The New Yorker Radio Hour - Masha Gessen and Joshua Yaffa on the Escalation of Violence in Ukraine

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Joshua Yaffa is a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, but he has been travelling throughout the war zone in Ukraine for weeks, reporting on the Russian invasion. Masha Gessen, who has lived in and reported from Russia in the past, returned to Moscow to write about the Russian people’s response to the invasion. Yaffa and Gessen spoke with David Remnick on March 3rd about the week’s escalation of violence, and what Putin’s goal might be. Plus, David Remnick speaks with Igor Novikov, an Internet researcher and entrepreneur who served as an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Novikov explains how Zelensky’s background as an actor and a comedian has given him an advantage in the West’s “attention economy.” Ukraine “will only survive if people pay attention,” Novikov notes, and must “make sure people understand who the perpetrator and who the victim is in this situation.” 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. There were thousands of people storming. You've got bomb sirens going off every 12 minutes, every 15 minutes. So then you're in the train station. Then you have to run outside, go to the metro for a bomb shelter. Then the sirens stop. Then you go back into the train.

So then we tried to compromise. And we got a taxi to the border of Poland for one. thousand dollars. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has gathered in intensity, something like a million refugees have left the country. And not only Ukrainians, but foreigners too, people who are in the country to study or travel. Johan Nell is South African, and he was only in Kiev to get a visa. He'd been there a few days when the fighting broke out. We got through the border of Ukraine or not exactly, because there was a line of course traffic going into the border about 25 kilometers long.

They said it would take us 70 to 80 hours to get to the front of the gate. And we did not have enough food or water to wait in the car for 70 or 80 hours. So we decided, okay, we're going to walk because if we walk, it will take us 14 to 15 hours. So eventually we got to the police border and then it was complete chaos. thousands of people, people telling us that they've been here for five days they've been here for four days, for four nights with no shelter, no water,

no food, no toilets. They prioritized the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian women and children. You've got women from other nationalities that's standing there in the cold, they're not doing anything to do them. They had us in this small block where everyone had to stand.

People were fighting, breaking bottles. I was concerned for my safety there. And then eventually someone saw some guy in the military told me like, dude, just go to another border because they're not going to let anyone in. The people are freaking out here. So then I decided

to go back to LeViv. I turned around, I spent $1,000. I walked for 25 kilometers. I wasted almost two days. And here I just go back to LeViv as if I wasted everything. Everything to waste.

I mean, by then, I almost had like 50 hours with no sleep. So I really needed one night's, one full night's rest before I can take on another plan for the next day. And then I met up with a fellow South African that was also in Libbyos. And he said he needs to go. I told him, yes, man, I'm also alone. Let's meet together. So we go to the Leviv Railway.

Same story. Absolute chaos. the boards are wrong the boards in the train in the railway station tells you this train going there is coming this time on this platform then you go there that time on that platform and then another train arrives

going into the eastern direction back to car keif or back to Kiev or back to Zaporosia we get this statue driver we're telling him like yeah man can you take us he's a bolt driver can we take us to Ujjjurat is the town

where you can go to either the Slovakian border or the Hungarian border. And he says, no, there's too many military checkpoints. There's too much snow. It's snowing. I can't take you. The people charge you like $1,000 again. So I was like, oh, no, I don't have this money anymore.

And he's like, okay, he might have an idea. He calls a bus driver. The bus driver tells him he already left from Leviv to Uzgarot. But he's not far. So the taxi driver offers to catch up with the bus driver, and we're like, yeah, thank God. Johan got to that bus and made it across the border, but countless others are stuck in a situation of utter terror. We've got at least 350 South African students that studies medical and whatever, and most of them are in their fourth year, and you've got universities being bombed. So what's going to happen?

With their four years of studies, I mean, where are they going to go? They wasted four years money. Four years studies. They have no plan, nothing. I mean, South African people do not have a lot of money. Most of them are there on scholarships. I can't just imagine what the atmosphere likes. Johann Nell. We reached him in Budapest last week. Joshua Yaffa, who's normally our Moscow correspondent,

has been traveling throughout the war zone in Ukraine for weeks. And Masha Gessen has been in the Russian capital reporting on the politics and the response to the invasion there. I spoke to them both late last week. It's a privilege to speak to you both. And we're speaking on Thursday. The city of Kersen has fallen. Kharkiv is under bombardment as are other cities.

Now, Josh, you spent the night in a, not in a bomb shelter, but in a metro station, which is now in effect a bomb shelter. What were people saying? I mean, people are there because they're seeing, especially in places like Kharkiv in Ukraine's northeast, they're seeing apartment blocks being hit with cluster munitions. They're seeing people fall dead in the streets as rocket fire rains down on them from above. And so, you know, to get to the point where you're coming night after

night and sleeping on a rolled-up blanket on the cold cement floor of a subway station suggests or sort of belies a level of really terror and danger. dread that is quite real and quite palpable in the city. And really makes people quite angry. And I think that's, on the one hand, totally understandable, if not obvious, right? There's the degree of absolute just fury that I've found among just about everyone I talk to in Kiev these days, and certainly the people who are spending the night in this metro station, how angry they are at Putin, how angry they are at Russia. And that really gets to the issue of the utter futility of this war, not just in its human cost and the horror that has already inflicted

and will continue to inflict for some days and I'm afraid weeks to come. But it just beggars the mind as to what Putin was thinking here. In other words, all wars have some kind of political solution. Clearly, Putin had something in mind when he invaded Ukraine and that something presumably was some sort of new pro-Russian government built in the ashes of the Ukrainian state that Putin was sent on destroying. But the degree of and passion and depth of anger here that people have toward Russia, and these are not people, I'm not pushing or prompting people. I'm asking the most open-ended questions, even just sometimes as simple as, you know, hi, how are you in the metro. And there's the degree of absolute anger you get toward Russia makes this whole idea

that this country could ever, you know, go along with or submit itself to rule installed at the barrel of a gun from Moscow just makes the whole project seem so impossible and there, and there for so much more futile and really dark. Masha, you just left Moscow. Tell me, what kind of support this war has. We know that the airways are flooded with pro-war propaganda, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Western propaganda, but you're actually speaking to people.

Who's for this? Well, it's hard to tell. But actually, can I pick up on something that Josh said first? Because, you know, I was thinking, as I was listening to you, Josh, it makes no sense that he would imagine

that he could, could bring Ukraine to its knees and like what would he do even if he bombs Kiev out of existence and and installs what he thinks is a puppet government. But the thing is that I think what he's thinking is that he has the experience of having done that. In 1994 and again in 2000, Moscow bombed the everything out of Grosny. And then it installed a puppet dickens. dictator who somehow manages to, you know, through, I mean, not somehow, through sheer terror, manages to run a Putin fiefdom in Chechnya. And so there's, if you go to Grozny,

you will see portraits of Putin and, and it is, it is the absolute image of, of a land where, where people fought a people's war of resistance that has been completely subjugated. And so I think that's what he imagines will happen with Ukraine. And I think he's probably been assured by, to the extent that he consults with anybody, but I think he's been assured by his military men that they could take Ukraine fast and sort of do the same thing. And I think he believed that Ukrainians were, were waiting for him with open arms.

Now, to the question of who supports this war, I mean, I have talked to people who support the war. And although it's not the war as we see it that they support, because what they're seeing on television is very, very different. The newscasts in Russia tell you that Russia is involved in a peacekeeping. I kid you not, a peacekeeping operation. Sometimes they call it a peacekeeping operation, and sometimes they call it a special operation for the cessation of hostilities. It's a really Orwellian sort of framing.

And Russians are convinced on the one hand that they're fighting pure evil, that Ukrainians are Nazis. They also think that they're fighting the United States and Ukraine as a proxy. But on the other hand, they have no images of the actual war. What Russian television is showing are refugees from the Dumbos area, who are saying that they're fleeing Ukrainians, who are receiving gratefully humanitarian aid.

There's really no blood and gore. There's very, very little. imagery of damaged buildings or streets. But even if you see them, you don't see sort of the devastated cities. You see a village that has had a missile hit it, and the Russians claim that it was the Ukrainians. Right. So they imagine a completely different thing.

But, Masha, this is the digital age. Speaking about whether Putin can stay in control as a leader, the former British ambassador to Russia, Sir Roderick Line, told the BBC recently that Putin's biggest weakness now is the mobile phone. Ukrainians are calling up their friends and relatives in Russia, and they're sending pictures of the truth into Russia. So the truth is going to get in, and Putin can't stop that.

That's what Roderick-Line said. What do you make of that argument? I think it may be overstating the facts for two big reasons. One is that people are often really resistant to factual interventions in their belief systems and in their ideologies. I have talked to people in the last few days who have relatives in Ukraine. I mean, in some way or another,

pretty much anybody you run into and Russia has a connection to Ukraine. Right. If it's not family, it's somebody that they knew through work, somebody they studied for a lot of middle class and higher people. It's people who provide a domestic help,

right? Often nannies that raise them, right? So close connections. And they, what they say is that, you know, those people have been brainwashed by the Ukrainian Nazis, and they don't know what's happening. They dismiss the images that they receive as fakes. So that's one reason, right, is this desire to push away any information that interferes with a worldview and an ideology. And the other possibly even bigger problem is that Putin has really destroyed the public sphere, including the digital public sphere. when we talk about people getting pictures of the truth, we're not really talking about individuals, right?

We imagine that there are sort of networks and people exchange these pictures and they make their way online and they bubble up to bigger media and then they trickle down again to individual people and that information circulates, but information doesn't circulate. Just in the last week, Russia has lost two of its main independent media outlets. And a third one, Nobel Gazeta, led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Midere Muratov, today announced that it had decided to submit to censorship. Josh, you've lived in Moscow now for 10 years. Lots of people you know have left the country. Lots of people you know, Masha, have left the country.

And a person I talked to, who was a presenter on TV Raine, one of the outlets that's been shut down, said the country has been completely transformed. that sanctions and the feeling of wartime Russia as an invader has completely transformed the economics and the psychology of the Moscow they knew. Josh, can you respond to that? I know that you're in Ukraine, but I'm sure you're wired into Moscow as well. Yeah, it's been interesting to listen and read Masha over the last few days to get a glimpse into a city and a world that I've known. so well for years, but yet am following with just absolute horror and confusion at how quickly

things have changed. And we always knew that any war that Russia launched in Ukraine would not just be absolutely devastating for Ukraine, but utterly transformative for Russia as well. And that seems to be exactly what's happening. And it's been disorienting and strange to watch that from afar. I I've been in Ukraine now for almost a month. And I've seen and certainly heard in terms of talks with friends and following along what's what's happening in Moscow from people I've known well and known for some years. It just wasn't utterly, I don't want to say unrecognizable place it is because we've been on this trajectory for a while. You've written about it. Masha has written about it at length. Russia was not a flourishing, open, healthy democracy two weeks ago.

far from it. But the phase we're entering into now is quite dark. It's dark because of the economic effects for real people. These are millions of people who already have seen 20-plus years of Putin's rule. And now we'll see that continue for an indefinite period of time, but in a much harsher reality living in a country that's essentially akin to Venezuela or Iran in terms of it's international isolation. It's hard to get money into Moscow these days. It's hard to fly in or out of Moscow these days. In fact, that's almost impossible really to get anywhere internationally from Moscow, whether that actually raises a real political danger for Putin and the stability of his rule. I'm not sure. I think that Putin has organized his system in such a way

is to really disassociate or prevent discontent from actually reaching the political system itself and causing any direct threat to him. So I think we may be stuck with this really dark system and sort of dark arrangement of power almost close to a more close to a military dictatorship than the kind of postmodern authoritarianism we've seen in Russia of late. So I'm afraid the story for Russia itself is quite dark. Well, Masha, you were recently at some protests, but the crackdown seems to be coming hard and fast,

and there's even talk of martial law in Moscow, if not throughout Russia. That's entirely speculative, but that's very much the talk of Moscow, as I understand it, and beyond. What would that mean? Well, we don't know, but, but, people fear most that the borders will close, right? The rumor that's circulating is that tomorrow, Friday, there's going to be an emergency joint session of parliament.

This will know that there's going to be an emergency joint session of parliament and that they're going to declare a state of emergency or martial law and prevent people between the ages of 18 and 50, people of both sexes, from leaving the country. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out that this was a rumor spread to induce all the people who would leave the country to hurry up and leave the country. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if we don't actually see martial law or a state of emergency come down tomorrow.

But I think right now the regime is doing everything to force all of its enemies out of the country and then at a certain point yes they're going to close the borders and put everyone who's perceived as enemy who's still inside

in prison I hear from a lot of Ukrainians Masha saying Russia can't win this war and even if they win the cities in the

short term and they subdue and pulverize these cities that they will be engaged in a prolonged guerrilla war with Ukrainians. What about this claim?

Are the Ukrainians just trying to get themselves to be brave and endure, which would be perfectly understandable, or strategically, or even tactically, can they win a war against Russian aggression? You know, I have no doubt that, I mean, I wouldn't say that they could, win a war, but I'm certain that Ukrainians can prevent Russia from winning the war. I think there's no way for Moscow to come to dominate Ukraine.

I think that that image of Chechnya that Putin has is not transferable to Ukraine. I mean, that there was an even more unequal context. and it also cost Moscow a lot of money to basically buy the shell of a country, a shell of a land that was left after Chichna. I shudder to think that Putin plans to do the same thing in Ukraine, but I don't think he can succeed. So I think the best case scenario is that Russia just gets bogged down in a prolonged conflict with guerrilla fighters.

Josh, how do you think this ends? Is there any way to even know? I'm afraid not. Like Masha just said, I don't see Ukraine capitulating. It may be militarily defeated in the sense that at a certain point, its regular army may be overwhelmed

by the military. military might that is or are the Russian armed forces. That's a big if. I don't think that's necessarily inevitable. It's clear from the first days of the fighting that the military aspect of this war has not gone at all like Russia thought it would. But in the end, especially if Russia is willing to ratchet up the level of brutality and the level of firepower they're using against Ukraine, they could force through a really ugly military solution. But like Masha just said, I don't see how that translates really ever into a political solution. What you'd be left with is a kind of Northern Ireland scenario, but absolutely on just incredible steroids,

on incredible and really terrifying steroids in terms of the degree and depth of the violence that could follow for a generation or more. What I think could happen, and I'd be curious to have Masha speak to this, is are there breaks on Putin's behavior in Moscow? Are there any voices who could impel or convince him of a path that I don't think would involve Russian forces packing up and leaving tomorrow? I think that the best in a way we could hope for is a kind of negotiated solution. But here too, it's hard to think of what Ukraine, given the mood in the country, would be willing to give up at this point. I think Ukraine feels like this is an existential battle for its own sense of statehood. So expecting Ukraine to give up on some aspect of that statehood, say, for swearing NATO for all eternity, I think would be a hard thing to get Ukrainians to.

agree to. But I think how this ends and the nature of this war going forward really depends in a terrifying way off of the kind of mental space and worldview and understanding of one person. And that's Vladimir Putin. Masha, can anyone penetrate that reality? I don't think so. But I think even worse than that, as Josh said, Putin has staked his entire political future on this war. There's no way for him to exit it, to find a non-triumphan solution and retain power. And I don't think there's a way for him to survive not retaining power, to humanly, physically survive, not retaining power. He is really cornered. And that's a terrifying situation for the world, not just for Ukraine.

Joshua Yaffa, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for all the work you're doing and be well. See you soon, I hope. Thank you. Thank you. Masha Gessen, who just left Moscow and Joshua Yaffa joined us from Kiev. We spoke late on Thursday, and you can find all their reporting on the assault on Ukraine at New Yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with Boy to Come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Rimbeck. Volodymyr Zelensky was once a sitcom star. But now as president of Ukraine, he has emerged as a kind of digital age Churchill,

a potent and savvy communicator throughout the Russian invasion of his country. Slava our defenders. Slav our defensemen. Slav Ukraine. His emotional appeal to a recent EU meeting, which was video conference from the battlefield, has been credited with the... spurring European leaders to tougher sanctions like kicking Russia out of the swift banking system.

And so in some ways, at least for now, Ukraine seems to be winning the information war. Igor Novikov is a former advisor to President Zelenskyy, and he's an internet researcher and entrepreneur. I spoke with Novakoff from Kiev last week. I'm good. How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. Hi. Paul need to be a bit of Sivogne today. Well, exactly. That would be the way I described it. And we just got some worrying news. Basically, there was a memo issued by the Indian Ministry of Internal Affairs,

telling Indian citizens to get out of Kharkiv before 6pm, including on foot if necessary. So I've no idea what they're planning on doing tonight in Kharkiv, but it'll be horrific. To be realistic, if not even blunt, For a week now, this invasion has been going on. And the resistance to it has been more than, let's just say, Vladimir Putin might have expected and his military commanders might have expected. But in the end, is it your thinking that he will unleash firepower at an enormous level like we used to see in Grozny, in Chechnya? To be honest, what we're seeing now from Russia is irrational violence and pretty much borderline intentional genocide, so intended and premeditated. So I would say that, you know, obviously the intensity of the attacks will increase, you know, because Russia is in a bad position militarily at the moment.

So unless Putin decides to take a step back and figure out a diplomatic solution. and figure out a way to save his face, you know, most likely, yeah, we're going to see some atrocities. You use the word genocide. What do you mean? And how do you see this as a genocide? Well, you have to understand the way Putin kind of views Ukraine. You know, for him, we are one people with the Russians, right?

So he claims that historically Ukrainians and Russians are one people separated by political and geopolitical circumstances. that is not exactly the case. I mean, Ukrainian people are different in their mindset, in their history, in everything, pretty much. So, you know, he went in on an assumption that, you know, his troops will be at least partially welcomed with flowers. And that didn't happen. Now the whole of Ukraine is a constant reminder for him that there are liberty and freedom-loving people right next to his totalitarian. enclave. So basically, you know, I think for him it's personal and, you know, if he can't force us

to love him, he'll do his best to eliminate, I mean, as many Ukrainians as it can, including the elites and the political leadership to kind of to break the spine of the Ukrainian nation. And in order to do that, he would have to resort to measures not seen in Europe since the 1940s. And we're already kind of witnessing that in Kharkiv. We're witnessing that in Volnavacher. We're witnessing that in Mariupol. And do notice that he's actually bombing Russian-speaking cities in the eastern Ukraine way more than he is, you know,

pro-Western Ukrainian cities, right? Why would he do that? Do you think he wants to hive off Western Ukraine and let it be a separate, as he would think of it, more purely Ukrainian, enclave, and then seize greater control in the east and install a puppet government in Kiev? Is that the scenario you see? Well, I think they had, say, a number of different scenarios. I mean, definitely from what we've seen, their first and main objective was to change the government of Ukraine and make Ukraine pro-Russian that way. They failed miserably. So now I think

they've resorted to plan B, i.e. They are trying to create what they used to call Nova Russia. So, Navarosa, yeah. So basically, they're trying to take as much territory from the eastern Ukraine as possible, connect, create that land bridge to Crimea, and kind of try and, you know, consolidate all the territories with the Russian-speaking population. But once again, even that plan is doomed to failure, Because, like, look, even pro-Russians in Ukraine are now turning against Russia.

I mean, you don't win hearts and minds with bombs and genocide. I mean, it's a very simple rule, but it's very effective. Now, you were an advisor to President Zelensky for a year, his first year in office. Have you had any contact with him or people in his circle in recent days? I'm in contact with the president's office, yes. And that's, unfortunately, I'm sorry, that's as much as I can say due to, you know, security concerns at all. And what can you say about Zylyensky's thinking? He's doing something extremely 21st century, which is that he's winning a 21st century information war through social media, through his own force of personality.

Where does that come from? Well, I would highlight probably two main elements to that. First of all, obviously, it's the creative side. of him. It's the showbiz background. It's the screenwriting, the movie making, you know, because when you come from that background, you're familiar with how to write in the characters, how to develop them, how to develop story arcs, how to make people laugh and cry, how to make people pay attention to what you're doing. So that's the first element. The second element, and that's where my background kind of comes in, is to do with the theory of information, the theory of the, the

so-called attention economy. The first time I met the president was doing a one-day academic program for him on how technology affects society and what the future might hold because of that technological change. And one of the things we actually talked about was, well, two things.

First of all, it was behavioral economics and behavioral psychology, so how people behave differently in this day and age. And the second thing that we've actually discussed is this, I don't even know how to describe it, this flood of information and how to survive and navigate those turbulent waters. So I gave them the academic sides of it. And then, like, little did we know that, like, literally less than a year later,

he's going to be president. I'm going to be his advisor. And we were faced with the biggest story in the world, the Trump impeachment. And that was the first time where we actually had to kind of practice what we preached. So we took everything that we were discussing and using and kind of build a new system to contain information from scratch. So that was the first kind of time. The second time we're seeing now, I mean, look, Ukraine will only survive if people pay attention. And that's really important because, like, look, I can give you one example.

history i mean if if if if if i had to ask you to name at least one astronaut from apollo 11 you know the first mission to the moon can you name one sure neil armstrong yeah exactly can you uh apollo 12 flew like a few months later can you name i see i take your point i take you see my point right um yeah so we we need to make sure that there's no apollo 12 effect in you know in the in our war against russia so that's issue number one we have to keep the attention. Secondly, look, it's all about hearts and minds. I mean, people, unfortunately, are irrational at the moment more than usual. So we need to make sure that people understand who the perpetrator and who the victim is in this situation, especially given the

fact that we've been attacked by a country well known for its propaganda and probably, you know, one of the best disinformation kind of centers in the world, you know, the country that's weaponized information. And lucky for us, we have a showbiz president who is interested in that kind of stuff and who's not afraid to use kind of the newest advances that we have. And it seems to be working great. Now, that's the arc of the story, but it's the arc of the story now. And I hate to be like this. But what happens if the arc turns into something quite different, which is to say that the bombardment coming from the Russian army increases to the point of real agony,

which is, I think, even quite likely, but one doesn't want to predict. How does the information war continue then, or does it become then a guerrilla war? Well, it always has been since the very beginning on February 24th, and it still is a guerrilla war. I mean, we don't have the resources at our display. that we can utilize as easily as Putin.

If things take a turn for the worst, well, first of all, let's talk about the people. I mean, we need to make sure that the humanitarian situation remains bearable. So, you know, women and children are leaving and they should be leaving at a greater pace and scale if, you know, if the fighting intensifies. Even those women and children, like, for example, my wife and my daughters, because I have been warned about this like a long time ago. obviously it was difficult to believe in it first, but like, you know, I set my wife down and she's from Poltava in, you know, in eastern Ukraine. So set her down and said like, look,

I mean, I think we should leave or at least you should leave, okay? Take the kids out. Because I knew if I said, you should leave, I should stay. You know, it was a no-go area for that conversation. So I said, like, look, we should leave. And she goes like, no, no, no, no, we're staying. And I was like, well, you have to understand. I mean, you're putting yourself in grave danger. And she goes like, look, we're sensible, grown up human beings, intelligent. You know, we're not stupid enough to run around like playing soccer or, you know, walking the kids if the rockets are landing.

So we know what the bomb shelter is. We know how to behave. We know how to fight. So we know how to survive. We're staying because this is a home. And she actually told me a very important thing that's become probably my most valued lesson of this whole situation. me like, look, in the world where there are people like Putin who openly wish you death,

you know, you can't keep running away because sooner or later you'll have to make a stand. And there's no place better for fighting than your own home. You undoubtedly heard news of Joe Biden's State of the Union address and his message that Putin will pay a price. How do you evaluate his behavior so far? He's ruled out American troops and out air power for reasons you well know. Do you worry that more support or intervention from the West could trigger a wider war, or do you want more? I support what President Biden does, because, I mean, some people criticize them for a lacklustre kind of reaction to the threats.

But, I mean, look, I have to remind people that we're dealing with a person who might be mentally unstable. you know, the president of Russia. So in the world where he has that red button at his disposal, you know, we need to fight back, but fight back sensibly, you know. That's like, that's the issue number one. Issue number two, in terms of American boots on the ground, I mean, we love our country and we're ready to defend our country,

and we would appreciate American boots on the ground, obviously the more than marry, but I mean, we're not in desperate need of other people. dying for a country against their will just because the government decided. What we really need is weapons. I appreciate that the West is really concerned that the first Russian plane shot down

by a NATO member country could lead to third World War and potentially to a nuclear war. But we need to at the same time figure out a way to give Ukraine a chance in the air as well because most of the damage that's happening now is happening because Russia controls a large percentage of Ukrainian airspace.

We do have some fighter jets. We do have some anti-aircraft systems, right? But obviously Russia is far superior in terms of its hardware. So, you know, the very fact that we're actually shooting down their planes and helicopters and cruise missiles is a miracle. Tell me at what point your family does leave Ukraine, or are you there until the bitter end or until there is a, a moment where the chokehold is released?

I would put it this way. First of all, I'd separate myself from my family in that particular sense. So my family would leave when there is an imminent threat to their security. Like, although we're in a hotspot at the moment, I have the situation under control. And if you don't mind, I won't go into the details.

If I deem the situation too dangerous, they will leave against a will. So that's issue number one. Issue number two, I'm not leaving. Like, look, even if Putin raises every inch of our country to the ground, we'll take this fight elsewhere. So whatever happens, Ukrainian people and Ukrainian nation will survive this. Igor Novakov, thank you so much. And best to your family.

Thanks very much. Igor Novikov, a former advisor to President Zelenskyy, and we spoke on Wednesday. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for joining us. 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 Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Calalia, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Alison McAdam, Harrison Keithline, and Meng Fei Chen, and guidance from Emily Boutin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.