The Dispatch Podcast - Ukraine Under Attack

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

On today’s podcast, Sarah and Steve talk with Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine's former minister of finance. They discuss the history of Ukraine, its people, and what the last two weeks have meant for the country.   Show Notes: -NPR: “Kenyan U.N. ambassador compares Ukraine's plight to colonial legacy in Africa” -The Dispatch: “Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine Now?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Natalie Jurekow. She is American-born and served as Ukraine's Minister of Finance from December 2014 until April 2016. She spent 25 years in Ukraine and is here to talk to us about the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people and what the last two weeks have meant for that country. Let's dive right in. Natalie, thank you so much for joining us. I want to start, you know, with some history about how we get to this place after the fall of the Soviet Union. So can you walk us through what happens with the relationship between Ukraine and Ukraine? Russia as the Soviet Union falls? First of all, there were three leaders that met in a forest in Belarus, the Béjda agreement, that really led to what was a peaceful, nonviolent end of an empire that had long ago ceased

to function in terms of delivering value to the people of that country. And so the Soviet Union falls because the president of the Russian Republic, the Ukrainian Republic and the Belarus Republic meet and agree this just isn't working. And so from there in Ukraine, we have a referendum. And the referendum was in December of 1991. And in that referendum, every single oblast, like a state, including the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which was a different legal status in the constitution, but part of Soviet Ukrainian Republic, all voted in favor of independence. Then there's a declaration of independence that occurs after that, an actual independence kind of in December of 1991. In this effort, Gorbachev ceases to become president, right? And Boris Yeltsin

becomes president of Russia in the Russian Republic. And everyone is dealing with each other in a very different environment than having Moscow at the top of a pyramid giving instructions. Now, You know, that all these countries have become independent. Some, the Baltics, for example, who for years, as a child, I used to go on these captive nation protests where we would all, all the Baltic Americans, the Belarusian Americans, the Ukrainian Americans, we felt our people were part of captive nations. Well, now the Baltics became independent and went fast track into the EU, fast track into NATO. But the other non-Baltic countries all had, I would say, you know, a longer period of time in the Soviet Union, because the Baltics were only part of the Soviet Union from post-World War II. And so we had an extra 40 years of domination by the communist system from 17 through the World War II. And so it was a harder defining of oneself than it was for the Baltz.

In the case of all of the countries, including Ukraine, set up their own. independent institutions took time, something that's very different from East European countries after the fall of the wall, because they all had independent institutions, whether or not they were acting independently separate, but they had people trained and ready to move forward. So Ukraine then starts this journey. And the journey is one of being relatively, you know, I would say, it is a peaceful journey with Russia. In fact, in 1994, something is signed. called the Budapest Memorandum. And in 1994, that Budapest memorandum, in essence, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear

– yeah, had the third largest nuclear holdings in the world and voluntarily gave them up in return for security guarantees. And the signatories to that Budapest memorandum included Russia and the United States. Very important here. That Budapest memorandum was assigned – later Belmont – roofs gave up its nuclear weapons. And, you know, this is part of what I think was the beginning of potentially a very strong non-proliferation policy approach globally, which I think now is backfire and will backfire on all of us because those security guarantees have shown to be,

frankly speaking, meaningless. One of the signatories has invaded and is bombing the country. And so now when you think about non-proliferation with other countries, you have to wonder whether any offer of guarantees, it's ever going to be enough. Well, one is invaded, if I can just jump in, one has invaded another country, another signatory, and the other is not guaranteeing security, or at least taking minimal steps at this point. That's right. They're being supportive.

They're being supportive. Right. To jump back in history a little bit further, if I can, Vladimir Putin gave a speech on February 21st of this year, where he laid. out his version of the history of the Russian Empire, of the USSR, of Stalin's sort of great mistake in creating- Lenin. He blamed Lenin for other things. He and Stalin are more colleagues, and, you know, he's blaming Lenin for things. Will you walk through sort of what Vladimir Putin's version of the history of Ukraine is?

Because his version is that Ukraine's created out of whole cloth. It's a fake country. The borders were sort of created. And in fact, this was the great sin of the original USSR that the creation of these states, which weren't real, in a sense. So the myth that Vladimir Putin is pushing is in fact that it's a myth. There are a couple ways to look at it.

You want to go back in history, then let's go all the way back in history, to the 900s to the 800s. There was something called Kievan Rus. And it was a principality, it was a state. It became by the year 1040, 1070, one of the most powerful states in all of Europe and had married off its royalty to all the different European states. In fact, the queen of France was a Ukrainian princess. At a time when she spoke three, four, five, six languages.

And from what I've read, the French king did not. So Ukraine was based on this Kievan Rus. And Kiev and Rus was a major power in European politics until 1240. In 1240, the Mongols invaded Kiev and raised it to the ground. And in 1240, one of the princes, one of the relatives, went to a town called Muscovy and founded the principality of Muscovy in 1240, 300 years after, after Kiev and Russe became Christian. In 98, Kievan Rus became a Christian state,

aligning itself with the Orthodox world, primarily because at that point, Byzantium was a direct trading partner, and there are all kinds of other wonderful stories about they love the song in the church and so on, but primarily probably because of the trade along the Nibra through the Black Sea to Byzantium. So Ukrainians would like to say,

if you want to take a myth, It gets destroyed right there. They don't own Kiev. They never owned Kiev. And Kiev and Rus is the founding, yes, of what many people will say, the birthplace of all the Slavic countries. So Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, but it's Kiev and Rus. Now, Muscovy took the name Rus and called themselves later Russia. And from 1240, the Russian Empire appears.

But Ukrainians, after that, continue to have a very different culture, one based on democracy. And I think this is something that's very critically important. Cazaks, who have a variety of myths associated with them, had some of the first democracies in the region. In the 1600s, they elected their hechemons, their leaders. Ukrainians have democracy in their blood. The border is shifted. There's no question. The Polish Empire, the Lithuanian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

empire, all coming from the Turks and the Ottomans from the south. And Cossacks were fighting one with the other and allying with one party to fight the other. So in the 1600s, it was a complete mess of partnerships that went in different directions. One of the first democratic, written constitutions in the world, Pilip Orlik, one of the headmonds, one of the first written democratic comes from Ukraine, from the Ukrainian tradition. The Russians are not the Cossack. And they don't share our language, our culture, our custom, and clearly, to destroy the myth in today's world, clearly, the Ukrainian people have shown over the last two weeks that they are not the same as Russians. They may be Russian speaking, just as we Americans are English speaking, and yet we're not Brits. at some point those colonial ambitions and that colonial control ends and Ukrainian development has been so different from Russian development in terms of in the last 30 years freedom of speech freedom of the press freedom of religion something I think is really important to underline there is one state religion in Russia and everyone else is persecuted in Ukraine we have an all council of churches we have synagogues We have churches, we have, we have a Mormon, we have the largest Mormon tabernacle east of Dusseldorf.

We have mosques. We have, we have everyone cooperating, living together in peace and respecting one another's differences. That is not Russian society today. That is not Russian government today. And so when he expected to be greeted with flowers because he was protecting his people, you see that in no place in the country, no place, not south, not east. In many Russian-speaking areas, have they been greeted with flowers. Ukrainians have been willing to lay down in front of tanks to stop them.

They have jumped on top of tanks to stop them. Being a Russian speaker does not make you a Russian. There is hundreds of years of families, and borders changing. But at some point, you know, we're living in the 21st century and we have the Helsinki principles. And we've said never again. And we said that Europe, given borders in Europe are fluid

and have been fluid for hundreds of years, at some point you just have to accept borders. If you want to take a look at a fascinating piece, the Kenyan representatives of the UN Security Council spoke about what it would mean for the continent of Africa. If we did not recognize borders as they are today and instead try to recarve them based on what language people speak. This is just, the myth that he's presented, he's killed his own truth by invading and seeing how Ukrainians are fighting for a future that is completely different than the future he's offering the Russian people. I want to pick up on that. We will put that. That was a remarkable short speech by the Ukrainian, I mean, by the Kenyan ambassador. It was fantastic. No, the Kenyan speech at the UN was brilliant. I think it was two and a half minutes in total. It was a fantastic speech. We will put that in the show notes. I want to pick up with you of the rise of Vladimir Putin, the early days of Vladimir Putin. He comes to power in Russia, in effectively an

months, this extraordinarily fast move where he goes from being more or less a no-name prime minister, whether or not you believe that he had a hand in the bombings. I do. I think there's, I think it's pretty well established. Yeltsin leaves Putin ascends to power and consolidates power very quickly within a year. So this is 1999-2000 timeframe. As Vladimir Putin basically takes over in Russia and we watch his early years, what are you thinking of Putin watching from Ukraine? Well, in the early years, I think there was a belief that we could all live in peace and respect one another's borders and one another's differences. And, you know, there was a treaty for the use of Crimea for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Our largest trading partner was Russia.

And frankly speaking, the Ukrainian people were not particularly pro-NATO. And it is shocking to many Ukrainians today. You have video of Ukrainians in Kharkiv, the second largest city in the northeast, the first Soviet capital of Ukraine, walking dazed, thinking, how could this be? They can't even conceive of it. So I think for Ukrainians, it's been very hard. Ukrainians have, over time, come to understand that the paths have diverged tremendously. And so I think in 2014, that just was driven home, right? It was driven home with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Dunbas. And now we've been living...

with it, excuse me, for eight years. But I think back then, there was no sense. Yeah, there was no, I mean, I lived in Ukraine then, and there was not a sense that we were going to diverge in this way. There was a sense, in fact, back then, and I think it was the Clinton administration that began, is that, you know, Russia would be, would have a NATO partnership. You know, it was that we were all going to go in this,

let's call it, a path of European values and freedom and democracy. Right. And that obviously changes over time. And I would say that we probably didn't watch the signals fast enough how that was changed. Yeah. I mean, that was my next question. So when is it, when does it become clearer that what you had just described in those early days of Putin was not the case? Like, this is not somebody who's friendly.

This is somebody who might have territorial ambitions. this is somebody who was going to try to control Ukrainian politicians, politicians throughout the former Soviet Empire. He was aggressive. He wanted to extend his reach. When did that become sort of either apparent or undeniable? I think it becomes undeniable in 2014, undeniable in 14. And do you mean by that the annexation of Donbos, or do you mean what led up to that?

It starts with the revolution because, you know, he supported the president at the time, Yanukovych, and urged him, and we all knew he was urging him to use force against civilians, which in Ukraine, again, let's walk back for a moment, the end of the Soviet Union did not involve force. There was no force use since basically World War II on the territory of Ukraine. And, you know, for people that understand World War II in that region, it was a massive killing, right? And so using force is shocking to people who live through that. And I think the urging and the relationship and Putin's attempt to get Yanukovych not to sign the EU Association Agreement, you know, Yanukovych was brought to Saatchi, he was wine and dined and or whatever happened in Saochi. And then he comes back and he says, after years of everyone working on negotiating this association agreement, we're not signing.

It was an abrupt change, correct? I mean, this was unexpected. People didn't, whoa, what happened here? And then, you know, basically in November of that year, the students go out to say, wait a minute, it's our lives, it's our futures. We want to be part of. This is November 2013. 2013. Right. We want to be part of the free world.

Wait a minute. What do you mean after all this? And then, you know, he uses force on the students. And then when he used force against, when Nankovych used force on the students, you know, the parents, the grandparents, and every other person said, well, wait a minute, what society are we in? What, you know, what is going on here? And then that becomes the revolution of dignity, which unfortunately ends with sniper shooting

over 100 peaceful unarmed citizens in February of 2004. Live bullets. They switched from rubber bullets to live bullets. Right. Right. And those, I mean, those pictures for, you know, for, I imagine. many of our listeners were familiar with that. Remember those incredibly moving videos that we saw on the news that, you know, where people were using the lights from their phones on New Year's

Eve, people singing the Ukrainian national anthem. I mean, it was this moving, moving moment and had this, this, you know, strong hint of promise of what was to come. And then, Bad things came in 2014. When the president was forced to flee, they seemed ready in a moment to send in what they called little green men. But Ukrainians knew they were Russian. We watched it live, happening live. We learned at that point that our military had been completely destroyed. We had no military.

We shouldn't have been surprised. We had a Russian minister of defense for some period of time under that president. And he had basically sold and or, you know, destroyed everything that was there and there was no system. And we had to use civilian defense to stop the Dunbas, the eastern Ukrainian invasion after the illegal annexation of Crimea. But again, super important differentiation between Russian society and Ukrainian society is civil society, both in the Revolution and Dignity, in the rebuilding of a country post-revolution, you know, elections at every level from Parliament to, president to government, you know, when I was a minister from December of 14 through 16, you know, civil society was involved in every action we took, whether it was tax policy or whether it was budgetary policy. I mean, every action we took, we had, you know, NGOs engaged.

People were engaged in rebuilding and engaged in them defending in the East. And so that really is this period of understanding that Ukrainian society is never going to go back, never going to go back and that they're willing to pay the price. I think what we're finding out today in the last two weeks more than any other messages, Ukrainians do not take for granted peace and democracy. They're paying with their lives. And I know we're having a debate today about prices at the gas pump. And I respect how hard it is for many Americans.

I really do. All I can say is that we all need to have this kind of respect for democracy because otherwise we will lose it. We have to pay respect for democracy. It's too valuable to lose. 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

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like this, but to quote Batman, the person that Ukraine needed at the helm right now, perhaps. And right now he's faced with what to me is a really perhaps world-changing option with these Israeli peace talks. Vladimir Putin appears at least to be offering that he will remove troops stop the invasion and the war if the Dunbos region is. demilitarized. And if Ukraine doesn't join NATO. So as in he keeps Crimea, Donbos becomes something short maybe of an independent state, but not part of Ukraine either. Or that gets taken off the table and in not so many words, the violence will escalate exponentially from here. What is that choice to Zelensky in your mind at this moment to me where he

He has the world's attention. And for that matter, he is alive. To me, it looks like if you, on the one hand, turn down this offer, the world may say you turn down a pretty good offer for peace here to end this and to not have escalating violence. On the other hand, if you take this offer, you know, is this the Munich Pact where he's buying time and a year from now when the world isn't watching Putin comes back or, you know, Ken Zelensky really keep up. his own security 24 hours a day for the rest of his life. What do you think the Ukrainian people think about this deal? I can't speak for the president, and I can't speak for a person who has the burden to lead at such a most incredible difficult time. People are dying. Thousands of people are dying. I can say that from my perspective, there isn't a guarantee that Putin could

offer, in my personal view, that would be worth a piece of paper that it's written on. As I said earlier, we had guarantees, signatures. We also had a Minsk agreement with signatures. When we talk about, for example, demilitarized in Dunbas, well, that was what they were supposed to do. They were supposed to remove their troops, put their equipment according to the Minsk agreements, and then we can move on to the next issues, whether it was constitutional change, whether it was elections and so on. They never did it. I also feel very strongly that the number of people who die deserve more than that. And I may be not qualified to speak on it because I'm not there underneath bombs right now, right?

And so the Ukrainian people are the ones who really have to make that determination. But I would guess if there are many people who will share my view that, you know, we weren't part of NATO and we weren't on the fast track to NATO before he invaded. So frankly speaking, you know, saying that we won't be NATO, that doesn't explain why he just bombed city and killed thousands of people. That was all an artificial story, right? You heard from every player in NATO, Ukraine wasn't ready. We weren't on a fast track. We didn't have the map. I mean, every, it's artificial.

It's an artificial argument. So if that's what we're settling for, I have a hard time. Again, I just can't trust a party who has twisted every agreement and who has, you know, announced that the Ukrainian people don't exist. Again, let's use his words. He doesn't believe that our country exists, our people exist, our culture exists. So now he does?

Or what did he mean two weeks ago, February when he made the statement? What did he mean in his op-ed last summer where he wrote in Ukrainian, telling the Ukrainian people they don't exist? How long will it take before he's able to resupply, reorganize, maybe he's losing on the ground right now. He may be winning in the air, but he's losing on the ground right now,

and he needs to restock. I'm not a military. expert, but I wouldn't want to give them time to do it. And so it is up to the president and the people of Ukraine who are unfortunately having to live with that day and day out hour after hour bombing. But I would not believe the words. And in terms of you said the West, what security guarantees are they going to put up? Since you can't trust Russia and then what are those worth if the last ones weren't worth. I just don't, I don't see how you at a sufficient level of security to go forward like that. Well, two points to follow up.

Look at the pretexts he used for this invasion. I mean, they're so absurd on their face. He's going to denotify Ukraine. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. So you're going to trust him in peace negotiations when he's making these absurd. I mean, literally you had Sergei Lavrov the other day saying that there is, there's no bombing. I mean, we all see the bombing. It's hard to have serious negotiations with the regime that's doing that. Every humanitarian corridor they've set up, they've shot the civilians after they set it up. Right. You know, I, how, how is that word good? Right, right. Can I ask, ask you as you, as you watch these images, I mean, they're, you know, they're, they're heartbreaking for, for us. I've never been to Ukraine. I've, I've followed it,

I've read about it. I've been fascinated for years. I've never set foot in there, but this is your home country. As you watch these things, what goes through your head? It's a nightmare. I have friends.

I have distant relatives. I have colleagues. I live there for 25 years of my adult life, right? And I... It's a nightmare. the unfairness of it, Ukrainians have never been aggressive people and they haven't attacked or threatened anyone.

And friends of mine who are missing in towns that I see are completely bombed and I don't know whether they're alive or not. The families who have been separated because the men are staying and women may be taking small children out to Eastern Europe? No, I can't.

It's a nightmare. It's horrific. I mean, I grew up, my parents are World War II immigrants. They fled communism. They fled the Nazis. They came through displaced person camps in Germany to the United States. Always extraordinarily grateful for what the United States provided for them in terms of an opportunity to live freely and make a life.

And I heard stories about World War II all my life. And yet, this is just shocking. It's like grusny, right? They're bombing cities. It's a scorched earth approach, right? It's war crimes. You can't bomb kindergarten's orphanages and hospitals. That's not war.

That's just inhuman. And so it's just, it's a nightmare. There's nothing worse. There's nothing. How do you think? President Zelensky has captured the world's attention. Is it that he has this background as an actor and a performer? And so he is able to use the mediums available in the 21st century in a new way? Is it just, you know, would anyone leading Ukraine at this point have the

attention that he has? Is it specifically him? I've been struggling with that while watching, of course, old videos of him doing dancing with the stars. And playing Haggila. We'll put that, can we put that in the show notes, Steve? That might be a little racy for us. He's the voice of Paddington in the Ukrainian language. Yes, yes. That's a little better than the Havanaughal video, but in terms of family friendliness.

But what do you think of him? You know, I think he's risen to the occasion. And from time to time, you know, leaders put into a particular situation rise and he's risen he has shown he has shown his courage he has shown his willingness to stand with his people you know the famous i don't i don't need a ride i just need ammunition um he has shown his soldiers that he is with them at the most difficult time he is very human in terms of you said using media techniques and you know whether it's a selfie or whether it's He's impressed the world.

His speech to the U.K. parliament was as close to Churchillian, I think, as you're going to get. It's fascinating to me that the United States media, you know, he spoke to the Senate. And that was not broadcast in the United States, which I thought was a, the one mistake that I've really seen, I think, him make is that I don't think he asked for that to be broadcast. and maybe the U.S. Senate wouldn't have allowed it. But he is not spoken to the American people in the same way that I think would be, would force the Biden administration to respond to whatever he said. I can see why the Biden administration doesn't want that, for instance. But I don't see why our networks wouldn't welcome it.

He's also, though, to be very frank, he has used his own propaganda moments as well. So, for instance, that quote that you mentioned, I don't need a riot, I need ammunition. Fascinating. There's actually no record of that, of him saying that. It's based on one U.S. official, anonymous source. The U.S. government hasn't confirmed he said it. And interestingly, he hasn't confirmed he said it. Now,

whether he specifically said or not, whether he said it or not is living. Right. Right. So it's not the question, you know, it's the question the sort of genius of the rhetoric, the words, and their power versus not reality. But, you know, for instance, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, you know, the Snake Island soldiers who initially we were told we're dead, now it appears that they are not dead, moments like that where the fog of war has worked in Ukraine's favor at times.

as well. And I'm curious if you have thoughts on why he hasn't addressed the American people. I haven't, but I think it's a great idea. I'm going to make sure that's a long. You know, I think I'm guessing that he really wanted to have a heart to heart with our senators and Congress people without the press to prove to them that he meant it from his heart, right? Because when you're appearing for the press, you're, you know, that's a different audience. I think he wanted to get to the heart of, you know, how disappointed Ukrainians are, frankly, with the pace of our response. And, you know, I spend a lot of time trying to accelerate that pace myself. You know, we, we under, Ukrainians, you know, I'm a Ukrainian and I'm an American, and so I'm kind of in between here.

But without the United States, even the support that we have. would be possible. There's no question that the United States leads in the allies. The UK and the EU have really stepped up, which is great. But without the United States, I don't know where we would be. So we are always going to be grateful and must be grateful to the United States. But there is a disappointment that we're not doing more and doing it faster. And I think he wanted to convey that message in a way that they would understand was not for the press, but was for the reality of people are dying every hour don't make sanctions effective later in March

they need to be effective now people are dying every hour you can't consider that $14 billion package next week you got to consider it now and I just we talk about tranching sanctions what do you mean tranching let's if you you know I may or may not agree with the decision

to not provide a no-fizant I may feel differently but if that's your position well then use all the other tools in your in your toolbox to help us defend ourselves so the this the story of these planes from poland is it not ending agonizing story these mix need to be transferred to ukraine find a way find away and we're kind of playing you know who's who's who's got the who's got the ball here and in there are there are countless things i mean why are we sanctioning you know tens of people why aren't we sanctioning the entire political elite, the entire Duma, the entire government, all their families?

Why aren't we sanctioning the top 100 oligarchs until and unless one of them or another says we are separating ourselves from that, from the Kremlin? Why are we selectively cutting off banks from SWIFT rather than cutting off all state banks from SWIFT? why haven't we sanctioned state energy companies, state commodity companies? Why are our investment bankers still buying and selling securities? We need to stop financing and fueling this war. Okay, you don't want to be in it. We heard you, even though some of us might think that you have some responsibility because of the Budapest memorandum.

Okay, then do everything else humanly possible, and time is of the essence. Yeah, I think there has been a lack of urgency. And I think you're right that that's why Zelensky spoke to the Senate the way that he did. I was listening to the BBC yesterday and his speech to the parliament. The reporter who was covering this, the correspondent said, I've been covering parliament for three decades. I've never seen anything like it. And had people in tears, had people trembling at that. the message that he was delivering, and the message that he was delivering is, in a fact,

where is the urgency? Where is the urgency? And my criticism of the Biden administration is that it's lacked that urgency from the beginning. We just haven't seen it. The limited sanctions that you describe, we were laid on those. In many respects, we followed Germany. We followed the EU. We followed the UK.

the ban on Russian oil, the White House put out a statement late Friday saying that it wasn't going to happen and carving out energy trading through the end of June and only were, I think, dragged to it by Congress after Zelensky addressed Congress. It shouldn't take that in my view. I mean, I do think we have a moral obligation because of the promises that we've made. And I would think particularly President Biden, who's been involved in Ukraine policy for decades, watched as the United States after the annexation of Crimea said Russia will be isolated and then invited Vladimir Putin to a bilateral summit. we've we've not kept our promises as a country and i think at the very least given the suffering that you described just moments ago we have every obligation to make sure that it ends as soon as it

possibly can it's even beyond the moral obligation we in our world order that we live in and we benefit from is at risk we are our system our business if if you know today the turnover power plant was shut off from the electrical grid. That means it has 48 hours of power generation before it no longer has the cooling systems to deal with the nuclear storage there. That means that we have no longer the international organizations monitoring because we're shut off from WALBA. The Russians are in control of Chernobyl. Recently, they bombed one of the reactors, the largest reactor in Europe. The reactor didn't crack. Thank God. But what happens next time?

These risks are risks to all of us. It's not just about feeling sorry for the Ukrainian people. And I truly believe, again, if you listen to Putin's words, he has said that countries who sanction them are at war. He's announced that. He has said that countries who provide military equipment, whether it be the Baltics, Poland, are at war. He has said in the last two weeks that he doesn't believe that any of those countries

have their right former Soviet countries, which means the Baltics, have the right to join NATO. He has threatened Sweden and Finland recently for having ongoing discussions about joining NATO, which they're only having because he invaded Ukraine. They weren't having them before. So do we know for sure? Does anyone want to put money on it that this is going to end in Ukraine?

That this isn't going to affect all of us? I just don't believe that we need to take that risk. I believe we need to end this and need to use the tools that we have to end this. And we need to do it in an urgent fashion. Before we leave, I was hoping we could have a little language tutorial. So I have gotten very into etymology and language history, and it turns out that English, as you may know, is derived from Indo-European, like the all-Germanic languages, the Romance languages, Sanskrit, for instance, all come from this original language called Indo-European. Indo-European, by the way, as anthropologists and historians have placed it, around 4,500 BC, it began in Ukraine. So we actually owe our language to you. In return, I was hoping you would teach us how to say thank you in Ukrainian. I took Russian in college, and I feel like it would be inappropriate to thank you in Russian. So I'm hoping you'll teach us a few.

Ukrainian phrases, thank you very much, would be helpful. So thank you is three syllables. Jia, Ku, you. D-Y-A, Ja-ku-K-U-Y-U, Y-U, Y-U, Y-U. Ja-ku-Y-U. That's thank you. Thank you very much. You would add, duja, two syllables.

Dujé-ya-Q-you, which is very much thank you, but the orders, but it's thank you very much. Well, Natalie Dresko, Dujo, we're so thrilled to have you here today. I was so helpful to hear this history from someone who knows the country so well. And God bless the Ukrainian people, and may God keep Ukraine. Thank you very much. With Amex Platinum, with Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets

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