The New Yorker Radio Hour - Joshua Yaffa on What’s Next for Ukraine

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

The contributor Joshua Yaffa, who was based in Moscow for years and has been reporting from Ukraine since the start of the war, speaks to David Remnick from Kyiv. There, Yaffa says, the latest news from Russia—including threats of nuclear attack and reports of political upheaval—has been treated with near-indifference. “Ukraine has been in the fight for its survival since the end of February, fully aware that Russia is ready to throw any and all resources at the attempted subjugation of the Ukrainian state,” he says. “And after things like the massacre in Bucha and other areas outside of Kyiv, earlier this spring, there’s not much that can surprise or shock or scare the Ukrainian public about what Russia is ready to do.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Our contributor, Joshua Yaffe, is on the ground reporting in Ukraine where the news has been absolutely stunning. A counterattack in Ukraine that has Russian forces in retreat. Vladimir Putin reacting by calling up recruits and threatening nuclear war. And distinct signs of political rebellion and despair in Russia at its war. as thousands of people have fled the country, and many more are taking to the street in protest. Joshua Yoffa was based for years in Moscow, and since the war began, he's reported for us consistently

from Ukraine. I reached him there last week. Hey, Josh, how are you? Nice to talk to you. I'm reaching you in Kiev. That's right. Yeah, I arrived a few days ago. Now, the news that's coming out of Moscow, the news that's coming out of Ukraine is astonishing, and it's hard to know where to start. But Putin's mobilization effort seems to be a disaster in so many ways. It sparked protests at home, people leaving the country. How is it being received in Ukraine?

Is there some sense of, weirdly, some sense of celebration about how badly it's gone? I would actually say that the latest news out of Moscow has been treated in Ukraine with a kind of indifference almost. In other words, Ukraine has been in a fight for its survival since the end of February, full aware that Russia is ready to throw any at all resources at the attempted subjugation of the Ukrainian state. And after things like the massacre in Buccia and other areas outside of Kiev from earlier to spring, there's not much that can surprise or shock or scare the Ukrainian public about what Russia is ready to do. Now, you've lived for years in Moscow, and recently you've been living elsewhere in Europe and been in and out of Ukraine, a great deal. But I'm sure you're in touch with people in Moscow. Has the so-called bargain ended? The bargain in which Putin basically says, I will let you live your private lives if you stay out of politics. Are we suddenly seeing signs of politics on the streets of Moscow in a way that we haven't before?

I'm not so sure I would say we're yet seeing politics on the streets, but I think we are seeing politics emerge, at least in the consciousness of people's minds. There's a saying I've heard both among Russian acquaintances also here in Ukraine that on September 21st, the day when Putin announced this mobilization, that's when Russians really understood what had happened on February 24th. In other words, the Russian people, many of whom were able to live with this kind of illusion, or at least with the ability to not pay much attention to what was going on in Ukraine. There was polling done from places like the Levada Center, an institution. I know you know well, really the last independent sociological research organization of its type left in Russia

that was showing by the summer half of all Russians were paying little to no attention to what was happening in Ukraine. And that really is what Russians support. And that really is what Russian support, as it were, for the war boiled down to. It was support through not paying attention. Putin, as you mentioned, has imposed or sort of forced the Russian people to see themselves now as part of this war through mobilization. He simply didn't have the forces anymore in Ukraine to continue the fight. So he was really left with no choice. But to go for this mobilization if he wanted to continue the war. But of course, in so doing, he has greatly upended the war. the social and political contract that you described.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. You're in Kiev, you're talking to political leaders, you're talking to military leaders. How do they assess Ukraine's prospects in the coming months? People here are, of course, optimistic. Certainly, the success in the Harkiv region really emboldened a lot of people, both in society and in the military, that in fact Russia could be defeated. That was an important proof of concept for a lot of people here. But I think that Ukraine now believes it has a path to victory that it's certainly going to continue to pursue. Is Ukraine overconfident

in that sense? We'll see. I do think that the military balance of power fairly and objectively favors Ukraine. The question is, you know, will that actually translate into battlefield victory? It's one thing to keep Russian forces from sacking Kiev as Ukrainian military managed to do in the spring. It's another to dislodge them from positions in the south and the east that Russians have dug into now for months or in the Donbos in some cases for years. Statistics are hard to come by, reliable statistics. I'm just reading a piece that David Kortava, our colleague, will have coming out in the magazine in a couple of days, in which he says that Mariopo, the city of Mariopo, was completely destroyed, and Russian forces had killed 21,000 residents and had bombed out 90% of the buildings in that city. Is there any sense of casualties on both

sides? Not really, I think, is the most fair answer. We have these estimates for military casualties. Ukraine has its own numbers saying upwards of 50,000, I think at this point, much higher than that. Russian soldiers killed, several thousand of its own killed. Russia has essentially the mirror image numbers about losses. Western intelligence services and governments have weighed in, also suggesting the losses, certainly for Russia are extraordinarily high. As to the civilian toll, I think, I'm afraid we know maybe even less about that. I think that there are thousands of uncounted losses in Ukraine, especially we

take a place like Meriupil, now under Russian occupation. There was just a really ghoulish story today. I read just in the hours before we were having our conversation that the children's ombudswoman in Russia, a government official whose job is ostensibly to protect the rights of children was talking about how Ukrainian children evacuated, you might say, taken, stolen out of Meriupil after it was seized and taken by Russian forces now have arrived in Russia and they have undergone, as she put it, a positive trajectory from being critical of Putin and singing the Ukrainian anthem to now loving Russia and understanding the virtue of Russia's activities in Ukraine. And I think that gets to the really dark nature of this war with real echoes of the Second World War. And we only see in really grim,

tragic scattershot ways like that story, the overall human toll, which I think remains impossible to estimate. Putin has made nuclear threats in the past and is still doing so. How is that being received in Ukraine? Here, I think it's interesting to talk about a real dichotomy or difference of reaction in Ukraine and in the West. In Ukraine, that's another element of Putin's recent policies, recent escalation that Ukrainians don't pay that much attention to. For Ukrainians, this war has been existential since the very beginning. I think Putin knows that either threatening to use a nuclear weapon or even deploying a small tactical one, small, relatively speaking, right, still horribly destructive with incredible human toll, wouldn't really scare off or deter Ukraine. I think the real

audience for this kind of saber-rattling is the West. The idea is to scare the West off from continuing to and courage and arm Ukraine for these continuing counter-offensives. And Putin's bet is that the West will be so freaked out by the very prospect of nuclear use that it will do anything it can to essentially pressure Kiev to cut a deal. I'm not so sure that's going to work. If you hear the statements of people in the Biden administration, they don't seem to be, at this stage, buying into or all that scared by Putin's ratcheting up of the nuclear rhetoric. but you could imagine a scenario in which the triangle, Moscow, Kiev, Washington becomes more difficult, more fraught if these threats continue

and a different calculus around escalation and avoiding certainly nuclear escalation clicks into focus. You could potentially see some policy disagreements or friction between Washington and Kiev. Again, Kiev unable to be deterred, and Washington perhaps, if not can be deterred, certainly has a different calculus in thinking about that. the nuclear issue. Josh, Kremlinology is always a mugs game ever since people tried to figure out where people were standing on Lenin's tomb during a May Day parade and figuring out, you know, the leadership

intrigues from it. Your one-time job. I found it unbelievably intriguing that Putin would schedule a speech for a particular date, as he did last week, and then cancel at the last minute after keeping people waiting, having one of his officials tweet, you know, go to bed. We'll see it tomorrow. And then he gives the speech. It did not speak of great stability in the Kremlin. Is there any way to know what's going on when you read these reports from on telegram from so-called Kremlin insiders talking about great instability? Do you believe them? And do you think that Putin is in political trouble to the extent where he may

be overthrown? I know very little and would put very little faith in anyone who, who claims to talk about actual palace intrigue inside the halls of the Kremlin. But there's enough evidence publicly available to certainly speak about some turbulence inside the ruling system writ large. And so you're seeing rifts emerge on state television, right? Different camps emerge, even within the ruling system. And those kinds of dynamics are, by definition, destabilizing to the Putin system, which really had this vertical of power in which all. all members of the ruling system from top to bottom were on the same page.

Now they're not on the same page. And I think that that can't be good for Putin and his continued rule. Finally, Josh, it seems to me, tell me if I'm wrong, that the minimum Putin would accept or signaling that he would accept to come to real negotiations is that he gets to keep Crimea and eastern Ukraine, that he freezes into place a larger version of what he had before. he came in. On the other hand, on the Ukrainian side, it seems to me unanimous as a position that Ukraine will not accept Russian presence in any part of Ukraine at all, including Crimea.

That's certainly the mood right now. And again, it's hard to overestimate, at least is where we are late September, early October, the importance of the success of this Harkiv counteroffensive, because that really proved to the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian military, political leadership, that it's possible to kick out Russian forces from areas of Ukraine they occupy. And right now, that is absolutely the intent and the mood. And as long as that continues to seem possible and realistic, I don't think neither the Ukrainian people nor the Ukrainian political leadership will agree to anything less than that.

But that's where we are now. If this Harkiv counteroffensive in some months turns out to have been a one- off success, and there isn't much more Ukrainian success in the south toward Kyrsone, in the east, toward Donbass in pushing back Russian forces and recapturing occupied territory, then perhaps that mood could shift toward some sort of willingness to consider a negotiated settlement. That's a difficult conversation to try and raise in Kiev these days. You immediately get told that that's not on the table, but of course, wars are fluid, unpredictable processes. And if It gets to be winter. It's cold in Ukraine. They're difficult difficulty with energy supplies.

Inflation is going up. It's more expensive. The economy continues to take a hit. The real medium and long-term costs of the war become more and more apparent. And Ukraine hasn't managed to take back much more territory. You could imagine a different conversation. But for now, that's really speculative. Josh Hoffa, thanks so much. Stay safe, my friend. Thank you. Joshua Yoffa, we spoke on Wednesday. You can read Josh on Ukraine as well as reporting on the war from Masha Gessen, Luke Mogelson, and more at New Yorker. I'm David Remnick, and that's our episode for today. Thanks so much for listening.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Breda Green, Kalilea, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, and Gophane and Putubuele. Along with Jeffrey Masters, Will Coley, Jenny Lawton, and Michael May. And we had assistance from Harrison Keithline and James Napoli. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.