Today, Explained - Is the US ghosting Ukraine?

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Last year’s counteroffensive failed and Ukraine needs American aid to win. Republicans in Congress won’t give it up without a fight. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin and Isabel Angell, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I am feeling that I have to be here. War with Russia is my war also. It's been almost two years since Russia escalated its war with Ukraine. And two years in, Ukraine is desperate for military aid from the United States. Your money is not charity. It's an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way. And it's not just Zelensky begging for money, it's Biden. Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine.

We must, we must, we must prove him wrong. But there are no signs that Congress is gonna budge and at present they're not gonna budge because of the US-Mexico border, believe it or not. It's a big old mess and we're gonna try and make sense of it on Today Explained. From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone.

So, the story starts. Better Man, now playing in select theaters. This is Today Explained. I was ready to go to the army because I have to do it. We got in touch with a Ukrainian soldier on the eastern front of this war this week. He wanted to remain anonymous to protect his safety if he were to get captured, but we verified his identity. Every day we laugh at each other, different jokes. It's also because without jokes it's so, it's not so good. Without jokes it's so like gray day, dark day, you know, and a lot of brother in

arms, our brother in arms were killed also, and civilian peoples were killed, but we need to support each other and jokes is a good way. A good way, maybe coffee, maybe some sandwiches, maybe something sweet, also supports our blood and our soul. And we have to have this optimism, I mean, inside of us to do our tasks. And I try, I talk to myself that, okay, I have to be in good condition and my brain has to be cold and my heart has to be warm, hot, hot heart, you know. It's so difficult because now we don't have enough weapons, enough needed things, you know. Mēs nav vajadzējušas vīpons, vajadzējušas lietas, ka mēs varam savu citu, savu cilvēku.

Arī ar ārmās, ar artaisku, ar ārmās un ārmās. like armed machines also, like artillery things and others. So we have optimism inside of us, you know, but we need more, more, more military things to cope with this Russian army. We wanted to hear what this war looks like as it approaches its two-year anniversary, so we got in touch with Luke Harding at The Guardian, who spends a lot of time on the ground in Ukraine. The situation on the ground is the Russians are slowly but surely moving forward. Now, last year, 2023, there were high hopes that the Ukrainians might be able to take are slowly but surely moving forward.

Now, last year, 2023, there were high hopes that the Ukrainians might be able to take back more territory, particularly in the south of the summer counteroffensive. Ukraine is finally on the march. Spring has become summer, and defensive operations switched to offensive ones. Slava! Slava! Slava! I was there when it started, and basically they ran into massive entrenched Russian fortifications,

minefields, air defense and so on. And that didn't work. And really, I would say since kind of late autumn and winter, the Russians have been pushing, pushing, pushing with a series of assaults across the front line, which, by the way, is more than 600 miles long, but particularly in the east. So the whole idea is an attempt to cut off the land bridge between Russian-held territory and the Russian-held Crimean Peninsula. And what we're seeing is massive attacks involving infantry, tanks, armoured vehicles, aviation,

and with tens of thousands of Russian soldiers being killed. I mean, I was on the front line recently near a town called Avdiivka, which the Russians have been trying to seize since last October, and I talked to one Ukrainian soldier who said, they come, we kill them, then more of them come. Close up, you see trenches. There are booms from outgoing artillery, whistles from incoming projectiles. There is mud, rats, now frost.

It's very cold in Ukraine with glassy looking trees and treacherous conditions everywhere in these kind of bare frozen fields. But with the addition of drones so it's this mash-up between first world war early 20th century and 21st war where both sides have got complete reconnaissance of the battlefield and it's impossible to do anything but by stealth or by surprise um and you would have thought that these sort of tactics where where hundreds of r Russian soldiers die every day, that they would change up, but they're not. And the sort of Putin strategy is to overwhelm Ukraine, to smother Ukraine, to use Russia's superior volumes of everything,

whether it's artillery or ballistic missiles or warplanes, and to grind out some kind of victory. It sounds like this counteroffensive has failed. Yeah, I mean, that's right. I mean, these things are always, Sean, they're always sort of perspectival. So if we were sitting here, let's say, two years ago, early 2022,

before the full-scale invasion, and I said, well, at that point, the Pentagon, the US basically assumed that the Russians would overrule Ukraine, topple the government of Vladimir Zelensky, set up a puppet administration in Kiev, and fold Ukraine back into Russia. And that didn't happen. I mean, the Russians tried to take Kiev,

but they failed. And actually, Ukraine's taken back quite a lot of territory. But the problem now is that their capacity to take more depends on the supply of weapons from the West and from the United States in particular. And what we know perfectly well is that this is being held up by Congress. It's become the subject of a bitter partisan debate.

And this has a direct effect on the battlefield. You know, I talked to Ukrainian servicemen who say that they noticed a dip in the amount of munitions they were getting in about late summer of last year. And they're now just completely outgunned. And they say the problem isn't infantry. They don't mind that the Russians have got more people. It's a country of 140 million. What the problem is, it was Stalin who called artillery the god of war. And there's more God on the Russian side than on the Ukrainian side. Artillery is the god of war. And there's more god on the Russian side than on the Ukrainian side. Artillery is the god of war. What about manpower? Because Russia's got an advantage there too,

right? There's the numerical advantage, of course, that they've got more people. They've got about 300,000 plus soldiers in the Ukrainian theater, which is a huge army. Look, this is the biggest war in Europe, my content, since 1945. And actually, it quite looks like the Second World War for much of the time. These tank assaults we keep on seeing. I've rarely listened to Stalingrad or the Soviet push for Berlin. So they've got more, but it's not just that. It's also the fact that the Russians are prepared to squander lives in the way the Ukrainians are not.

And their commanders, Ukrainian commanders, they don't send them in on impossible missions, whereas Russian officers will send 15 guys to their certain deaths across an icy field just to try and expose the Ukrainian firing position, knowing that they won't come back, knowing that they won't break through, just fodder. And there's a word in Russian, they call them meat assaults.

Meat assaults. And we've seen meat assaults throughout, and they continue. They continue. It's as if there is no level of pain and loss, which is too high for the Russian state. Meat war, you know, when they push a lot of people to kill, that we kill them. But it's their tactic, it's their strategy, and sometimes it works for Russian army, you know. How does the Ukrainian public feel about this conflict at this point?

I mean, everybody's exhausted. I mean, I'm in Kiev every month. I'll do a long stint there, then take a break, and then go back again. And last year, my Ukrainian friends, they all knew someone who was fighting. Now they all know someone who's been killed. I was sitting in a restaurant in December and got chatting to a guy, and he said, 10 of my friends have been killed.

10 of my friends have been killed. And that's the problem. I mean, Kiev superficially looks like any successful European city. I mean, it's, Sean, it's rather beautiful. There are Art Deco buildings. There are golden couplers. There are cobbled streets that twist up and down.

There's great coffee, by the way, and good pizza. You know, it's not some dreary Soviet bag water. I mean, it's a lively European city. It's a Berlin or a Prague. But under the surface, everybody is hurting because a brother or a husband or a cousin or a guy you played football with, you know, have been killed. And meanwhile, Kiev is being hit by...

It's being bombarded. There's a massive Russian air assault most nights. We just saw one in the last 24 hours with six cities being hit by ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, by everything missiles. Part of the problem is people are just very tired. I mean, I've been there. When this happens, your phone vibrates,

you get an air alarm signal, and then nothing happens for a bit. And then you hear Ukrainian air defense engaging, and then nothing happens for a bit. And then you hear Ukrainian air defense engaging, there are flashes in the sky, booms. It's all very apocalyptic. And then when finally you get the all clear at about 4, 4.30 in the morning, you're so wired, you're buzzing, you can't sleep. Because how can you sleep after that? Your body just won't switch off. And then repeat, repeat, repeat. But there is a degree of bewilderment

along the lines of what happened to the party of Ronald Reagan. Right? The party that in the 1980s faced down the mighty Soviet empire and basically, you could argue, won the Cold War. I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault.

To ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire. To simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding. And thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. Is now seems to think that Putin is a good guy when it's clear to everybody, pretty much everyone of sane mind that he is a murderous psychopath whose armies plunder, rape, destroy, kill, enslave, abduct children, actually, and take them back to Russia to be made into good Russians. The Kremlin wants to basically exhaust the Ukrainian civilian population

to kill them where it can, to destroy energy infrastructure, to make people freeze and immiserate them, to basically break Ukrainian will. And Putin thinks he's got time on his side. And meanwhile, he's looking eagerly to the US, to possible political developments there, which he thinks could well turn out to be favorable to him. Luke Harding, he's The Guardian's senior international correspondent and the author of Invasion, the Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival. When we're back on Today Explained,

how and why Congress might be ghosting Ukraine right now. Thank you. their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the order frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just

so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting oraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout.

Plus, with super simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp.

If you're a finance manager, you're probably used to having to toggle between multiple disjointed tools just to keep track of everything. And sometimes that means there's limited visibility on business spend. I don't know what any of that means, but ramp might be able to help ramp is a corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your back pocket. Ramp's accounting software automatically collects receipts, categorizes your expenses in real time. You can say goodbye to manual expense reports. You will never have to chase down a receipt again. You can customize spending limits and restrictions so your employees are empowered to purchase what

your business needs and you can have peace of mind. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained. Cards are issued by Sutton Bank, a member of the FDIC, and terms and conditions do apply. Ukraine, Ukraine Explained. It's Ukraine Explained. My name is Andrew Desiderio. I'm a senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl News. And you know a little bit about this funding battle for the Ukraine war in Congress? A little bit, yeah.

It's been my whole life for the past few months. Will Ukraine get the money? And if not, why not? Well, look, it's an open question at this point. Congress has tried many times over the last, I don't know, 12 months or so to get more money to Ukraine, more funding authorities for the president to transfer weapons from U.S. stockpiles. And at least three times they have failed to do so. And what's basically happened is each time they have been thwarted by the House Republicans. But right now, the big sort of hang up is that Republicans are demanding that any future aid for Ukraine be attached to legislation

that imposes policy changes for the U.S.-Mexico border, which members of both parties agree is a problem that should be addressed for sure. Where Democrats differ from Republicans on this is they don't believe that it should be tied to what is viewed as emergency spending for Ukraine, for Israel, and for Taiwan. Okay, a lot to process there. You got Ukraine funding, you've got border funding, you've got Taiwan, you've got Israel. Let's just focus on how it is that funding for the war in Ukraine got tied to the southern border. Can you help us wrap our heads around that? Yeah, so, you know, a lot of progressives are frustrated with the White House right now because back in August, they actually included additional funding resources to help

manage the crisis at the border as part of their request for money for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. And the thinking at the time was that this would be a way to sort of sweeten the deal for Republicans. It ended up backfiring and doing the exact opposite. Republicans saw that the White House asked for it and said, well, you're asking for it, so let's negotiate. And what they did was they made a series of demands surrounding border security, policy changes, restrictions on the ability to seek asylum, restrictions on the ability of the administration to parole migrants who are processed into the United States from the southern border. We delivered common sense legislation that will secure our border, but it's been sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk for seven months. House Resolution 2 was our bill, and the time to act on it is yesterday. And that is the standoff we're currently in right now,

because this is really the third rail of American politics. And the thinking is, if you're tying Ukraine aid to one of the most contentious, difficult issues Congress has ever had to address, then that doesn't fare well for Ukraine aid. And that has unfortunately borne out to be true. Which is to say that the Biden administration, whom we spoke with when they made this decision, miscalculated by tying border funding to the war in Ukraine. That is what a lot of progressives think. They think it gave Republicans an opening to demand these border policy changes as part of this supplemental funding request because, well, in their view, the White House put it on the table, so we're going to negotiate around that, right?

So, you know, you have Democrats and the White House kind of throwing shade at Republicans for tying these two issues together. Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security. Holding Ukraine's funding hostages are extreme partisan border policies. But then Republicans are coming back at them and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we didn't tie them together. You tied them together. And they're technically correct when they say that. Putting all the politics aside and, you know, the gamesmanship, what do Republicans actually think about this war in Ukraine? Are there Republicans who wouldn't support it even if it hadn't been tied to border funding? That's exactly the case. So you have Republicans like Mitch McConnell, who are the more traditional neoconservative hawkish Republicans who are going to support Ukraine no matter what.

They're going to be tied to the hip with Democrats, with President Biden on that issue, as they have been. Continuing our support for Ukraine is morally right. But it's not only that. It's also a direct investment in cold, hard American interests. And then you have a very significant contingent, especially in the House, and a growing group at that, that will not support Ukraine aid no matter what it's tied to. I mean, you could tie, you know, every border restriction under the sun that Stephen Miller and Donald Trump would love to have as part of this to Ukraine aid, and they still would not vote for it because of the Ukraine aid portion. They want to add a $100 billion supplemental, of which $60 billion will go to Ukraine. So that is the way.

Why is it that some Republicans are so staunchly against funding this war? Well, that's a very complicated question. I would say that the influence of Donald Trump is definitely the biggest thing here. Donald Trump, his whole foreign policy ethos was America first. This idea that we shouldn't be involved in foreign wars that don't have a direct bearing on the lives of Americans. It's more sort of non-interventionist, isolationist, if you want to call it. And the issue of Ukraine has become so politically charged in the United States ever since Donald Trump was impeached the first time for his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, in which he threatened to basically cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine unless they started an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The White House has just released a transcript of President Trump's July 25th phone call with Ukraine's president. So after that exchange about U.S. help to Ukraine, Trump then says, I would like you to do us a favor.

A whistleblower report related to that phone call led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry. And at the time, that got a lot of Republicans angry at the idea that, led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry. And at the time, that got a lot of Republicans angry at the idea that, oh, Donald Trump is being targeted for this stuff, right? And it made Ukraine a political issue and an issue that the Republican base in particular latched onto and said, hey, well, look at all this corruption in Ukraine. Donald Trump was right to do this. And so when this

issue comes up where they're, you know, basically under full scale assault by the Russian army, you have Republicans who are thinking back to that episode and saying, huh, is it really worth us giving, you know, billions of dollars and a lot of our weapons to Ukraine to help them fight the Russians? Infrastructure minister arrested for stealing $400,000. Deputy head of Zelensky's office can't explain where the sports cars came from so he had to resign but i think the main sort of reason why this has become so difficult for the republican party is is politics and you know i talked to a republican senator a few weeks ago who is in the mcconnell crowd a very supportive of ukraine and i asked him said, what do you think it is that, you know,

ever since the war started, there's been this steep decline of support for Ukraine among members of your party? And the senator said to me, you know, I have tried to get an intellectually honest answer out of the anti-Ukraine crowd as to why they don't support sending more money to Ukraine. I have not found one apart from domestic politics. And that is really what it boils down to, is that Ukraine has become almost a domestic political issue in the United States, especially for people who are aligned with Donald Trump and people who

have been the staunchest apologists for him, really, ever since he first came into office. Which is to say, in, what is it, 10 months, 11 months, when there is an election, if Joe Biden loses to the former president, that might be the end of Ukraine funding forever. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that. And a lot of Democrats at the last midterm elections were warning that if Republicans took the House, which they did, that could be the end of Ukraine funding forever. And of course, Congress has not passed new Ukraine funding ever since the lame duck period right after that election. Even when it's been led by someone like Mitch McConnell, it's been a failure of an effort. You know, frankly, one of the arguments that Mitch McConnell makes, which I think is one of the strongest arguments in favor of Ukraine aid, is that America is not sending any troops, we're not spilling any blood to help the Ukrainians, and we are helping them

degrade the Russian army. I mean, that is on its own a serious investment, a worthwhile investment in our national security. So, you know, to people like Mitch McConnell, this is a no-brainer of an issue. But in the Republican Party today, with Donald Trump's influence the way it is, that is no longer the case. Andrew Desiderio reports on Congress for Punchbowl. Find his work at punchbowl.news. Our program today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain and Isabel Angel. We were edited by Amina Alsadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd. It's Today Explained.

I don't know what will will do when this is over. I really hope that I can continue my own business. I hope, I really hope that I am alive. I will be alive. I really hope. And I talk to God, talk to God to support me in different way and I really want to be alive. ¶¶ Thank you.