The NPR Politics Podcast - Mass Graves Found In Kyiv Suburbs Following Russian Withdrawal

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

President Joe Biden again referred to Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a war criminal after mass graves were discovered in territory recaptured by Ukrainian forces. And in conversations with NPR, many Ukrainians have expressed a deep sense of grief — and a desire for more military support from Europe and the United States.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and correspondent Elissa Nadworny.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. The time now is 2.14 p.m. on Monday, April 4th. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Today, the latest from Ukraine with NPR's Alyssa Nadverny, who is joining us from Kiev. Hey, Alyssa. Hello. Thank you for coming on the pod. And we should just warn up front here that we are going to talk about some developments that many listeners are likely to find troubling and hard to listen to. So just a warning before we get into it. NPR is reporting that a senior defense official in the U.S. estimates about two-thirds of the Russian forces that were arrayed outside of Kyiv have now pulled back.

It's not clear what Russia's plan is for them or the remaining troops around the Ukrainian capital, but Ukrainian troops are retaking small villages outside of Kyiv and are returning to scenes of devastation, flattened apartment buildings, mass graves, dead bodies lying in the street. Alyssa, what can you tell us about the state of the conflict right now? Yeah, well, so the big news is really that Russian forces have withdrawn from Kyiv, which is the capital city. That's really the big news. But there is still ongoing fighting in the east and in the south. Odessa, which is that vital port city on the Black Sea, they've seen missile strikes in the last few days, a significant hit to a fuel depot, which is basically storage for fuel, which just really hinders military movements, but also infrastructure. So big, the big news, of course, is the retreat from Kiev, the capital, but fighting is ongoing all

over the country, really. Alyssa, what can you tell us about the gruesome discoveries that were made in the Ukrainian suburb of Bucha over the weekend? Yeah, well, I first want to just kind of set the scene for how this unfolded, which, you know, these are places around the Kiev area, suburbs and towns. Irpin is one of them, Bucha, as you said. These are places that Russian troops took early on in the war. And so as Ukrainian counter offenses pushed them back, as the troops withdrew, we're kind of starting to see what happened in these places. And so now the work is underway from military and local police to kind of clear the areas. And what they're finding is just it's devastating. just bodies lying in the street, some that were found with their hands tied behind their backs,

shot at close range, eyewitness accounts of people in villages just talking about kind of what the Russian military did there. We have accounts of rape, residents going weeks without food, homes are destroyed and damaged. And Human Rights Watch put out a report on some of these places. And I just want to also kind of caution, these are being called alleged war crimes. It's going to take a long time to investigate them and to actually be able to say definitively that these were war crimes. So I just wanted to say that.

But with social media, of course, they're all over and everybody can kind of see them and react to them. Everybody, including lots of people in Ukraine. Everybody, including lots of people in Ukraine. I mean, the grief here is just palpable. And it's in every conversation that I have. It's hard to watch. These are places that people know these are vibrant places before the war. And I do want to say that we have gotten some reports from the prosecutor general here in Ukraine saying that officials have found bodies of over 400 civilians around Kyiv. They're beginning to be examined by prosecutors and other specialists. They're doing eyewitness

accounts. They're just trying to document what happened as much as possible. And this is the painstaking work of determining or getting a determination about what happened. Mara, President Biden addressed this this morning. What did he have to say? Well, you know, Biden has called Vladimir Putin a war criminal in the past, and he did it again today. You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter is, so it happened in Russia.

He called Putin a war criminal, but to actually have a war crimes trial, he said they have to gather evidence. He also said that the U.S. will continue to provide Ukraine with weapons, ramp up sanctions. And this comes after Ukrainian President Zelensky visited Bucha and called what happened there a genocide and is asking the West for tougher sanctions. And Biden was asked whether it was a genocide, and he didn't go that far.

No, he didn't go that far. What's so interesting is the more brutal this gets, the less possibility there is for a negotiated settlement, because Ukraine, after what's happened, is not willing to give Russia a chunk of their country. And as the sanctions escalate because of what Putin is doing, there's no off-ramp for him either. I mean, this seems like a conflict without any resolution in sight. Is that fair? Yeah, you know, I also think Kyiv was kind of a big playing piece in the negotiations last week, right?

Russia was saying we're going to withdraw from Kyiv as a sign of trust in the negotiations. And kind of what we're realizing is actually that perhaps was a military defeat and not so much a concession at the negotiating table. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more of Alyssa's reporting from Ukraine. And we're back.

And Alyssa, we were talking about the conflict and the effect that it is having on Ukrainians who are still there in the country, millions of people either internally displaced or in their homes, hunkering down trying to make it through this conflict. How have the people that you've been talking to responded to the latest developments? Well, certainly everybody is following this so closely. I mean, it's really incredible to kind of watch the war unfold from an individual perspective, because, you know, everybody is constantly scrolling, and they know like the latest military movements. And they're certainly watching the stories and images that are coming out of Bucha and Irpin. But in the same breath, life goes on. They just started, you know, regular train services. Businesses are opening up here in Kiev. Life goes on in the like very true sense as well. I was at a maternity hospital today. So far in the war, 15,000 babies have been born. Which I guess makes sense. It's been more than a month.

Of course, yes. And so it's a very interesting juxtaposition to have kind of new life at the same time as kind of deep grief and so much death. I talked with a woman named Alina, who is actually from Bucha, and she fled during the war. So she's telling me how she escaped from Bucha and how she kind of closed her eyes on her walk out to get into the car to evacuate because she just didn't want to see what was around her. She's so focused on keeping the stress out and having a healthy baby. She hasn't been able to look at the pictures. It's too much in a time in which she really needs to just stay positive and healthy for her new baby girl, which is due tonight or

tomorrow, any minute. Wow. When did she escape Bucha? Was she there when Russia invaded? She was there when Russia invaded. Yep. They debated whether or not to go. They lived in the basement for about a week. Explosions started picking up. And already kind of Russian soldiers had come into their town. And so, yeah, they debated for about a week down in that basement. They decided to go to Irpin. Of course, they got to Earpin and they couldn't get out. So they're now living in the basement of his office building in Kiev. They went to the hospital today, and so they'll be there through the birth. Wow. Mara, does all of this just increase pressure on the West, increased pressure on President Biden to do more? And what does more

even look like anymore? Well, that's a good question. Yes, it increases pressure on the U.S. and its NATO allies to do more. What does more look like? More sanctions. There's still a lot of Russian oil and gas flowing to Europe. Germany actually today suggested that it's time to talk about cutting off Russian oil and gas completely. That would entail big sacrifices on the part of Germans and Europeans because they're heavily dependent on Russia. And we don't know if there's a limit to how much the American people are willing to support. Part of the reason that gas prices are so high in the U.S. – they're high all over, but they're high here, is because of the war in Ukraine. And the tougher the sanctions get, the more potential inflation there will be. Don't forget,

Ukraine is also a big wheat producer. It's going to cause food inflation. And that's just an unknown question. You know, right now, I think the world is transfixed. The Western world is wholly behind the Ukrainian people. But this is a conflict that could grind on for years, for years. And how much sacrifice are European voters and American voters willing to make? We don't know that. Does the president and leaders, other allies, do they risk just falling into a political quagmire? I don't know if I would call this a political quagmire. The fact is that NATO has been strong and unified so far. We don't see any cracks, although, of course, the Hungarian leader, Viktor Orban, just got reelected, and he has actually called Zelensky a foe. So he's kind of a pro-Putin member of NATO. But other than that,

NATO has really stuck together. Over time, we don't know what will happen. I mean, Russia is now in an untenable military situation. Are they going to just hunker down in the Donbass and Crimea? Are they going to escalate to using other kinds of weapons that will be much harder for the U.S. to respond to, like chemical weapons? We just don't know. But I don't think that this is something that's hurting President Biden, for instance, but he's not getting any bump from it. He's not getting any of the rally around the flag, foreign policy crisis effect that past presidents have gotten. Alyssa, do you have any sense of how the peace talks are going? Certainly,

President Zelensky has made it clear that it is difficult to proceed with peace talks with all of this happening. But then at the same time, he has said that he has to proceed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He said today, again, when he was asked that, yep, you know, we live in current day, right? That we have to find a peaceful solution. You know, I think it's kind of interesting what is able to be put on the table at this point, especially the more kind of we see in terms of devastation, of course, influences that, you know, there are places like Mariupol in the South where we haven't even seen that yet, you know, and so a lot of experts are

saying that could also be be a big shift in terms of like, what is able to be on the table and is accepted, especially by the Ukrainian people. Alyssa, this war has been going on for weeks now. What are you hearing from the people there about what lies ahead? Well, I think, you know, the big question here is kind of like, what do we see as an end? And everyone that we have talked to from, you know, people on the ground, teachers in schools, to an advisor to Zelensky, I mean,

they anticipate this to go on for months at the shortest. And so that has been kind of an interesting thread to follow. What does that mean in kind of an interesting thread to follow. What does that mean in terms of just how much stamina the people of Ukraine have, the military of Ukraine has? You know, I talked to the woman named Irina Trukhova. She's a medic with a battalion here, and she was telling me, like,

she feels like she can't even get undressed because with missiles, you don't even know where the front line is yeah so she's saying i can never get fully undressed sometimes she takes off her medic kit because it's a bit uncomfortable but for the most part she's in her full uniform every night like sleeping in a flak jacket she she takes off her bulletproof vest and she sleeps in her jacket and her pants and her boots. So she's ready to run out the door.

Yep. And that's kind of the sense that I'm just getting from most of the people we're talking to. One thing to remember is that this is a country that's also familiar with war, right? I mean, just 2014, the Donbass has been in a military conflict, Crimea. It's not totally unfamiliar in a sense that they are ready to kind of be called to action. Wow. Well, I think we're going to leave it there for today. Alyssa Naberny, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, you bet. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, National Political Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.