers were found guilty of federal crimes for failing to intervene as a fellow officer, Derek Chauvin, killed George Floyd by pressing his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. The case is believed to be the first time that the federal government has charged

police officers for inaction when a more senior officer was using excessive force. Two of the officers were rookies at the time of Floyd's death, but the jury rejected their defense that they had been trained to obey superior officers like Chauvin and to carry out orders without question. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Rochelle Bonja, Lindsay Garrison, Rachel Quester, Caitlin Roberts, and Claire Tennesgetter. It was edited by Lisa Tobin and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Dan Powell and

Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Corey Schreppel. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennisgetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung,

Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderplug, MJ Davis-Lynn, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell,

Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Aastha Chaturvedi, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Aastha Chaturvedi, Caitlin Roberts, Rochelle Banja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badajoe, Rob Zipko, Alishaba Itub, Chelsea Daniel, Moosh Zady, Patricia Willans,

Rowan Nemisto, Jody Becker, Ricky Nowetzki, and John Ketchum. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Schumann, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sophia Milan, Des Ibequa, Erica Futterman, Wendy Doerr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday. Thank you.