The Dispatch Podcast - Ukraine on the Brink | Interview: Tim Mak

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Tim Mak, founder of The Counteroffensive, joins Jamie from Kyviv to give an update about life on the frontlines and: -U.S. funding debate -What victory looks like for Ukraine -Trying Putin at The Hague -Not even close to diplomatic talks -What if Donald Trump becomes president again? -How to talk about your Republican uncle about Ukraine -Marshall law pushing off elections Show Notes: -Watch this interview on YouTube -Tim Make's X profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is an old friend, Tim Mack. You've seen his byline in The Daily Beast in Politico, or heard his voice on NPR, where he worked for a good period of time. Now, over the last year, he has started his own publication at Stubstect, the counteroffensive. News, where he covers the war in Ukraine, where we talk to him from Kiev, about what is going on there, what is the state of the war, what are the consequences? if the U.S. doesn't pass legislation to continue funding the war? And what it is like to cover a tragic conflict as intensely as Tim has covered this conflict? I hope you find this conversation as educational as interesting as I did. Without further ado, I give you Mr. Tim Mack. Tim Mack, welcome to the Dispatch Podcasts.

Thanks so much for having them. Let's start, Tim. But maybe just telling us where in Ukraine you are right now and where you are recording this interview and maybe giving us a little color, what time is it there, and what was your day like? Well, you never want to be too specific about your location in a war zone. Fair enough.

Let me tell you where I am generally speaking without, you know, addresses or GPS coordinates. I'm in the city center of Kiev, very close to, you know, the central part of the capital city here. And, you know, it's the evening here. It's the morning in the United States, but it's about 5.30. And I'm in a city that doesn't have really very reliable Internet access written. right now. I'm really glad we're able to talk, but a lot of Ukrainians don't have access to their cell phones or access to their home internet because there was a Russian hacking attack on Kivstar, the largest telecommunications provider in the country. And this isn't just, you know,

an idle threat. I mean, this is, it's not just, it's more than just, oh, I can't get access to my Instagram. People in Ukraine rely on. on the internet to get access to critical things like air rate alerts and to figure out when there's incoming drone attacks or missile attacks. So that's really been the setting of the mood this week is not having this critical infrastructure. And for those listening who will probably hear this when it's published Monday, we're recording this Friday morning, East Coast time, and as Tim just said, evening in Ukraine. Tim, let's begin then just with a general question. what is the state of the war in Ukraine?

Well, right now, we're at a period where Ukrainian political and military leaders are starting to acknowledge that the counteroffensive that had been underway in the spring and summer just hasn't yielded the results that they had hoped for. And that fierce fighting leading to thousands of deaths on both sides, both on the Russian side, more dramatically, but also on the Ukrainian side, has led to not tremendous changes in the strategic picture. And the question now is what to do next. And there's a real dreary attitude in Ukraine and Kiev right now, because there's so much uncertainty about what the strategy ought to be next, about whether they can count on the U.S. as a reliable ally, whether

aid is going to come through in 2024, but the EU will approve a package of military aid or allow Ukraine to enter as a member of the EU in the coming years, whether it can rely on security guarantees from whether it's NATO or other partners. Ukraine's feeling pretty alone right now. I think it's safe to say, even though there's a lot of verbal support, theoretical support, and a broad coalition of countries that support Ukraine, right now it feels very vulnerable. There's a lot of uncertainty, and there are attacks in Kiev on a near daily basis recently. As I mentioned, a cyber attack as well. There are just a lot of unanswered questions about what the future holds. And we're going to get into some of the issues you raise, particularly the funding

debate here in Washington. But what is it like in the mood? you know, sometimes we don't understand that, you know, cities operate when, when there's a war going on. What is, what is it like to live in the capital city of Ukraine, Kiev? What is, what is the mood like? And, and, you know, what are the conversations that you have with people on a daily basis? Is it all about the war, or does life go on while, you know, while war is going on from the front lines. Life goes on in some ways. People go out for dinner, they'll have a drink, but everyone rushes home in time for curfew, which is at midnight, and then waits for, you know, what is almost felt inevitable every day, which is a bunch of explosions waking up at 4 o'clock in the

morning and then trying to get back to sleep. I don't think I've had a conversation in recent months that didn't in some way, you know, revolve around the war. I mean, it's one of those things, you know, it's impossible to imagine having a conversation without. I mean, not every single conversation all the time is about the conflict. But there is no discussion of, you know, 15 or 20 minutes or longer that doesn't in some way touch on it. I mean, it's a part, it's this terrifying part of everyday life. And it's it's a war that has touched pretty much anyone that you'll come in contact with here in Ukraine, whether personally in a financial way or they've got family members on the front lines or they know someone who's been killed or terribly, terribly wounded. Everyone's been touched by it. And it is obviously, you know, it's like the predominant topic of conversation.

You mentioned one of the conversations happening in D.C. right now is a question over aid Ukraine that's being tied. to a debate about border security. It's unclear how that will play out. Are those topics that you hear on the street that people are talking about this debate in Washington? Is that something that has occupied a lot of the debate on, you know, local TV? Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's astonishing sometimes to go to foreign countries. I'm an American and, you know, you go to the foreign countries And you sometimes feel like people in foreign countries are keeping a closer eye on American politics than Americans are in a lot of ways. You know, I've been to foreign countries and they've gone into just the tiniest pieces of minutiae, citing Newt Gingrich and the contract with America in the mid-90s to make a point or something like that. That happened to me recently when I was reporting in Taiwan, you know, people really, really pay it.

It's not an abstraction. Foreign policy isn't an abstraction to the residents of Taiwan and Ukrainians, part of their daily lives. And it makes a difference as to whether or not people live or die. And so, yeah, I mean, it is as important as any local political debates that are happening is what's happening in the U.S. House and the U.S. House and the U. U.S. Senate. What do you think the consequences would be if there was no aid package? I mean, it seems like a possibility that there will be no aid package that is passed. I don't know what percentage chance that is, but it's not zero. What happens to Ukraine if that's the case? It's hard for me to tell, but I think whatever happens, it will be catastrophic for the Ukrainian

war effort. You know, a lot of people are describing the war in Ukraine poorly, I think, by calling it a stalemate. And the stalemate doesn't quite capture the ferocity, the fighting that's happening to keep the lines as they are at the particular moment. You know, there are artillery duels happening as we are talking. These artillery duels are happening. And they're expending thousands upon thousands of rounds in order to keep the battle lines where they are right now. And in order to sustain

that amount of fire and in order to sustain the amount of drones that they're putting out there, longer range missiles that they're putting out there, they need Western support in particular from their until the state, closest ally

and support of the United States from America. So without it, I think we're having a conversation in 2024 about whether Ukraine will be put on its back foot and might be forced into a defensive posture to hold what it has rather than what we're talking about this year, which was a counteroffensive to regain territory. And in any case, it would be a real catastrophe, like I said, a real catastrophe for the Ukrainian war. Let me ask you about, I was doing some research for this interview. Obviously don't follow Ukraine as closely as you do, but it's not a

daily focus in my reading. And I went back and read a Time magazine piece from October. It was a profile of Zelensky. And so my question, and I'll read the quote, is, is the war winnable even with the aid? Because this is what it said in the article. In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky's close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged. We don't have the men to use them. A rather astonishing fact that's been reported publicly is the average age the Ukrainian soldier is 43 years old. You can't even join the U.S. Army if you're older than 35 without an exception. It tells you the tragic fact of

how many young people have been killed in the war thus far over the past almost two years now. And it means that from a manpower standpoint, Ukraine needs to develop and execute a strategy that gets replenishment of their ranks. You know, you hear all sorts of stories here in Ukraine about people just being pulled off the streets or while they're working out at the gym and conscripted right on the spot to go fight.

I mean, it's a daily fact of reality. But what we haven't heard yet is that is a high-level strategy from the Ukrainian government as to how they're going to address this problem. And 2024 is going to be a difficult year if they don't find a sustainable strategy to bring that figure down and to get enough troops to do the fighting that's necessary to be done. What does victory look like for Ukraine? If you ask 100 people, they'll give you 100 answers.

Everyone has a different idea of what it means in their mind. Some people say, oh, it means the return of Crimea and all the territories from the original borders of Ukraine. One Ukrainian politician had a really interesting definition of victory, which I think is illustrative. He said that I'll know that Ukraine is one when I'm able to go into the airport at Kiev and take a flight to the Hague where I can watch Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, get tried at the International Criminal Court. And so that definition of victory has two elements. One is the resumption of normal economic activity. You can't fly in Ukraine right now.

You can't take a plane into the country because of active hostilities. And then the second element is the element of accountability for the atrocities that have happened. But, you know, again, ask people. this question, and you'll get a range of answers from the money that they feel like they're owed from Russia to territorial, regaining territorial possession of what they call temporarily occupied areas, to financial recovery and the resumption of economic activity and accountability for the violations of law and human decency. that have been committed by Russian forces.

It's a really broad and difficult question. Obviously, one would hope that you could have justice like that. But I guess my question to you, are either of those scenarios realistic, either taking back Crimea and some of those other territories or the idea that Vladimir Putin is going to be tried at the Hague? I don't even know.

How would that happen? Well, governments collapse. Administrations change. People fall out of favor. Vladimir Putin is the leader of Russia right now, but he might not always be. It sounds like a far-fetched scenario, but it's certainly not impossible. And, you know, a trial at the Hague means more than just the actual court process of having a world leader be brought in front of cameras or whatever. else. Firstly, it's a signal of international moral outrage about actions and war crimes committed.

It's a restriction on Putin's ability to travel freely throughout the world. And so there are lots of different measures of accountability that may not involve the direct physical presence of Vladimir Putin at the Hague that could lead to some personal responsibility being imposed on on on putin for his actions um without you know it you know but that doesn't sound like an immediate likelihood um but you know the stranger things have happened and there are things short of that um that outcome that would still impose similar costs as for the regaining of territorial uh integrity of ukraine and sovereignty over temporarily what they call temporarily occupied areas.

The war is ongoing. I mean, you could have looked at various points in the American Civil War, in World War I, World War II, obviously parts of the Korean War, and said, well, the war is lost and been quite pessimistic about the outcome. What I can say is that right now, the will to win among the vast majority of Ukrainians has not diminished. They very much want this to happen. And the question is, will they get the support from its closest allies in the U.S. and in Europe who have said, many officials have said that they'll be with Ukraine as long as it takes, was that, did the U.S. really mean it when they said that? Did Europe really mean it when it said that? Or will that just turn out to be hollow? I mean, that's the big question among Ukrainians right now. Certainly, they can't make large

scale territorial gains without continued support from its closest allies. I think that's pretty clear. Well, I think you anticipated my next question, which is, is that the mood on the street that this is not a question about settling for less? This is about going until there is a breakthrough in potential victory? I mean, is there any a constituency in Ukraine for some sort of deal short of returning all the territory that Russia took from Ukraine. To get a deal, you need to start negotiations. And what a lot of people outside of Ukraine forget is that for many years, since the illegal annexation of Crimea, Ukraine was involved in negotiations with Russia and made very many

concessions in order to come to some sort of diplomatic solution in eastern Ukraine. And what did they get from this? they got the full-scale invasion of the country, what is now more than 100,000 alleged war crimes committed on their territory, untold number of people killed and wounded, lives changed forever, and that was the outcome from their last round of talks with the Russians. No matter how bad it's gotten and how pessimistic folks are about the future right now, I don't sense of mood at all in terms of opening up diplomatic talks.

We're not nearly to that point, I don't think. I mean, it just, I hear people talking about talking, but I think ultimately they know that there's a long road ahead before any negotiations could, you know, feasibly be suggested and implemented. And that's just to start conversations. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change

and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two

bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on Trust Pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project,

Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics

and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch,

use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. what do you think vladimir putin's current goals are i mean what i mean can you speak to what his original goal was with the war i mean it seemed like it was broader in the beginning he was uh you know marching uh farther uh uh west um what was his goals in the beginning and what you see as his goals right now if they're any different yeah his original goals were to extinguish the idea of ukraine as a separate identity separate from uh from the idea of russia um and the what he what he would call the Ruski Mir, the Russian world. Russia, and the Russian government and Vladimir Putin just don't think that Ukraine has

the right to exist as a separate entity. And he intended, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, to subjectate Ukraine, to bring it back under the control of Russia in practice and in terms of authority. And I don't see that his, I don't see that his aims have changed. He was at a, he had a kind of statement or press conference, however you want to call it this week. And he still thinks that his goal for this full-scale invasion is to, quote, de-nazify and, quote, demilitarize Ukraine. His goals haven't changed. And for all the West's unity in the early days of this full-scale invasion, Vladimir Putin made a bet that in the long term that fissures will form in the coalition to support Ukraine.

And the question is, is he right? Will the United States validate, you know, Vladimir Putin's long-term strategic bet? That remains to be seen. That is up to Congress, and that's up to the EU and various European states. But right now it's looking pretty dark. Well, it also seems to be even if Congress funds Ukraine this time, it seems partly up to the 2024 presidential. election. What is the discussion on the streets of if Donald Trump wins again, becomes president again, which seems like a very possible outcome in the United States?

Purely from the perspective of the Ukrainian war effort, it would be a catastrophe. I think there's no argument about it. It's funny, I've been thinking a lot about how this country in Eastern Europe has become such an important part of the political conversation in Washington, D.C., across the U.S. for the last decade. Everything from, do you remember the platform at the RNC in 2016 when the Trump campaign intervened to change the language to be more pro-Russia? I was in the room, sorry, I was right outside the room when that platform debate was going on and I was writing about it all the way to that phone call that.

that Trump called the perfect phone call where he blackmailed Zelensky trying to get dirt on the Bidens in order to get a personal political advantage to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I mean, Ukraine has become, from 2014 and the annexation of Crimea onwards, the central issue that's that's really had huge impacts on American foreign policy thinking and what America really views as its role in the world. What do you, I mean, explain, there are a lot of voices in the United States who don't see a consequence to Ukraine losing. They might want Ukraine to win, but it's unclear to them what the kind of consequence would

be to the United States in the West. What would you say to them? Well, we did a story on counteroffensive. News about, it was titled, How to Talk to Your Republican Uncle about Ukraine. And what we did was we, I mean, one of our big philosophies at the counteroffensive as a publication is to use human stories to illustrate the news and to make it more personal, to make it more compelling, to make you feel a little bit more of a connection to what's happening. And so we told the story of a man named Oleg Sentsov, who is a filmmaker. turned soldier, fighting on the front lines. And we post that question to him. I mean, what are the strategic challenges here? And it turns out that what he said was the same answer that was the result of focus groups held by Republicans who support Ukraine to try to figure out what

works in terms of talking to your Republican friends or family members in order to convince them that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do. The big thing about this is, that Ukraine, what America does with Ukraine isn't isolated, it's just what happens in Eastern Europe or Europe more broadly. What happens to you in Ukraine is a message to authoritarian's all around the world, most especially Xi Jinping and whether he feels like it's in the strategic interest of China to try to redraw borders by force like Putin is trying to do right now. Originally the message of Ukraine was that the West will band together, unite, will sanction you, will send weapons to your opponent, and will isolate you. The message over time to Putin and to China and

to Bashar al-Assad and to authoritarians all over the world is that if you stick the course, Western unity will crack. And, you know, all those denunciations are going to end up fading. ultimately, it's a terrible message to send to autocrats everywhere. You write at the counteroffensive a lot, or at least I read this week, about domestic politics is still going on. I think you're at a protest locally. You see fighting back and forth, Klitsko, of Atali Klitsko, the mayor of Kiev, called Zelensky, becoming more authoritarian. Speak to, like, the domestic politics, the internal debate. And is it possible that, I think there's no elections during the war, but is it possible that this war will continue and we could see a new leader of the country other than Zelensky while they're fighting Russia?

There's supposed to be. They're scheduled, there was scheduled an election in 2024. But right now, all signs point to that being postponed because of martial law. And so in the near term, it's unlikely that there was. will be a presidential election and Zelensky were placed. But, you know, Ukraine is one of those new democracies, yes, but one that was formed on the back of popular protest. It is a country with a really vibrant and active civil society. And they fight about everything, you know, as a healthy democracy does. People disagree very urgently with one another about issues large and small. And there are fights between the mayor of Kiev and the president of Ukraine. There are, you know, very passionate discussions about how the budgets ought to be done. And there are protests. I was down at a protest earlier this week in the stinging rain

in the cold. There's snow and ice on the ground and people are out there chanting over an issue that you would think, you know, not that many people would be on the streets about. They're chanting about the Kiev local city budget, and they're arguing about, well, should we dedicate more money towards fixing roads, or should we just send all the money to the military and focus on the war until the war is over? That's a healthy thing in any democracy. And standing there amongst the chanting and the demonstrations and the protests, seeing myself really for the first time since the full-scale invasion began in this in this crowd of young people demanding political change it was really refreshing and it felt like you know this is this is what freedom feels like

this is what the point of freedom is is to be able to do this and this is the sort of thing that doesn't happen in russia um it's funny i mean i i've met a lot of people who say you know Zelensky didn't vote for him, but, you know, he's really stepped up in a way that I never expected he would. He stayed in Kiev when the full-scale invasion began at great personal risk. He didn't flee, and I respect them for that. That said, they'll continue. I wouldn't vote for him next time. And that's like, that's like a, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's the right of every democratic citizen to be a weirdo in this, in this political sense, you know? I mean, it's, it's like, it's like, you know, the guy right behind you, actually, Churchill after World War II was immediately voted out of office.

Your listeners might not see this because we're talking on a video conference call, but right behind, Jamie, there's a big portrait of Winston. Big Churchill holding a Tommy going to my office. You know, Tim, I want to close at the end just with you just telling a little bit of your story and how you came to cover the war in Ukraine. But I do want to press one point that kind of pop. into my mind, and I didn't press at the time, because it does seem a little bit of a dichotomy. And that is, on one hand, there seems to be no, all the Ukrainians seem to believe that their only choices to fight on. On the other hand, you have recruiters who are having to sometimes take by force people who don't want to go and fight in the war and having trouble actually recruiting people to go to the front lines. If you could just speak to how we should take those two pieces of information. Yeah, I mean, the tragedy of this war having gone for nearly two years

and the incredible number of fatalities on the front lines has meant, and we've written extensively about this, and my Ukrainian colleagues at the counterfeit have written about this in very moving in passionate ways. The terrible fact is that the people who are most motivated to join the military in the early stages, many of them are now dead. And Ukraine has lost some of its best people in terms of creativity, in terms of passion, in terms of motivation, in terms of civic duty. Ukraine has lost some of its best people.

And what I'd say to that is I'd turn the mirror on the United States. Did the United States require conscription in World War I and World War II? Did it require conscription in the Vietnam War? Of course it did. It did. Does that mean that the causes were not just? Did that mean that the United States was improper in pushing their citizens? War is a terrible thing. And looking at the conditions on the front line, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

To be bombarded in the cold and in the dark, sitting in trenches that are either filled with mud or filled with ice. These are things that, you know, people, you know, your average person would be crazy to jump up and volunteer for. I'm not excusing it, but I'm trying to explain, you know, why it is that people need to be pushed into these situations. And conscription is a reality here in Ukraine. I think most people understand that. And it's an inevitable result of the war lasting far longer than anyone would last. like it to beat. It was about a year ago, Tim, I think.

We were at a bar in Washington, D.C. You were thinking about next steps after NPR. You didn't know which route you were going to take. And then all of a sudden, I read that you're starting a publication. You're going to go live in Ukraine where you had covered for NPR. What has it been like to, A, be a kind of a go from journalism to journalist slash entrepreneur in terms of starting a publication and running a business covering, you know, a very sad many times and difficult subject.

I just want to give you the floor to talk about that a little bit. It's one of those things I thought I was starting a journalism initiative. And it turns out I'm launching a startup in a war zone. And all the things as a journalist you take for granted, being done behind the scene, suddenly you're in charge of it. When you start a small business as any one of your listeners who has done that, knows, suddenly you're in charge of legal, HR, marketing, taxes, management. And then on top of that, you're in charge of, you know,

the journalism, editing, writing, photography, and everything else. And that's been a real challenge beyond the logistical challenge of working in a war zone to begin with. And in terms of feeling, one of the things that, you know, that I've tried to describe to folks is that there's a sense of stress and anxiety that falls on you that sticks with you as long as you're in country. There's no place really, even though you're not at the immediate front lines, when you can really fully relax and, you know, unclunch your fist, you know. Because at any moment, an air alert can sound, any moment drones can come in or missiles can come in. But here's the thing. I'm really motivated.

The counteroffensive has been really interesting as a publication. And your listeners can check it out at counteroffensive. News. What we try to do is we try to differentiate ourselves from your average straight news. We take every story of the news from the perspective. of a person going through it. We do really deep human profiles that center on people who are going through in many instances the worst days of your life, or the worst days of their life.

And we try to do these compelling personal stories that illustrate what's going on at a ground level in Ukraine. And that's been really interesting. And it seems to have struck a chord because it's very different from the other kinds of journalism that that's coming out of Ukraine right now. We don't just tell you what happened today. We introduce you to a person who went through it. And that seemed to motivate people to read us. And I'm really, really grateful for folks who have expressed an interest. Tim Mack, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thanks so much for having you.

Thank you.